To analyze the need to increase the Urban Social Capital, in its three versions, Natural Capital, Human Capital and Infrastructures, tangible and intangible. To define the Glocal, City-Region concept as the optimal area of the Urban project and promoter of a new transregionalism that emerges as a consequence of the progressive dissolution of the Westphalian Nation-State.
J. ACEbillo
To emphasize those intangible virtues, such as Temperance, Space Justice, Parsimony or Harmony, which will define a new Urbanity, once the growing populism-demagoguery has been overcome.
GLOCAL Urbanity
It proposes to understand urban complexity as a socio-technical process on a regional scale, which integrates in the urban corpus the concepts of Thermodynamics and Urban Metabolism, Second Order Cybernetics, Territorial Isotropy, infrastructural porosity, regional clustering ... and a new post industrial mobility matrix.
DISRUPTIVE Urbanism
This book contains 52 proposals to generate a new Disruptive Urbanism for inducing new Glocal Urbanity to replace the degraded urban and rural situation generated by the FIRE paradigm from post-Fordism to the current Globalization.
DISRUPTIVE Urbanism GLOCAL Urbanity J. ACEbillo
DISRUPTIVE Urbanism GLOCAL Urbanity J. ACEbillo
This book has been realized thanks to the reasearch (2016/2018) made by the author in CAUP (College of Architecture and Urban Planning) Tongji University in Shanghai. Edition and distribution ActarD Co-edition Zheng Shiling.CAUP.Tongji University Shanghai.
This book is dedicated to: Mayor Pasqual Maragall, with whom I had the honour of collaborating for so many years on the transformation of Barcelona. My grandson AdriĂ , who, just ten years old, will have the opportunity to witness a new future.
__GENERAL INDEX
pp 06 Introduction 10 Abstract 24 Glossay 30 I 32 1. 40 2. 54 3. 62 4.
POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES The obsolescence of the modern-industrial urban model Essential conditions for Global processes of urban development Post-Fordist transition, disciplinary propositional paralysis and emergence of the FIRE paradigm Urban Aporias and disciplinary desertification fostered by the FIRE paradigm
NEW GLOBAL URBANITY FRAMED WITHIN A NEW AXIAL ORDER The emergence of the modern concept of Human Progress Multiple Modernities The deepest cut in history: The Axial Age Spirituality in the evolution of civilisation
72 74 84 90 98
II 5. 6. 7. 8.
108 III 110 9. 118 10. 132 11. 136 12. 140 13. 144 14. 148 15. 154 16. 158 17. 162 18. 166 19. 170 20. 174 21. 178 22. 200 23.
THE CITY AS A SOCIO-TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESS Interactive vectors of urban culturea Technology as Pivot I New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Territorial Isotropy New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Interstitiality New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Fracmentation New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Iceberg New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Recycling New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Intermodality New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Interactivity New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Unbundling Infrastructures New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: The new logistics and the port-city relationship New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Global airports (NAC) as regional clusters New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: Logistics and geopolitics New urban and territorial socio-technological trends: A new post-industrial mobility matrix Invariants of territorial culture
DISCIPLINARY PREMISES I: URBAN COMPLEXITY AND METABOLIC EFFICIENCY Interaction and Complexity Urban thermodynamics Rupture and recovery of urban balance Urban resilience Urban metabolism
208 210 216 226 230 236
IV 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
5
242 248
29. 30.
Urban metabolism Urban metabolism and model
254 V 256 31. 264 32. 270 33. 276 34.
DISCIPLINARY PREMISES II: SOCIAL CAPITAL, UNDERPINNING OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND URBANITY Social capital Human capital Natural capital Infrastructure as fixed social capital: Affordable housing and urban public space
284 VI 286 35. 294 36. 300 37. 304 38. 316 39. 326 40. 334 41.
DISCIPLINARY PREMISES III: NEO-METROPOLITANISM AND CITY-REGION Obsolescence of modern-industrial metropolitanism New regional visions: M. Storper’s socioeconomic theories Regional ecological perspective: R. Forman’s land mosaic New regional urban planning perspective: The archipelago model The structuring of intermediate spaces in the City-Region: The tertiarisation of the primary sector and the Desakota phenomenon Regional clustering. The efficiency of corridors Territorial interpretation of the Principle of Elective Affinities
342 VII 344 42. 356 43. 364 44. 368 45. 376 46. 380 47. 384 48. 390 49. 396 50. 406 51. 416 52.
DISRUPTIVE URBANISM Disruptive innovation and new Glocal urban models Towards a more disruptive urbanism: technology as Pivot II Tactical principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Demolition as innovative urban planning policy Tactical principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: the transformational efficiency of Urban Acupuncture Tactical-methodological principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Introduce chance and random aspects into the stochastic processes of urban transformation Structuring principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: The trilateral nature of space Structuring principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: “Patterns that connect” in a global urban world Structuring principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Temperance against the dissolution of functionalist theories Intangible ideological values for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Spatial Justice Intangible ideological values for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Parsimony Intangible ideological values for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Harmony
427 Appendix: The seduction of Siracuse, again 429 Excursus 447 Bibliography and References
__ INTRODUCTION
I At first, this book was designed to help those budding architects-urbanists who believed themselves insufficiently prepared to tackle the complexity of their profession. But the architect-urban planner, young or mature, cannot simply be a neutral observer, indifferent to the disgraceful course being taken by the current process of Global urban development, and he has the obligation, ethical too, to take a firm disciplinary stand or turn his back on what is happening, either unconditionally collaborating with the status quo or trying, from his disciplinary perspective, to contribute to a change of urban Model. This last option is the one proposed in this treatise. In this book the disciplinary rearming of the architect-urban designer is acknowledged to be complex because it reaches beyond his own domain: The architect-urban designer must rearm within his discipline but he must be aware that, owing to the growing complexity of urban phenomenology, he will not be able to take on the functions society demands of him unless he frames his theories within a renewed framework of interdisciplinary collaboration and interaction, which implies a minimum knowledge of other fields decisive for Urbanity, like philosophy, history, ecology, technology, infrastructures, thermodynamics, cybernetics, biology, statistics, computer sciences... The architect-urban designers should delve into History whenever he needs to in order to draw conclusions and find suggestions that enable him to understand the complexity of the present and holistically face an uncertain urban future, which is already announced, albeit from biased and interested fields. The architect-urban designers must be aware that, despite having a solid disciplinary background, this will not be enough as a tool for urban regeneration unless it is framed within a broad ideological and spiritual reconceptualization intense enough to change the trend of the deteriorated cultural, socioeconomic and political models of current Globalisation.
7
II This book corresponds to the first scope; the next one will analyze the disciplinar potentiality offered by a critical revision of neo-Medievalism and, finally, a new dialectical territorial interaction between Tecnology anddeology. I have always been seduced by the work of Lao-Tse, whose book “The Book of Tao”, one of the most important conceptual texts in civilisation, is expressed in only 375 sentences. But my literary limitations do not let me visualise contemporary urban complexity and translate it into Urbanity so succinctly. So, the scope of this treatise undertaken from the recognition of its interdisciplinarity, has prompted me to think about its utility, not only as a reflection for budding architects-urban designers, but also for those readers who, despite belonging to other fields, are interested in the future of “the urban” from the urbanistic perspective. The book is divided into seven disciplinary domains, developed in 52 Propositions that attempt to set down guidelines for personal reflection prior to or during design solutions. The basic references of the seven disciplinary domains are: – Devaluation of Urbanity during the post-Fordist transition that introduced Globalisation. – Possibility of understanding the new Global urbanity as a new modernity, or as a matrix derived from the Axial Age. Understand the city also as a sociotechnological process. – Integrate into our disciplinary corpus concepts like Urban Complexity and Metabolism. Understand the need to increase Social, Human and Natural Capital. – Propose a new trans-regionalism in symbiosis with the Glocal scale. – Foster a more Disruptive urbanism composed of tangible values and intangible virtues.
__ INTRODUCTION
Each one of the 52 Propositions corresponds to a field of knowledge, to reflect on prior to or during the project development process. The Propositions form a fractal set. They all have their own differential value, but their differentiation should not curtail the logistic nature of this treatise, and the reader should be free to decide on the order or preference of the propositions, or indeed whether to leave any out. The final “Excursus” is not just one more proposition, but rather one of many alternative ways that should converge to lead to the creation of new Glocal urban models. III This book is a reflection resulting from my last 36 years of work. In the first period (1980-2004), as responsible for urbanism in the city of Barcelona in different positions, I must show my gratitude to the three mayors who during that time allowed me to work, helped me and encouraged me: Narcís Serra, Pasqual Maragall and Joan Clos. During that period of inexhaustible reflection, politically and urbanistically, I was able to gradually check my work as urbanist in Barcelona at the Universities where I worked, ETSAB at the Barcelona Polytechnical University, as visiting professor at Yale, GSDHarvard, NUS in Singapore and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Nanjing University, although the most intense confrontation between practice and theory in the fields of architecture, infrastructure and urban design took place in my theory classes at the Mendrisio School of Architecture (Lugano University between 2004 and 2016. From my experience at the School, as professor and Dean, I would like to make special mention of the great help and experience I received while teaching my students, especially in the four doctoral theses I was responsible for and which were a major incentive for my own theoretical education. I would like to thank the doctors Alexandre Martinelli, Nuria Casais, Mojdeh Aalaii and especially Dr. Stanislava Boskovic, who was also teaching assistant during my 10 years of professorship.
9
The regular chats in Barcelona with talented professionals and academics have enabled me to contrast ideas. I would like to thank my architect friends Oriol Bohigas, Lluís Clotet, Beth Galí and Elías Torres, the photographers Rosa Feliu and Toni Bernard, the designer Mireia Riera and the artist Toni Llena. Over recent years I have paid close attention to the interesting work by the Professor of Ecology Richard Forman, who I would like to thank for the chance to compare ideas, above all during the work “Land mosaic for the Barcelona metropolitan area”. I also wish to thank the architects Sergi Godia and Albert Danès, the engineer Dr. Alex Ivancic and the lawyer M. Angels Badia for her patient critical attention to my work, and the architect Matteo Polci for undertaking and systemising the graphic designs. My thanks to my friends who, although they are no longer with us, have proved crucial for my theoretical and practical education: the architect Enric Miralles, The philosopher Pep Subirós, the geographer Edward Soja and my professor Manuel de Solà Morales. Special thanks also go to the inestimable help of two people: my wife Eugenia Guerra, who besides managing to overcome the constant debate between family and work, has played an important role in the production of the texts, and Dr. Zheng Shiling, professor at CAUP, College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Shanghai Tongji University. Professor Shiling, besides giving me the chance to spend two years researching at the CAUP, has held weekly talks with me that have clarified my stand on Chinese culture and the East-West relationship.
Shanghai-Barcelona, August 2018
ABSTRACT
11
1.
The obsolescence of the modern-industrial urban model
An urban model depends on many vectors, but structurally three of those are key: the socio political context; the economic model and the technological paradigm. When these vectors vary widely, the model should be altered or even replaced by a new one. At the end of the 19th century, with industrialisation, society underwent a great structural change that consequently gave rise to the modern-industrial movement, which defined the rules of the game for the new industrial urban society (URBAN TURN-I). Subsequently the Network Society generated Globalisation from the radical evolution of those three vectors, which led to a new supranational political context, a new neo-tertiary economy and a new technological paradigm. But despite the importance of these changes (URBAN TURN-II) has not yet happened.
2.
Essential conditions for Global processes of urban development
Globalisation has determined the new geopolitical context of urban society, framed within three cross-disciplinary discourses with a strong impact on new processes of urban development: The “demographic boom”; a new ecological discourse and the socio political conflict related to diversity and migration flows. 3.
Post-Fordist transition, disciplinary propositional paralysis and emergence of the FIRE paradigm
The obsolescence of industrial Fordism gave rise to a period of urban transition within the framework of a post-Fordist economy aimed towards the new Globalisation. But instead of the emergence of a new global model (URBAN TURN II), the powers that be promoted the FIRE paradigm (Financial, Insurance, Real Estate), built on the new global socioeconomic theories, but with no connection whatsoever to the urbanistic discourse. 4.
Urban Aporias and disciplinary desertification fostered by the FIRE paradigm
The disciplinary propositional paralysis, an integral part of the FIRE paradigm, led to the emergence of Urban Aporias which have generated a strong adjectivation of what is urban, within an atmosphere of disciplinary desertification that encouraged the tendency to simplify urban complexity, to eternalize the present and elude the future. The FIRE paradigm does not favor any type of discourse other than the urban business, which leads to a strong urban planning proactive paralysis. Its immediate consequence has been the “disciplinary trivialization”, generating the emergence of Urban Aporias as a consequence.
__ ABSTRACT
These Urban Aporias, however, would not have been possible without the breeding ground of a perverse ideological system, whose consequences could be seen in the 2008 crisis and whose effects are still latent.
5.
