In the last decade of planning and policy making, radical or experimental approaches to the organisation of society and the way we plan, design and manage cities have been rare. What has instead evolved during recent years is a firm consensus that sustainable societies and cities can be achieved within the frames of our current unsustainable path (economic, organizational, consumerist patterns) through small steps such as biking lanes, light-rail, densification strategies and growth boundaries.

Critical researchers, such as Erik Swyngedouw and Roger Keil, argue however that this “light greening‟ of current society and cities cannot reach deeply enough to fundamentally redirect the destructive dynamics of today’s urbanism. They are not enough to handle the threats posed by climate change, uneven global development, and growing socio-economic segregation (see this blog’s post Green Building alone won’t save the planet). Instead they call for visions and initiataives of alternative futures and more deep-reaching approaches that can help change the structural problems of our unsustainble society. As Zev Naveh well said it “our present environmental crisis has to  be recognized and resolved as an all-embracing cultural revolution”.

Therefore attention needs to be paid to the growing number of initiatives of social movements, communities, and non-traditional practitioners that challenge today’s predominant social order and the ways in which we traditionally plan, design and manage our cities.

In this blog I try to share alternative practices that have the potential to creat big difference in our cities. Some of these can be seen in posts such as the ones about Park(ing) Day, Space Hijackers, The Bottle city project, or the practice of Atelier d’architecture autogérée. Although most of these examples and their initiatives and projects are small in scale, I believe that it is through these small bottom up initiatives that we can create the structural change that it is needed. Initiatives that do not only change the way cities are physically, but that also dig deep and create a change in the way people and communities think, how they organize, how they use the city and what they value in it. The accumulation of many of these small initiatives can help us create a shift to our current unsustainable path. Therefore a call for much more radical “small” approaches to urban change.

parts of the text are based on: Green Futures Symposium: Form Utopian grans schemes to micro-practices

Review of the book “Making Competitive Cities” by citybreaths:

In the era of rapid urbanization, we are all trying to understand how numerous processes and phenomena shape our cities: globalization, post-industrialization, entrepreneurial cities, creative classes, clustering industries, networked societies, etcetera. All cities are in need of grand theories that can function as instruments for making these cities the best cities.

But that doesn’t work, according to Musterd & Murie. Their book is a conclusion of 4 years of comprehensive empirical research in 13 major European cities. “Cities are context”, the authors say, implying that cities are multi-layered entities that have been shaped over centuries by their economies, cultures, politics, technologies and institutions. This has resulted in cities with different roles (capital cities, industrial cities, educational centres) and different population compositions. We must be cautious to draw general conclusions from these roles, functions and compositions. Reality is extremely differentiated. In order to gain or maintain importance, cities have to capitalize on elements of their rich histories and individual assets. There is no golden formula that can attract the creative class to every city. Cities should be considered one by one. Each city’s history and the legacies from history are important influences on their future, but they are not determinants.

Next to the importance of a city’s path dependency for urban development, the authors found that an individual’s choice for a city depends on certain factors. The research shows that key actors (professionals and managers) in creative and knowledge economies choose a place to work and live based largely on personal networks and ‘hard’ conditions, and less on ‘soft’ conditions. These soft conditions are certain amenities that a city has such as tolerance, diversity, openness and ‘nice environments’ (yes, Richard Florida’s conditions). These amenities do play a role, however, in the decision whether or not to stay in a city, but are not important in a city’s competitiveness. Personal networks and hard conditions are much more important, making up for about 80-90 percent of what the location decision is based on. Relations with friends, familiy and professional colleagues - personal networks (or individual trajectories) - and available space, accessibility, tax regimes, etc. - hard conditions - are the most important factors.

So the factors on which MANY cities have based (part of) their competitive strategies on in the past years turned out to be the least important. Say goodbye to Richard Florida, it’s time for a new hype.

(Source: citybreaths)

via summeroffrugality via  davidgalestudios:

Although considered as a guide for the future of sustainable urban development there is something about those one-fit-all solutions that I just can’t swallow, especially when they are mainly based on land use and traffic patterns.

The idea which originated in one Portland’s development companies is an interesting one: “all of the necessary and enjoyable things that make life great, including open spaces, grocery stores, workplaces, libraries, events, and schools, within 20 minutes of the home.Twenty minutes on foot is ideal, but 20 minutes by transit, bike or even auto is a reasonable goal.”

Of course this goes in favor of the need of mixuse neighborhoods, fight against sprawl, walk more, etc, etc, etc, bla, bla,  which for many american cities this is a huge eye opener a real difference. But living in a city that could say follows many of these principles in its urban fabric I can think of a few buts that might be good to consider.

Here are just some questions that come in to mind:

do I really want to limit my daily life to my neighborhood? 

are my social relations/networks in a 20 minute radius? in other words do my friends live in my same neighborhood?

who is deciding what a community, what I consider as necessary and enjoyable things/uses?

what if what I consider essential is different from my neighbor’s?

will having “all the essential things” in a 20 minute radius mean that it will be a little of everything instead of quality of a few? … those few things that I really value

is it proximity to a certain use, as in time-distance that takes me to go somewhere, what really matters? or is it the accessibility, meaning different, comfortable, enjoyable, fruitful, inviting, etc, etc ways to go to the place I want/need.

can proximity really make a difference in our transportation patterns? I just say this because I know people that prefer to drive to the local Macdonalds even if it is just a few blocks from their house.