THE PROJECT WELTSTADT – WHO CREATES BANGALORE, BELGRADE, BERLIN, CURITIBA, DAKAR, WELTSTADT EDITORS: THE CITY? IS A JOINT INITIATIVE OF THE JOHANNESBURG, LISBON, MADRID,NEW YORK, MATTHIAS BÖTTGER, WWW.GOETHE.DE / WELTSTADT GOETHE-INSTITUT AND THE GERMAN PORTO ALEGRE,RIGA , SALVADOR, SÃO PAULO, № 5 FEDERAL MINISTRY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, SEOUL, TOULOUSE, TURIN, ULAN BATOR ANGELIKA FITZ NATURE CONSERVATION, BUILDING AND NUCLEAR SAFETY (BMUB) NEW YORK CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIES AND AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP CITIES CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP CITIZENSHIP CITIES CITIES AND AND AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP CITIES AND CITIZENSHIP AND AND CITIZENSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP

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AND AND AND AND AND AND CITIES CITIES AND AND AND CITIES AND AND AND EDITORIAL: CITIES AND

According to a report by the United Nations Human Settlements Program, over the course of the next two decades the global urban population will double, from 2.5 to 5 billion. What does it mean to consider CITIZENSHIPIoanna Theocharapolou architecture and urbanism beyond the building as an isolated artifact? In addition, for architecture, the study of “nature” and especially urban nature is a relatively new Exploring “Narratives of Place” in a recent The conference was designed to explore or re-discovered territory. To explore a kind talk at the New School in New York, city-making and citizenship, honing in of natural history of the city, including other American writer and poet Philip Lopate three main themes: “Environment and living organisms, from pigeons (see our revealed that a large part of the pleasure Citizenship or The Social Construction of conference participant Colin Jerolmack’s he feels living in a city, is being able to Nature in the City”; “Design, Participation book The Global Pigeon, 2013) to ants and chose whether he “wallows in loneliness, and Citizenship”; and “Design Humanism”. cockroaches, would be a fascinating path. self-pity and alienation” or allows himself Whereas the documentary tackled issues Another, probed by the first panel of the to “enjoy the company of strangers”. Lopate of community activism and gentrification in conference, may be to consider what does remarked: “like Whitman, I am energized Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the four workshops it mean to situate the human environment, by the crowd and, momentarily, I believe were designed to give participants the and human society, as a subsystem of in democracy”. It is this relationship opportunity to work practically with themes our ecological environment. What are between cities and democracy by way of and ideas from the previous two days. the implications? How is human society citizenship, that we set out to explore in our Urban space is an active participant in accountable to the complex order of the three part events, “Cities and Citizenship”, citizenship. After all, it is not by chance that larger ecological system? that took place in mid-March, in New the words polis, politics and the political York: a documentary film screening, “The are so closely related etymologically Domino Effect” (2012) followed by a public since ancient times as are city, civics and IOANNA THEOCHAROPOULOU is an architect and conversation with the filmmakers at the civilization. How might design enhance architectural historian. Her research focuses on cities and the concept of sustainability. Her writing Goethe-Institut downtown moderated by these connections? Can the design of has appeared in numerous publications including, Alissa Burmeister, a full day conference cities contribute to democratic ideals of most recently, the Urban Design Ecologies organized as a collaboration between commonwealth, participation and equality, AD Reader, edited by Brian McGrath. She has participated in a number of events at the Goethe- Parsons the New School for Design, New a community of shared interests and Institut New York, and has curated academic York University, and the Goethe-Institut, purpose, that is the essence of citizenship? conferences at Parsons the New School for Design, and finally, a series of workshops with To what extent is the twenty-first century where she is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Constructed Environments, and at architects, filmmakers, urban educators citizen finding new ways of inhabiting the the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and and activists held at the Goethe-Institut city – and for that matter, what does it mean Preservation, Columbia University. following the conference. to “inhabit” the city today?

Matthias Hollwich leads a workshop on Design for an Aging Population at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building. © Goethe-Institut New York One way to define “citizenship” in an environ­ mental context is to include a responsible consideration of nature as a requisite aspect of urban citizenry. NOTES FROM building fundamentally stronger, longer- lasting, more durable cities.

The Cities and Citizenship conference addressed key questions regarding the relationship between design theory THE CONFERENCE and application, and the ways in which Carly A. Krakow, Peder Anker, Louise Harpman, Mitchell Joachim citizenship is defined in a true “global city”. In her opening remarks, Andrea Zell of the Goethe-Institut commented on the What is the relationship between nature of the city, and to what extent regional forces Speech project, raising questions about untranslatability of “Weltstadt” – explaining and the city? How are the bounds between define urban epicenters, as well as the ways whether or not places can be specifically that after considering translated English a democratic, open-access approach to in which community preservation is affected designed and set aside for free speech counterparts such as “world city”, it was felt city development and an urban planning by urban expansion and globalization. and acts of protest in New York City. One that the term was best retained in its native methodology that emphasizes expertise and possibility is that mechanizing the creation linguistic form. It is interesting to consider extensive training negotiated? Is it possible NYU Professor of Sociology and of protest-spaces actually risks a boomerang how this notion of untranslatability impacts to design spaces as realms of free speech Environmental Studies Colin Jerolmack effect that leads to a confinement of free our conception of the “global citizen” in a and activism, or is the idea of “designed also noted the ways in which Jacobs’ speech and a stunting of First Amendment dynamic urban center. Is citizenry locally democracy” antithetical to spontaneous discussion of the “intricate ballet of sidewalk rights. The hope and expectation, however, and regionally defined, or does citizenship and genuine demonstrations of citizenship? life” has shaped contemporary thinking is that the process of design in and of itself in its true sense transcend geographic about urban community membership and creates citizenship and sustains a sense of borders to facilitate cross-cultural These are just a few of the questions participation. The Weltstadt Project begs community, fostering stronger connections expressions of democracy? addressed at March 14th’s Cities and the question, “Who creates the city?”, but between citizens and the built environment. Citizenship conference, co-organized by as Jerolmack demonstrated, this question is The ideas communicated at the Cities and Global Design NYU and Parsons the New problematized when we consider participants The conference teased out important Citizenship conference suggest that while School for Design as part of the Goethe- of the community that play huge roles in tensions between emphases on democratic unique and vibrant cities such as New Institut’s Weltstadt project. The conference “creating” the city, but are at best not given open-access and a focus on expertise York each have an individual and perhaps featured a series of panels that engaged credit for the roles they play, and as is and comprehensive training – traditionally “untranslatable” essence that define the with the ways in which the construction unfortunately too often the case, are deemed integral aspects of high-quality, reliable identity of that particular city, it is the ways of the city is inextricably related to the “undesirable” urban inhabitants. Jerolmack design. In seeking to define the role of the in which the city’s inhabitants interact with role of the citizen. Drawing on historical discussed the example of the pigeon from citizen in a sustainable city, it is important one another and with other global actors understandings of how urban centers have his book The Global Pigeon, but the ensuing to strike a balance between visions of that truly define a city as a “world city”. been both geographically and socially conversation opened up larger questions an urban environmental utopia and the Nature must be a key consideration in this delimited, the conference sought to inspire about exclusion and marginalization in the ecological reality. In the era of globalization, conversation, since the natural environment an expanded understanding of the citizen’s creation of the modern city. As Jerolmack the stakes have been raised for the is in large part what defines the potential role in shaping the 21st century “green city”. stated, “Modernization of the city is the environmentally conscious citizen, and it and possibilities of the “global city”, and it expulsion of nature, and then we invite it has become challenging now more than ever is environmental concerns that must inform In an era of globalization and mega-urbanism, back in ways that are compartmentalized and to recognize the vital role of nature in the urban planning and policy-making in the age natural disasters caused by global warming controlled…Animals that are ‘out of control’ city, and to consider nature in all urbanist of global warming. Citizenship and the city pose unprecedented challenges to the are [ deemed ] trespassers”. Jerolmack and activist endeavors. Perhaps one way are mutually defined, and only when citizenry architecture and design communities. then postulated that perhaps the status of to define “citizenship” in an environmental is examined in an environmental context Climate change is forcing an urgent “pedestrian” is a step en route to the status context is to include a responsible does the emergence of a truly “green”, examination of outdated infrastructure, of “citizen”, connecting back to consideration of nature as a requisite ecologically conscious, and democratic particularly in New York City. This sense the conference’s larger theme about who aspect of urban citizenry. urban center become possible. of immediacy about the interactions between creates the city, and how city-creation is urbanism and environmentalism has led influenced by the agency of its inhabitants. This line of thought, however, opens up a to heated discussion amongst academics, host of questions regarding who is entitled scientists, urban planners, and policy-makers Conservation ecologist Eric Sanderson to define “citizenship” in a dynamic and PEDER ANKER, Ph.D., is an historian of science, about the ways in which the “natural” or directly and gladly exclaimed “nature rapidly evolving environment such as Associate Professor at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and the Chair of NYU’s pre-existing environment has interacted creates the city!” in response to this set of New York City. One issue raised is that Environmental Studies program. and ought to interact with infrastructural questions, drawing on his Manahatta2409. the building codes and legal policies of LOUISE HARPMAN is a founding partner at Specht planning and creation. org project that allows the public to develop New York do not evolve as rapidly as the Harpman | Architecture and an Associate Professor and share climate-resilient designs for city itself, creating numerous hurdles for of Practice at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized As NYU biologist and Professor of Manhattan based on rapid model estimates designers and the public. Architect Susanne Study. Environmental Studies Tyler Volk pointed of the water cycle, carbon cycle, biodiversity, Schindler noted that for design to be truly MITCHELL JOACHIM, Ph.D., is a founder of Terreform out, nature plays an integral role in defining and population – showing the ways in emancipative, it must be affordable as well ONE and an Associate Professor of Practice at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. urban citizenship, and a deeper appreciation which designed-by-citizens approaches to as feasible as dictated by building codes. of the role that nature plays in shaping city-planning interact with considerations This opened up a larger discussion about the CARLY A. KRAKOW is a student at NYU’s our urban centers can perhaps lead to a of science and the natural environment. fine line between codes ensuring safe living Gallatin School of Individualized Study, focusing on Environmental Policy and Human Rights. heightened level of engaged citizenry. Volk Miodrag Mitrasinovic of Parsons the New conditions and controlling living conditions noted the potential for the loss of individual School for Design suggested that the in outdated or unrealistic ways, with identity in our era of increased technological question of how we define “designers” is Schindler remarking that it is perhaps time advancement, and suggested “involvement more complex than is commonly thought, to “legalize … living” and advocate for codes with ecological networks and other species and that architects as well as social that catch up to ways in which people are [can] help prevent us from becoming scientists and political organizers are already living in New York City, as long as automatons in a large urban machine”. “designers” of the city in different ways. these ways of living are safe. NYU Gallatin sociologist Gianpaolo Baiocchi Volk’s warnings against the “age of argued that there is a distinction between On the topic of infrastructural policy- zombification” were in sync with an emphasis citizenship and democracy, and that we can making, the landscape architect Susannah on an appreciation of the micro-community “live in a citizenship without democracy”. Drake noted that the lessons learned from – an emphasis that pervaded the tone of These comments suggest that membership Hurricane Sandy and the looming threat of the entire conference. Not surprisingly, within a state does not automatically imply additional global warming-induced natural this focus on an appreciation of the micro- the presence of a democratic process, an disasters should lead to the creation of community led to many nods to activist and idea touched upon by New School political codes that promote increased infrastructural urban theorist Jane Jacobs, including NYU theorist Andreas Kalyvas. Perhaps democracy strength. She added that the reality of sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s remark that is what shapes the role of the citizen and climate change has led to an increased flow we are in the “age of Jacobs, not [ Robert ] enables the citizen to literally and figuratively of stormwater, but that belief in this reality Moses” and assertion that when it comes to “design” egalitarian urban centers. is not necessary on the part of policy-makers dealing with pressing issues such as climate – increased infrastructural strength should security, it is essential to emphasize citizen Stephen Duncombe, a sociologist and be encouraged regardless – emphasizing involvement. This line of thought raised NYU Gallatin Professor of Media and Cultural the ways in which partisan divides should issues about how we define the bounds Studies, discussed the Designing for Free not prevent architects and designers from NEW YORK’S