The emergence of the modern concept of Human Progress
The concept of human Progress has not always existed. In Europe it reached a peak in the 18th century with Turgot’s new idea of Progress, a prelude to the Illustration and its evolution towards the Utopian proposals prior to Industrialisation. Today the new vectors that shape Globalisation, and particularly the new technological outlook, are leading us to modify the idea of Progress resulting from industrial modernity.
6.
Multiple Modernities
Necessary as the implementation of new urban models is, it is not possible to do this unless they are framed within a new Global order, so we must analyse two issues: Do we need a new urban model or is it enough to simply “adjust” the existing modernindustrial one? Can “modernity” be interpreted as a permanently updateable model, able to generate and adapt to the demands and expectations of the new urbanity?
7.
The deepest cut in history: The Axial Age
The spiritual process between the years 800 and 200 BC produced the deepest cut in history, the Axial Age. This period saw the creation of the fundamental categories with which we still think, the birth of the religions that continue today and the origin of man as we know him today. If it is not possible to implement new urban models unless they are framed within a new Global order, is it feasible to recover some of the theories that generated the AXIAL AGE as the origin of a new urbanity?
8.
Spirituality in the evolution of civilisation
Since the Axial Age, spirituality has constituted the driving force and cornerstone of the most advanced, innovative and revolutionary stages of civilisation, such as the Protestant Reform. But we also see that spiritual involution and religious fundamentalism, besides restricting the ideological outlook, are now a danger that can put the review of Globalisation, and our own survival, at risk. However, despite its good and bad points, the shaping of a new ideological framework able to renovate current Globalisation will not be possible without strengthening our spirituality and even updating religions.
13
9.
Interactive vectors of urban culture
Since the Axial Age the interaction between Family, Nature and Technology has constituted the evolutionary matrix of any urban culture.
10.
Technology as Pivot I
Technology as a tool to serve man´s needs has acted as a pivot between past, present and future and as the underpinning of urbanity.
11.
New socio technological, territorial and urban trends: Territorial Isotropy
The new infrastructures generated by the Network Society are lighter and less tangible than industrial ones, and cause less impact on the land. This produces a greater Territorial Isotropy, removing many of the land’s functional limits owing to its lack of infrastructures.
12.
New socio technological, territorial and urban trends: Interstitiality
Interstitial networks are more flexible and elastic than main networks, providing new values, such as capillarity, accessibility, ductility and lightness, very beneficial for the new territorial culture.
13.
New socio technological, territorial and urban trends: Fracmentation
Methodologically and operatively every urban system may be better understood by analysing it fragmentally. But Fracmentation must not involve the loss of the holistic nature of the urban system, but should be understood in a sense of fractality, where the specificity and differences between the parts should not be contradictory to the perceptible existence of features common to the whole territory.
14.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: Icebergs
The growing interest in subterranean space, for socio-economic and ecological reasons, is leading to new types of space –Icebergs– and the possibility of a great spatial reserve at the service of new urban expectations.
15.
New socio technological, territorial and urban trends: Recycling
A great many objects and architectural works built over the years suffer processes of obsolescence that we may find worrying. Their Restoration, Recycling, Reuse, or in some cases their Demolition, are the choices we have, bearing in mind that any choice will affect the behaviour of urban structure in a different way.
__ ABSTRACT
16.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: Intermodality
In an increasingly mobile society, communication arteries are becoming more powerful and complex, but the efficiency of mobility systems mainly relies on the efficiency of the intersections of transport networks, the HUBS. The complexity resulting from the Intermodality between flows goes beyond the sphere of transport, and can generate areas of new urban and regional centrality around the HUBs.
17.
New socio technological, territorial and urban trends: Interactivity
The modification of the ICT-enabled space/time relationship generates new forms of interaction between the form, the flows and the function that create new ways to use and perceive objects on the land. 18.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: Unbundling Infrastructures
The porosity and segmentation of infrastructures produces greater functional efficiency, socioeconomic benefits and structural changes in urban and territorial spheres. 19.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: The new logistics and the Port-City relationship
The technological advancements of the Network Society have led to great developments in Logistics, which have in turn led to a new Port-City relationship. 20.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: Global airports as regional clusters
Some large Global Airports as a transport HUB, decisively affects regional mobility and, at the same time, as a neo-tertiary Cluster, significantly affects the regional socioeconomic structure. 21.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: Logistics and Geopolitics
The development of new Logistics routes to serve trade and the growing interaction of Globalisation are generating significant geopolitical changes, of great importance for the future of territorial culture.
15
22.
New socio-technological, territorial and urban trends: A new post-industrial Mobility Matrix
To promote a new post-industrial Mobility Matrix is key to improving urban efficiency, reducing energy consumption and pollution, and generating greater parsimony in our fast-paced urban life, which are basic conditions for a more qualified urbanity. The new post-industrial Mobility Matrix, beyond its end as transport for people and goods, must be understood as an interactive process of tangible and intangible elements. The regeneration of urban public space will be the essential outcome of this new matrix.
23.
Invariants of territorial culture
Since the Axial Age the interaction between different cultures has threatened the identity of peoples and civilisations, and has also encouraged new models of urbanity, based on permanent ideological and technological renovation. However, urban culture has evolved while always retaining some invariants still valid today: water as a sine qua non condition of urban development, infrastructures to facilitate socio cultural interaction, the building of great icons to highlight peoples’ identity, and above all the use of orthogonal grids as geometrical models for the urban fabric.
24.
Interaction and Complexity
After the Axial Age, the evolution of civilisations has always been fomented by the interaction between different peoples and cultures; although it is easier to know the nature of the elements that interact than the nature of the interactions themselves. Thus, in such an interactive world as the present one, we need new scientific approaches, like Complexity, to help us analyse it more accurately.
25.
Urban thermodynamics
Thermodynamically, the city is defined as a Complex Open System, systematically characterised by its degrees of: Stability, Reversibility and Fluctuations.
26.
Rupture and Recovery of the urban balance
Thermodynamically, the city must be understood as a constant and intermittent sequence of actions that tend to break the urban balance (the city as a Dissipative Structure); and counter tendencies to recover its initial state of balance (the process of urban Homeostasis). From the logic of this loop we extract two concepts: Urban Resilience and Metabolism.
__ ABSTRACT
27.
Urban Resilience
Urban resilience as an expression of the capacity of the system to resist and react to serious perturbances, has become a new parameter of urban design and development, due to its serious social and economic implications.
28.
Urban Metabolism
Urban metabolism as a regulator of the processes of urban transformation brings to light the outcome of the exchange of mass, energy and information, between the city and its surroundings. The metabolic theory involves a triple view of urban systems: Nutritional-energetic, Thermodynamic, and Ecological.
29.
Metabolic efficiency
Structurally, any urban System can be broken down into three subsystems that interact with each other: The built environment, transport and human activity. The three subsystems together define the Metabolic Efficiency of the city, a concept equal to a more objective and scientific way to measure urban efficiency.
30.
Metabolism and urban models
Urban Metabolism is an analytical method and an efficient project design tool. The parameters that make up the metabolism of a city define the nature and functioning of urban transformations, but also result in different types of urbanity. Therefore, conceptually and methodologically, Metabolism should be considered an essential tool for defining future urban models.
31.
Social Capital
The consolidation of the new American democracy, the framework of modernindustrial modernity, had a double underpinning: the birth of Civil Society, fruit of the evolution of the family’s social role, and the development of a concept complementary to the former, Social Capital, designed so that Civil Society could sustain itself and be operative and able to translate citizens’ wishes into practical actions. If Civil Society is not protected and reinforced, in such a complex context as the current one, it will be unlikely to be able to take on the challenges posed by its very essence. If Social Capital opts for the detrimental effects of some trends like “amoral familism”, Civil Society loses effectiveness and democratic values, and general well-being suffers.
17
32.
Human Capital
Human Capital synthesises the value generated by people’s capacities through education, experience, knowledge, self-improvement, decision-making and social interaction. It refers to the stock of knowledge and skills that people have and their ability to apply them to the improvement of the system. Human Capital is suitable for restoring and revitalising unused land with little complexity by means of the injection of intangible concepts, such as creativity. The question is to ensure that they come together to shape the Creative City from a qualitative, transformational perspective and not as a subterfuge for the continuity of the status quo.
33.
Natural Capital
The updated analytical view of nature and agriculture were incorporated by Turgot into his theory on Human Progress, but it was David Ricardo, who in the early 19th century established that earth is a source of wealth that is analytically governed by the law of diminishing yield and analysed the link between natural ecosystems and social wealth and well-being. Natural Capital is a stock of assets and natural services, renewable or non-renewable, which, as they are scarce, need to be preserved and replenished to guarantee optimum socioeconomic development, and which, insofar as they are scarce, valuable and vulnerable, need to be socioeconomically valued like other assets. 34.
Infrastructure as fixed social capital: affordable housing and urban public space
Infrastructures, socioeconomically defined as Fixed Social Capital, constitute the backbone of urban fabrics. Even though their range of functions is enormous (transport, socio-cultural, health, energy...) we will highlight two here which, in the current context, have great importance for any model of urbanity: Affordable Housing, and Urban Public Space. Both, but not exclusively, make up the essence of urbanity, and have been underrated as disciplines and reduced to mere goods by the FIRE paradigm of post-Fordist urbanism.
35.
Obsolescence of modern-industrial metropolitanism
It is necessary to review our concept of Metropolitan, because the new technological and socioeconomic paradigms of the Network Society are generating new territorial debates that have left modern-industrial metropolitanism practically obsolete.
__ ABSTRACT
The rise and fall of industrial suburbs, the consolidation of “permanent deurbanised crusts” around mature cities, and the exhaustion of the Westphalian model of NationState, require us to review the current metropolitan phenomenology. The neo-metropolitanism that is emerging with post-industrialisation brings with it new regional territorial patterns that will result in a new urbanity, City-Regions, based on a new transregional territorial culture.
36.
New regional visions: M. Storper’s socioeconomic theories
The interaction between urban systems and their context means a new interaction between natural and urban systems, which goes beyond the old Marxist citycountryside debate. The new “macro urban constellations”, the result of this new interaction, cannot be understood from the perspective of the Nation-State nor as an exclusive effect of Globalisation, since the new clusters that articulate the constellations contain very specific morphological and syntactic features, in keeping with what is happening following the decline of the modern-industrial model. In the new socio-political neo-metropolitan context, the step from Global to Glocal must be described in a cross-disciplinary way from three regional viewpoints: Socioeconomic, Ecological and Urban. M. Storper’s theories on the new regional economy are important in themselves to assess, geo-morpho-logically, the new neo-metropolitan perspective and the City-Region.
37.
Regional ecological perspective: R. Forman’s land mosaic
In the new neo-metropolitan context, the cities and clusters that articulate urban constellations interact in a very complex way with the natural surroundings in which they are immersed. This interaction has socio-economic, urban and environmental effects, without whose analysis the resulting complexity cannot be explained. The theory Land Mosaics, by Richard Forman, is a new land analysis approach at the service of urban designers.
38.
New regional urban perspective: Archipelago model
The City-Region, composed of the blend of built (urban) and unbuilt systems (natural ecosystems), is structurally like an archipelago, comprising built urban systems that emerge in an unbuilt context (natural and agricultural ecosystems).
19
The centralities formed by mature historic cities, new urban developments and clusters make up a polycentric structure, like a constellation city, with different identities, hierarchical functions and articulated infrastructures like a regional network. 39.
Structure of the intermediate spaces in the City-Region: The tertiarisation of the primary sector: the Desakota phenomenon
The enhancement and revitalisation of intermediate spaces between the different urban systems is a fundamental condition for the shaping of a new regional context, but their revitalisation to favour interaction with the city cannot be allowed to endanger the sustainability of natural ecosystems. Agriculture, as the vital underpinning of the city, plays a predominant role, but also, conveniently tertiarised, will play a crucial role in the socioeconomic structuring of the regional Archipelago. With the aim of optimising urban-rural interaction, the new Desakota phenomenon is a good example to follow.
40.
Regional Clustering. The efficiency of corridors
The interactions between the urban systems of the City-Region give rise to a certain type of land development, clustering, which by reinterpreting industrial spatialproduction models are in accordance with globalisation and new regional logics. The connections between cities and clusters become corridors which, owing to their functional porosity and the efficiency of their flows, are the main arteries where new production and residential activity is centred. The efficiency of the regional system primarily depends on its corridors, particularly when we incorporate new urban systems, Clusters.
41.
Territorial interpretation of the Principle of Elective Affinities
Traditionally, connections between cities have been favoured by the efficiency of the corridor that connects them, forming binary urban constellations, but in today’s network-land, cities tend to interact in a more complex way, based on the formation of ternary urban constellations. To analyse and improve the relationship between new clusters and the regional system, and especially to analyse the new ternary constellations, we propose a new approach: territorially interpret the “Principle of Elective Affinities�.
42.
