Community-washing in urbanism?

Aseem Inam: The design fields such as architecture, landscape architecture, and the more transdisciplinary field of urbanism are rife with lofty claims--especially on social media like LinkedIn--that mask hard-core realities of green-washing, art-washing, and increasingly, community-washing.

As my research project, journal article, and forthcoming book explain, one has to carefully unpack popular--and often misunderstood--ideas about what "co-designing" and "public" [or rather, "publics"--plural] actually mean both conceptually and in practice. In terms of the latter, there are three quotes that should give us not only pause, but inspire us to do the necessary and hard work of community mobilizing and organizing.

The first quote is from the black feminist scholar and activist, Loretta J. Ross, who talked about working with people that were extremely different and even diametrically opposite than her as "having difficult conversations with a whole lot of people I wouldn't bring home for coffee. I don't want them to be my friends, but I needed to have conversations with them as a community organizer."

The second quote is from Chris Smalls, the president and founder of the new Amazon Labor Union, describing the historic drive to organize one of Amazon's New York City warehouses: "We created our own culture. Amazon has its own culture that is run completely on metrics, numbers -- no human interaction. While we interacted, we brought a human aspect to it, we cared for one another, we showed the workers every day that we cared for them. Even if they disliked us, we didn't argue, we didn't sit there and you know, get into fights. We just continued to pretty much . . . kill them with kindness . . . I think workers respected that . . . We just stuck to the issues and built off that commonality."

The third and final quote is from the political theorist Alyssa Battistoni: “The point of organizing is to reach beyond the people who are already on your side and win over as many others as you can. So you can't assume the people you organize share your values; in fact, you should usually assume they don't."

I will leave these quotes here for readers to think about, interpret, and come up with their own understandings about they imply for practice and action, especially in the design fields because there is often a lot of lip service in those fields for what is in fact extremely hard and complicated work of truly collaborating and partnering with different kinds of communities.

Note: These three quotes come from an excellent essay by Amia Srinivasan in the London Review of Books. If you are interested in an effective [though not necessarily perfect, because there is no such thing] example of "co-designing publics" in urbanism, please read my open-access journal article on the amazing work of the legendary Culinary Union in Las Vegas. AI

Puerta del Sol square in Madrid: Hundreds of young Spaniards camped out on the streets of Madrid and other cities protesting against mass unemployment, corruption and a political class they say is ruled by the financial markets, not the needs of the people. The demonstration in Madrid gradually developed from a small sit in, to a full blown tent city with a market, a garden and even a library.

I love this photograph! You may want to know why . . .

Aseem Inam: I love this photograph for so many reasons because it represents so much to me.

One of the most important reasons is that it was taken by my partner, who is an amazing photographer.  I really like the way, that rather than doing just a standard screen grab, she took a photograph of the screen, which is covered with a slight layer of dust and smudges and sunlight coming through the windows on the upper right-hand corner of the image.  She is excellent at capturing the moment, and this photograph captures so well, what is happening inside the screen, on the screen, and outside the screen.

Another reason is that it represents a very special moment, which was the opening of our "Co-Designing Publics" international symposium on September 16-17, with over 337 registered participants from all over the world spread out over 15 different time zones and 30 speakers from 8 countries.  The symposium was funded by a grant from the UK Arts and Humanities research council, and while I was the principal investigator and lead speaker, it was truly a collaborative effort.  Those of you who have organized and lead such events know the enormous intellectual effort and logistical coordination it takes to carry them out successfully.

The collaboration was extraordinarily enriching, with colleagues such as Charlotte Lemanski of the University of Cambridge in the UK, AbdouMaliq Simone and Melanie Lombard of the University of Sheffield in the UK, Neha Sami from the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Simon Springer of the University of Newcastle in Australia, and Fernando Lara for the University of Texas – Austin in the United States.  Juan Usubilliga, my former research assistant and current Ph.D. student, played an especially instrumental—and outsized--role as the Network Administrator of the "Co-Designing Publics" research network.  I learned a great deal from each one of my collaborators.

One of the main goals of this research network is to foster the exchange of ideas, nurture dialogue about experiences in different parts of the world, and generate common understandings and newly shared knowledge.  What is the topic of investigation?  Well, it was a mouthful, representing the true ambitions of learning in our group:  "Co-Designing Publics: [Re]Producing the Public Realm via Informal Urbanisms in Cities of the Global South."  In my opening talk, which the image shown here, I unpacked the title and sub-title, talked about the relationalities among the different components, and concluded with the significance of the implications, which are quite considerable.  What the title reflects is the intellectual and intersectional framing of these ideas.

I loved wrestling with these ideas!  I have been thinking about them, testing them out in teaching and practice, researching them, and articulating them for many years in bits and pices.  Based on many years of experience, I believe these ideas are truly significant for both understanding cities [i.e. #TheoryAsPractice] and designing them [i.e. #ResearchAsPractice].  In fact, they lie at the heart and soul of what a city should be, now and in the future.  I will be publishing the full text of my talk, with the title "Co-Designing Publics," in the near future, so please look out for it.  I would love to continue the conversation that we started with our research network and final symposium with all of you.

Finally, I love this photograph because it represents to me a type of camaraderie and solidarity which I cherish deeply, because this is what we need to not only survive but also thrive in our world.  In fact, I talk about "Co-Designing Publics" because it represents the camaraderie and solidarity that we need for our cities to thrive and for us to thrive in them.  Recently, there has been a great deal of welcome talk about "self-care," which has to be part of larger commitment to "collective care," where we take care of ourselves and of each other.  This is not easy, due to our many differences and to the normal frictions among and between communities, but it is absolutely necessary.  Thus, the photograph for me represents a special moment in my life, the capture of a special collaborative event, and a passion for the special work I have been doing in partnership with my friends and colleagues. AI.

I took the photograph of the Dhobi Ghat in the Mahalakshmi area of Mumbai, India in 2013. The Dhobi Ghat is the largest open-air laundry in the world and is run by a cooperative. I like the contrast with the high-rise residential buildings under construction in the background, geared towards the affluent members of society, which in India means the middle-income and upper-income groups. While there is aesthetic contrast between them, in reality they are intertwined physically, socially and economically. Image of screen: Elahe Karimnia.

ESSAY: "POSTPANDEMIC: CITIES"

Aseem Inam: I was one of the experts invited by the journal, Issues in Science and Technology, to reflect on life after the COVID-19 global pandemic. The journal is published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The wide-ranging contributions explore the postpandemic world as it relates to public health, research, universities, economics, disasters, robots, time, space, and much more. The PDF fof the special issue can be read and downloaded at: https://www.academia.edu/44902552/Postpandemic_Cities My contribution on "Cities" is on pages 47-48. AI.

The cover of the special section on “Postpandemic” of the journal, Issues in Science and Technology, with a mixed-media painting by Diane Burko.

Book review: New Companion to Urban Design

Aseem Inam: The Journal of Urban Design published my review of a recent and remarkable book, The New Companion to Urban Design.