general. Not least, because the conditions URBAN for participation have become extremely complicated here, New York proved to be a particularly fertile ground for such exploration.

This became most evident in the presentations of practitioners such as Susanne Schindler, Matthias Hollwich and Susannah Drake, architects with civil missions who have successfully pursued projects or are pursuing projects in New York City. Dealing with the conditions in Sebastian Moll Bloomberg’s New York has forced them to LEGACY rethink and expand their roles as designers and architects and develop a new creativity in utalizing their work toward social ends.

Hollwich, Schindler and Drake might be called activist designers, a new breed of designers that Cities and Citizenship curators chose to place at the center of the In the Spring of 2007, three New York pursued. New York entered a new era of drawing board, is coming into being. New York project. Mitchell Joachim, one City museums joined forces to honor the top-down urban planning. Contemporary of the project curators and also Co-Founder work and legacy of the most ambitious New York provides an environment, in which The Bloomberg administration started a and Director of Research at the Brooklyn master planner and builder the city had citizen participation in planning decisions new era of large scale urban development Navy Yard’s Terreform One, considers known in the 20th century. As a leader of has become extremely difficult. Such was in New York City. The mechanisms by himself to be one of these designers, who several public agencies for more than three the backdrop for the New York chapter of which he achieved his development goals no longer think of “good design” as merely decades, Robert Moses changed the face the Goethe Institute’s Weltstadt Project, and realized his vision of the city were aesthetically enriching our everyday lives. of the city like no one else. entitles Cities and Citizenship. more subtle, but every bit as effective, This new generation of designers, ranging as those of Robert Moses. By enabling from architects to industrial designers, Prior to the simultaneous shows in 2007 In 2007, when Robert Moses’ legacy was strong alliances between politicians strive instead to “actively contribute at the Museum of the City of New York, re-assessed, mayor Michael Bloomberg was and developers, he stifled democratic to shaping society”. Joachim considers the Queens Museum and the galleries five years into his 12-year tenure as mayor of participation in the planning process. them “applied sociologists”. at Columbia University, the assessment New York, which ended in January of 2014. of Moses’ legacy in urban planning and From the beginning, Bloomberg had had More than fittingly, the three-day One of Joachim’s primary goals for the architecture circles had been virtually urban planning ambitions on a scale that program on “Cities and Citizenship” in conference was to create a dialogue unanimous. Moses was vilified for the city had not seen since Robert Moses. downtown Manhattan opened with the between such applied sociologists and destroying neighborhoods and communities And not since Robert Moses had anyone screening of “The Domino Effect”, a actual academic sociologists. It was a in the name of his technocratic vision been as successful as Bloomberg in documentary film that explored exactly true experiment to find out whether the of the modern city. He displaced tens changing the face of the city. how public participation was suppressed two groups would be able to find a common of thousands of families under the guise in Bloomberg’s New York. The filmmakers, language and perhaps help answer each of slum clearance, rendered residential Bloomberg rezoned 40 percent of the city, Brian Paul, Megan Sperry and Daniel Phelps, other’s questions. areas uninhabitable by running highways changing or eliminating the traditional spent several years filming the efforts of the through them and created public housing limitations placed on the usage of certain residents of the Williamsburg neighborhood The first concept that the theoreticians ghettos that aggravated social problems areas. On his watch, neighborhoods have of Brooklyn to prevent a dramatic and practitioners tried to close in on rather than solving them. been rededicated and developed, more demographic shift in the area after the was that of participation and citizenship often than not for high-end housing and main employer, the Domino Sugar factory, itself. The social scientists’ historical and The 2007 exhibitions, however, were retail, while manufacturing has all but closed in 2004. theoretical models were juxtaposed with surprisingly kind to Moses. They painted disappeared from the city. The underutilized the practitioners’ real experiences a more nuanced picture of his efforts, and post-industrial waterfronts have been The screening set the stage for an intense of participation as well as their utopian emphasized the merits of his work over its developed, Midtown and Lower Manhattan two-day multidisciplinary dialogue on how visions of it. flaws. The political climate in the city had have seen an enormous construction boom. citizens might be empowered to address shifted back to favor of the kind of grand And on the westside of Manhattan an entire the pressing issues of our time and help The political scientist Andreas Kalyvas urban planning initiatives that Robert Moses new community, conceived entirely at the improve life in New York and cities in

Filmmakers Brian Paul and Megan Sperry discussing Marian Moglievich presenting her work in the their documentary, “The Domino Effect” (2012), “Design, Participation and Citizenship” panel, Cities after a screening at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming and Citizenship conference, the Gallatin School, Building © Goethe-Institut New York New York University © Jake Madoff From the beginning, Bloomberg had had urban planning ambitions on a scale that the city had not seen since Robert Moses. And not since Robert Moses had anyone been as successful as Bloomberg in changing the face of the city. —Sebastian Moll