Disruptive innovation andnew Glocal urban models
To create a new Glocal urban model, first and foremost we must replace those clearly detrimental theories promoted by the FIRE paradigm. It is also necessary to recycle
__ ABSTRACT
those earlier urban theories that could serve to design a new model, and finally make positive propositions, like the cultivation of a renewed utopian thinking, the introduction of cybernetics and disruptive innovation in urban analyses, with the aim of establishing a new symbiosis between theory and development, based on both a disciplinary and ethical review.
43.
Towards a more Disruptive urbanism: Technology such as Pivot II
To shape a more Disruptive urbanism, we need the blend of tangible, measurable parameters with other kinds of intangible values, non-quantifiable in physical-material terms. Technology, so long as man is able to control and manage it, will be an effective means, though not the only one, to facilitate the new propositions that will make up a new kind of more disruptive urbanism. In the new global context, IV Industrial Revolution, technology will also play a role as essential as it has in previous eras, although of a very different nature. In addition to functionally training the individual, will tend to refine and replace it and this question, obviously, must pose great existential and ethical questions. 44.
Tactical-methodological principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: The demolition as a project tool to promote urban innovation
Although it is usually held that the city is created by “building”, it is also true that “demolition” can be a constructive incentive, because it removes obsolete or inappropriate structures, and because the voids it creates may house new functions, morphologies and typologies that foster urban innovation. Nevertheless, precautions must be taken to avoid the destruction of landmark buildings and structures, or to avoid the eviction of the resident population and so favour speculation, disguised as urban renovation. However, disciplinary action must be taken to prevent the destruction of buildings and significant groups that entail the expulsion of the resident population, camouflaged as a policy of urban renewal. 45.
Tactical principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: The transformational efficiency of Urban Acupuncture
As a method of urban transformation, today, the Plan, designed for modern-industrial urbanism, is not a suitable instrument today because it is slow, inflexible and generally proves to be an unconditional, operative instrument at the service of the status quo of urban Globalisation.
21
Since it is not possible to relinquish an immediate replacement of the FIRE paradigm, for preparing the conditions to introduce new radical urban models, in a transactional way but without undue risk, it is possible a new conceptualisation of Transformational Urban Project as the foreword of a new urbanity. A system of projects, strategically scattered over the land, regardless of its scale, make up an Urban Acupuncture whith radical transformational effects. 46.
Tactical principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Introduce chance and random elements into the stochastic processes of urban transformation and development
The processes of urban transformation and development are Stochastic Processes. In these processes there is a sequence of events in which random components combine with selected events in such a way that the end goal can only be reached if certain results of the random component are evident. In terms of urban development, Stochastic Processes should be understood to the extent that the random elements contained in their core must be captured in order to produce the effects of urbanity we are aiming for. 47.
Structuring principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Reconsider project development based on the complexity implied by recognizing the trilateral nature of space
From the Cybernetic perspective, the description and understanding of everything related to life, the evolution and the interaction between living organisms, obviously including the behaviour of those who enjoy the city, cannot only be deduced from quantitative logic and analysis, because if the observer and the observed are part of the same object described, the convergence between the subject and the object cannot ignore the principle of reflexivity shown by the system’s internal interaction. Edward Soja goes deeper into this with a three-way composition of space, Thirdspace, breaking it down into three levels: How space is lived. How space is perceived. How space is designed. 48.
Structuring principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Promote the “patterns that connect� in a global urban world that clearly tends towards differentiation and indifference
Among all living beings we can observe a wide array of kinds of behaviour, often irreconcilable. To redress this, G. Bateson launched a restorative theoretical challenge: Find the patterns that connect us to all living creatures.
__ ABSTRACT
Given the importance of the biological organisation of the world, he points to the relevance of homology, formal similarities, as an evolutionary consequence, and analyses the criteria for looking into the laws of form based on the overlap of the concepts, differentiation and information, which leads us to state that to formalise is to make a perfect but different container. Knowing the importance of “being different within a single pattern”, we should be in a position to find Glocal urban models able to meet different expectations based on connecting patterns between different individuals and cultures, while retaining our own differences and singularities. 49.
Structural principles for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Temperance as a disciplinary reaction to encourage moderation in the face of the current trend for the dissolution of functionalist theories
The classical understanding of architecture according to the Vitruvian triad, UtilitusFirmitas-Venustus, has relaxed to a worrying degree. The resolutely functionalist nature of the modern-industrial movement has gradually degenerated with current Globalisation to make “iconic” the supreme value of urban architecture, to the point where external sources are warning us of the gravity of the current proliferation of dispensable and superfluous urban dynamics, drawing our attention to the need for a Slim City. In the face of the current whirlwind of urban superficiality and banality, urban designers and developers must necessarily practice the virtue of Temperance with greater intensity, as an attitude of moderation to face the challenge of so many sensorial provocations. 50.
Intangible ideological values for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: Promote greater Spatial Justice from the field of urban design
Urban Space cannot be deemed an exclusively morphological issue, neither is it socially neutral itself. Its structural features determine whether it is, to a greater or lesser degree, socially accessible, democratic or even repressive. For this reason, wherever man appears, attitudes will intentionally surface that go beyond the geomorphological discourse, which means that a fight for Justice in a territorial context inevitably becomes a fight for control of the land. In the sixties several authors dealt with this issue, two in particular: John Rawls and Edward Soja. The new theories of Social Justice expounded by the former were translated by the latter into the basis for Spatial Justice. From the Global perspective, Spatial Justice involves the control of surplus Capital generated by urban development, and from the urbanistic perspective, Spatial Justice
23
involves abandoning unconditional collaboration with the Global status quo and raising the intensity of interdisciplinary collaboration to guarantee a fairer urban discourse. 51.
Intangible ideological values for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: The value of Parsimony in such a fast-paced world
Today we live faster than in the modern industrial period. New technologies and our own concept of Global lead us to turn the classical space-time binomial into the triad of space-time-individuality, which has resulted in both imbalances and improvements in our way of life due to widespread flows of communication, information, trade, culture, finance and currency. The fast pace of our lives has led to the need and freedom to travel, resulting in the growth of mass tourism, not a new phenomenon, which is now turning against the land that seduced it. The frenetic mobility of Global society does not only create territorial and environmental dysfunctions, it also creates them at a personal level, like stress. Parsimony, as an intangible spiritual value, is the best antidote to incorporate into project development, to redress the devastating consequences of the extreme acceleration of our lives. 52.
Intangible ideological values for the shaping of a more Disruptive urbanism: The value of Harmony as a counterpoint in an urban world so full of imbalances
In all ages and civilisations, development has brought with it strong imbalances, but on the other hand, the most influential thinkers, like Plato, Confucius, Tao, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Fourier or Einstein, developed a concept able to “harmonise” the causes of these imbalances. As a secret virtue that exalts moderation in a world of extravagance, Harmony, already defined in the Axial Age as “the unity and concordance of man with all things”, has always been a vital concept for music, beauty and the artistic world in general, and should also be the governing principle for the disciplinary revitalisation of architecture and urban development. The seduction of Siracuse, again: Can Neo-medievalism be considered a disciplinary incentive, able to contribute to the creation of new Glocal urban models?
GLOSSARY
25
Axial Age_(According to Karl Jaspers) Period between 800 and 200 BC, which saw “the deepest cut in history”. In this period many extraordinary events took place in faraway countries that had no possibility of communicating. In China lived Confucius and Lao Tse. In India, Buda. In Iran Zarathustra taught. In Palestine appeared the prophets and in Greece philosophers like Plato. This is when we see the end of prehistory and the birth of philosophy, religions and spiritual currents that are still with us today. For the first time, man is acknowledged as an individual and cultivates his own ideology. Barcelona Model_The long, devastating era of Franco’s dictatorship also meant a black period for Barcelona. After the first elections following the dictator’s death, in 1980 the first democratic Barcelona city council put into place a series of radical policies in different spheres, particularly in urban planning. The new team responsible for urbanism (Bohigas, Acebillo, Galofré, and Puigdomènech) proposed a “transformational urbanism” that would take immediate action on the territory, based on a rethinking of the idea of Urban Project, reshaping the Plan (former modern-industrial model of urbanism) that would mainly focus on guaranteeing the legal security of the transformational interventions undertaken. Between 1980 and 2005the transformation of Barcelona (under the mayors Serra, Maragall and Clos) has been dubbed “Barcelona Model” and can be explained in three stages: –1980-1986: Predominance of small interventions on public space. Urban acupuncture. (146 new squares, streets, gardens and parks). –1986-1992: -Expansion of urban interventions and their complexity, infrastructures and systems, underpinned by the organisation of the 1992 Olympic Games. –1992-2005: Glocal Paradigm. Metropolitan deliberation on translating into an urban Model the transition from the industrial to the neo-tertiary socioeconomy. From 2005, with new political guidelines, the Barcelona Model is still alive, but in some respects rather diluted. Creative milieu_A spatial, social, economic, cultural and institutional environment that foments and sustains creativity through economic and technological innovation. Cybernetics_(According to Gregory Bateson) Branch of mathematics that deals with problems of control, recursion and information.
__GLOSSARY
Cybord City_The notion that contemporary cities are seamlessly mediated by technological and cybernetic systems which completely mediate the city’s relationship to society, culture and nature. Disruptive Innovation vs. Sustainable Innovation_Any action or process that breaks a person’s or organisation’s status quo. Ground-breaking products or ideas that replace existing ones and appear suddenly and unasked for, creating new functions and needs (ground-breaking theory). The concept of disruptive innovation is opposed to sustainable innovation, which dictates improvement by innovative actions, a process in decline. In this case, the original process or idea remains and is simply improved on (conservative theory). Epistemology_(According to Gregory Bateson) Branch of science combined with a branch of philosophy. As a science, epistemology is the study of the manner in which certain organisms know, think and decide. As a philosophy, it is the study of limits and other features of knowledge, thought and decision processes. FIRE Paradigm_Economy comprising the Financial, Insurance and Real Estate sectors, of great importance from the 80s. Subsequently Enterprise was added. The FIRE paradigm became the midwife of post-Fordist urban production, exclusively anchored on neoliberal socioeconomic precepts and with no connection to urbanistic culture, which gave rise to the Urban Aporias that explain today’s critical situation and the paralysis of any advancements related to urbanity. Fordism and Post-Fordism_The Fordist production model emerged at the beginning of the 20th century pioneered by Henry Ford. It involved concentrating different production processes to create big factories with assembly lines for large-scale mass production. For example, Detroit was the headquarters of most of the big automobile manufacturers. In the 70s, the eruption of the new technologies of the Network Society fostered new criteria for quality control and the value of cutting-edge technology, added to the idea that large-scale Fordist production based on offer should be replaced by a new kind of production that responded to demand. The big Fordist factories were gradually replaced by a new network of smaller, more sophisticated centres, located according to their socio-technical capacity. Detroit is just one of the
27
cities that is suffering an irreversible crisis owing to the collapse of Fordism, because it has been unable to adapt to the new economic and socio-technological theories of post-Fordism. Gentrification and Urban Vietnamisation_Gentrification refers to the transformation, with devastating consequences, of an obsolete or nearly obsolete urban area that is rebuilt using urbanistic parameters that prompt the eviction of local residents, which following the transformation will be occupied by wealthier social classes. After the Gentrification process, the redeveloped district houses social classes that tend to physically isolate themselves from the rest of the city, in so-called golden ghettos, to hold onto their privileged status. This process has been dubbed Vietnamisation because it negatively fragments the city. GISs (Geographical Information System)_Computerised mapping systems which enable geographically referenced data sets to be superimposed and analysed. Glocal_Glocal is a term that originated in the 80s as a combination of Global and Local. The decline of the Westphalian Nation-State, resulting from a new relationship between global production and the territory, has meant that the local area must no longer be considered secondary, be closer to power and more engaged in global decisions. The maxim “Think Global, act Local� succinctly illustrates the idea of Glocal. Heterotopy_(According to Michel Foucault) Discipline whose focus is those different spaces, those other places, those mythical and real deviations of space in which we live (e.g. a cemetery, asylum, prison, spa, brothel...) Homology_(According to Gregory Bateson) Formal similarity between two organisms, such that the relationships between certain parts of A are similar to the relationships between the corresponding parts of B. Modern infrastructural ideal_The idea of rolling out monopolistic, standardised and integrated infrastructure networks to cover a city, region or country that was associated particularly with the period 1850-1960. Closely associated with the idea of the natural monopoly, the theory of public goods and Keynesian policies.