Urban design is a multifaceted and evolving field.  However, it does not become multifaceted and evolve by itself.  We make it so.  The "we" is the community of inquirers and enactors such as academic scholars, urban practitioners, and citizen activists.  From time to time, the field also needs a good shake.  This is just such a time.  Cities all over the world are confronting the climate crisis, urban inequality, structural racism and health emergencies such as the current Covid-19 global pandemic.  How is urban design engaging with such realities and challenges?  The book, New Companion to Urban Design, provides some valuable answers.  Indeed, the New Companion is a monumental and path-breaking tome in an increasingly welcome and crowded field of urban design readers and companions.  The breadth and scope of the issues it covers, at 50 chapters and 714 pages, is a breathtakingly impressive achievement.  As significant as this is, the New Companion is monumental in another, equally impressive, manner, which is the outstanding quality of its most remarkable chapters—all of which bring fresh and potentially transformative perspectives to the field of urban design. 

 The editors of the New Companion, the distinguished and prolific scholars Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, state that the present book should be seen more as an aspirational sequel to their earlier project, Companion to Urban Design (2011), which was more foundational.  The Companion to Urban Design was focused on what I would call a passive observation of past research and current trends, as revealed in the titles of its nine parts:  roots, theoretical perspectives, influences, technologies and methods, process, components, debates, global trends, and new directions.  In contrast, the New Companion concentrates much more on substantive issues and future possibilities in its fifteen sections:  part 1: Comparative Urbanism (i.e. arguments and observations, regional experiences,), part II: Challenges (i.e. claims and conflicts, informality, explosive growth versus shrinkage, large-scale development, gentrification and displacement, mimesis and simulacra) and part III: Aspirations (i.e. reliance and sustainability, health, conservation / restoration, justice, intelligence, mobility and access, arts and culture).

As this summary list attests, the chapters and their authors cover a wide range of facets of cities that are being increasingly recognized for their importance in city-design-and-building processes and their spatial products.  Within this overall structure, a number of chapters are especially outstanding for their fresh empirical analysis, theoretical contributions and new directions for practice in urban design.  These chapters share a number of themes that are vital for shaping the future of urban design. Three themes are especially pertinent: the first challenges Euro-American centric modes of thinking by learning from the global south, the second recognizes the complicity of urban design in urban inequality by engaging with theories of social justice, and the third complements an exclusive focus on urban form and space by theorizing about new modes of transformative practice.

The rest of the original and detailed book review and essay can be viewed and downloaded from this website. The shorter and edited version, as published by the Journal of Urban Design, can be viewed here. AI.

Cover image of the recent book, The New Companion to Urban Design. Source: Routledge.

First paragraph of the published book review. Source: Journal of Urban Design.

Designing the "Off-Grid" City: Empowering the Transactions of Infrastructure

Aseem Inam: What is the relationship between informality and sustainability as seen through the lens of design?

Through such a powerful lens, we acknowledge that while cities face enormous challenges and crises, they also constitute places and networks of innovation and transformation. A significant source of innovation are informal urbanisms. I define informal urbanisms as the transactional conditions of ambiguity that exist between that which is acceptable and that which is unacceptable in cities. Thus, informal urbanisms constitute the transactive realm between coded formalities (e.g. planning regulations, engineered infrastructures), and fluid informalities (e.g. social networks around housing issues, political negotiations over use of public spaces). In fact, informal urbanisms are not marginalized forms of places and practices; rather, they are central to understanding the logics of urbanism.

Focusing on various types of urban infrastructure and examples of illuminating case studies, a forthcoming book chapter by me proposes an analytical framework to develop a systematic and in-depth understanding of these informal urbanisms, in order to develop their potential for transforming cities through "off-grid" strategies. The purpose of the framework is to harness the everyday knowledge and informal urbanisms of marginalized residents in order to flip the narrative from their marginalization to their empowerment in the face of urban crises. In this manner, our understanding of the design of the everyday city and its long-term sustainability will be broadened, deepened and ultimately, empowered.

In this manner, this chapter fundamentally rethinks what constitutes urban infrastructure and its future design by proposing a theoretical framework and attendant research agenda. The chapter investigates how residents transact i.e. have interactive exchanges, with urban infrastructure (e.g. water, sanitation, transportation, communication, energy), in the global south via “off-grid” approaches (i.e. highly creative ways, such as informal strategies and social innovations). The theoretical framework is based on two innovative premises. The first is that the conjunctions of people and their transactions with each other and with urban infrastructure in the global south in fact constitute a type of unique infrastructure itself i.e. people as infrastructure, following Simone (2004).

The second is that these types of people/people and people/infrastructure transactions can be further designed to empower residents and create transformative urban practices i.e. designing urban transformation, following Inam (2014). Integrating these two premises, the chapter further develops this theoretical framework via a research agenda focusing on the global south, where the most ground-breaking innovations in informality have been integral to cities for centuries e.g. in Africa, Asia, Latin America.

By pursuing this research agenda, the chapter proposes new ideas about the power of design, such as the everyday creativity of citizens, and the transdisciplinary collaborations necessary to redesign urban infrastructure. This is also an approach for learning and theorizing from the global south that is highly relevant to the global north (e.g. in terms of radically democratic design, innovation in the face of resource constraints, horizontal networks rather than top-down expertise). AI.

Note: The name of the forthcoming book is Informality Now, edited by Antonino Di Raimo, Steffen Lehmann, and Alessandro Melis, and to be published by Routledge in 2020-2021.

The Ocupação São João in São Paulo addresses the critical shortage of housing via a residential squatting strategy that also contributes to the cultural infrastructure of the city through a self-managed cultural center, the Centro Cultural São João. The mural in the cultural center symbolizes how citizens can empower the transactions of such infrastructure through radically democratic strategies and informal urbanisms. Source: Aseem Inam.

Caring for the City

Aseem Inam: What is the relationship between care and the city?

As I write this, we are in the midst of a  Covid-19 / coronavirus pandemic.  At the time of this writing, there are a staggering 1,309,439 confirmed cases and 72,637 deaths worldwide, with many more projected.  Many of these cases are in cities, since 55% of the world's population lives in cities, a percentage that continues to rise. 

 Some commentators, in a rush to judgement and with a superficial understanding of judgement, have blamed urban density as a major part of the reason the virus is spreading so quickly.  At one level, whenever there is a concentration of people, there is bound to be a concentration of illness and crime, but there is also flourishing of a vital exchange of ideas, collective cultural expressions and incredible mobilizations for problem-solving.

 Currently in the United Kingdom, where I am presently based, there is an efflorescence of mutual aid societies, in which people come together using social media to help each other [e.g. getting food and medicines for the elderly and the vulnerable].  Also in the United Kingdom, a staggering 700,000 volunteers have committed to helping the over-stretched doctors, nurses and healthcare workers of the National Health Service.

 There are many such examples from all over the world, including sacrificing their lives for the well-being of others.  There are many studies done about the motivations that drive such altruistic behavior, but I want to get back to the city as a place of care.  Cities are truly places of hope, because that is where we learn to deal with difference, with the other, and over time, cultivate a culture of mutual trust and care, without which cities would not thrive.