of the New School for Social Research Zuccotti, are regarded as a problem, create the illusion of participation. In reality and policing, Klinenberg feels that armoring in New York, set the tone for the debate a disgrace. Such a view, however, however, they limit the pedestrian to the the city against flooding at immense cost is with his concept of counter genealogy. according to Vyjayanthi, prevents us role of consumer instead of citizen, much not the answer. In tracing lived participation from ancient from seeing the infrastructure that is less insurgent citizen. Athens all the way to the Occupy movement actually there, sustaining the people Klinenberg believes that adapting the city he devised a concept of what he calls and enabling us to learn from them. As much as the conference participants for nature, and making space for natural “seditious citizenship”. According to agreed on the necessity of expanding the shifts, is more sensible. At the same time, Kalyvas, seditious citizenship runs counter Obviously, being able to appreciate concept of citizenship, they agreed that the asking populations in flood prone areas to official conceptions of citizenship, which citizen-driven democratic spaces relationship between nature and the city to move and effectively making living on are constituted mainly by participating in requires a radically broadened conception needs to be rethought, especially in light higher ground a privilege for the wealthy the political institutions of the state. of citizenship. Colin Jarolmack of the of the challenges posed by climate change. contradicts ideals of democracy and Environmental Studies Department at Lynnette Widder of the Earth Institute at participation in other ways. His idea of participation is quite the NYU, for example, posited that the idea Columbia University, for example, argued opposite. A good citizen according to of citizenship could even be extended for letting more of the “hinterland” into The Cities and Citizens project provided Kalyvas is an active citizen, one that to include pigeons. Pigeons, reviled by the city, in effect deconstructing the no easy answers to the questions that “takes part in factional strife”. The New Yorkers as “flying rats”, and the like, traditional concept of the city as that Klinenberg, or the Williamsburg activists protester, the revolutionary, in this sense represent an anarchic part of nature that which is “not nature”. The supply of natural are struggling with. It did provide plenty is a better citizen than the person who trespasses our public spaces and in doing resources upon which the city depends of ideas for enhancing how we think about limits his participation to the voting booth. so, affects and even shapes the urban should be increasingly moved inside the the contemporary city and the role of its space, according to Jarolmack. They refuse boundaries of the city, in effect softening citizens within it. And the conference This conception opens the question of to remain within the boundaries set for the demarcation. showed how new and creative models where the conditions for such participation them (for example, spaces alloted to nature of citizen activism in an environment of can be found in today’s cities. In New such as parks) and spill into the spaces Widder’s ideas are a move toward an suffocating, top-down urban governance, York in particular, as several conference reserved for human use. Like the Occupy ecological conception of the city that can be successful. participants pointed out, the spaces movement, they appropriate public space is also embraced in the work of Matthias for such “insurgent citizenship”, or in unintended ways. Hollwich with his utopian vision of a simply for free speech, have become “MEtreePOLIS” or in the work of Mitchell extremely limited. Jarolmack thinks we should welcome Joachim’s Terreform group that seeks, SEBASTIAN MOLL lives in New York City as a pigeons and their unintended use of public among other things, to fuse architecture cultural correspondent for German publications The prime example for the limited space and care for them as a vital part of and biotechnology. such as Cicero, Spiegel Online, Berliner Zeitung possibilities of insurgent citizenship “the ballet” of the street. Of course, this and Frankfurter Rundschau since 2002. In his collection of essays "Uptown Blues (Picus Verlag of course is Zuccotti Park, the privately is intended as a metaphor for encouraging In New York City, with it’s almost 600-mile 2013) he grapples, among other things, with issues owned public space where in 2011 the citizens to use public space according shoreline that is seriously threatened by connected to gentrification in New York. A sample Occupy movement created a utopian space to their own needs instead of conforming rising sea levels, the tone of these debates of his work can be seen at www.sebastianmoll.de. for democratic participation. The space to prescribed usages. is urgent and specific. During Hurricane was cleared by the authorities under the Sandy in 2011, 400,000 homes were flooded pretense that habitation without necessary The reality in New York, however, remains and large parts of the city were without heat infrastructure resulted in unsanitary light years away from such ideals. In fact, and electricity for weeks, in some cases conditions harmful to the neighborhood at Marianne Moglievich of NYU showed that, months. Certain neighborhoods in Staten large. This argument, of course, ignores the if anything, it has become far more difficult Island and Brooklyn have not been rebuilt very elaborate infrastructure that Occupiers in recent years for citizens to own or inhabit to this day. did actually create in Zuccotti – complete the democratic social space. with eating and hygienic facilities, a library, Eric Klinenberg of NYU’s Institute for a media center and spaces designated As recently as the 1960s, Moglievich Public Knowledge is closely involved to support various forms of interaction argued, Mayor John Lindsay prevented in the planning commissions that are and debate. urban riots that took place in cities across discussing how the city should respond the country at that time by allowing city to rising sea levels and the threat of According to anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao, streets to be used as a place for articulating devastation and flooding. this disregard of infastructure created by dissent, at times even embracing it. Lindsay citizens rather than institutions is similar himself marched down Fifth Avenue along Learning from city planning mistakes to the ignorance that policy makers and with peace activists and civil rights leaders. following the September 11 th attacks, researchers alike display when thinking Moglievich juxtaposed the permissive where barriers were errected in public about the anarchic dwellings on the atmosphere of those days to the recent spaces around New York, dramatically outskirts of mega-cities such as Mumbai. installation of pedestrian zones in Midtown reducing space for democracy and Conventionally these dwellings, like Manhattan. These zones, Moglievich argues, participation while ramping up surveillance

Audience members enagage in discussions after the Daniel Phelps and Alissa Burmeister screening of the documentary Domino Effect in conversation after the screening © Goethe-Institut New York © Goethe-Institut New York ENVIRONMENT & CITIZENSHIP OR, THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATURE IN THE CITY

The first conference panel sought to identify how the construction of “nature” informs the construction of the urban subject or citizen, and explore new and emerging sites at which “nature” occurs in the city. To what extent are urban spaces inhabited “naturally”, by whom, for whose benefit? What are the social and ecological consequences of our continuous construction, reconstruction and appropriation of urban nature? Brussels Material Flows Diagram, Duvigneaud and Denaeyer-De Smet, 1977

At the beginning of his seminal essay flows in the city and the contested but Luftkrieg und Literatur, W.G. Sebald inevitable reciprocity between city and describes an American-British vision for hinterland, it is vital to locate nature as a a re-ruralized post-World War II Germany. formative dynamic condition sine qua non This was not just an abstruse method to within the urban complex. Air, water and IN THE insure that Germany would never again be the translation of solar energy into food an aggressor nation. By 1944, this vision may each threaten the city whether as finite was asserting itself de facto in the shells of supply or as volatile regime. To insure its the residual German metropolises left in the existence, the city sets out to expand that wake of bombing raids and ground battles. limitation and to regularize that volatility by rescripting nature. The earnestness While repastoralization may certainly tell of urban agriculture advocacy and the us something about the Anglo-American promise of resilience offer some evidence catechism of wholesome rural life as of a desire to change those terms, and to CITY’S antidote to the evils of urbanization, it also offer a kind of negotiated compromise with has a peculiar relevance to questions of nature. Brooklyn’s photogeneity may even urban sustainability. Conventional wisdom have the advantage of making visible a tells us that cities arose in response to the city:hinterland relationship so repressed surplus produced elsewhere: surplus gave by the achievement of on-demand resource rise to trade, trade gave rise to centralized provision. In turn, that visibility may marketplaces which in turn gave rise to provide an opening in an often technophilic cities. The city has historically served to sustainability rhetoric to reassert just SHADOWLynnette Widder gather and leverage what the hinterland how fundamental the rhythms of the non- produced: urban crafts guilds added value anthropogenic are in the city’s survival. to raw materials, crops and piecework were Flows are particularly evident when they monetized, knowledge was assembled and meet the resistant, solid state and at least disseminated in cities. slightly vainglorious spaces of the city. Visible and identifiable are two adjectives But the story could be told quite differently, that rarely pertain to the city’s perspective as Edward Soya has done in his brief on its hinterland. article Putting Cities First. Soya argues that it was the rise of the cities, which The history of services provision – whether Urban Metabolism offers methods to the non-anthropogenic that is at the root motivated the creation of hinterland heat, water, food or air – is a history of quantify a city’s material flows relative of all material flows constructs the city’s surplus. In other words, cities are not the increasingly invisible or abstracted supply. to its spatial, historical, political and forms, practices and regimes. This might flowerings of the hinterland’s opulence and This 1880 German design for a coal space social environment. Its name is apt. begin by relocating some of the hinterland largess but instead, arose because they heater speaks volumes: consistent and Nothing, whether a living creature or a within the city limits. asserted their demands on the resources effortless heat is provided to the room by a settlement, can have a metabolic rate of around them. The motivations behind vertical bin that continuously feeds the fire. zero, despite ambitions to sustainability. those demands were likely political before The room occupant is no longer implicated Within sustainability studies, cities are LYNNETTE WIDDER teaches urban metabolism, they were economic or existential: cities in the tempering of the space she or he often cited for the efficiency of their resiliency and building energy in the Masters of Sustainability program at Columbia University. waged war, and war required provisioning. enjoys. The bin, of course, does not feed transportation, housing and supply or She is a partner in aardvarchitecture, and has In either scenario, it is clear that cities itself. The space next to the heated room, refuse infrastructures. Their on-demand published extensively on architectural education, have never provided the basis for their into which the slanted coal bin obtrudes, relationship to their hinterlands in contemporary architecture and architectural history. own carrying capacity; their productive is occupied by the servants who top off the a globalized world defies this simple landscapes were always extraterritorial. coal supply. In this arrangement, comfort conclusion. It would be easy to locate urban The re-ruralized city – a city imagined from has become abstracted and denaturalized metabolism as a study within the long scratch as agricultural carrying capacity through this combination of invisible labor history of rhetoric that describes cities as housed amidst the ruins – might be the only and technology. By analogy, you might organisms or bodies, from the Renaissance historical exception. imagine a whole city warming itself at the discourse of ideal city planning to the coal hearth, largely oblivious to the ever 18th century beginnings of public health As academics, we know enough to put expanding landscapes on the other side of and urban reform movements. But as the nature in quotation marks and to call it out the wall or the myriad invisible technology fact of global hinterland challenges the as an imaginary, not as a natural, condition. connecting it to them. viability of simple “sustainability” agendas, Nonetheless, in characterizing resource we increasingly need to understand how

Repastoralized Hamburg ca. 1943, Excerpt from the Codex Xolotl, German Coal Furnace, from W.G. Seebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur a post-conquest map of Aztec landholdings ca. 1860, with “invisible” ca. 1550, showing the maize supply chain supply hatch in servant’s corridor, from Cecil D. Elliot, Technics and Architecture: The Development of Materials and Systems for Buildings ECOLOGIES OF