__GLOSSARY
Neo-tertiary_Conventional economic culture contemplates three basic production sectors: the primary sector pertaining to agriculture, the secondary sector pertaining to industry and the tertiary sector related to services. The Neo-tertiary refers to an extension of the classical secondary sector that appears with globalisation, with the incorporation of new ICT-enabled production systems and programmes. Network Society_The Information Age, according to Manuel Castells, is characterised by the interaction of the triad: Economy-Society-Culture and underpins the new socioeconomic paradigm: the Network Society. The Network Society creates new relationships of production/consumption, power and experiences that, interacting with a new space-time relationship, make up the foundation of the new Global culture. OBOR project_The OBOR project (One Belt, one Road), pioneered by the Chinese government under President Xi, intends to increase the interactive capacity of the Silk Route to match the complexity of the 21st century, and turn it into a key interactive system on a global scale, as efficient as the Silk Route was in the Middle Ages. However, there is one essential difference between the OBOR project and the Silk Route: whereas the latter was a Euro-Asian system, the OBOR project broadens its scope to cover Asia, Europe and Africa. Stochastic_(According to Gregory Bateson) (Shooting an arrow to a target, that is, disperse events in a partially random manner, so that some achieve the desired goals). A sequence of events is stochastic if it involves a random variable in a selective process, in such a way that only certain outcomes of the random component endure. Technological determinism_The conceptual practise of suggesting that technologies and infrastructures directly shape social and spatial outcomes in a linear, cause-andeffect manner because of their abstract qualities. Topology_(According to Gregory Bateson) Branch of mathematics that does not take quantities into account and only deals with the formal relationships between the component elements (especially those that can be represented geometrically). Topology studies those features that are not modified by quantitative distortion.
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Unbundling infrastructures_The collapse of industrial infrastructures unable to respond to the growing challenges that modern society demands, gives rise to a Splintering Urbanism with a double outcome: the gradual privatisation of infrastructures and the consolidation of infrastructural segmentation (Unbundling Infrastructures) which, as the result of their “functional porosity”, causes the decomposition of infrastructures to adapt to various functional programmes, supplementary to the main programme. For example, a motorway, besides carrying traffic, has petrol stations, motels, eateries and can also become a flow collector for electricity, telephone, fibre optic and so on. Westphalian Nation-State_The Westphalian system is the international rules of governance set down in Europe in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) following the 30 years’ war. One of the most significant outcomes was the new concept of NationState, based on national sovereignty (a nation’s right to exist without the interference of other nations) in the use of the State’s monopoly of force, and in the balance of power according to the development of the diplomacy/war concept. The repeatedly announced death of the Westphalian Nation-State in 1789, 1914 and 1945 has not come about, but Globalisation with its transnational vision, the elimination of borders and the limitation of sovereignty, is irreversibly undermining it and gradually replacing it with a new transregional order implied in the new Glocalisation theories.
I
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POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
1 THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE MODERN-INDUSTRIAL URBAN MODEL An urban model depends on many vectors, but structurally three of those are key: the socio-political context; the economic model and the technological paradigm. When these vectors vary widely, the model should be altered or even replaced by a new one. At the end of the 19th century, with industrialisation, society underwent a great structural change that consequently gave rise to the modern-industrial movement, which defined the rules of the game for the new industrial urban society (URBAN TURN-I). Subsequently the Network Society generated Globalisation from the radical evolution of those three vectors, which led to a new supranational political context, a new neotertiary economy and a new technological paradigm. But despite the importance of these changes (URBAN TURN II) has not yet happened.
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__ 1. THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE MODERN-INDUSTRIAL URBAN MODEL
The generation of new urban models is a very complex process conditioned by the convergence of multiple endogenous and exogenous contextual circumstances. The analysis we propose for the creation of new urban models akin to the Global concept, should be based on the evolution of the aforementioned contextual vectors, since they greatly affect the new urbanity. When one or more of these vectors varies widely, the urban model falls short of achieving the expected goals and must be corrected or replaced. This occurred during the 19th century. Then, farming, which was the basic primary economic sector, was replaced by a new secondary economic sector, industry. Simultaneously, precarious technology and pre-modern, agricultural infrastructure was replaced by new modern, industrial technology, at the same time as the modern Westphalian Nation-States were being consolidated. With such structural changes, the urban model also changed towards what we commonly define as industrial modernity. But this modernity was not only so in political, socioeconomic and technological terms, but also generated a total review of territorial urbanistic theories, and urban design: The Modern Movement thus constitutes the new Modern-industrial urban model, URBAN TURN-I.
marginalization of urban public space functional selectivity of the Zoning territory obsession with hygiene and orientation modern technologies occasionally promote tower-buildings binary relation: form follows function urban mobility: "obliged" and promoted from the offer hardware technologies and infrastructures low density as a quality diffuse sprawl urbanization architecture as a central column of the city primacy of the plan over the urban project
MISADJUSTMENTS IN THE GLOBAL MODERN-INDUSTRIAL TRANSITION
OLD MODERN-INDUSTRIAL URBAN MODEL
FUTURE GLOBAL URBAN MODELS urban public space as the supporting axis of neoterciary activity territorial isotropy, accessibility, programmatic hybridity are necessary but not sufficient conditions new technologies of the Network Society popularize tower buildings as the basis of new economy ternary relationship: form-flows-function urban mobility: "discretionary" and promoted from the demand software technologies and infrastructures ecological problems derived from diffuse urbanization increase density by ecology and economy the trinomial "system - infrastructure - architecture" as the basis of the new urban complexity primacy of the project over the plan
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
The fertile Modern-Industrial period, of artistic, objectual, architectural and urbanistic production, developed throughout most of the 19th century until the last quarter of the 20th, and from a disciplinary point of view has been one of the most fruitful periods of architectural and urban design. Logically, with the arrival of the new vectors entailed in Globalisation, some of the architectural and urban planning theories from the previous Modern-Industrial period were no longer suitable, or were obsolete, pointing to the need for a disciplinary renovation. But it is just as naïve to think that the disciplinary precepts of the Modern-Industrial model would be enough and could be directly applicable in the new era of Globalisation, as to think the opposite and do away with all the previous disciplinary ideology. So, when it comes to approaching Globalisation in terms of urban planning from the continuity of the Modern-Industrial model, many notable “imbalances” become evident. However, it is also worthwhile insisting on the theoretical convergences that arise when reinterpreting the main urbanistic precepts of the previous model from a Global angle. The precedent table shows some of the modern-industrial “imbalances and convergences” seen from the Global perspective. But the new global vectors were structurally different and that threw the urbanistic discipline and urbanity into confusion. NEW SUPRANATIONAL CONTEXT
After the dismantling of the Fordist industrial economy, the new socioeconomic dynamic resulting from the Network Society could not occur in a fragmented and disconnected international context and, beyond an ideological-cultural question, a new technological paradigm appeared that fosters and stimulates an interactive vision of the world, as the basis for Globalisation. 1.1 Zbigniew Brzezinski (19282017 American political scientist of Polish descent, National Security advisor during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
Many contemporary thinkers, and particularly Zbigniew. Brzezinski1.1, believe that “The power of Globalisation was defined by the linking of four decisive fields: military, economic, technological and cultural”. So, understanding politics in international terms in the 20th century is only possible by taking into account the validity of these four vectors. With Industrial Modernity and the reaffirmation of the Westphalian Nation-State, new political-territorial forms were consolidated that spatially and conceptually surpassed the restrictive territorial theories of European Medieval Feudalism.
ec on om y
gy olo hn tec
mo de l
35
URBAN MODEL
ne o-t ert iar y
gy olo hn tec
I
IT
ec on om y
socio-political context
GLOBAL CITY
supranational globalization
y
XIX-XX
state-nation prevalence agriculture/industry industrial technology
modern-industrial city URBAN U-TURN POST-FORDISM TRASITION
XX-XXI
supranational industry/new econom IT technology
& global city URBAN U-TURN II?
network society
__ 1. THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE MODERN-INDUSTRIAL URBAN MODEL
The Nation-States, born in the 17th century, seek logic of internal coherence able to confirm their sovereignty by reinventing, if necessary, an easily legible identity, and territorially marking out their area of sovereignty. This involved the creation of borders that altered the medieval geopolitical mosaic, especially in Europe, resulting in a new European map made up of the new states, based on relatively strict interpretations of history, identity and the hypothetically common culture of their inhabitants. This situation developed within the framework of a new industrial modernity, which acted as a lubricant for the new political system, especially in a new international context initially dominated by technology and the industrial economy. The design and execution of this new geopolitical puzzle, as well as the socioeconomic framework of industrialisation, required the development of a new territorial ideology that could only materialise by means of new technologies and the review of the previous territorial culture. The new modern-industrial, technological and infrastructural systems required international homologation, otherwise the consequences for the unified vision of national territory would be disastrous. For example, in 19th century Spain, in order to consolidate its borders and sovereignty, and avoid foreign military invasions, railways were built that were not geometrically homologated, so avoiding the natural connectivity with other nations and cultures leading to an unfortunate socio-cultural isolation from the rest of Europe, and great difficulties for transport and trade. It was impossible to be less interactive! Geopolitical reasoning that shows the validity of the four stated powers was evident in the Spanish colonisation of America, in all examples of colonisation in the 19th century and today, in the Global affirmation of, first the United States, and now the two great Eastern powers: India and China. The case of the USA is apparent from its direct military interventions in Vietnam or the Middle East, and its indirect destabilising operations in South America. Currently, India is being restructured with the building of great economic corridors to connect Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai-Bangalore, which will be the backbone of the whole country, and in China, the biggest urban development process in history is turning it into the first world power. Despite all the reluctance stemming from the cultural singularity and diversity of the different nations, the whole world is becoming Global, regardless of the
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
size of states and territories, since scale is no impediment for gaining supremacy on the new Global scene. The so-called NICs (Newly Industrialized Countries) refer both to the big countries in the BRICS block: Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, and the tiny “four Asian tigers”: Taiwan, HongKong, Singapore and South Korea. The indifference towards the scale of the land, and the economic success of some political-territorial micro-scales, are leading to an acceleration of the fractioning of the Nation-State mosaic, particularly evident in the contrived European political monolithic system. Small countries like Ireland, Scotland, Catalunya...with strong cultural identities, are now actively working to separate from their current State to form new independent institutions, overriding the modern federalist theories, which would imply a profound reconstruction of the European political-institutional mosaic. The necessary condition for the implementation of new global political entities is that they should have a new socioeconomic agenda to face the global future, with an optimum scientific-technological support. Globalisation processes rest on an ever-growing range of supranational organisations, which try to rationalise and improve global relations, always with one eye on the dissolution of the Nation-State. There are many types of supranational structures: - Supra-state entities of continental proportions - Supra-regional co-operation organisations - Para-political supra-national organisations, regulators of socioeconomic agreements - Groups of countries with specific logistical aims beyond their own borders - Non-profit Organisations – NGOs – designed to control, check andw act as drivers of specific policies, which act globally outside their territorial limits, compensating for State inefficiency. - Infrastructure projects on a macro national scale, such as the OBOR (One Belt, One Road) Project to improve the interaction between China, Europe and Africa. In the face of such a wide variety of supranational organisations the question is: Is it a tactical issue designed to guarantee the concentration of power, or the arrival of a new supranational attitude creating a global society more in keeping with the interests of the citizens? From our urbanistic viewpoint, this treatise attempts to move towards the latter option rather than the former one.
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__ 1. THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE MODERN-INDUSTRIAL URBAN MODEL
THE NEW NEO-TERTIARY ECONOMY AND THE DECLINE OF THE SECONDARY SECTOR 1.2 Alfred Marshall. British economist (1842-1924). Contributed decisively to welfare theories based on Richard and Stuart Mill’s theories. Among his works are: Principles of Economy (1890) and Industry and Commerce (1919).
1.3 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The organism of international cooperation composed of 37 States.