 Caring for the city is caring for each other in deep and meaningful ways.  Such type of compassion requires thoughts, feelings, words, actions and ultimately, effort, because it is by being actively intentional that we learn to love each other. AI

The love of public space: Friends and friends of friends enjoying the beautiful weather, the great music and each other’s company at the Butetown Music Festival in Cardiff in the summer of 2019.. Source: Aseem Inam.

Designing an Equitable City

Aseem Inam: How does one design a design studio that empowers future urbanists to engage deeply with, and to address critically, the urgent challenges that contemporary cities face?

Two of most significant challenges that cities face are the climate crisis and urban inequality. While awareness of the climate crisis has grown exponentially in the last few decades, I would argue that urban inequality has existed most likely from the earliest cities several millenia ago. At its root, urban inequality has to do with the systematically uneven distribution of power, as it is expressed not only in space and form but also in how material resources are controlled and distributed across cities.

In the contemporary era, one of the most prevalent forms of urban inequality is gentrification. Drawing from the work of Mark Davidson and Loretta Lees, we define gentrification as follows: Gentrification is a process with the following core elements: i. reinvestment of capital seeking higher profit [e.g. instead of investing in people], ii. social change [including homogenization] of area by incoming higher income groups, iii. physical change in the material city [i.e. built environment], and iv. direct or indirect displacement of lower-income groups.

The Grangetown area of Cardiff in the UK is close to the city center, borders the River Taff, is well known for its historic Victorian core, and is undergoing change. As the city of Cardiff continues to grow and expand vertically and horizontally, Grangetown is on the cusp of becoming heavily gentrified, thus displacing lower-income families and small businesses that give the area its social and physical character. We wanted to find out what can be done about it.

The best way to start to understand what is going on: more generally, what is gentrification, how do we know it is occurring, and what are its effects on the city and its residents, and more specifically, what is going on in Grangetown in terms of current conditions and changing circumstances. In this manner, we embraced the notion of "research as practice," which undertaking rigorous and systematic research that is integral to creative design practice – in other words, it is a dialectical process.

We worked with students in the MA Urban Design program through a series of reading discussions of existing research on gentrification, studies conducted by the students themselves on changing conditions in Grangetown, and interaction with the area and its representatives. Throughout this process, students brainstorm creative and critical approaches to not only "anti-gentrification design strategies," but also ways to design a more equitable city in Grangetown at multiple scales: a site, a street, a neighborhood, the entire area and even regionally.

Among the strategies developed by the 9 groups of students guided by my colleagues and I are: affordable housing through self-building and modest refurbishment of empty housing, "just green enough," community land trust to ensure local ownership of land, uplifting local businesses, community gardens, housing cooperatives, a mix of land uses including live/work housing types, and building a solidarity economy through means such as establishing a local labor network. How do these different design strategies work together to create a more equitable Grangetown?

As an illustrative example, one group of students – under my guidance – proposed that these strategies are coordinated and expressed spatially through a serious of affordable corridor developments throughout the larger Grangetown area. The first phase of these corridors targets areas that are currently in greatest need [e.g. those with the lowest income families and least number of affordable housing units]. The second phase, scheduled to begin around 10 years after the first one, learns it lessons from the first phase and focuses its strategies in the industrial areas. The third phase of this corridor strategy is most ambitious in terms of how land is owned, managed and utilized at a larger scale. Thus, beginning with anti-gentrification design strategies and continuing with creation of a more equitable city requires the on-the-ground testing of creative and interdisciplinary design approaches over a period of decades, rather than years.

If we are serious about dealing with the critical challenges of urban inequality as manifested in gentrification, these are the types of multifaceted and long-terms approaches we must design now and in the future. AI

Why I Teach: Part 3: To Collaborate With Students

Aseem Inam:  I am often invited to give keynote speeches at conferences and to speak in front of more scholarly, or more practice-oriented, or a mix of the two types of audiences.  Inevitably, I find that the best questions tend to be from students in the audience.  Why is that?

Having engaged in both university teaching and in public discourse for some years now, I believe I know the answer.  The best students tend to possess a combination of genuine curiosity, a real desire to learn, an open-minded attitude and an intellectual intelligence that makes them want to think things through.  Alas, and on the other hand, many of the most experienced practicing professionals and scholarly professors are far too immersed in their own, and sometimes-jaundiced, view of the world to really want to grow as urbanists and as human beings.  In such circumstances, students can and do really brighten up a room.

Moreover, students are truly the transformative future of urbanism.  This is because of the combination of traits I mention above as well as the need for fundamentally different ways of thinking that experienced practitioners and professors—especially those steeped in conventional, albeit rigorous, ways of thinking—are unable to embrace.  We see examples of student leadership in social movements, in political movements and in urban transformation, including projects that came to fruition due to the ideas of students.  For example, in Toronto, a group of graduate scholar-practitioners from the University of Toronto collaborated with the Thorncliffe Park Women's Committee [TPWC] to build upon their accomplishments to develop a set of community-based design strategies to transform the neighborhood.  The ideas and projects were extremely well-received by local leaders and community members, and now a member of that team of scholar-practitioners is on the Board of the TPWC.

In this third blog post about "Why I Teach," I want to celebrate the brilliance of students and the hope that they give us all.  This is not naïve thinking; on the contrary, throughout history and especially in cities, one finds time and again that students have shown us a way to the future through their courage and intelligence.  I always look forward to collaborating with them.  AI

The scholar-practitioners from the University of Toronto designed and conducted a series of extremely stimulating and productive community workshops in partnership with the Thorncliffe Park Women's Committee in Toronto. In this way, they demonstrated both great creativity and deep commitment. Source: Maria Grandez.

While I established the partnership with Sabina Ali, the Chair of the Thorncliffe Park Women's Committee, as well as the parameters of the design strategies, it was the group of brilliant and energetic scholar-practitioners who took the lead in collaborating with the community in extremely engaging ways. Source: Aseem Inam.

Why I Teach: Part 2: To Transform

Aseem Inam:  I’m getting back to my blog after a while.  I was offered and accepted, a terrific new position at the Cardiff University in the UK as Professor and Chair in Urban Design, where I’m working across the School of Architecture as well as the School of Geography and Planning.  Over the past year and a half, I’ve also been invited to give talks, including keynote speeches, at various professional and academic settings.  I take seriously and enjoy quite a bit these talks because I see them as important parts of the public discourse on urbanism.  I’ve also been working on multiple research projects which will lead to two more books, one on Las Vegas and the other on informal urbanisms.  I’ve posting about some of these things on Twitter and on LinkedIn, so please do take a look at those if you're interested. 

Here, I want to return to why I teach.  In the previous blog post, I talked about teaching to learn.  In this one, I talk about teaching to transform.  To transform means to change radically.  To change radically means to try to get at root causes.  So, transformation is one type of change, but it is fundamental change that is deeper that surface appearance and even structural.  Transformation is very hard to do, but it is the most important kind of change and it is very much worth the challenge and the effort.  The good news is that history is replete with transformations, both deliberate and circumstantial.