does citizenship take in such conditions? interactive, relational diagrams where To understand this I turn to the forms of people, infrastructure and nature meet, CITIZENSHIP: settlement and the spatial pattern that are adding the element of nature to the dyad labeled as “informal”, predominantly found of people and infrastructure, we introduce in the cities of the global south. In general, new complexity to our understanding one might define these settlements as of informality. occupations of lands left over in modern cities – lands reserved for other purposes What can citizenship mean in these or lands that form ecological margins – or contexts? Elsewhere I have developed OTHERNESS sites that separate one kind of entity from a careful formulation of speculation as another – the road from the river or land a method through which contemporary from the sea, concrete from clay. In either collectivities are formed. Building on case, informal settlements, the kinds this formulation, I posit that in the I have observed closely in Mumbai, for speculative world of contemporary cities, example, utilize what we understand when inherited structures of politics, as ‘natural’ features of the site – gradients, landscape and economy are routinely in IN THE CITY porosities, screens, folds, layers bringing flux and when urban territory itself is a Vyjayanthi Rao the distinct temporal grammars of these significant means by which finance capital features into human temporalities. This circulates and settles, speculation as a method of settlement is distinct from those method has also circulated rhizomatically forms of settlement whose very form is across social groups, rendering cities based on leveling and destruction of more open to practices that are based on those same features to produce new potentials rather than inheritances. Indeed, ones. The ‘wild’ attractions between my reading of urban informality is not things – both human and non-human – that romantic but is certainly through the lens Throughout its history, the discipline of played an important epistemological role, are mobilized by the various forms of of creativity fostered in the speculative anthropology has recognized a foundational especially in accounts of urban poverty informal settlement reveal and make visible process. The rearticulation of natural forms role for a concept of nature as an Other and possibilities for change. certain potentialities for settlement and in informal settlements takes place due in relation to human subjects, persons design in a self-reliant way. to lack of choice but it also constitutes and selves. Until recently, a dominant This has been the case since the an exit from the calculative logics that understanding of nature as regularity, emergence of systematic studies about What is the relationship between confine marginalized groups and citizens governed by “laws” of nature served to modern cities with the establishment of nature, city and citizenship in this form to specific places. The work of informal stabilize understandings of subjectivity, the Chicago school of sociology which of settlement? In order to answer this settlement is the production of an ecology mainly by providing the certain backdrop introduced the concept of ecology into the question, I turn once again to the argument of relations amongst volatile and dynamic against which secular subjectivity acquires vocabulary and practice of studying cities. laid out at the beginning of this piece: that entities, themselves composed of mixtures its transcendence, insured against wild Sociologists and anthropologists trained our foundational entanglement with nature between entities that we tend to separate possibilities and the strange ontological in this way of thinking posited that the city – whether within or outside the physical in our epistemologies of city formation. potentials opened up in a world without was a collection of neighborhoods, each limits of cities – is epistemological, The work of informal settlement is also theological center. The discipline’s with different capacities for contributing revealing the strange traffic between the work of designing self-reliance by attempts to discover and classify human to the overall health of the city. codes or ways of knowing and ways of creating new spaces of operation that “nature” then is tied to an idea of nature As ecologist Stuart Pickett has shown, being. The modern concept of urban give definition and dimension to abstract as the stable backdrop ensuring early 20th century University of Chicago citizenship, in turn is premised on the concepts like citizenship, democracy regularities in environment that influence, social scientists ‘borrowed’ then emergent foundational promise of mastering nature and entitlement. Without understanding in turn, regularities in behavior. While the ideas about ecosystem succession as and harnessing the potential of natural that labor – which is typically understood recognition of chance and contingency as metaphors to produce social explanations formations. But this promise is also through the idioms of poverty, lack and significant factors shaping the physical for changing spatial patterns in cities premised on colonial rationalities that decay rather than speculation and the and social worlds are both transhistorical – patterns that connected race, class, dictate specific, engineered ecologies constant insertion of the virtual into the and dynamic, our protocols for constructing environmental conditions and finally of separation between various natural space of the possible – we may not be able knowledge in the social sciences are personality and character of individuals features – especially soil and water to critically assess the potential forms based on decisions about what to hold and groups. The problem however, was but also land and air – to govern wild nature of justice that could emerge from today’s constant and how to decide on what is that social scientists assumed a linear and produce order. In the process, these atomized cities, increasingly shaped by certain. This foundational relationship and teleological explanation for change, separations are reflected in social divisions DIY cultures, whether those of artisanal between a transcendental, knowing where the life cycle of communities within cities. localities like Brooklyn in New York or subject and nature as object of knowledge were linked to organic life cycles, ending those of sweatshop neighborhoods like as well as source of transcendence has inevitably in death, decay or entropy. As economic formations, the labor required Dharavi in Mumbai. now been overturned quite decisively These ideas, still influential in the social by cities is produced precisely by the as anthropologists struggle with the sciences, have also lagged behind newer spatial differentiation of groups in order impossibility of containing and consigning understandings of change that ecosystem to better exploit their labor capacity. VYJAYANTHI V. RAO teaches Anthropology the role of chance and contingency to scientists are now producing which carry Ecological switchpoints, where these at Parson the New School. She is the editor irregular occurrences. Scholars have very different assumptions about the of Speculation, Now: Essays and Artworks separations between various natural forms shown that this shift is linked to the directions of change. (forthcoming, Duke University Press). Among recent take place could be considered especially projects, she co-founded the Spatial Ethnography rise of a “reflexive” modernity, which generative of the kind of compressed Lab (SEL), which combines visualization of big recognizes the risks created by human Social scientific theories of urban ecology, data with ethnographic techniques of story- energy and tension that cities require, in interventions and human aspirations for which have been especially powerful in telling to reveal alternative understandings of their present ideological forms. These are the generative rules framing contemporary cities controlling and directing the regularities theorizing urban poverty, in turn inspired points where nature, infrastructure and and their interpretations in the built forms and and contingencies of nature for their own design interventions as well as policy spatial patterns of those cities. Her manuscript vulnerable populations meet. My contention purposes. Reflexive modernity introduces frameworks that involved changes in on Mumbai, titled “Speculative City: Infrastructure is that informal settlements have been and Complexity in Global Mumbai” is currently the idea that, faced with the possibility the physical environments of cities. generally viewed from a purely social under review. of unknown risks, unexpected events and If poverty was a matter of the convergence perspective as lacking access to the types unintended consequences, there can be of ‘natural’ forces in spatial patterns, of infrastructure and habitats designed for no definitive knowledge, only provisional productive only of the energy derived from full citizenship. However, if we consider answers. This provisionality, in turn, a vast pool of cheap labor required for the such settlements in ecological terms as generates more uncertainty. Thus there functioning of the centralized industrial are no constants, only flux. city, then where did the hope for change lie? What practices of citizenship would Why begin with this particular, be adequate to cultivating these changes? epistemological account of nature in The answers apparently lay in changing the context of articles contemplating the ‘nature’ of urban nature by creating the relationship between cities and new infrastructure or, in other words, citizenship? Our brief was to explore through design. Such infrastructure, how the construction of nature informs including new housing layouts, were the construction of the urban subject assumed to promote desirable outcomes and citizen. In the study of cities, we are through their form alone. presented with a triangular relationship between nature as environment, city as In the era of globalization, such thinking construction and citizen as subject. about poverty and about technologies The city, as designed object, mediates of urban change has intensified, though between nature and subject. Nature, its focus now tends to be the “planet of in turn, could serve a dual analytic slums” ubiquitous in the mega-cities of the function – as hinterland, it serves to mark global South. However, precisely because the physical limits of the city and its of the planetary scale of urbanism, design engineered infrastructure while within the problems are no longer limited to singular physical and legal limits of the city, nature land parcels and their inherited structures serves as the biotic basis of citizenship of politics, landscape and economy. by pressing against urban infrastructure They have become multi-scalar problems, to produce and circulate energy and waste involving contingent, global forces throwing required for the functioning of the city. the very idea of nature – in its multiple In this latter capacity, nature has also senses – as knowable into flux. What form Nature, Settlement and Citizenship © The Spatial Ethnography Lab DESIGN, PARTICIPATION & CITIZENSHIP

Whereas the social sciences approach the concepts of “city” and “citizen” in terms of what can be known, the design disciplines – working propositionally – engage with the known in order to focus on what may be imagined and possible. The second panel focused on ‘spaces of insurgent citizenship’ in discussing possible scenarios for designers and social scientists working together in identifying ruptures in the spaces of everyday life: spaces where invention, exchange, co-creation and mobilization of collective energies re-imagines today’s cities and urban territories. URBAN SPACE My research explores the fluidity and improvisation of urban space. I am interested in the city as a continuous system of ecological and performative forces and flows. Cities today are made up of new instances where “urban” and “interior” mingle in interesting ways: the AND PARTICIPATION interior is no longer only a “shell” but a Ioanna Theocharopolou city, just as the city can be experienced as a vast interior with its own anatomy, degrees of interiority, ecology, unscripted privacy and publicity. I would like to embrace low-tech innovation, resilience, Less well-defined as a category, another Riviere’s projects such as his Don’t suggest that there is an exciting process and adaptability. I see two ways in which group of designers working today strive Pay, Play! made up of caddies and tape of re-invention of citizenship currently design has started to become a tool of to design processes rather than objects (Strasbourg, 2011), aim to, in his words, taking place today, through the built participation in this “pliable plankton” that or buildings. They utilize low-tech, “reinvest and divert public space to allow environment, where design lends agency is the twenty-first century city. The first do-it-yourself action and intelligent use citizens to reclaim their environment”. to social action or can become a tool of has to do with emergency responses, and of materials in combination with their own These kinds of projects and actions help participation in social life. The question related to that, the second has to do with design expertise. The projects presented us expand our definition of “design” and of “insurgent citizenship” was explored challenging processes of change. in the third panel of our conference, and “designer”, and bring to mind a hopeful in the second conference panel: spaces particularly Susanna Drake’s project text from the late 1960s by architect of everyday life, where invention, Examples of designers’ responses to for the Gowanus Canal and Susanne Richard Neutra, who wrote that exchange, co-creation and mobilization emergencies include initiatives to help Schindler’s work on housing, fall in this “a more active and alert citizenry”, of collective energies may re-imagine those facing homelessness due to extreme broad category. Other notable projects or “an environmental electorate” should cities and citizens. Sociologist and urban poverty, such as the work of the Rural include the work of Santiago Cirugeda in again become integral to our everyday theorist Saskia Sassen writes about a Studio in Alabama in the American South, Southern Spain, whose Recetas Urbanas awareness and activities. Neutra kind of interiority “in a city, of the city”, founded by the late Samuel Mockbee in projects aim to show or suggest to citizens diagnosed “a new and expansive form that consists of “the vacant grounds that the early 1990s. Still in existence today, how they may modify their environment of humanism within our reach, embodying enable residents who feel bypassed by Mockbee devised a program of study by finding “gaps”, exploiting bureaucratic a more enlightened concept of wealth their city to connect with it via memory that engaged students of architecture in oversight to practice what he calls and power”. It is precisely this sense of at a time of rapid changes […] empty space design-build programs specifically aimed “autonomous” architecture and urbanism, “humanism” that we wanted to explore that can be filled with memories [...] where to address the needs of shelter of the meaning deploying self-built, opportunistic in the Cities and Citizenship conference. activists and artists find a space for their largely underprivileged local community. and tactical uses of urban space. This is a rich and exciting topic that we projects [...] a making of presence that Mockbee set out to teach students to Cirugeda’s projects often utilize vacant believe needs a lot more attention. is an act of speech”. (see Do Cities Have become “sensitive to the power and lots for temporary uses, by devising ways The Cities and Citizenship events and our Speech? Public Culture, 2013) promise of what they do”, by helping them to “cheat” the authorities so as to give collaboration with the Goethe-Institut’s see that they can serve a real community citizens the chance to have extra space Weltstadt project, gave us the opportunity In a different vein, writing about exhibition in need. to live or play –as in his project for creating to begin this conversation amongst our design, Italian architect and critic Andrea a “balcony” in a small-scale building out respective institutions and disciplines. Branzi wrote about “the new internal Other groups of designer-activists have of scaffolding provided by city authorities, We look forward to more opportunities functioning of the city” in relation to sought ways to help those dealing with and a playground out of re-used plastic in the future. new technologies. For him, “the result is forced migration due to war or to extreme construction beacons. an extraordinarily pliable plankton that environmental conditions particularly makes it possible to renew the form and in areas of the so-called global South. In a similar vein, scouting and mapping the function of interior spaces inside the Founded in 1999, Architecture for unfinished or “skeletal” structures, the immobile containers of architecture… a Humanity, the most well-known such French Coloco Group, composed of a sort of lubricant that prevents the city group, provides design and construction core of two architects and a landscape from seizing up and allows it to adapt services to world-wide communities architect, help potential tenants to inhabit IOANNA THEOCHAROPOULOU is an architect and itself continually…” (Exhibition Design affected by natural disasters. In addition, these “skeletons” as housing. An essential architectural historian. Her research focuses on cities and the concept of sustainability. Her writing as Metaphor of a New Modernity, Lotus there are a number of talented designers element of these last urban actions is both has appeared in numerous publications including, International, 2002) who have been working to build schools inventiveness and a sense of play. The most recently, the Urban Design Ecologies and hospitals particularly in Africa, either element of play is explicitly deployed by AD Reader, edited by Brian McGrath. She has participated in a number of events at the Goethe- I want to suggest that current design by winning competitions or by finding ways artist Florian Riviere, who calls himself Institut New York, and has curated academic practices are taking to task strategies to get their work realized by themselves, a “hactivist”, and who devises playful conferences at Parsons the New School for Design, of activism and oppositionality that as Diebedo Francis Kere has done in scenarios to challenge how we view where she is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Constructed Environments, and at likely originated in art practices, and are Burkina Faso, and the MASS Design Group urban space. From organizing groups to the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and coming up with ways to deal with new with an award-winning hospital in Rwanda. exercise in city streets, to “do-it-yourself” Preservation, Columbia University. challenges we are faced with today that and upcycling found objects and waste,