At the beginning of industrialisation Alfred Marshall1.2 already pointed out that the production of tangible goods, principle aim of the industrial sector, was closely linked to certain services, like transport, advertising or product distribution. He later said that the facilitating character of those services was an essential vector for the feasibility of industrial production. This reorientation of the secondary sector was furthered with the confirmation of industrial Fordism, but its decline in the last quarter of the 20th century meant a genuine industrial metamorphosis. One of the first signs of this metamorphosis was the fall in manufacturing employment, a particularly sensitive issue in the urban peripheral areas, which entails the reorganisation of urban production activities and has produced a structural change in western economies, especially within the scope of the OECD1.3. The european transformation of the industrial sector towards tertiarisation was even more marked in the United States, consolidating after World War II and coinciding with a double phenomenon: Deindustrialisation, in areas that have not upgraded their production methods because they are unable to complement the secondary sector with the new tertiary one, and delocalisation, in areas that cannot withstand the productivity and competitivity of other territories more advanced in the understanding of new global strategies. In fact, some analysts, as Nick Srnicek, have already warned us that “hyperliberal post-capitalism will not be industrial. Nevertheless, the economy was continually being restructured and employment moved from manufacturing to services. The GDP continued to rise, also exports thanks to a greater interactivity, especially in China, with an annual increase of 25% over the last 15 years, in detriment to Japanese and American industry. At the end of the 20th century the New Economy showed a clear picture of change, with regard to its structure and its consequences for the land: The industrial sector was losing the economic power it had had for over a hundred years of industrialisation, sharing it with a new Tertiary sector, or rather Neo-tertiary. The influential effect of the industrial sector on economic activity is shared and transferred towards a Neo-tertiary sector, which has gained momentum as Globalisation processes have consolidated. The new tertiarisation is not a merely amplified echo of the tertiary sector we knew in the Modern-Industrial period, hence the term Neo-tertiary, but a far more intense and complex phenomenon which covers business, commerce, finance, energy, water, gas, trans-
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
port and communication services, like leisure and culture, very different from the modern-industrial period. Neo-tertiary is very reliant on ICT-enabled intangible activities (Information and Communication Technologies), which lends it quite a different character to the conventional Modern-Industrial Tertiary. Let us think of the differences to the past and the importance of Tourism, or the structural importance for our society of activities such as Research, Creativity or Marketing. Neo-tertiary appears with such intensity that its activity has finally become the generator of the socioeconomic dynamism we know today. In the New Economy, propelling the Neo-tertiary sector, the interaction between goods and services (intangibles) varies with respect to the modern-industrial period. The massive and accelerated production of goods (tangible), connotadora of industrial progress, generated services (intangibles), establishing a clear separation between goods and services, which will be diluted in the neoterciaria economy. For the New Economy, fostered by ICT, the classic separation between goods and services has vanished, in favor of an integration between both, and the supremacy of the intangible and the Neo-Tertiary activities. 1.4 Focal firms. Paul H. Dembinski. Very Large Enterprise, focal firms and global value chais. 2009.
Now, the interaction between goods and services evolves from the theses that promote a structure, image and unique commercialization, “focal firms” 1.4, such as mobile telephony and electronic products, examples of a deliberate ambiguity between the good produced and the service it provides. , until the most recent counter-trend, “unbundling” that to avoid monopolies and gain in efficiency breaks down to the maximum both the production of goods and the generation of services. In the field of infrastructures we will see that this new concept is crucial. For the New Economy, ICT-enabled, the classic separation between goods and services has vanished in favour of integration and the supremacy of the intangible environment and Neo-tertiary activities. The New Economy must be understood from three basic suppositions: It is Informational, generating knowledge and experiences able to increase productivity and competitivity. It is Global, as customers, markets, companies and demand confirm. It is Networked, as it bases its flexibility and capacity to adapt on information obtained thanks to global connectivity. It must also be stressed that the New Economy is capitalist, and for the first time in history practically the whole planet is, which implies an economic uniformity that obviously carries over into the fields of urban design, planning and production.
39
__ 1. THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THE MODERN-INDUSTRIAL URBAN MODEL
NEW TECHNOLOGICAL PARADIGM
New Technologies, underpinning of the Network Society, and especially those of information and communication, have permeated society producing previously unknown social and territorial effects. In the new Information Age human societies function in a new technological paradigm built around microelectronics, ICTs or genetic engineering, which have little to do with the modern mechanical technologies that emerged from industrialisation. In fact, the most important concepts of economic and political Globalisation that we have described as possible patterns for a new Global vision of the 21st century would not be feasible without a new technological paradigm to support them. Therefore, we will later deal with technology as the pivot between past, present and future. The new technological paradigm that characterises our age should not be interpreted as the mere continuity of industrial technological paradigms. With the Network Society we are just at the beginning of a technological revolution where ICT innovation, nanotechnology, the biological revolution, robotics, artificial intelligence and so on, are shaping a kind of society quite different to the industrial one. This dynamic, ICT-enabled Global outlook is also apparent in the field of culture. If the scope of Information and exchange itself produces complex effects on cultural perception, the Network Society, through a wide range of multimedia options, widens them even more, and new information channels, cable or satellite TV, VCR, videos, and new information sources on internet, are the basis of what we call today “the fourth power”. The consequences of the new technological paradigm are so crucial for urbanity that it is logical to say that in the new Global context “the urban must also be considered a socio-technical process”.
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
2 ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS FOR GLOBAL PROCESSES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT Globalisation has determined the new geopolitical context of urban society, framed within three cross-disciplinary discourses with a strong impact on new processes of urban development. The “demographic boom”; a new ecological discourse and the socio-political conflict related to diversity and migration flows.
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__ 2. ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS FOR GLOBAL PROCESSES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT
The new socio-economic globalization coincides with two key situations previously configured: the Nation-State and the pre-eminence of liberal-democratic thought. The Globalization / State-Nation interaction is conflictive because it restricts the key precepts of the Nation-State, such as borders, protectionism, and total autonomy of the national territory. The interaction Globalization / Liberal Democracy, is only understandable from the perspective of a new “global federalism� that is still undefined, and the interaction State-Nation/Liberal Democracy is still governed by the Bretton Woods Agreements of 1941.2.1
div ers i cu ltu ral
gic olo
ec
GLOBAL URBAN VECTORS
al
These inconsistencies are also palpable from the point of view of a new territorial culture, but in parallel to a total reconsideration of the current political and socioeconomic parameters, we have a certain margin of maneuver to discipline, analyzing and interpreting three key vectors related to Globalization which are key for the new processes of urbanization: The demographic boom, the new ecological discourse and the derived socio-cultural conflicts related to the diversity and migratory flows.
h ac
o pr
ap
so cio -
w
ne
ty
That is, the future Global Models will only be credible if the nature of the interactions stated is substantially modified.
demographic boom
2.1 The agreements of Bretton Woods, were signed in 1941 in the locality of the same name in New Hampshire, EE UU, and they formed the basic architecture of the international economic and financial relations after the II Great War. The new economic order was based on ensuring the stability of international transactions based on a solid and stable exchange rate based on the US dollar, which replaced the gold standard. In order to unfold the new economic-financial policy, two new institutions were created International: the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The World Trade Organization, which completes the scheme, was not created until 1995.
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
Population of the world: estimates, 1950-2015, and medium variant projection with 95% prediction intervals, 2015-2100
Population by region, estimates, 1950-2015, and medium variant projection, 2015-2100
Life expentancy at birth by region: estimates, 1975-2015, and projections 2015-2050
Urban and rural population of the world, 1950-2050
Average annual rate of change of the percentage, 1950-2050
A vast majority of the world’s rural inhabitants live in Asia, but projected growth is fastest in Africa
43
Source: United Nations World Population Prospects 2014 and 2017 (revision).
__ 2. ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS FOR GLOBAL PROCESSES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT
__I. POST-FORDIST TRANSITION: THE FIRE PARADIGM AND THE LOSS OF URBAN VALUES
DEMOGRAPHIC BOOM
In accordance with the document World Population Prospects (2017 Review) written by the United Nations. (Key Findings and Advance Tables). In 1950 the world population was estimated to be 2,600 million. In 1987 that reached 5,000 million. In 1999 6,000 million In 2011 7,000 million In 2017 the population reached 7,550 million. The forecast for the rest of the 21st century is around 8,851 m. in 2013, 9,772 m. in 2050 and 11,184 m. in 2100. From this date the world population will level off and according to the experts decrease. This drastic growth – demographic boom – is mostly due to the rise in the number of people who survive up to the age of reproduction and has been accompanied by great changes in fertility rates, with a huge urban repercussion. From the document WWP Key Findings we can extract some important concepts to understand the effect of the demographic boom on processes of urban development: – Continuous growth until 2100 At this time the world population will be around 11,200 m, from which time the stabilization and probable decline of the population is forecast. In 2100 over 80% of the world population will live in Asia or Africa. – Different regions will show widely varying growth rates Asia and Africa will grow steadily until 2100, while the rest, Europe, Oceania and the Americas will stay relatively constant. Europe is the only region that is losing population, above all in the East countries, while Africa increased by 25% yearly between 2010 and 2015. – Population growth is concentrated in few countries. China with 1,400 m. and India with 1,300 m. are the most populated countries and make up 19% and 18% of the world population. Africa is the fastest-growing continent.
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From 2017 to 2050 half the world’s population growth will be centred in only nine countries, which in order of growth are: India, Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, United States, Uganda and Indonesia. India will surpass China in 2024, and Nigeria will surpass United States before 2050. In 2050 the six most populated countries in the world (over 3000 m) will be China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and United States. – The great influence of fertility rates on population growth World fertility is expected to go from 2.5 children per woman in the period 2010-2015, to 2.4 in the period 2025-2030, and to 2 in the period 2095-2100. Out of the 21 countries with the highest fertility rates, 19 are in Africa and 2 in Asia. Europe has the lowest rates: 1.6 in the period 2010-2015 and probably 1.8 in 2045-2050. – Rise of life expectancy Life expectancy has risen worldwide, going from 67 to 70. In Africa, in the first decade of the 21st century, it has risen by 6 years. In the period 2010-2015 life expectancy in Africa was 60.2 years, in Asia 71.8, in Latin America 74.6, in Europe 77.2, in Oceania 77.9 and in United States 79.2. By 2050 Africa is expected to increase its life expectancy by 11 years, Asia, Europe and Latin America by 6-7 years, and North America and Oceania by 4-5 years. (the forecasts are made assuming a great reduction in HIV/AIDS and other infections). The described demographic boom has many consequences for society, today and in the future, but from the point of view of urbanity, the most important ones are: – High levels of urban development Even though the population will continue to grow until 2100, it is true that from the turn of the 21st century that growth has slowed down. In the sixties we grew by 87 m. per year (2.1% annually), currently by 77 m. (barely 1,2%), which means that the worrying hypothesis that the world population could double every 35 years, according to the experts, will not hapen. Even being more conservative, the constant population growth has one feature: the concentration of the population in cities. In 1950 the world urban population represented 30% of the total; in 2014 it was already 54%, and in 2050 the urban population is forecast to be over 66% of the total and will continue to grow at the expense of a decline in rural population, which will fall from 3.4 to 3.2 billion between 2014 and 2050.Africa, China and India have 90% of the world’s rural population.
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Urban population is growing fast, from 747 m. in 1950 to 3.9 billion in 2014. Asia, despite its initially low level of urban development, had 53% of the world’s urban population in 2014, followed by Europe with 14% and Latin America with 13%. The growth of urban population will continue to increase up to 2.5 billion in 2050, 37% of which will be concentrated in three countries: India, China and Nigeria. This forecast means a rise of 404 m. people in India, 292 m. in China and 212 m. in Nigeria. Even though it is not a direct cause-effect relationship, the “property bubble” that burst in 2008 could not be explained without the current demographic boom. Economic and social life is centred in cities and over half the world’s GDP is concentrated in just 750 urbs. Not only is the proportion of urban development increasing, but also its complexity and size, in the shape of megacities (over 10 m. inhabitants) located above all in China and India. The 28 megacities existing in 2015 will become 41 in 2050. In China today there are already three great urban constellations, the Pearl and Yangtze deltas with more than 50 m. each, and Beijing XXX, with almost 40 (the new city being started in XXX could reach 20 m. with the aim of limiting the uncontrollable growth of the capital). Even so, in 2025 there will be three more megacities, and in India six more are in the pipeline for 2030. Until today the rate of rural depopulation exceeds the capacity of urban absorption in minimally acceptable conditions, and rural emigrants are on “the waiting list to be accepted into the city”, scraping by in extreme hardship like the Brazilian favelas or the Argentines villas miseria, in ever increasing numbers and with fewer possibilities of ending their provisionality. In this sense, the city, precisely because of its spectacular “pull effect”, is becoming a “trap city” for rural emigrants. – Aging population An essential vector to take into account, due to its urban and territorial effects, and particularly its special mobility demands, is the widespread aging of the population, both owing to high life expectancy because of health and medical advances, and the falling birth rate. Between 2015 and 2050 the population over 60 will double: from 12% (0.9billion) to 22% (2.1 billion). Life expectancy will rise.
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In the period 2010-2015 it was 78 in developed countries and 68 in developing ones. In 2045-2050 life expectancy could be 83 in developed countries and 74 in developing ones. Currently only Japan has over 30% of its population over 60, but in 2050 64 countries are forecasted to be in the same conditions. Fertility will fall from 2.2 children per woman in 2015 to 2 in 2050. We must add that the intensity of aging varies in different parts of the world and also highlight a very significant socioeconomic figure: in 2050 over 50% of the world’s population will be Urban Middle Class. However, the urban population in who live in slums will exceed 3 billion in 2050. Socioeconomically we must consider that the cost of a universal pension for over 60s in developed countries varies from 0.7 to 2.6 % of the GDP; that worldwide over 46% of this population suffer some type of disability, but that 47% of male senior citizens and 23.8% of women are in work. If aging and rising life expectancy is one of humanity’s greatest achievements, society logically must do all it can to tackle the challenges involved in this demographic transition and take advantage of the benefits of this “longevity dividend”. The urban consequences of demographic growth are so large that they will be present throughout this treatise. Although some may think otherwise, the urban formula of globalisation promoting mega cities, generally vertical, is not always the best solution to urgent population and urban development growth, highlighting the need to progress towards new urban structures. Does anyone believe, for example, that to absorb the new urban population of Nigeria the best solution would be the construction of a dozen cities like Lagos? Or also, does anyone think that, to manage the immense Russian territory with such a deficient demographic tendency, it is acceptable to concentrate the urban population almost exclusively in Moscow? The demographic picture is particularly sensitive from the point of view of a new urbanity, which must accept the new reality with all its consequences, both with relation to urban-infrastructural design and spatial justice. – Greater social interconnection This demographic evolution is simultaneous with a real revolution regarding social ways of interconnection. While in 2013 47% of the population (3.4 billion) had a mobile phone, in 2020 the figure will reach 56% (4.3 billion). In addition, more than 69% of the population over 60 normally use a mobile phone.