Of course, my specific interest is in urban transformation.  To understand deeply the nature of cities is to begin pointing to the possibilities of urban transformation.  In fact, I spent several years researching the nature of urban transformation, its relationship to design and practice, and the critical and creative ways to design urban transformation.  My book, Designing Urban Transformation, was published a few years ago.  The term "transformation" is used quite frequently, often in lazy ways, so I continue to delve into understanding it and designing for it.  The ultimate goal of urban transformation is radical social, political and economic change [in addition to being spatial] in ways that affect people lives in cities and beyond.

Transformation happens at the intersection of theory and practice, simultaneously learning about the field and constantly redefining it.  A key aspect of this approach to challenge the theoretical foundations of the design fields that engage with the city on an everyday basis, such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and city planning.  Attempting to radically change the world with existing assumptions and design methods is a guarantee for failure, as has been demonstrated millions of times.  So, when I deploy terms such as urbanism, urban practice, urban practitioners and urban transformation [rather than urban design, design practice, urban designers and project implementation], it is to advocate for a fundamental shift in not just terminology, but more importantly a fundamental shift in attitude towards something that is far more critical, transdisciplinary and engaged than what the conventional fields embrace.

What better venue than the university to engage in such deep questioning, such persistent investigation and such forms of collective inquiry?!  The relationship between teaching and transformation is that teaching becomes a method of joint conversation—including debate and argument—rather than conventional notions of transfers of knowledge.  I have always felt free in front of students, especially graduate students, to share not only my ideas, knowledge and experiences, but also my doubts and questions.  For example, some of the best discussions follow from rhetorical questions.  In this manner, genuine transformation becomes a collective inquiry, a collective effort and ultimately, a collective accomplishment.

We, and our cities, need and deserve nothing less than that.  AI

The scholar-practitioners [i.e. graduate students] at the Parsons School of Design in New York City engaged in a collective exercise to inquire into and redefine the field of urban practice, coming up with a series of questions and issues that this newly-defined field addresses. Source: Sara Wallis Minard.

If one looks carefully and critically enough, one can find many sources of inspiration from collective actions that led to transformation throughout history. A brilliant example is when nearly 400 million Indians threw off the oppression of British colonial rule through nonviolent political strategies under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and others. Source: Wikipedia.

Why I Teach: Part 1: To Learn

Aseem Inam:  One of the best ways to learn is to teach.  And the best urbanists are always learning and growing.

As an #ActivistScholarPractitioner, I spend about 4-5 hours of research and preparation for every 1 hour of teaching time.  For example, I convert regular lecture courses into interactive seminars.  The idea here is that everyone—especially the students—contribute to collective learning, including mine.  To prepare for a 3-hour seminar, I invest about 12-15 hours of my time conducting research [so that I stay constantly refreshed and on top of things in the field], preparing a rough sequence and outline of topics to be covered, and incorporating plenty of provocative questions and discussion time for students to contribute their own personal experiences, existing knowledge, thoughtful ideas and provocative questions.  This pedagogical method builds confidence in students as they realize that they have much to offer to the evolving field of urbanism.

Such an approach has worked extremely well, for the most part.  I have received awards for excellence in teaching from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Southern California and University of Michigan.  More than the awards, though, what is extremely satisfying is to connect in powerful ways with urban practitioners [i.e. students], since I consider generating knowledge and creating paradigms to be perhaps the most powerful forms of practice.  The other source of not only deep satisfaction but also instant buzz in my head is the sense of collective learning.  For example, in my Theories of Urban Design seminar at the University of Michigan [which was constantly filled far beyond capacity by graduate students], we actually critiqued existing theories by pinpointing each theory’s unique influence on the field but also its lacunae [e.g. Does it only deal with urban form or does it also address the underlying processes that actually produce that form?].

In sum, as an #Urbanist who comes from the perspective of an #ActivistScholarPractitioner, I am always a student of cities.  AI

Students of the highly innovative MA Theories of Urban Practice program [of which I was the founding Director] of the Parsons School of Design in The New School in New York City. The students organized a public symposium of their work in Brooklyn in 2015. Source: Aseem Inam.

The best learning often occurs in the interaction between students and professors, such that both are open to be challenged and to new ways of thinking. Source: Matthew Sussman, The New School.

Planning for the Unplanned

Aseem Inam:  A friend of mine recently asked me about one of my books, Planning for the Unplanned: Recovering from Crises in Megacities. The book examines a critical issue for cities in the 21st century: How do we deal effectively with crises? The April 2015 devastating earthquake and terrible human tragedy that affected Kathmandu and surrounding areas in Nepal brought to the fore the urgency of the issue. However, while most research and analysis of crises focuses on what went wrong [extremely valuable as that research is], I wanted to find out what went right; that is, what kinds of things do work in urbanism, why, and what can we learn from them.

The book examines the specific case of how large public institutions respond to crises in nimble and adaptive ways. I did a careful study of how local governments in Mexico City in 1985 and Los Angeles in 1994 dealt with rebuilding housing after the earthquakes. What is particularly interesting is that both these cities have long had poor images [e.g. traffic, pollution, crime, etc.]. These case study analyses, on the other hand, yielded surprising and valuable insights into the dynamics of urbanism, particularly in terms of their institutional effectiveness.

One counter-intuitive insight was that these public institutions were effective because they were bureaucratic; that is, they relied on established institutional routines and procedures, which were then adapted and applied relatively quickly to the situations at hand. Another insight was that the key actors were neither the leaders at the top nor the community groups at the grassroots; instead, they were the mid-level managers who understood both: the resources and procedures at the national level as well as the needs and conditions at the neighborhood level.

One of the most important lessons from the book is to learn to compare in an increasingly global and interconnected world. Fortunately, there are many efforts in comparative urbanism. Unfortunately, many of them can be fairly superficial [e.g. ideas about “best practices” that fail to taken into different political and economic structures] or viewed through a singular lens [e.g. one-size-fits-all ideas of “sustainability”]. To compare in a meaningful way, one has to carefully think about why we are comparing [e.g. purposes] and how we are comparing [e.g. analytical frameworks and research methods].

The comparative method is one of the most powerful ways of learning about urban practices from all over the world, to reflect critically on one’s own city, to be sensitive to the similarities and differences among contexts, and to collaborate across international borders. One critical component for comparative research and practice is to be multilingual, because language opens the door to local cultures and social norms that are essential for engaging with contextual differences. The other critical component for comparative urbanism is being self-aware, because even well meaning urban practitioners and scholars are often unaware how their values [e.g. middle-class or Euro American-centric] color how they perceive and act in different contexts around the world.

In these ways, comparative urbanism can be an extremely effective way for learning, for practicing, and for planning for the unplanned.  AI

The book, Planning for the Unplanned: Recovering from Crises in Megacities, analyzes examples of successful housing rebuilding after earthquakes in Los Angeles and Mexico City, but also failed attempts at addressing critical economic development and air pollution challenges in both cities. Source: Aseem Inam.