I see two ways in which design has started to become a tool of participation in this “pliable plankton” that is the twenty-first century city. The first has to do with emergency responses, and related to that, the second has to do with challenging processes of change.

Participants use building blocks to redesign a Ioanna Theocharopoulou welcomes guests to the neighborhood and bring it to building code in Cities and Citizenship conference at the Gallatin Mark Torrey and the Center for Urban Pedagogy's School of Individualized Study, NYU © Jake Madoff workshop entitled, What is Zoning? at the Goethe- Institut Wyoming Building © Jake Madoff It is in the interstitial spaces between the old forms of governance that are increasingly failing, and emergent forms of organizational and communal self-management, where designers and urban activists today labor to introduce or boost democratic processes by co-designing broad participatory processes, bottom- up organizational approaches, CONCURRENT networking strategies, and new innovative edifice ideas. URBANITIES: DESIGNING The context of this conference cannot What is the role of designing in these be more opportune, as NYC transitions urban processes, and what roles do from the era of Michael Bloomberg’s professional designers play? What do administration to the new one headed we mean by ‘design’ in this context, by Mayor Bill de Blasio. This transition, and whom do we perceive as ‘designers’? INFRASTRUCTURES however, also takes place in a situation Can design facilitate the transfer of of an ongoing crisis: economic, cultural, expertise, knowledge and experience ecological, and political. Bloomberg’s across the socio-economic spectrum? neoliberal policies have been widely One thing is certain: to adequately criticized; after all, the rezoning of over understand informal and improvised urban OF INCLUSION 40 % of the city’s most commercially socio-spatial infrastructures, alternative Miodrag Mitrasinovic promising land mass is an act of historic modes of economic exchange, and proportions. Rezoning it for the purposes emergent forms of local governance, of commodifying urban living without a we need new transdisciplinary approaches, serious public participation in the process, new types and bodies of urban and design and followed by the naturalized mass knowledge, new forms of collaborative displacements of low-income residents, practice, new mindsets, attitudes, and an for radically rethinking the workings commitment to singular solutions to any is an act of wicked proportions. At the entirely new, emerging ethics of design. of democracy ‘on the ground’. given urban challenge. Based in the notion very least, it asks for the revaluation of On the other hand, in order to understand of ‘wicked problems’ 4, it presupposes that the principles of representative democracy, the role design can play beyond its Through the work featured in the book, there are always multiple, equally plausible particularly at the regional and local level, professional applications, we ought design and designing emerge through some alternatives to all socio-spatial challenges, and above all for scrutinizing the role urban to explore expanded definitions, scopes canonical and many less expected forms. particularly in face of the impossibility citizens play in important decision-making and fields of design: the expanded field For example, in reframing the process and of long-term planning and the overall processes in the city. As the transition of design as a practice concerned with activity of designing, as a forethoughtful situation of ongoing crisis. Propositions from one mayor to the next took place, a realm much broader than that of material activity designing emerges as a vital for transformation, thus, must be situated, NYC Department of Planning released The forms and practices; a realm concerned, human capability rather than exclusively contextual, transitory, and vectorized Newest New Yorkers – 2013 Edition which in this case, with an urbanism that seeks a domain of practice and knowledge towards critical urban change. prompted wide media coverage reporting a fundamental reorganization of urban associated with professional designers.3 that more foreign-born legal immigrants socio-spatial systems and relations of Secondly, as opposed to the traditional Overall, in these and other manifestation “live in NYC than there are people in economic and political power. top-down and bottom-up approaches of design and designing, design is proposed Chicago” 1, some 3 million individuals, or to ‘solving’ urban problems, designing as a way of unearthing, discovering, 37 % of NYC residents. The largest groups The above outlined context and questions emerges as an essentially equitable, co-learning, collaborating, co-imagining, of these new urban citizens are from the have led to the forthcoming book human-centered, process-based, and and above all suggesting courses of critical Dominican Republic, followed by China titled Concurrent Urbanities: Designing middle-out collaborative activity aimed urban action. Design-led models of working and Mexico, and a great majority has Infrastructures of Inclusion (Routledge towards proposing alternative modes of and modes of acting provide clear insights immigrated since the 1990s. Two thirds live 2015). This edited volume contains engagement with urban challenges. Third, and offer unparalleled ways of discovering in Brooklyn and Queens, and along B, Q, N contribution by seventeen design design(ing) has emerged as instrumental configurative possibilities while proposing and 7 subway lines. In addition, a majority activists, urbanists, architects, artists, medium through which individuals and new models of being.5 has limited English language proficiency, anthropologists, leaders of non-profit and social groups engage in co-producing and makes between 35–70 % of the city’s non-governmental organizations, and civic alternative systems of governance; in that median family income. Similar figures and community activists. In the book, sense designing is both a core capability 1 “More foreign-born immigrants live in NYC than characterize the unprecedented influx of we explore designing as a critical socio- but also, when scaled-up, a strategic asset there are people in Chicago”, Huffington Post, 19 December 2013 immigrants across the United States, but spatial praxis as we discuss how design in the socio-spatial practices of groups, also the unparalleled degrees and modes has been employed as an agent of social communities, and organizations alike. 2 Holston, J. and Appadurai, A. (1996) Cities and of mobility of individuals and groups across and political change, and as catalyst Fourth, in many of the cases presented Citizenship, in: Public Culture, Duke University the globe. It would be fair to suggest for spatial and urban transformations in the book, design acts as a method of Press. that concepts of democracy, citizenship, in different geo-political contexts. scrutinizing the generalized notions of 3 Here, I refer to Herbert Simon’s canonical and participation have never been as We argue for the centrality of designing ‘citizenship’ and ‘participation’ in searching argument: “everyone designs who devises ambiguous as they are today. in the conceptualization, production, for greater degrees of specificity, new courses of action aimed at changing existing and representation of democratic and modes of accessibility in relation to situations into preferred ones.” See: Simon, H. A. (1969) The Sciences of the Artificial. MIT Press. As cities cut capital projects and participatory urban space. public resources, renewed rights to the P. 130. maintenance budgets, and as private city, models of political representation, investors lack available capital or The book presents a set of models of innovative ways of engaging with the social 4 Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973) “Dilemmas in a economic incentives to engage in public- design-driven urban practice that employs and economic conflict, and with the global General Theory of Planning.” In: Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. private partnerships in urban territories design to negotiate social inclusion and economic, cultural, and environmental that lack immediate commercial potential, participation in the production of everyday crisis alike. Fifth, design has emerged as 5 Dilnot, C. (2006) What are Architects For? cities are basically failing their most urbanism: from employing design to a connective nexus of learning, research, Scapes, Fall 2006. disadvantaged citizens in providing basic negotiate new social contracts in the work knowledge, pedagogy and action that urban services and public provisions. of Stalker and Stealth, to Teddy Cruz’s contains the potential to trigger an Equally important is the fact that design of new political and economic understanding and transformation of MIODRAG MITRASINOVIC is an architect, urbanist possibilities for public participation as processes, to designing new protocols the pressing issues of contemporary and author. He is an associate professor of well as for political and civic engagement for citizens’ interaction with public urbanization. As such, design addresses Urbanism and Architecture in The School of Design have been strictly minimized. As a result, institutions by DESIS and Cohabitation the creative, integrative and mediating Strategies, at Parsons The New School for Design. Miodrag’s research focuses on both generative forms of local governance, communal Strategies, and to designing new models capacity of creative human action that capacity and infrastructural dimensions of micro-economies, movements for socio- of urban education and pedagogy by the can unearth new urban knowledge, new public space, specifically at the intersections spatial justice and the ‘right to the city,’ Center for Urban Pedagogy and Hester methods of urban research, and engage of public policy, urban and public design, and processes of privatization of public resources. self-organized micro urban enclaves, Street Collaborative. For it is in the space broader audiences and participants to He is the author of Total Landscape, Theme Parks, and informal human and material of the everyday, as Holston and Appadurai establish new ways of learning about cities, Public Space (Ashgate 2006), co-editor of Travel, infrastructures have emerged. It is in the argued 2, where frequently marginalized, citizenship, and processes of urbanization. Space, Architecture (Ashgate 2009) and editor of Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures interstitial spaces between the old forms tactically-minded urban citizens interact Sixth, the application of design-led models of Inclusion (Routledge, forthcoming). His first two of governance that are increasingly failing, and often collide with the institutions of of urban education and urban pedagogy books received Graham Foundation Grants in 2004 and emergent forms of organizational state and corporate power. Conducive to has led to the capacity building through and 2006 respectively. He has served in a variety of scholarly, professional and editorial roles, and communal self-management, where democratic action, such spaces present design, to rethinking of the modes of and his professional and scholarly work has been designers and urban activists today labor opportunities for reconfiguring design- engagement with public institutions, published internationally. to introduce or boost democratic processes driven urban practice beyond traditional as well as scrutinizing the political by co-designing broad participatory interventions manifested by the design protocols of inclusion of urban citizens processes, bottom-up organizational of physical objects and public amenities, in the processes of urbanization. Finally, approaches, networking strategies, to the design of new social protocols, design-led urban transformation challenge and new innovative edifice ideas. processes, infrastructures and capabilities conventional approaches based in the DESIGN HUMANISM ?