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Internet connection between and from cars is growing by 30% year on year, and the forecast is that over 20% of vehicles will be connected by 2020. New technologies related to automatization and robotics will directly affect the population of any age. However, the care and assistance of senior citizens, whose number is growing constantly, will be solved mainly with people, who for care functions are preferable to machines. – Mobility and Transport One of the fields that is changing most in this new hyper connected context of growth is automation. The number of motor vehicles will grow at an annual rate of 3% until 2030, though unequally. In Europe and United States this growth is 1-2% and in India it will reach 7-8%. In China, out of the 240 million vehicles incorporated in 2012, 120 million were for individual transport. According to International Transport Forum, in 2050 people’s mobility will be 3 to 4 times greater than in 2000, and goods mobility will be 2.5 to 3.5 time greater. As we will later see, with these forecasts, there is an obvious need to rethink and propose new Models of Post-industrial Mobility, in keeping with the new guidelines and demands of global mobility and demographic evolution.
NEW ECOLOGICAL DISCOURSE
As the Modern-Industrial model advanced, being a movement centred on the idea of continuous growth, in some of its fields, like territorial, three urban crises arose in the second half of the 20th century that span both the disciplinary sphere and social revindication: Heritage, Mobility and Ecology. The Heritage Crisis, without the need for a great historical or critical perspective, was clearly only apparent and contradictorily settled, since despite widespread criticism, often retro-historical, and the establishment of new protectionist measures like Heritage Year, created by the Unesco as pontiff of World Heritage Conservation, Heritage continues to be lost, in some cases in an worrying way, such as in Russia or Asia. The Mobility Crisis was brewing with the maturing of the Modern-Industrial Model, because the modern spirit is probably best embodied in the new mobility (American Way of Life), above all in the omnipresence of the car, both in semi-urban sprawl and in urban fabrics.
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Today urban mobility has not improved, in fact quite the opposite, and it is no longer only a problem in itself, but part of a chain of “bad practices” that make up the core of a much more structural crisis: The Ecology Crisis. The Ecology Crisis is far more complex than the two previous cases of Heritage and Mobility. In order not to lose its complexity it should be analysed by focusing on some issues considered critical by the scientific community and public opinion, although these two movements show fluctuations with regard to their coincidences and discrepancies. We are referring to Climate Change and Global Warming, which necessarily involve the critical review of the climate-energy vector, based on the emergency of new disciplinary views inseparable from the new ecological discourse, such as the concepts of Natural Capital, Land Mosaic or Green Infrastructures, technical-scientific supports for the new theories on “environmental sustainability”. The territorial consequences of the demographic boom and climate change lead to a preliminary double conclusion: – It is not possible to establish universal Urban Models, owing to the irregularity of the resulting population mosaic. Cities, as the main instruments for housing, leisure and work, should be conceptually and structurally reviewed, taking into account their contextual specificity and so responding to the new demands of urbanity resulting from globalisation. – It is necessary to have a new ecological discourse, more complex and transversal, due to its variety of aspects and its cross-disciplinarity. If we must exemplify in just one concept our reaction to the course of globalisation after the 2008 crisis it would undoubtedly be the urgent need to articulate a new ecological discourse that will completely reorganise man’s relationship with the environment. The future of technology will play a decisive role in the formulation and authenticity of the new discourse, and it will be necessary to get rid of the current paraphernalia of pseudo-technological-cultural metaphors and maxims in favour of greater research and argumentative rigor. The new ecological discourse will have to overcome its obsession with growth and become a genuine Ecological Philosophy.
SOCIO-CULTURAL CONFLICT DUE TO DIVERSITY AND MIGRATION FLOWS
Diverse is good. The more variety, the greater possibilities for interaction exist, and the greater the interaction, the greater complexity subsists, which is an essential component of quality.
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2.2 Aristotle. On the origin of the City. “Politics”
The debate between the components and the whole has always been present. The first and most radical person to analyse the relationship between the components and the whole was Aristotle2.2 who, speaking of the origin of the City, said that the city is diverse and that its unity would lead to its ruin, and in modern times Einstein jokingly said that “the description of the soup doesn’t necessarily have to taste of soup”. Aristotle stressed that the City should be made up of many different components and that its greatest quality is precisely to be found in Diversity, and warned that “Unity means the ruin of the Polis” In one way or Diversity has always been present in the discourse of urban philosophy. Shakespeare went down in history with his famous sentence “What is the City but the People?” and it is difficult to think that the term people refers to anything other than socially diverse groups. With industrial modernity, the concept of Diversity enters an ambiguous controversy, as we see in the following three scenarios: Diversity adopted a contradictory character in the political process of the American Foundation which, at that moment, was more developed and radical than in Europe. The new country, founded on the base of European migration and industrial modernity, built a very advanced democratic system, but accepted and proclaimed racial segregation and slavery.
2.3. Aristotle. On slavery. “Politics”
The American Revolution and the Declaration of Rights inspired by modern progressive intellectuals, such as T. Jefferson and B. Franklin, were unable to avoid this cruel contradiction which, on the other hand, with regard to the need for slavery, was prophesied two thousand years before by Aristotle2.3, when he referred to the inevitability of slavery so that citizens could enjoy the advantages of the city. In Europe the new urban theories of the modern movement, especially the Charter of Athens, curtailed the concept of diversity by consciously discouraging the Urban Public Space, considering it not very modern, truncating its socio-cultural meaning and considering it preferably a platform for the display of new flows, basically mobility.
2.4. Stanislava Boskovic. Doctoral Thesis “La potenzialità della città Post-Sovietica alla luce della Globalizzazione odiema”, Mendrisio School of Architecture.
In the Soviet world the premises derived from Marx and Engels for the configuration of the new Socialist City, closer to Plato than to Aristotle, were translated in such a way that Diversity was seen as a serious impediment for the idea of equality and the new social order, aborting from the start all those urban mechanisms that might stimulate it, from the negation of the Urban Public Space as a structuring entity, to the limitation of territorial mobility with the isolation of new enclosed cities, thus impeding interurban communications and interactions2.4. With globalisation the moment seemed to have come to definitively establish the concept of Diversity as praxis of the Network Society, thanks to the support of ICTs, which
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favoured everything to do with mobility and interactivity. But there is also a contradiction here: although technologies and infrastructures facilitate travel and interactions, and the socioeconomic inequalities of the Global world lead to strong migratory flows, the socio-political reality impeded, de facto, Diversity. The situation is particularly dramatic in Europe. Finance, energy and goods flows are still in effect, but limitations are put on the flow of people, for labour and security reasons, and if these flows come from certain geographical regions they are rejected, alluding to the possibility of terrorist actions. The protectionist reason for this senseless option is twofold: On one hand, the anachronic interpretation of the concept of Identity, and on the other the fear that has taken hold in Europe in the face of migration from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. This disastrous interpretation of the current social and geopolitical reality, caused mainly by incomprehension of diversity, must be analysed from two perspectives: Multiculturism and identity, although due to its complexity we will only briefly comment on it in relation to the urban. – On Multiculturism Multiculturism is much closer to politics than to philosophy, and closer to a practical-tactical discourse than to a theoretical-strategic one. Multiculturism reflects the state of a melting pot in which minority groups would assimilate the features of the dominating culture, so long as they could retain some signs of their identity. So, multiculturism advocates separation and division rather than integration and unity. The Network Society driven by ICTs, advocates complex contemporary hybridity, and multiculturism appears as a balsam, in response to new situations: – The dissonant voices of the communitarian world, which criticise the excessive individualism of the new liberalism in detriment to social values. – The marriage between autonomy and equality, as a basis for liberalism, is conditioned by the cultural aspect for two reasons: because the cultural condition is essential to guarantee personal autonomy – Multicultural Citizenship – and because the cultural condition also plays a very important role in individual identity itself. – Multiculturism focuses on a new relation between freedom and domination. – Multiculturism is affected by the new reactions to postcolonial situations that are now seen as issues of inclusion in a new intercultural dialogue.
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In practice, the multicultural theories born in the 90s are very contradictory: they are more about reinforcing the new forms of colonialism than contributing to their dissolution. In addition, the tension and ambiguity created by the concepts of feminism and multiculturism lead us to think that diversity should not go precisely through multiculturism. Multicultural theories, as an inspiring source of the concept of Socio-cultural Diversity, have been losing their validity due to: – In an increasingly cosmopolitan world dominated by technology and trade, it is normal to live in socio-cultural hybridity. So, having strongly vindictive attitudes towards certain traditions can be a fascinating anthropological experience, but also a genuine dislocation in the context of global interaction in which we live. – The tolerance our society needs is better encouraged by indifference than by accommodation and the trend is to defend and promote individual rights rather than collective ones. – A better correlation has to be ensured between policies to recognize inequalities and policies of redistribution, because social confrontation reduces solidarity and civic participation, putting social well-being at risk. 2.5 Will Kymlicka (1962) Canadian philosopher-politician and researcher of ethnic problems and multicultural coexistence, who currently exercises great influence.
The current situation of multiculturism leads W.Kymlicka2.5 to state his reconceptualization based on three criteria: – The re-internationalization of the relations between states and minorities. – The need to regenerate liberal multiculturism theories, due to the increase of rights of conscience, demographic changes, new forms of mobility and a greater consensus on human rights. – The analysis from a multicultural perspective the consequences of post-colonialism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. – On identity
2.6 Zygmunt Bauman (19252017). Polish sociologist, philosopher and essayist of Jewish descent. Bauman, who never abandoned Marxism, cannot be categorised as postmodernist since he uses the concepts of solid modernity and liquid modernity to describe both sides of the same coin. He wrote over 100 essays, some with wide social penetration, such as those referring to Liquid Modernity and Identity.
In urban contexts Identity is an even more complex concept. The initial equation would be: The growing migrations stimulated by the ICT should encourage a greater socio-cultural diversity in urban contexts. However, we can observe a disjunctive alternative: Either the growing diversity disrupts and dilutes the local identity (also the foreign); or there is a degree of integration such that the question of identity does not seem to be a problem. What is, then, the root of this fiasco?Identity is a multifaceted concept and the view of correlation between globalisation and identity is well explained by certain authors: – Zygmunt Bauman2.6 discusses identity in relation to a specific quality of globalisation, which he defines as “liquid”, According to him, global culture, particularly urban, strongly uniform, has lost the capacity of seduction, and besides, it does not tend to solve already existing problems but create new ones.
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2.7 Wang Yi (1953) Politician and diplomat, Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China since 2013. 2.8 Jerome H. Friedman (1939) Professor of Statistics at Stanford University. A renowned contributor in the fields of Statistics and Data Mining.
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– It is true that we all consume practically the same everywhere, but it is also true that the same product consumed may change its meaning according to the geographical and cultural context. Wang Yi2.7 gives an eloquent example of this: It is not the same to eat in McDonald’s in America, in an environment so close to the brand, or in Mc Donald’s in India, where only the wealthy can afford to, or in Mc Donald’s in China, where restaurants serving traditional cuisine still predominate. – Is it possible, as J. Friedman2.8 points out, that global homogenization is superficial and limited above all to consumer goods, without affecting cultural goods to such a degree? Is it possible that people do not remain impassive and defend their own view, in favour of cultural change and against uniformity? Can it be argued that Globalisation is increasingly involved in the defence of particularities and in the search for its own roots, and that is has more cultural awareness than before?
2.9 Richard Sennet (1943) American sociologist, belonging to the philosophical current of pragmatism, author of a dozen books, some with great social repercussion like “The Awareness of the Eye”, “The Corruption of Character”, “The Craftsman”, “Together” and “The Public Space”. 2.10 John Tomlinson (1946) English sociologist, Director of the Institute for Cultural Analysis at Nottingham University. Author of books on Globalisation, Cosmopolitanism, Modernity and Identity. 2.11 Félix Guattari (1930-1992) French psychoanalyst and philosopher. Author of “The Three Ecologies”, about the interaction between environment, human relationships and human subjectivity. With Gilles Deleuze, he wrote the famous “One Thousand Plateaus”.