Diversity Politics and Engaging Pluralism as Transformative Urban Practice

Nadia Elokdah:  My current research, a thesis in theories of urban practice, examines notions of identity, culture, and urban imaginary in everyday practices.

Cities are dynamic systems perpetually reproduced through negotiations and practices of myriad endogenous and exogenous actors and forces, as well as their interconnnections. In this regard, cities are active sites of collective imagination, invention and intervention. In these sites, there is perpetual urban transformation shaped by active engagement and lived experience.

There is a disconcerting pattern that has emerged in contemporary cities, which is the co-optation of diversity alongside reductionist notions of culture. The critique of this pattern lies in understanding how notions of diversity are wielded by power structures, such as city governments or anchor institutions. Rather than offering the city as an active and pluralistic platform, diversity is used as a veil to mask the actual and often complicated richness of pluralism.

In order to identify new possibilities of diversity, I am collaborating with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture, an arts and culture non-profit organization based in Philadelphia. My argument has three facets. One is the design of an interactive exhibition embedding identity within the urban realm, on display from February to April 2015 at Philadelphia City Hall. The second is a series of interviews. The third is a repositioning of actors from city departments, arts and cultural organizations, and small-scale, community based organizations as collaborators.

These actors can inform and support one another in multiple ways to activate and co-design spaces of plurality toward urban transformation. Key actors are positioned as intermediaries able to wield power to affect transformation beyond symbolic support. These actors are fundamental to bridging the gap between local, nuanced knowledge of grassroots or community-based organizations and top-down, reductionist practices often found in urban governance.

When thinking of cities as shaped by active engagement and lived experience, conversations involving multiple voices from multiple actors are possible. An important moment is when the formation of strategic alliances begins to emerge. If these alliances prioritize complex identities as foundations for diversity and cultural initiatives, they might be able to consciously move toward a practice of co-design using the urban imaginary as a vehicle for inclusivity of multiple voices and aspirations. The interactive exhibition is a prototype of this. The goal is a practice of co-design of multiple voices and aspirations and a pluralistic framework for arts and culture in urban governance.

I conclude the thesis by addressing a critical question: How can actors better navigate current power structures for urban transformation, while offering expanded notions of what constitutes valid knowledge of the urban? This necessarily becomes a project of making inclusive urban epistemologies while expanding and deepening urban practice.  NE

The “We Went Looking for Home but We Found” interactive, bi-lingual exhibition asks attendees to contribute to the discourse of urban transformation through questions such as, “How does your identity shape the culture of Philadelphia?” Mapping the relations between various stakeholders demonstrates which voices included in decision making and how power structures negotiate. Source: Nadia Elokdah

Understanding the city of Philadelphia as perpetually transforming allows for critical analysis of current systems of urban governance while also creating openings for new possibilities. Putting in conversation unlikely allies moves toward processes of inclusion and co-design of pluralistic frameworks for arts and culture and diversity politics. Source: Nadia Elokdah

Embodying The Transformative Potential of Urbanism

Aseem Inam:  How does one symbolize urban transformation?

That was the creative challenge for designing the cover of my book, Designing Urban Transformation.  Does one go with the common techniques of either showing a city skyline, or a public space, or an abstract design?  Since my argument in the book is uncommon [i.e. more critical and much deeper and than most approaches], I wanted to embody urban transformation with the same multifaceted complexity that cities themselves represent.  Urban transformation in fact occurs in many different ways and takes multiple guises, including unexpected ones.

I worked with an excellent team, my TRULAB collaborators Namkyu Chun and Matt DelSesto, my editor at Routledge, Nicole Solano and the art director at Taylor and Francis, Sally Beesely.  The basic idea was to focus on one of the most compelling examples of contemporary urban transformation, the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi.  The project is deceptively banal.  On the face of it, it is simply a low-cost community-based sanitation infrastructure project and it has been presented as such multiple times.

However, a deeper analysis via the conceptual shift of “beyond practice:  urbanism as creative political act” reveals a much more compelling narrative of urban practice.  Within an incredibly challenging context of extremely poverty, violence and gender discrimination, the Orangi Pilot Project has not only dramatically improved the urban fabric and health conditions of an informal settlement, but has also mobilized the community and contributed to vital improvements in housing, health and entrepreneurship.

The background image is of a woman making and selling incense sticks, one of the beneficiaries of the Orangi Pilot Project’s entrepreneurship program.  The foreground diagram is the hand-made map of the lane-by-lane alley-by-alley sewage system that has benefitted an astounding one million people and counting.  This black diagram also evokes the intricate jaalis [i.e. windows with delicate stonework] of the Mughal architecture of South Asia. The colors of the cover—the white main title text, the orange font of the author’s name, the pink of the spine and back cover—are taken directly from the colors of the background photograph.

To understand how this all works together as a multilayered embodiment of remarkable urban transformation, the cover is best appreciated as a full spread, as seen in the image below.  AI.

The full spread of the cover of Designing Urban Transformation shows how the background image and foreground image [which spills over onto the back cover] work together with the placement of the texts and their colors.

There is no silver bullet

Drew Tucker:  Our investigations into the current state of urbanity revealed a long term strategy by the state, public and private actors towards urban solutions. We conducted intensive, urban forensic investigations into these social, policy based, and economic projects only to uncover that they more often compounded seemingly intractable problems in their wake. Modern urban ‘solutions’ in the U.S (our primary site of investigation), slum clearance and urban renewal, displacement as housing policy, and gentrification, have by and large sought to solve problems of urban form, in lieu of function, through social exclusion, creative destruction, and out of scale development. While their intentions were often, in the beginning, well meaning, divisive politics, moralism, and economic competition more often than not, led them astray.

We can now clearly identify a new set of urban solutions on the horizon: smart cities, New Urbanism, Place Making, tactical urbanism, Market Urbanism, Sustainable/Resilient Urbanism, etc. These emerging practices are not for the most part problematic in and of themselves, it is simply that they are overburdened in their task: to provide a concise, complete, and ultimate solution to urban problems. Urbanists are asking too much of these methodologies. Each of them are only a part of the puzzle, and as such, each can only address its particular paradigm of interest. More importantly, urbanity is a process of expanding, intense spatial change. A process that acts upon both the social and physical environment through “a historically situated and geographically unevenly distributed condition, characterized by interdependencies, unpredictability, mobility, differences, speed and intense affects.”  How could any theory or set of theories control for the fluidity of urban change? How could any set of methodologies purport to be the solution to the true wicked problem of urbanization? Rather, shouldn’t we instead develop a similarly fluid set of strategies and tactics to address the mercurial nature of urbanity? Shouldn’t we accept a certain level of shared social precarity and abandon market based solutions whose success is inherently dependent on a level of transference of precarity onto a marginalized group in exchange for an increased economic security for another?