How can we interpret the needs of diverse social groups and design material spaces and artifacts that are viable and emancipative? Can design help us create new and richer tools for strengthening citizenship and advancing human rights and responsibilities? [ How ] can climate change-related emergencies serve as new sites of interaction between the two? These were the questions adressed by the third and final conference panel. MAKING

He questions traditional ideas of retirement of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as the conventional path of aging PS1. Wendy was most certainly loud and within the immediate family or all alone most certainly a conversation starter. until one can no longer take care of But it also actively did something to oneself. In place of that, Hollwich envisions reduce carbon emissions. Composed of communities in which the aging can live a nylon fabric treated with a space age with meaning, dignity, and productivity until nanoparticle spray, it cleaned the air the end oftheir lives. in Queens to an equivalent of taking Sebastian Moll 260 cars off the road. DO HWKN has translated his ideas about aging into plans for LGBT communities in Palm A more speculative and even more eco- Springs and Spain that he calls BOOM. activist project is a design for Skygroves, Hollwich thinks that because conventional skyscrapers for coastal zones modeled family structures are often not available to on mangroves. They are specifically members of the LGBT community, they have designed to function in a world in which been much more creative and progressive in the consequences of climate change have The building in the southern part of Midtown To elaborate, he steps to one of the forming alternative ways of living together become an everyday reality. They provide Manhattan is hardly the kind of place renderings on his wall, an image of an and supporting each other. For that reason, housing and protection in an age where where you would expect to find a young affordable housing complex in New Jersey LGBT communities for the aging can serve rising sea levels and extreme weather architecture firm on the cutting edge of the that is scheduled to open later this year. as models of living according to Hollwich’s have become the norm. trade. The walls in the narrow staircase of To keep the building economical, it needed revised concept of age. the rundown two-story commercial building to be massive in scale, an enormous Projects like these are meant primarily as are grimy; the hardwood floors of the two ten-story cube. In order to break up this The architecture of BOOM, like many of conversation starters, Hollwich does not loft spaces haven’t been refinished in years, imposing volume, Hollwich fragmented HWKN’s designs, is loud, or, as Hollwich pretend that he can singlehandedly delay if not decades. The windows overlooking the façade into asymmetrical patterns describes it “supercharged”. The shapes climate change. Fifth Avenue and 30th Street are milky of concrete and glass. and dimensions are unusual and iconic. “But maybe someone will look at it and and porous, hardly the stuff of the future They draw attention to themselves – an decide to make his suburban home in of socially and ecologically responsible It’s the exact opposite of the dreary effect clearly intended by Hollwich and New Jersey energy efficient”, he says. architecture. exteriors of low income housing of the Kushner. The partners don’t just want to The design strategies of Hollwich and 1960s and 1970s, which, contrary to the provide a new and improved environment. Kuschner aim for these kinds of small “Yes it sometimes breaks my German heart vision of its planners, has often yielded They want to raise awareness. victories. how much CO2 we put out”, sighs Matthias disastrous living conditions. And the “We want people to become curious about “It might not be enough”, Hollwich says, Hollwich, one of the two partners of HWKN. unorthodoxy continues on the inside. what we do and start a thought process “for all I know, it’s too late for small steps But until the up-and-coming firm moves about the issues we are trying to address”, altogether, when it comes to climate into its new space in lower Manhattan, the “People used to try to create efficiencies says Hollwich. change.” old building, which is slated for demolition, in architecture”, Hollwich says. “We are serves the needs of the rapidly growing trying to create inefficiencies. We want You might call it a “shock and awe” But it sure beats the grand ambitions of company well. Around 40 people have their people to have to go out of their way so approach to architecture and design. high modernism to change everything that work stations on the two floors, half of that opportunities for interaction arise.” The more the HWKN partners care ended up changing almost nothing. them designers and architects, half of them For Hollwich, architecture is always about about an issue, the more forcefully they employees of Architizer, the successful the people and not about the building. attack it. When it comes to bringing social network for architects that Hollwich He would never become an architect who attention to climate change as well as and Kushner launched in 2009. develops a recognizable style that he then offering local solutions, Hollwich / Kushner HWKN has clearly outgrown this space, yet reproduces over and over again, regardless become downright outrageous. in a certain sense, the firm’s current home of use and context. His structures range Their most prominent built structure in meshes well with the architectural vision from a 9 × 9 foot green rooftop mound, that vein was Wendy, an oversized, blue, Written by Weltstadt Correspondent of Hollwich and his partner Marc Kushner. an installation in New York designed to asteroid-like object that they landed in SEBASTIAN MOLL draw attention to the ecological impact the courtyard of the contemporary branch “Radical visions of transforming entire of architecture, to an 1800-unit high rise urban landscapes have mostly failed in apartment complex in New Jersey. None the past”, Matthias Hollwich says, as he of the structures resemble each other makes himself comfortable in front of a and Hollwich is very proud of that. wall of renderings of his current projects. “The grand modernist visions have all but When it comes to improving lives, disappeared in the drawers of architectural Hollwich, who teaches at the University “We are after the same goals history. That’s why I think it’s much more of Pennsylvania when he is not running important to improve upon what exists, his office on 30th Street, is particularly of improving people’s lives and rather than re-invent everything.” passionate about one demographic: the Making do, so to speak, is firmly rooted elderly. Hollwich views the United States’ in HWKN’s DNA. Not that Matthias Hollwich, treatment of people who are no longer enabling meaningful social the 42 year-old veteran of such renowned self-sufficient as a kind of warehousing firms as Rem Koolhaas’s OMA and Diller, that verges on a human rights violation. connection as architects and Scoffidio Renfro, is anti-modernity, with “It is simply inhumane”, he says. it’s grand utopian ideas. The way Hollwich has tackled the issue of urban planners were in the Quite to the contrary: aging very much exemplifies the way HWKN “We are after the same goals of improving operates. Hollwich embarked on a thorough 1960s, we are just trying to learn people’s lives and enabling meaningful sociological exploration of aging in our social connection as architects and urban time and has published a book about it. planners were in the 1960s”, he says. “We In the book, he develops the concept of from their mistakes.” are just trying to learn from their mistakes.” “re-aging”, the, as he sees it, necessary re-thinking of what aging should mean. — Matthias Hollwich Guests watch The Domino Effect at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building © Goethe-Institut New York THE