– Richard Sennett2.9 defends that with the support of ICTs, globalisation steadily leads the sense of collaboration – togetherness – and that we can speak of a convergence that would reinforce Identity, precisely from the global perspective. Deeply-rooted-in-one’s-culture would be the maxim, which, as a convergence between global and local, would not be far from the Global concept that interests us. – Is it possible to say that the current process of globalisation is moving towards a greater understanding of Identity? John Tomlinson2.10 defends this position and believes that globalisation today is perhaps the force most interested in creating and consolidating cultural Identity, and that the latter is rather a product of the former and not its victim. The author considers Identity a “treasure of the local community” and supports his argument basically from the new “deterritorialistic” perspective, which determines the relationship between cultural Identity and the geographical area in which it develops. In this sense, the culture of globalisation is less influenced by geographical location since this is constantly violated by the evolution of the space-time binomial and the contribution of ICTs. On the other hand, discussions about identity clearly reveal the lack of harmony between the Nation-State and the Local sphere, a disciplinarily important question which will be analysed later within the concept of City-Region. In fact, the true answer to the ecological crisis will be found when we are able to observe it in all its social, economic and political complexity, for which we can turn to the texts by Félix Guattari.2.11
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NEW GLOBAL URBANITY FRAMED WITHIN A NEW AXIAL ORDER
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EXCURSUS Demagogic-Populism and Covid-19: An Umbrella for So-called “Tactical Urbanism”
In Triumph of the City (2011), Edward Glaeser points out that the city “our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier.” Although the phrase may elicit some disagreement, the truth is that we have accepted the fact that, in our current global context, urbanisation will spread indiscriminately across the planet. That said, it is also true that this is being debated intensely from different disciplinary perspectives, especially now that the global crisis, further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has highlighted the need to confront the future from new perspectives. Therefore, we need to reflect from a position of disciplinary rigor and from outside the status quo (business as usual (BAU), obsessed with an impossible “return to normal” sustained by an acritical immobilism incapable of processing the complexity of the crisis, let alone reformulating a plausible future for Territorial Culture. Rethinking Territorial Culture is a crucial issue, but the current complex political and socioeconomic situation obliges us to explore more disruptive urbanistic approaches, because fixing the current model will not be enough to construct a “new territorial paradigm” capable of forging a better relationship between the urban/artificial realm, the rural sphere, and the spontaneity of nature. Moving beyond the urban scale within the framework of a critical rethinking of the Regional Urban-Continuum centred on recycling the rural territory is one way – although not the only one – to approach a new model of country-city interaction with renewed hope. It is especially relevant given how modernity shattered the traditional indifference of citizens towards nature, and with globalisation the issue has worsened, generating “a new yearning for the countryside among urban individuals”. This situation forces us to ask ourselves whether the future of urbanity will really be as urban as people say. Although it is obvious that in recent decades the world’s population has become majoritarily urban, that does not necessarily mean that the current model of urbanity is not susceptible to change, which prompts us to ask ourselves: Is it possible that, from within the city, there could be a demand for less city? Dealing with that question is the core of so-called Tactical Urbanism. Promoting new urban-territorial approaches to move beyond the strictly urban scale through a broader interaction between country and city has been a historical constant, and particularly in modern-industrial urbanism.
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In the early days of industrialisation, Le Corbusier transmitted this demand by replacing traditional, continuous and compact, urban construction with a less dense urban fabric made up of scattered high-rises that allowed for the presence of green areas among the buildings. Although this idea began to become more widespread in different design formulas, more socially engaged alternatives eventually arose derived from updating Howard’s concept of the Garden City. The lectures given by F.LL. Wright at Princeton in 1930 offered another approach, which favoured a greater interaction between the city and the countryside. In his Broadacre City project, Wright understood that the lifestyle offered by the Industrial City was increasingly out of touch with people’s idea of happiness, and that, feeling enslaved by the city, they were increasingly turning their gaze toward the rural world. Wright felt that urban buildings, even skyscrapers, should be dissolved into nature, as opposed to introducing nature into the city through large urban parks. For Wright, the countryside should not be brought into the City; on the contrary, the city should penetrate into the countryside, and it would be that shift that would characterise the urban environments of the future. At the same time, in Soviet Russia, Marx and Engels’ speeches showed so much concern for the city/country interaction that they formed the foundations for the new socialist urbanistic culture. The Industrial City was no longer the proper setting for socialist urban life, and its compact, dense spaces were poised to disappear to make way for large, less defined expanses that could definitively resolve the existing inequalities between the countryside and the city. These ideas were not far removed from the ones Wright was defending at Princeton at the time, and they can also be seen in the writings of Ginzburg and Ochitovic in the definition of the foundations of their theory of Deurbanism: ... The idea is not to turn the countryside into a City, or to limit the size of the City... but to disperse the centre as much as possible, in order to eliminate the City “in general”. The goal is not to combine the city and the countryside into a single mode... or to achieve a conciliation between countryside and city, like in Howard’s Garden City or in Comrade Kozanny’s Workers’ Garden City.... Rather, it has to do with “a new delocalisation of humanity”.
The antinomy urbanism/deurbanism referred back to the country/city dilemma as two alternative models of life and production, characterised socially by the differences between the farmer and the industrial worker, and urbanistically by the contrasts between urban complexity and rural simplicity. Deurbanism did not bear great fruit in Soviet Russia; in fact, it was only active between 1929 and 1930. Although it advocated for linear schemes in the design of new cities such as Magnitogorsk or Stalingrad, it failed when it tried to radically transform mature cities, even at the cost of their near disappearance, like in the case of the “Green City” project for Moscow, which left behind only a repertoire of new typologies for urban buildings (largely the result of Ginzburg’s work), which are still present today but have left no significant urban heritage, especially with respect to their central theses: “dissolve the city into the countryside, even if that means its near-destruction.” In parallel, we saw how Wright’s Broadacre City never became a reality, although significant urban projects were brought to life, like Patrick Gueddes’ White City in Tel Aviv, or Lafayette Park by Hilberseimer and Mies in Detroit. Certainly, Le Corbusier and Hilberseimer’s ideas of the Vertical City were consolidated and became the most convenient typologies for urban development of the age of globalisation. All of this took place in parallel to the promotion and consolidation, across Europe and America, of large-scale “landscaped horizontal developments” like Sun City in Phoenix, Arizona, or the Edge City movement in the US – which offered an initial precedent for the new urban-regional territorial reflection. That said, the true protagonist with regard to the country-city interaction on new scales of intervention appeared at the end of the 20th century with the urbanisation process in China. After the failure of Deurbanism, the USSR and the West ushered in different conceptions of modern-industrial urbanism. Today, in a critical socioeconomic context aggravated by post-Fordism and globalisation, the country-city interaction, understood as a radical revision of the Urban-Rural Continuum, has prompted the transition toward new regional models for land management such as the Glocal, City-Region model, along with new alternatives for recycling rural areas through a suitable tertiarisation of the primary-agricultural sector – options that are discussed at length in this book.
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However, in the current global situation aggravated by the pandemic, we can see a worrying ideological upheaval, which has meant that territorial paradigms have become inscribed in a political context that both in certain right-leaning and left-leaning circles is slowly but surely being tinged with a demagogic-populism, with token representation in the beginning, but capable, ultimately, of taking over positions in government. In the demagogic-populisms of the right and the left, strategic positions are hard to come by, but shared tactical excesses abound; they movements have no a problem with being branded anti-system, because they ultimately are not. And both facets have taken it upon themselves to substitute rigorous, scientific discourse with an emotional narrative – an option with dire consequences for ideological coherence, as Walter Benjamin warned. It should not surprise us, then, that, in this situation, the democratic system is increasingly imperfect, and that its result are, in the words of Jacob Talmon, a “totalitarian democracy” and “political Messianism” (1956), which leads, according to Fareed Zakaria, to the imperfect Illiberal Democracy (1990) from which we are suffering today, personified by figures like Erdogan, Maduro, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Salvini, Le Pen, Vox... or Trump. Although demagogic-populisms are embedded in both right-wing and left-wing groups, perhaps the key ideological principles have not yet been entirely watered down, such that is still possible to suss out liberal or Marxist references, although it is true that the reactions are very heterogeneous. For example, given similar scientific conditions characterised by an ignorance of the novel coronavirus, the response to the pandemic has not been the same in the US (a contemptuous attitude), as in Europe (awareness and powerlessness) or Asia (efficient pragmatism). As a result, the pandemic is read differently in different territories, also resulting in an evolution at different speeds depending on the individual Country, Region or even City. Translated into the Territorial Culture, this lets us formulate a new urbanistic-political process: The irrational country-city interaction associated with globalisation, aggravated by the pandemic, is creating a strong mistrust of the urban sphere, which, interpreted in the light of the new populist-demagogic positions, favours para-disciplinary urbanistic options, inaptly referred to as Tactical Urbanism. In disciplinary terms, this trend has some significant connotations:
1.-In relation to the character of Urban Public Space The transformational urbanism successfully implemented in many cities in recent decades was based, especially in Barcelona, on the ability to optimise the urban environment through the qualitative transformation of Urban Public Space, while recognising its complexity, and also implementing the transformation on all scales: from the smallest specific interventions, situated strategically like “urban acupuncture”, to those on a larger scale that engender broader transformative urban projects. In our current situation, urban transformations could reinterpret that process by continuing it, perfecting it, or replacing it with new design options. However, Tactical Urbanism prefers to use Public Space as a “tactical scenario for confrontation”, striking out against tourism, against mobility, and against the automobile, and in general against the regenerative capacity of urban design – an attitude that is evidenced, in the case of Barcelona, by the bizarre surface treatments that have been given to some of the central streets in Cerdà’s Eixample. If the idea, stemming from insolvency or functional incompatibility, were to modify or replace what already exists, in any case, the new interventions should be the result of new disciplinarily rigorous urban designs with qualitative transformative goals – as opposed to the mere translation of emotional inspirations. While in any urban project there is always a difficult articulation between What is being done? and How is it being done? in the case of Tactical Urbanism there can be no doubt: generally, it is the result of simple improvisation without the disciplinary support demanded by urban complexity. This normally translates into the reuse of spaces, prioritising specific functions. Thus, the slogan “a street is not a highway”, which was used as an urban design criterion for Barcelona in the 1980s, still holds true, but it is also true that a street is not a square, or a museum, or a garden. “A street is a complex urban space, in which urbanity is also expressed dynamically.” The reality is that, if the complexity of Urban Public Space is not understood as a structural, meaningful strategy – and instead it is simplified into epidermal and decorative treatments, as promoted by Tactical Urbanism – in the end, what we are left with is a trivialisation of Public Space, which causes it to lose all its structuring potential.