This lesson is especially important for us as we begin to leave (or decide to stay) in New York City and to seek out the physical spaces where we will practice. Personally, I have learned to take a good hard look at how my city, Louisville, is courting new urban trends as solutions to entrenched, historical urban frictions. In some ways, for Louisville, any urbanism is good urbanism, but in many other ways, these urban trends will further complicate (or ignore) entrenched issues of racial segregation, infrastructural deterioration, and economic disparity. What I know now is that my practice, as it impacts Louisville, must add a level of depth to these well meaning ideals; my work must engage a broader element of research, a deeper level of commitment mediation between marginalized and privileged communities, and offer reflexive, embedded, and pragmatic interventions that speak to both of these communities.  DT.

Multiple intersecting urbanities: Love @ The Garage Bar in Louisville, Kentucky. Source: LuAnn Snawder Photography via Flickr and Creative Commons

A verb, not a noun

Drew Tucker:  In the Fall of 2012, over thirty prospective graduate students traveled across the globe to take part in an incredible experiment. Many had just months earlier finished their undergraduate degrees in a myriad of different disciplines: geography, philosophy, film production, urban planning, architecture, design, and fine arts; others were more experienced professionals, already in the field, and feeling some tension between what they had imagined their personal practice would be, and the reality of that work on the ground. What they all had in common was a desire to study in a city like no other, New York City; a city that Aseem Inam explains by saying, “no extrapolation can be made, it is an anomaly.” Also, these students were on their way to become the first cohorts of Parsons the New School for Designs two new groundbreaking urban programs; the Theories of Urban Practice and Design & Urban Ecologies programs. These programs, housed in the School of Design Strategies, would attempt something completely new to academia in the United States, the simultaneous unveiling of two programs, both transdisciplinary in make-up, and focused on actual real world interventions in the urban environment. While each program has its own benefits and methodologies, students from each group quickly formed a network of camaraderie and co-production that drove their research, and deliverables to new heights.

A series of urban investigations into the city of New York allowed us to begin to understand the complex political economic, social, and cultural ecology into which we were becoming integrated. Our investigations included site based forensics on the acquisition of property for immigrant populations and their political organizing efforts; the history of urban homesteading and its possible re-imagining as a fair and affordable housing strategy; strategies for measuring current and future forced displacement due to gentrification; urban gardening as an anti-recidivism urban resilience strategy; cooper square and expanding community land trusts; reconceptualizing the history of the commons; street vendors as diffused architectural solutions in times of crisis, and many, many more. Each of these projects was physically situated in one or more boroughs in New York City, and each one worked directly with an on the ground community group to produce an actual real world urban transformation. We quickly learned that the designer does not have the luxury to just critique but instead must “ask powerful questions” of the frictions within the city. This implicates and positions them as actors in a process of participation and risk; not simply as observers. They openly engage as embedded agents of social processes, giving legitimacy to these interventions.

Over the two year engagement, something interesting happened. We stopped being geographers, architects, and designers; we stopped being academics. We stopped wanting to be urbanists. Our theories and practices became fluid, constantly developing, site based methodologies. We began to work from coexistence with one another toward a co-production of urban praxis. We learned that conflict can be agonistic rather than antagonistic. In the end, we stopped trying to fit ourselves into static categories, rigid methodologies, and combative political ideologies. Instead we created convivial tools towards civil engagement. We developed participatory methods of cogeneration. Our ethic became collective, democratic action, toward the realization of a common liberatory urban good. We began to act as the sans-culottes an “irresistible force...a strategic alliance that recognized a common “revolutionary project” as we worked collectively to participate in La Cite.  DT

Perpetual Renewal: An intensive workshop in the Lower East Side of Manhattan that probes the true nature of supposedly finalized projects such as urban renewal and creates further opportunities for truly equitable outcomes in the redevelopment of land. Source: Aseem Inam.

Should We Love or Hate The High Line?

Aseem Inam:  The world famous High Line elevated park in New York City is simultaneously celebrated and vilified.  The High Line is a 1.45 mile-long public park built on a historic freight railroad line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side.  The celebrations and vilifications of this park occur through five major narratives:  the High Line as historic preservation, as exemplary design, as public policy, as a lack of community participation, and as contributing to gentrification.

The historic preservation narrative highlights the way in which local government and neighborhood businesses considered the abandoned elevated railroad tracks as eyesores to be demolished and eradicated.  In the past, the historic preservation movement in the United States has had a commendable, yet sometimes peculiar, attitude:  old structures—sometimes regardless of their value—should be saved and almost frozen in time.  The heroes of the narrative of exemplary design are the landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and architects Diller, Scofidio and Renfro.  In fact, the High Line is frequently held up as an outstanding example of landscape urbanism, which sometimes overlooks the fact that such notions of “nature” in the city are manufactured, and that the real challenge is the effort and cost of maintaining such “natural landscapes” in a dense urban setting.

As a narrative of public policy, the High Line is increasingly viewed as a “best practice” to be emulated by local governments all over the world.  The challenge with this narrative is the common occurrence of copying ideas and projects without truly understanding significant contextual differences and similarities.  A less publicized yet persistent narrative, especially at the local level, is the apparent lack of community participation in the design, implementation and maintenance of the project.  The Friends of the High Line, the powerhouse non-profit behind the project, has sought to make amends with the local community through public programming and outreach efforts in recent years.  The fifth narrative and probably the sharpest critique is that the High Line has contributed significantly to the gentrification of the neighborhood, which includes increases in property values, construction of luxury condominiums and the emergence of expensive commercial and retail businesses.  However, thus far no studies of the High Line have produced the empirical evidence necessary to establish such a causality or correlation.

Each of these narratives remains insightful, yet incomplete.  For example, the recent spate of critiques views the High Line as a cause or a significant contributor to gentrification.  There are several critiques to be made of this critique.  One is that the first public offensive in this direction was launched by an opinion piece in The New York Times written under the pseudonym Jeremiah Moss, which already reduces the credibility of the author.  Scholars have also joined this public discourse, claiming that it is an example of the neoliberal transformation of our cities.  However, neither of these present any compelling empirical evidence tying the gentrification process to the High Line.  In general, while there is a legitimate concern about gentrification, there is also an over-simplification and misunderstanding of what gentrification actually entails and the different causes that lead to increases in property values.  The concern here should be much more about the devastating effects of profit-driven development that is inherent in the capitalist city and that we are all part of.

Many of these narratives also miss several critical aspects of the High Line as an example of urbanism.  First, for anyone who has spent some time there, it can actually be quite a wonderful place to walk, to eat lunch, to people-watch, to see the city, or to do other activities in a public space.  The park design embraces the urbanity of Manhattan.  Second, what is a common criticism is instead a compliment.  Many New Yorkers complain that there are too many people in the High Line, especially tourists.  But we want lots of people in our public spaces; in fact, isn’t that one important sign of their success?  In addition, tourists are human beings too and visitors are integral to the lifeblood of cities.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, what is missing from many of these narratives is what I call radical humanism, which views our humanity as a source of inspiration and a course of action.  One of the most compelling aspects of the High Line is how two apparently ordinary citizens, Robert Hammond and Joshua David, set about to save the old elevated railroad tracks and repurpose them.  At the time, they had no significant funding, no political contacts, no training in landscape or urbanism, and no experience in the field.  The story of how they brought the issue to the public eye, how they generated creative ideas for its adaptive reuse, how they built political coalitions, how they harnessed private resources, and how they doggedly pursued the project in the face of enormous challenges is truly inspiring.  At the end of the day, the narrative of the High Line is also a narrative of how human beings are capable of transforming cities through tremendous effort, creativity, and perseverance.