The Domino Sugar Factory has become and insurance companies under the somewhat of a monument for New Yorkers. leadership of David Rockefeller, joined DOMINO Widely visible from the East River waterfront forces with the Katan Group and bought the and the Williamsburg Bridge, the the former property for 55 million dollars shortly after refinerary is a lonely reminant of Brooklyn’s the mayor’s office announced the rezoning of industrial past. Perched between newly the area. The plans to build luxury waterfront landscaped waterfront parks and modern housing had clearly been made in advance. residential highrises, the structure feels like the sole survivor of a bygone era. For the next five years, the CPC underwent the mandatory public review process for For longtime residents of Williamsburg, the project, trying to gain public support for EFFECT however, the building is also a symbol for their enterprise. The documentary film The Another promise from the developers was like Brian Paul, Megan Sperry and Daniel the long and arduous battle that they have Domino Effect, which opened their Goethe- that of job creation. The commercial office Phelps, often funded by private money or been engaged in for more than ten years. Institut New York’s Cities and Citizenship space made available in the new complex by crowdfunding. However their reach and It is the battle for their neighborhood, project, follows this process and exposed however will most certainly not attract opportunities for distribution have been one of the most rapidly gentrifying areas the charade that it truly was. industrial workers but the new Williamsburg limited. of New York City with a dizzying rate of demographic of young people in the tech displacement. The filmmakers convincingly showed that and new media sector. Moreover, it is highly New York City’s new mayor Bill de Blasio all decisions had been made before the likely that the remaining manufacturing has promised to slow gentrification and When the Domino Sugar Factory closed in public review process even started. jobs in the neighborhood will disappear. provide affordable housing in all areas of 2004, Williamsburg had already become Agreements were worked out in advance the city. However filmmakers Sperry and a destination for artists and creative between the developer and local politicians Thankfully, for the time being, all these Phelps are skeptical whether there is a professionals fleeing the rising rents and organizations, the testimonies delivered plans are on hold. In 2012 CPC had to true political will to stop or even reverse in downtown Manhattan. Yet the working at public hearings and in community sell the property because it was nearly the process that has been termed “hyper class neighborhood previously sustained board meetings came from the same paid bankrupt from other failed real estate gentrification” and that has befallen by industrial jobs remained relatively intact. supporters every time. Despite the action investments. It sold the Domino plant for virtually all of New York City. As filmmaker There was still an abundance of low-income of community advocacy groups, the 180 million dollars to a developer named Megan Sperry says: “We will continue to housing as well as manufacturing jobs. citizens of Williamsburg were rendered Two Trees. The profits helped to protect see the effects of the Bloomberg era for Today both are in short supply. The number utterly powerless in the process. CPC from bankruptcy. many years to come.” of industrial jobs has decreased by almost 75 percent, an apartment of any size Moreover, the promises made to the citizens Now the negotiations begin anew. With a This article does not include the developments of for less than 2000 dollars per month has to appease them turned out to be largely new developer and a new mayor there is early 2014. become nearly impossible to find. false claims. In exchange for over 100 some hope that the revised plans will serve million dollars in federal subsidies, the the existing community better than the In 2005, parts of Williamsburg and developers promised 660 units of so-called CPC plans. But it is also clear that with an Weltstadt Correspondent SEBASTIAN MOLL Greenpoint were rezoned, removing affordable housing. However only 100 of investment of 180 million dollars Two Trees attended the screening of the documentary “The Domino Effect” (2012). The directors are industrial protections, and opening the those units were actually affordable for is expecting a sizeable return. BRIAN PAUL, MEGAN SPERRY and DANIEL PHELPS. area up to high-end residential development. the people that live in the vicinity of the The Williamsburg example is a perfect case The Bloomberg administration re-imagined plant, many of them families of former study for the way top-down urban planning Williamsburg as a community for a young workers. Their income ranges from 19 to has worked in New York over the past 15 wealthy clientele working in technology, 29,000 dollars per year, most of the so years. The way politics and developers have new media and other creative industry jobs. called affordable units however were slated pursued their visions while circumventing for households earning 48,000 dollars per citizen participation in Williamsburg follows Domino Sugar stands on the East River year or more. In calculating affordability, a playbook that has been applied all over waterfront, positioned directly in the path the city uses income data that includes the the city: The Atlantic Yards in downtown of the Williamsburg redevelopment plans. wealthy suburbs. Hence the numbers rarely Brooklyn, in Harlem and on the Lower East A subsidiary of the Community Preservation accurately portray the true needs of inner Side. All of these developments have been Corperation (CPC), a consortium of banks city communities. documented by independent filmmakers

Audience members watch one of The Domino Filmmakers Brian Paul, Megan Sperry, and Daniel Audience members watching The Domino Effect The Domino Effect supplemental materials, Effect's archival footage scenes Phelps in conversation at the Goethe-Institut © Goethe-Institut New York available for audience members curious about © Goethe-Institut New York Wyoming Building © Goethe-Institut New York zoning, affordable housing, and land use policy in New York © Goethe-Institut New York R8 THE ACTIVIST DESIGNERS THE POINT OF DEPARTURE FOR R8 ARE SOME HARD community facilities to all residential The Team R8 around Jonathan Kirschenfeld, Karen Kubey, Nancy Owens, DEMOGRAPHIC FACTS. 33 PERCENT OF TODAY’S construction. This would make a whole new Susanne Schindler, Brian Schulman and Erin Shnier can be seen as a good NEW YORKERS ARE SINGLE, 24 PERCENT SHARE range of housing options possible. The unit HOUSING UNITS WITH OTHER ADULTS. 9 PERCENT ARE size could be reduced, no parking space example of “activist desginers” or “applied sociologists”. In their work, SINGLE PARENTS AND ONLY 17 PERCENT ARE THE would need to be made available, amenities Team R8 put their design and architecture expertise entirely to use to find TRADITIONAL NUCLEAR FAMILY. YET THE HOUSING could be shared and the required courtyard STOCK AND MANY OF THE REGULATIONS THAT space could be reduced. creative solutions for New York City’s pressing affordable housing crisis. GOVERN RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION STILL HAVE THE NUCLEAR FAMILY AS IT’S TARGET. THE RESULT Of course Team R8 has concrete design IS A TREMENDOUS SHORTAGE OF HOUSING FOR THE proposals in place for the scenario in ACTUAL POPULATION OF TODAY’S NEW YORK, WHERE which the Supportive Housing regulations THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY IS A MINORITY. would be extended to a variety of sites, particularly to neighborhoods zoned as Small units that were available at low “R8” – meaning areas with midrise, dense cost 30 years ago have been replaced by apartment buildings. luxury development and the city’s growing hunger for hotel space to accommodate The designs would provide a whole new international tourists. range of affordable housing options to New Yorkers, at rates between 450 and At the same time, a large underground 750 dollars per month. There would be market has developed. Basement and large shared apartments with flexible attic spaces are rented out as apartments, space, that could be inhabited by several two- to three bedroom apartments are families, there would be small individual shared by four or more unrelated adults, units with shared amenities, as well as which, technically, is illegal. loft-type spaces that are inhabited by In order to tackle this problem, the Team a number of single individuals. R8 has sought loopholes in residential building regulations and codes. And they Key to these designs is the willingness to have found them. share spaces and amenities as well as the philosophy that in New York, the city itself, The New York City zoning code allows for is a living room, a communal space shared so-called micro-units complemented by by all at all times. That, of course, is merely shared amenities only under Use Group III, the acknowledgement of an existing reality or “Community Facilities”. This includes and it’s incorporation into design and policy. dormitories, convents, and supportive As such it aligns well with R8’s overall housing, or long-term assisted living for strategy. To stop building for the imaginary special-needs populations. The regulatory nuclear family and start providing for an framework is more flexible than Use Group existing and underserved population is a II (residential housing), for instance by mark of true design activism. not requiring parking and allowing for smaller courtyard dimensions, which can substantially lower cost and make irregular and small parcels buildable. Written by Weltstadt Correspondent Now Team R8 has proposed to extend the SEBASTIAN MOLL applicability of these regulations from

Key to their designs is the willingness to share spaces and amenities as well as the

Three examples of recent supportive housing projects by architect philosophy that in New York, Jonathan Kirschenfeld in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. These irregular infill sites could only be developed thanks to the more flexible dimensional requirements of Use Group III. © Team R8 the city itself, is a living room, a communal space shared by all at all times. THE CITY AS A LIVING ROOM Team R8 (Jonathan Kirschenfeld, Karen Kubey, Nancy Owens, Susanne Schindler, Brian Schulman, Erin Shnier, and Margaret Tobin)

TEAM R8 IS A COLLABORATIVE OF PROFESSIONALS urban space allowing for passive and WITH EXPERTISE IN ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE, active recreation. We selected the Grand URBAN DESIGN, RESEARCH, AND REAL-ESTATE Concourse for its R8 zoning, which allows DEVELOPMENT. WE RESPONDED TO THE CHALLENGE for the densest mid-rise housing in New OF EXPANDING HOUSING OPTIONS FOR NEW YORKERS York City, ideal to test our hypotheses ON THE BASIS OF TWO PREMISES: regarding current housing needs.

First, whatever the size and make-up of We designed three housing types that range a household, in New York the city is your from very small, live-work spaces (the SRO living room. New Yorkers can live in small Redux), to independent Micro Units (the spaces because the city beyond has so Studio Mix), to very large, reconfigurable much to offer. The design task does not end apartments (the Flux) that vary in their at the unit’s front door, and the unit cannot relative degrees of private, shared, and be designed without considering the shared public spaces. and the public realms beyond, both on the interior and on the exterior of the building. Whether the upgrading of the Grand Concourse and other comparable New York Second, we don’t need to reinvent the infrastructure needs to come first, or private SRO Redux, Typical upper floor plan for a site on the Grand wheel when it comes to regulatory reform. developers will take the lead: the City Concourse in the Bronx. © Team R8 Architect team-member Jonathan as Living Room enables single and shared Kirschenfeld’s experience in supportive housing for all. housing reveals that the zoning regulations governing “community facilities” THE SRO REDUX provides minimal, live- (which includes this form of special-needs work units for singles. In contrast to the While this studio design is far from housing) is well-thought out and intelligent: Single Room Occupancy (SRO) building of revolutionary, its 275-square feet – smaller TEAM R8: certain minimum dimensions, such as the past, the SRO Redux adds extensive than the 400-square-foot minimum currently JONATHAN KIRSCHENFELD is principal of Jonathan those governing courtyards, are less shared amenities to its small, 150-square- required by residential construction in most Kirschenfeld Architect PC and the founder of the restrictive than in conventional residential foot units. Two units share a bathroom areas of the city – makes it a micro-unit Institute for Public Architecture. construction, allowing for the development accessed from a semi-private work area. ahead of its time. KAREN KUBEY is an architectural designer and of difficult infill sites; there is no minimum This work area, screened from the sleeping educator and executive director of the Institute unit size; and there are no requirements area, opens onto a wide, day-lit, and THE FLUX is a large, flexible apartment for Public Architecture. for providing parking. naturally ventilated corridor featuring a building that can be easily adapted to the NANCY OWENS is principal of Nancy Owens Studio long, continuous counter that can be used changing needs of a household of friends LLC, a firm specializing in landscape architecture We therefore propose to extend these by all for working, eating, or gathering. or multiple generations of a family. Each and urban design. existing regulatory advantages, which can Each kitchen, part of this multi-use corridor, apartment features connectable rooms SUSANNE SCHINDLER is an architect and writer significantly lower the cost of construction serves six units. of similar sizes, which are suitable for affiliated with Parsons The New School and and increase design opportunities, to living, sleeping, or working. Spaces also Columbia University’s Buell Center. all residential construction, making the THE STUDIO MIX apartment building can easily be separated to create an BRIAN SCHULMAN is an architectural designer pleasures of single and shared living combines densely packed, self-sufficient independent office, rental apartment, and photographer based in Brooklyn. available to all New Yorkers. units for singles or couples with an array or accessory dwelling unit (for a nanny ERIN SHNIER is an architectural designer based of shared spaces. Each studio provides or in-law). Apartments range from eight in New York. Our proposal for underused sites along a full kitchen and bathroom that are ADA to twelve rooms, or a total of 1,700 to the Grand Concourse in the Bronx thus accessible. Two rows of apartments line 2,300 square feet. comprises a major redesign of the a central corridor, with shared amenities thoroughfare from its current eleven located on the building’s ground floor, lanes to a pedestrian-friendly greened courtyard, and roof levels.