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2.- In relation to Infrastructures Tactical Urbanism’s poor translation of Public Space is also applicable to the field of Infrastructures. Its disregard for urban mobility is only upheld by the associated polluting capacity, ignoring the advantages that disruptive transport technologies can offer as motors for new models of ecologically sustainable mobility. Moreover, the phobia of automobiles, without accounting for the socioeconomic consequences, is only offset by slogans in favour of public transport, to which no significant improvements have been made. We are all in favour of implementing measures to reduce pollution and limit mobility for the sake of the environment, but not frivolously or “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. In any case, methodologically, before indiscriminately getting rid of cars, we must foment their replacement with cleaner vehicles, and then reduce, adjust, and streamline mobility as necessary. Yet Tactical Urbanism does not promote new electrification systems for urban mobility, such as “electric roads”, which use the piezoelectric effect produced by the action of the wheels on the pavement to provide direct (wireless) electrification from the pavement, a technology that is already being implemented in Tel Aviv. It has made no commitment to implementing intangible communication networks that facilitate interaction between vehicles; nor is it working, like in some North American cities, to substitute the technology in conventional traffic lights, conceived in 1912 to regulate very simple traffic, which has become inadequate for the regulation of vehicles today with their vast typological diversity. Nor does it promote “hectometric” mobility by introducing special electrified vehicles to provide services to people in need of assistance. It does not promote reconsidering the type or size of vehicles to facilitate storage at a minimum of cost and space... nor does it consider that the pollution problem associated with conventional automobiles practically disappears if they are powered by electricity, hydrogen, or other disruptive technologies. On the contrary, Tactical Urbanism is obsessively pursuing the disappearance of private vehicles, a priori, without paying attention to the fact that, under certain circumstances, they are essential to people’s work (public transport cannot replace private vehicles for the self-employed, for craftspeople, or in locations with limited
accessibility), and without regard for their ability to consolidate democratic practice in the form of freedom of movement. In this sense, it is worth recalling that, in Soviet Russia, in order to promote a socio-economically solvent interaction between the city and the countryside, a communist version of the “American way of life” was promoted, with the signature of a large contract with Ford in 1929 to produce 200,000 vehicles per year (cars, trucks and tractors), which involved building a factory in Stalingrad, the largest vehicle factory in the world at the time (40,000 vehicles a year). The factory was prefabricated in Detroit by the Albert Kahn Company. In the field of energy, as well, Tactical Urbanism is not as proactive as it claims. Although it lets fly slogans like “the rooftop revolution” for the generation of photovoltaic electricity, it does not promote any kind of urban-scale energy platform. Similarly, Tactical Urbanism demonises the tourism sector without promoting any structural changes. Although it is true that mass tourism has its problems, the logical response would be to analyse it critically and propose alternative solutions, instead of responding with simple fixes for complex problems – especially in Mediterranean Europe, where tourism accounts for such a high percentage of GDP. For Tactical Urbanism, infrastructures, whether tangible or intangible, are not a priority objective. It disregards conventional infrastructures because they negatively impact the urban landscape and pollute excessively, an issue that recent urban planning is already addressing with new design approaches, such as the demolition of all raised traffic intersections in Barcelona, or the Central Artery project in Boston to replace the elevated highway over the waterfront with a tunnel. Yet Tactical Urbanism does not propose disruptive intangible infrastructures to avoid negative impacts on the territory while incrementing Human Capital, such as implementing free Wi-Fi in all urban parks and squares or improving deficient communications services, if necessary by installing more antennas. 3.- On Civil Society and Social Capital When Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to America in 1830, he found that the new concept of Democracy (respect for majority decisions), complemented by Liberal
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thought (respect for the individual and minorities), was consubstantial with the emergence of Civil Society, which developed in America before it did in Europe. Modern Civil Society, the result of the evolution of the idea of Progress, was intended to complement, not replace, the State in stimulating and ensuring the viability of democratic life. And yet, for its subsistence and operational ability, it requires support in the form of Social Capital, which, understood as fixed-social capital, has three versions that are of interest to the Territorial Culture: Natural Capital, Human Capital, and Infrastructures. Although it claims otherwise, preserving and augmenting Natural Capital is not a priority objective for demagogic-populism. Without adequate policies to intervene on the regional scale, which is the most suitable scale for the present, the “green insinuations” promoted by Tactical Urbanism – such as urban vegetable gardens, vertical gardens, plants at the base of street trees, paint on pavements, and all real or virtual greening in general – are qualitatively and quantitatively insignificant actions resulting from persistent advertising slogans, with a certain symbolic-emotional value but with hardly any effect on Natural Capital, the essential driver of the ecological paradigm. On the other hand, Tactical Urbanism does not see place importance on increasing Human Capital, which fosters creativity in the city; and the vectors that characterise it – such as Public Space, R+D+i, the singularity of workplaces (or housing typologies), and intangible infrastructures that promote knowledge – are not priority objectives, which reveals a negative attitude towards the intangible infrastructures that support Human Capital. Such a meagre stance on issues as important as Natural Capital, Human Capital, and Infrastructures, both tangible and intangible, means that urban Social Capital not only does not grow, but deteriorates. This has dire socio-economic consequences for cities obligated to survive in the neo-tertiary economy because their industry has been delocalised, leaving no plausible alternatives for the present, following the Fordist debacle. Demonising tourism, automobiles and mobility in general, a priori, without proposing ways of remedying their negative aspects or investigating new disruptive transpor-
tation options; trivialising Urban Space by ignoring its complexity and attempting to restructure it only through a decorative urban naturalisation; distrusting design in general and especially urban design... suggests that perhaps we are dealing with a “stingy”, spineless and non-structural urbanism, rather than urbanistic tactics. A Progressive Ideology? When tactical urbanism, taking up a Manichean attitude, vehemently exalts the contradictions between sophistication and popular culture, between rigor and creative arbitrariness, or between the public and the private spheres, it undermines confidence in research, in creativity, among new entrepreneurs, and in any activity that, by taking risks, aims to produce something new, fostering a “closed off and non-inclusive urbanity” which is inadmissible in 21st-century urban culture. Yet this attitude is only possible if it is supported by a – presumably progressive – ideological framework, and although there are, no doubt, many connotations that reveal the demagogic-populist roots of Tactical Urbanism, we will look at just three: distrust of the Discipline of Urbanism, distrust of the modern idea of Human Progress, and the tautological manipulation of the concept of Subjectivity. 4.- Distrust of the Science of Urbanism. Although Tactical Urbanism sings the praises of knowledge, it is actually suspicious of academic disciplines with a bearing on the territory as well as conceptually rigorous urban planning theses, demonstrating an indifference towards optimising the country-city interaction, which recklessly generates a mistrust of the city, counteracted tactically through a falsely naturalistic decoration of the urban landscape. In other words, it intensifies the problem and, after revealing its scepticism towards disciplinary solutions, proposes “tactical measures” as opposed to strategic ones, relying on the distortion of citizen participation processes – licit and necessary, but now acting as urban design mechanisms – or competitions, convened without a foundation of solid ideas. In that sense, there is significance in the unabashed announcement made by the Barcelona City Council’s Department of Urbanism: “We are going to hold a competition to design a Cerdà Plan for the 21st century.”
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The limited technical and disciplinary standards of tactical urbanism explain its refusal (although this is never expressed outright) to recognise the central role of the complexity of global urbanity. That lets it justify its simplistic positions in the face of difficult, complex issues. It also helps to explain citizens’ scepticism regarding the future, especially non-specialist citizens, who look on with dismay as their city becomes progressively more banal, dysfunctional, ugly, and mediocre. It is not easy to find the key that inserts so-called Tactical Urbanism into any of the known urban planning theories, not even in the theses that Manuel Castells argued in The Urban Question from Paris in the 1960s, when he referred to “the urban, not as a theoretical object but as an ideological object, and the urban centre as a political option”. That being said, given his extraordinary work on the Network Society and the information society, I cannot imagine Castells, as an ideologist of Tactical Urbanism, installing concrete blocks on the streets of Cerdà’s Eixample. This apathy with regard to urban design should not be indifferent to us, since the antinomy that existed at the beginning of the 20th century between Urbanism and Deurbanism, now, in the 21st, has translated into a worrying proximity between socalled Tactical Urbanism and the failed Deurbanism. 5.- Distrust of the Modern Idea of Human Progress What left-wing demagogic-populism actually disavows is the idea of Human Progress, shaped by Turgot in the 18th century and converted into the ideological antecedent of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. The presumed progressivism of Tactical Urbanism is more apparent than real. That is why when they are confronted for their disciplinary inability to remedy urban failings, they angrily respond with allusions denouncing Enlightened Despotism. The modern idea of Human Progress is of as little importance for the demagogic-populist ideology, and by extension for Tactical Urbanism, as it was for medieval urbanism. Both shun the search for a harmonic relationship between progress and tradition, so essential to progressive thinking. The serious issue here is that the lukewarm feelings about the modern idea of progress are tangentially helping to bring about the proletarianisation of the urban middle
classes. It is not an exaggeration to say that in the current context of structural crisis, aggravated by the pandemic, workers are seeing their level of well-being diminish, and the survival of many small and medium-sized companies hangs in the balance. And yet this situation does not seem to be among the priorities of its urbanistic tacticalism, more concerned with epidermal interventions than structural ones – hence the need to shift tactical urbanism disciplinarily back into strategic-transformational urbanism, with the ability to articulate new socioeconomic proposals. 6.- Teleological Subjectivism In right-wing and left-wing demagogic-populisms, subjectivity becomes a deterministic invariant; thus, they try to make their ideas and discourses more concrete, giving maximum prominence to a kind of individuality which they understand as malleable. Demagogic populisms endorse the relevance of the aspects of Foucault’s ideas that put forward subjectivity as a transformative tactic, “an individualising set of feelings that generates techniques capable of producing disciplined individuals” and Guattari’s thesis, which considers that “subjectivism can be manipulated and mass produced through instruments like media, advertising, surveys and polls, capable of prefabricating stereotypical opinions and sclerotic narratives of desire”. Tactical Urbanism takes up some of Foucault and Guattari’s ideas, partially and out of context, and turns a blind eye to the discourse and the conversations between Goethe, von Humboldt, and Kant in Jena and Weimar, which introduced the concept of subjectivity as an essential vector for rational thought, bringing new perspective to the natural/artificial dialectic largely responsible for the birth of ecology as a modern scientific discipline. On the contrary, today demagogic-populisms, on the right and the left, present their arguments using Narrative – subjective and emotional – as a vehicle, as opposed to scientifically rigorous Discourse, in order to explain any event or process, even the most contradictory of them, convincingly based on a conveniently dressed-up story. As an instrumental tactic, Narrative has a specific purpose, and its argumentation must be clearly teleological, not as a succession of causes and effects, but as an “order whose purpose is to achieve certain specific objectives”, thus whitewashing the idea that “the end justifies the means.”
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Furthermore, knowing that urban processes are stochastic – that is, they behave like a succession of random variables that evolve over time as a function of another external variable – it is easy to deduce that, for Tactical Urbanism, narrative, understood as an external variable, is the most effective design component. In fact, if we look at the most significant components of Tactical Urbanism as a whole – the urban components: Public Space, Infrastructures, Social Capital and the ideological ones: Distrust in disciplinary rigor, Distrust in the modern idea of Human Progress, Teleological Subjectivity – although we may arrive at different conclusions, we detect a common teleological argument: “Anything goes!” But the idea that “anything goes”, today, is inadmissible in a society that aspires to create a new ideological foundation without losing its ethical-moral values. “Anything goes” is not admissible in the field of urban planning either, demonstrating that Tactical Urbanism, as we know it today, is only a form of para-urbanism and that if it continues and is not substantially improved, it will lead to serious short-term socio-economic consequences for both the city and the countryside. That said, we would not want these final reflections to lead the reader, especially young architects and urban planners, towards nihilistic perspectives. On the contrary. If overall systems can be affected so much by such superficial interventions, what would it be possible to do through disciplinary rigorous interventions? The answer is that, although urban planners cannot change the course of events with just their individual work, they can significantly improve it, especially in certain contexts. And that fundamentally depends on the coherence and quality of their designs. When it comes to designing a good project, the quality of the designer is a necessary condition, but it is not sufficient. Sufficiency comes from other factors, such as how the client behaves. You cannot have a good project without a good client! Hence, the designer, among many other factors, must properly calibrate the client’s reasoning, whether that client is public or private. Plato failed to properly calibrate personal behaviours on the part of Dion and Dionysius; fascinated, he made the unfortunate journey to Syracuse. The same happened to Heidegger in leaving his chair to become rector of the University of Freiburg,
when he failed to gauge the intentions of his Nazi friends. We should learn from their experiences. Having assured a beneficial interaction of context-client-authorship, it is clear that the potential and scope of qualified urban projects has never been in doubt and that the urban transformations that result from a holistic disciplinary vision, regardless of the scale of intervention and their conceptual singularity, demonstrate that the most qualified transformations produce effects that reach far beyond their local context. That has been the case from the ancient polis to the recent Chinese urban experiments. Now that Disruptive and Glocal urbanism is affirming this qualitative option, there is no room for professional nihilism among professionals whose work is focused on the territory, especially among the younger generation of architects and urban planners. If you want your reflections and your designs to contribute to improving the urban sphere, now is the time to act – by promoting a structural urbanism that supports qualitative planning on every scale. Barcelona, October 2020
Disruptive Urbanism, Glocal Urbanity by Josep Acebillo Published by Actar Publishers Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning Author Josep Acebillo Graphic Design Actar Publishers Printing and binding Arlequin All rights reserved © edition: Actar Publishers & Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning © texts: Josep Acebillo © drawings and photographs: Their authors
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, on all or part of the material, specifically translation rights, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or other media, and storage in databases. For use of any kind, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. The author and Actar Publishers are especially grateful to the image providers. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Should unintentional mistakes or omissions have occurred, we sincerely apologize and ask for notice. Such mistakes will be corrected in the next edition of this publication. Distribution Actar D, Inc. New York, Barcelona New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor New York, NY 10016, USA T +1 2129662207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com Barcelona Roca i Batlle 2-4 08023 Barcelona, Spain T +34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com ISBN: 978-1-948765-75-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951568 Printed in Europe
To analyze the need to increase the Urban Social Capital, in its three versions, Natural Capital, Human Capital and Infrastructures, tangible and intangible. To define the Glocal, City-Region concept as the optimal area of the Urban project and promoter of a new transregionalism that emerges as a consequence of the progressive dissolution of the Westphalian Nation-State.
J. ACEbillo
To emphasize those intangible virtues, such as Temperance, Space Justice, Parsimony or Harmony, which will define a new Urbanity, once the growing populism-demagoguery has been overcome.
GLOCAL Urbanity
It proposes to understand urban complexity as a socio-technical process on a regional scale, which integrates in the urban corpus the concepts of Thermodynamics and Urban Metabolism, Second Order Cybernetics, Territorial Isotropy, infrastructural porosity, regional clustering ... and a new post industrial mobility matrix.
DISRUPTIVE Urbanism
This book contains 52 proposals to generate a new Disruptive Urbanism for inducing new Glocal Urbanity to replace the degraded urban and rural situation generated by the FIRE paradigm from post-Fordism to the current Globalization.
DISRUPTIVE Urbanism GLOCAL Urbanity J. ACEbillo