Thus, to pass critical judgment on the High Line we must better understand the complex nature of the spatial production and reproduction of cities.  Such a deeper understanding also opens up possibilities for fundamental and positive urban transformations.  For example, projects such as the High Line are as much ongoing processes as they are spatial products.  The notion of city as flux suggests that part of our task to design and manage these processes as much as it is to design and manage places.  The concept of the consequences of design points to the fact that there are always political and economic consequences of intervening in the material city [e.g. projects that manifest themselves as form, space or infrastructure].  We would do well to actually design such consequences, rather than view them as accidental after-effects.  Finally, the practice of urbanism as a creative political act is one in which politics is not just the capital “p” of formal political institutions and dynamics, but also the everyday politics of the city in which the contested nature of the allocation of resources, land as a speculative commodity and the social dynamics of communities are vital.

The High Line is not perfect; no project ever is.  It possesses many strengths and many weaknesses.  To learn from the High Line, we must engage with the multifaceted nature of urbanism and continue to propose alternatives forms of practice, intervention and transformation that benefit more and more people.   AI.

The High Line attracts crowds of visitors, workers and residents and embraces the urbanity of Manhattan in its design. Source: Aseem Inam.

Workers from surrounding office buildings come to work, meet and have lunch on the High Line, included this secluded spot at the south end. Source: Aseem Inam.

Artists and food vendors have small stalls to exhibit and sell their wares. Source: Aseem Inam.

People enjoy the details of the High Line, including specially designed benches, water features, paving patterns inspired by the former train tracks and a palette of landscapes. Source: Aseem Inam.

Chaos Is An Order We Don't Understand

Aseem Inam:  There is a popular perception of cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America as being “chaotic.”  This is not only true of visitors from Western Europe and North America, but also the western-educated elite from these regions.  What this popular perception embraces is the dictionary definition of chaos as “a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.”  This seems to imply that things like housing, transportation, markets, electricity, water and the material city [i.e. urban fabric] of the cities of Africa, Asia and Latin America are abitrary, haphazard and will presumably lead to increasing entropy.

Such a perception can have serious consequences.  First and foremost is a somewhat condescending attitude towards these cities, most often reflected in the still commonly-used term—at least in the popular discourse—“Third World.”  What this attitude often suggests is that not only is there nothing much of significant value in those regions of the world, but that there is nothing much to be learned from them either.  [In recent years there has been a trend amongst some urbanists and scholars to swing the other way and to romanticize and fetishize the cities of the so-called “Third World,” especially their informal settlements, without a more in-depth and sophisticated understanding.]

The second consequence, which to some extent derives from this implicitly condescending attitude, is that prescribed strategies and policies view the cities of Africa, Asia and Latin American as “problems to be fixed.”  The proposals for fixing these problems tend to emerge out of the specific contexts of urbanists, academics and international institutions based in New York, Washington DC, London, Brussels, Paris, and so forth.  [There are exceptions to this, most notably the pioneering urban theorizing of Jennifer Robinson and Ananya Roy].  For example, the World Bank continues to promote market-based individual property rights in Latin America as a significant component of urban development.

The reality is that when it comes to cities, chaos is often an order that we don’t understand.  For example, for many years, U.S. cities were judged—and designed—by historic European standards, with their historic cores, civic centers, and grand boulevards.  The books The Image of the City, Learning From Las Vegas, and Architecture of the Four Ecologies began to shift the way we understood post-World War II American cities, by trying to understand them on their own terms.  Similarly, we need to understand the cities of Africa, Asia and Latin America on their own terms, eschewing the overwhelmingly colonial imprint and perspective established by the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal and others.

What makes this task all the most interesting is that some of the oldest cities in the world are located in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which means they have evolved over millenia.  Furthermore, what makes the order of the material city in these regions particularly unique is the presence of informal settlements, which are entire neighborhoods and mini-cities built entirely from scratch.  They are examples of stunning resourcefulness of those with lowest access to financial and material resources.  In that way, even with their myriad problems, they are beautiful testaments to human ingenuity.  It would serve us well to better understand these ancient, highly complex and continuously evolving cities to better harness their true potential.  AI.

Chaotic or orderly? Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat in Mumbai, which is where thousands of clothes are still washed by hand everyday and is considered to be the world's largest outdoor laundry. Source: Aseem Inam.

Developing future-oriented histories of urban renewal

Matt DelSesto:  Transforming cities requires understanding their histories—not just with a fixation on the past, but with an eye towards the future.  This is especially true with the history of urban renewal in US cities because many of these “historic” plans are still active and have a significant influence on the structures and people of urban neighborhoods today.  In a recent project with land-access advocacy organization 596 Acres, I participated in the creation of a map of urban renewal plans in New York City that highlights present impact of urban renewal plans and supports future action.

In NYC, urban renewal plans were mostly written and revised by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the organization that has has the 150+ plans on paper files.  We set out to collect data from every plan including plan area, date adopted, the planned disposition.  Our request for access to the agency records was granted in 2012 and we opted for the right to inspect these records instead of having the agency make copies for us at 25 cents per page (see more on the Urban Reviewer “About” page).  596 Acres volunteers went to the HPD offices several times a month (for about one year and a total of more than 100 hours) to collect that data from the plans that were made available.  We knew that we wanted to make this data more accessible to the public, but the final outcome was flexible, open-ended, and uncertain until near the end of the data collection when 596 Acres partnered with SmartSign and Partner & Partners to create urbanreviewer.org.

One of the significant connections between past and present revealed on the map is that a startling number of vacant lots owned by the city today were also lots slated for demotion and clearance as part of urban renewal plans.  In other words, HPD categorized a neighborhood as “blighted,” promised redevelopment, began demolition, and in many cases never actually got around the the “renewal.”

Today, New Yorkers can use Urban Reviewer to find the urban renewal plans in their neighborhood, and in some ways, continue the work that city officials began.  Where lots are vacant and city owned the Urban Reviewer tool links to the 596 Acres online organizing platform, encouraging users of the site to take action about the future of their neighborhood.

In the process, I realized that the Urban Reviewer would continue to be a changing tool as New Yorkers interact with the website, especially because each urban renewal plan has a distinct format and history that changed people’s lives in very different ways.  As the site was launching in June, I saw that in some ways the website was potentially just beginning.  We have already revisited some of the plans for clarification, heard from individuals who want to help build out content for plan pages, and now 596 Acres has launched an Urban Reviewer exhibit within the "Spontaneous Interventions" residency at Governors Island for August 2014.

