Emergent Urbanism, or ‘bottom-up planning’

I was asked to write an article around ‘bottom-up planning’ by Architectural Review Australia a while ago. It was published in the last issue, and I’m re-posting here. ‘Bottom-up’ is hardly the most elegant phrase, but I suspect you know what I mean. Either way, I re-cast it in the article as ‘emergent urbanism’ which captured a little more of the non-planning approaches I was interested in (note also the blog of same name, which I didn’t know about beforehand). It partly concerns increased transparency over the urban planning process but also, and perhaps more interestingly, how citizens might be able to proactively engage in the creation of their cities. And for those of you outside Australia, there are a few subtitles required to read this. And regarding this broad idea of emergent urbanism, a particularly inspirational recent project over this way has been ‘Renew Newcastle’ (Newcastle, New South Wales that is) initiated by Marcus Westbury. Yimby = Yes In My Backyard

BLDGBLOG Rebar Art & Design Studio | San Francisco | art, design and ecology Paris est sa banlieue Understanding the World's Urban Transition Chuck Wolfe and Ana Maria Manzo join forces to offer a global perspective on the changes underway in the urban areas of the world. "Today, we are driven by a new sustainability ethic, necessarily systemic in scope. Carbon-neutrality is a commonly stated goal, and location efficiency, clean energy and the return of neighborhood are the watchwords of change. Formulas, metrics, and new regulatory systems attempt results, and show the quest to measure how close we are to achieving ideal forms of location and development. But as both of us have written in different languages, context is key, and adaptation to a multi-environmental sense of place, associated imagery and sensation is an essential element of building design, urban development and innovation going forward. Creating attractive buildings that are able to work for the environment, or crafting appropriate enabling regulations, should also be considered as part of a broader, holistic effort.

Géographie de la ville en guerre - BLOG Occupy as psychogeographic urbanism [draft 3] [Draft 5 is much longer and edited in many places, to make it a bit easier: # mostly unchanged, # changed, # new paragraph.] “As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.” - Declaration of the Occupation of New York City [1] “It is like a little village. They have got a food tent, a welfare tent, a first aid tent, an information tent, a library tent and a university tent where they have their daily meetings. "The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life." - Ivan Chtcheglov[4] # Psychogeography has moved from revolution (say: Guy Debord) to nostalgia (say: Iain Sinclair) and I think I know why. # Every city has its cryptoforests, places that are camouflaged by nature to hide the discontinued urban.

Edible Geography Mass Moving, des Insoumis dans l’Art | Memento Production Version française – Nederlandse Versie – English Version L’histoire d’un mouvement artistique né en Belgique et en Hollande dans la foulée de mai 68. Composé d’artistes et d’ingénieurs, le groupe se définit par des projets et des actions éphémères. Le but de Mass Moving ? Le groupe se définit par des Actions réalisées à travers le monde. Quand les Mass-Movers réalisent que le fonctionnement du groupe ne correspond plus à leur idéal de départ, ils se sabordent en 1976 par un autodafé spectaculaire, détruisant les machines, brûlant les dessins, les photos, les films et les affiches. A travers Mass Moving et ses actions, c’est non seulement l’histoire d’une époque qui est racontée, mais aussi les débuts des mouvements écologistes et des énergies alternatives. Le film est illustré par de nombreuses archives d’époque. Réalisation : Françoise Levie Durée : 52’ Avec l’aide du Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Communauté française de Belgique et des télédistributeurs wallons.

TRANSIT-CITY / URBAN & MOBILE THINK TANK A Journey to the worlds' sustainable cities / Brisbane to Bogota