Urban Reviewer shows that history matters because through history we learn how cities have been shaped and who wields the power to shape them.  An urban history aimed at designing urban transformation can seek to understand how the city has been shaped in a way that supports future transformative urban actions.  MD.

Above is the home page of the Urban Reviewer website. New York City blocks impacted by urban renewal are in bold. The site has references, essays, and an “about” section that situates the work within a larger context. Source: www.urbanreviewer.org

Urbanism, Practice and Power

Aseem Inam:  When it comes to transforming cities in profound ways, architects, landscape architects, urban designers and city planners can be often impotent.  We lack the power, in general, to make a profound difference to society and more specifically, to shape cities.  We rarely matter in the world of urban power relations and urban exclusion.

Cities are shaped by a sometimes-bewildering variety of actors and institutions:  families, politicians, companies, local government, national agencies, utilities, private investors and real estate developers.  For example, in the United States, the dominant private sector actors tend to be financial institutions, which set the terms for urban investment;  major corporations, which influence urban growth through decisions about location and productivity;  and large developers, who build extensive pieces of cities.  In the U.S. public sector, the major players are the federal government, which sets tax, subsidy and regulatory policies; and the large state agencies that create highways, airports, and other regional infrastructure.  These actors tend to have relatively singular purposes:  to make profits, or to generate tax revenues, or to promote efficient transportation.

A close examination of the shaping of cities throughout history provides further evidence of influential actors who were neither architects, nor urban designers, nor city planners.  Cities have been shaped by military engineers, such as those who laid out the early British port cities of India;  by administrators, such as the medieval lords of England, France and Spain, who planted hundreds of new towns in their territories;  by religious orders, such as the Franciscan missionaries in Spanish Mexico;  and by paternalistic industrialists and social reformers.  Today, city-design-and-building processes are marked by conflict, cross purposes, and negotiation.  Paradoxically, those who often have the greatest ability to adopt a forward-looking comprehensive view of a city—i.e. urbanists—are those who in practice tend to have little actual influence in this processes.

One understanding of power is to act effectively and to influence outcomes.  Is the presentation of stunning architectural drawings enough to act effectively?  What difference do radical new three-dimensional forms, in-and-of-themselves, make to a city?  Is the preparation of sustainable neighborhood plan persuasive?  Does designating various land uses, such as residential, industrial or mixed-use, strengthen community?  What power do these types of practices possess, not just in the often self-referential and self-congratulatory realms of architecture, urban design and city planning, but in the invisible structures and long-term processes that actually shape cities?

As urbanists, one of the first steps in becoming far more effective is to realize how little power we actually have to shape cities.  A critical and questioning eye for the nature of power relations, institutional structures, and decision-making processes in cities is essential.  Another step is to understand history in broader and deeper ways.  For example, a study of the legal abolition of slavery under President Abraham Lincoln in the 19th century is a study of the use of political savvy in extremely challenging and complicated sets of circumstances.  Yet another step, is to draw inspiration from philosophical movements such as Pragmatism, which helps us ask questions about consequences as much as about intentions:  What actual impact will our proposals have on the city?  Finally, as urbanists, we also have to act as citizens and human beings who actively engage with cities on a daily basis, whether it is through constant activism, political advocacy, or even small acts of volunteerism.

The questions that all urbanists must struggle with are these:  Do we have the types of knowledge and skills to truly make a difference in cities, and perhaps even more importantly, do we have the kind of courage and sacrifice it takes to make those differences?  AI.

The recent protests calling for radical reform around the world are examples of courageous citizen initiatives and grassroots movements that can lead to fundamental change in cities. Source: Time magazine, December 11, 2011.

Urbanism of Democracy

View of the Town Hall from the south, with the offices and residences to the left, the public library with the large windows in the middle, and the vertical tower of the council chamber in the background. Between the office / residential block and the public library are grass-covered steps spilling out from the garden courtyard. Source: Aseem Inam.

Aseem Inam:  How does one represent and symbolize the urbanism of democracy?  I have long been interested in this question.  My research on Town Hall at Säynätsalo by Alvar Aalto, the Finnish architect and urbanist, focuses on what forms the urbanism of democracy might take.

The Town Hall derives its presence from a number of sources:  its paradoxical domestic scale, it sensitive relationship to nature, in its extraordinary details, and its role in the surrounding urban context.  Primarily, the Town Hall is a non-monumental monument.  Aalto had a specific humanizing intent in his projects:  “It seems to me that there are many situations in life in which the organization is too brutal:  it is the task of the architect to give life a gentler structure.”  Thus, the civic piazza or atrium around which the elements are grouped is, in reality, neither.

Any sense of public or formal space is neutralized by what is presented as a domestic garden.  What is more, whereas the exterior masses announce a substantial and impressive building, the architectural character of the interior court is decidedly small scale and domestic.  Upon climbing the relatively monumental granite staircase, the monument itself disappears.  Having made the architectural representation of dignity and significance, so that one may step out of the forest and climb into the palace of local government, Aalto then allows the observer to find herself back in a world of recognizable intimacy of house and farmyard.

In person, one is stunned by what a gem of craftsmanship the Town Hall truly is.  After extensive renovations a few years ago, the palette of materials—brick, wood, glass, copper, grass, water—is warm and engaging.  The two most remarkable spaces are the courtyard garden in the center and the council chamber in the tower.  The garden, covered with lush vegetation, is imminently accessible to the public.  The council chamber is symbolically elevated yet modestly—and beautifully—clad in the warm hues of brick and wood.  These two spaces symbolize the collective while being viscerally welcoming.

Another key component of the Town Hall is the public library, which is one of the most under-appreciated institutions of an urban democracy.  Free and accessible to all, the library represents a place of knowledge as well as gathering.  For example, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I found that one of the only places that the homeless were actually welcome is in the central public library.  At Säynätsalo, the library wing faces the south with large windows framed elegantly in wood flooding the interior with natural light [see image above].  On the inside, the beautiful elegance of the building is echoed with the white painted walls, wood floor and furniture [also designed by Aalto], and light fixtures inspired by industrial forms.

Of course, democracy is a complex and challenging phenomenon.  The processes by which the forms of the urbanisms of democracy are produced are equally—if not more so—important.  A key question in this discussion is how do we conceptualize, operationalize and experience democracy.  The Pragmatist philosopher John Dewey talked about democracy in radical terms, including being simultaneously the expression of individuality, the protection of common interests, and as social inquiry.  More recently, my friend Mark Purcell wrote a thoroughly intriguing book, The Deep Down Delight of Democracy, in which he advocates the reframing of democracy as a personal and collective struggle to discover the best in ourselves and others.

I find this notion of democracy as a collective struggle to discover the best in us as individuals and as societies to be quite compelling.  A critical analysis of Alvar Aalto’s work at Säynätsalo can offer us captivating clues as to how that struggle may be expressed in the material city.  AI.

A view of the delightful contrast of the brick-clad tower of the council chamber with the grass-covered courtyard garden, with a fountain and sculpture in the middle. A series of meeting rooms and offices surround the hallway filled with natural light on the left. Source: Aseem Inam.