The Flux, a large subdividable unit for households that wish to live SRO Redux, model view. The daylit corridor becomes space for together, with seven or more generous rooms that can be interconnected maximum social interaction and work, while the individual units are or separated. © Team R8 staggered to provide semi-private and private space. © Team R8 WELTSTADT EXCURSUS: ENVIRONMENT AND CITIZENSHIP IN ULAN BATOR GER SETTLEMENTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES IN ULAANBAATAR

Mongolia has one of the lowest population of the total water supply is consumed in the closer to the city centre can be integrated for an open debate to find an inclusive and density of any country worldwide with an ger settlements i.e. 8 – 10 liters day / person, into the urban fabric, densifying the lots creative solution for one of the most unique area of 1,564,116 square kilometers and while the average water consumption of in height, while the outer ring would urbanization challenges in Mongolia and a population of 2,800,000. More than apartment residents is about 285 liters per continue to be a suburban periphery, beyond. 1.3 million people live in the country’s day), with other related issues, such as where the priorities lie on the provision of capital Ulaanbaatar while approximately ground water pollution. infrastructure, accessibility and services. 1 million Mongolians still populate the One of the key challenges is to effectively The text was written by the NOMAD CITY team. The country’s wide prairies living as nomads But the environmental impact of water combine top down state investment with the project explores the potentials for improvement of a peri-central Ger settlement in the district of Yarmag or semi-nomads. The balance between management is surpassed by the immense survival techniques and local expertise of in Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator. The project was a urban and nomadic populations is expected air pollution problems caused, among other, the ger dwellers themselves. It remains an collaboration between TU Berlin (Philipp Misselwitz, Renato D’Alencon and architecture students) to dramatically change in the future by the ger settlements whose dwellers use open question if the traditional ger remains and MUST, Mongolian University for Science and with more and more Mongolians migrating inefficient wood coal ovens to heat their a significant form of dwelling, beyond Technology (Olivia Kummel, Purev-Erdene Ershuu, into the capital. homes. Tires, plastics or other burnable folklore or tourist attraction. Amgalan Sukhbaatar, Oelun Altangerel This migration translates to a rapid growth garbage often serve as substitute for scarce and architecture students). of UB (4 % yearly growth rate), which takes and expensive wood or coal. Ulaanbaatar The Nomad City project was conceived place mostly in the peripheral areas of is also flooded of cars, buses and taxicabs. in recognition of the urgency to develop the city, leading to a highly unique urban Even if public transport is widely used, an understanding of the internal patterns pattern: the ger settlements (Mongolian: the road network is insufficient and there of social-spatial organization within гэр хороолол, ger khoroolol; English: is simply not enough space. By 2030 the the ger settlements as well as the lack yurt settlements) – an accumulation of city is expected to have half a million of appropriate strategic policy, urban informally claimed parcels, surrounded cars. Improving the network and streets management and urban design responses. by high wooden fences and housing one is necessary and important now. As a Nomad City is committed to the belief that or more gers (yurts) or detached houses. result, Ulaanbaatar now struggles with air this lack can only be addressed through About 63 % of the city’s inhabitants are pollution, with an average concentration the mobilization of ger residents and their living in ger settlements. However, only of particulated material (PM10) four times involvement as key stakeholders of a a 43 % of the ger settlement dwellers higher than the EU and developing countries multi-disciplinary discussion and planning still live in traditional gers, and most standard and 14 times higher than the process. This process should bring together prefer consolidated dwellings built with World Health Organization guideline value. both grass roots organizations as well as conventional materials. During the winter months, AMHIB data relevant organizations on the municipal shows daily average concentrations peaks and national level. The project has After further acceleration of informal ger reaching 1,000 μg / m3, an amount which adopted Yarmag settlement in South–West settlement growth since democratization seriously impacts public health. Ulaanbaatar as a pilot site. Architecture in the early 1990s, the number of ger and urban design students from Mongolia settlements continued to grow. Coupled In recent years, the state has ceased to and Germany, as well as academics with this demographic pressure is ignore the presence of the ger settlements and experts from both countries have a growing infrastructural problem due and begun to plan towards systematic cooperated and will continue to cooperate to the slow improvement of technical infrastructural improvement. Following the with local community representatives and networks, which can not keep up with lines of international recommendations, the community at large to develop and test the changes in the population patterns. such as those of the World Bank, the new a new approach towards community-driven Infrastructural problems remain major Master Plan for Ulaanbaatar proposes a neighborhood development. It is our aim issues in Ulaanbaatar (only two percent strategy for the ger settlements. Those that Nomad City will provide an impetus

Ger Settlements and Power plants in Ulaanbaatar © Renato D’Alençon Air pollution in Yarmag, Ulaanbaatar © Matthias Burke WELTSTADT EXCURSUS: ENVIRONMENT AND CITIZENSHIP IN DAKAR THE CITY AND THE

The relationship between the city and the been recognized as the triggering event. countryside is taking an important position The consequence was the loss of in the global development strategies of arable land together with an advancing African nations since gaining independence, desertification and intensification of the COUNTRYSIDE in particular for the countries of sub- agricultural crisis accompanied by the Saharan Africa. In the process, over the question of available water reserves. course of recent decades, the city has Efficient solutions for building reservoir gained in significance in ways that must not dams in the Senegal River were lacking, be underestimated, especially with respect and policy-makers attempted to find to the availability of (precarious) labor and regional solutions, no longer limited to — DAKAR the development of new occupational fields, national territory, through cooperation which on the one hand are anchored in with the Organisation for the Development modernity, and interface with the informal of the Senegal River. sector on the other. These measures did not produce the The developmental history of African cities desired results. At the same time, a loss consideration in various disciplines, for Solutions demand a rethinking, a change prior to the era of colonialism until the of purchasing power by the rural population instance in geography, the environmental in mentality on the part of those who are post-colonial period is rich in lessons both occurred, not only stemming from a sciences, sociology, but also in civil already there and therefore must receive with respect to the hybrid character of the prolonged worsening of real exchange society organizations with the demand and integrate the newcomers, and also on cities as well as with respect to their lack relations. Prolonged rainy periods resulting to transfer competences to rural regions, the part of those who have just arrived. of adaptability to new realities in the period from climatic changes aggravated the municipalities and communities. This is They demand a new feeling of citizenship, following independence. Post-colonial situation, leading to flooding in medium- finding an echo in legislation. of belonging and responsibility towards urbanization did not take place in stages. sized cities. These cities were still the social and natural environment. Instead, a cityscape was preserved and connected with their rural hinterlands, and The Last Village by the Goethe-Institut Here, cultural initiatives play an important continued that was not adapted to clearly did not succeed in fulfilling their role as first Senegal, is a significant project in the intermediary role in the creation of a culture identified needs. The city was and remains point of attraction for urban contact. This context of these developments and of defending and upgrading of a space a place of commerce, financial exchange can be observed in the former region of Sine questions. It functions as a point of that from now on is structured around two and cash flow, later a place for services, Saloum, and there above all in the cities departure and enables the observation clear-cut and identifiable poles. in the name of a modernization that of Diourbel and Kaolack. The local peanut of individual elements of sustainable nonetheless remained ungoverned. In most growing area has suffered measurably development that are involved in the The title The Last Village can therefore be African countries, this phenomenon has and the expansion of a railway line that approaches to mastering the complex read as a call for greater attentiveness to led to a rapid and uncontrolled urbanization could have facilitated trade and exchange crises affecting many African countries. the countryside, to the traditional terrain that has increased from 10 % to 35 % in foundered. It can also be observed in the The project investigates important and the functions bound up with it until the last 40 years. north, where the city of Saint-Louis is now consequences of development: new forms now: bearer of a collective memory, cultural only a stopover on the way to the northern of sociability in an unknown cultural, traditions and secular values. They are In 2015, 60 % of the inhabitants of West sub-region, as well as in the Casamance, economic and social environment. undergoing change, are being threatened, Africa will be living in cities. In this where the situation of armed conflict is The significance of religion as a system by powerful internal demographic process, migration is both trigger and bringing environmental catastrophes in its of representation and as place of refuge. movements in which the capacity for consequence at the same time. It functions wake as the rice fields are being neglected New forms of communication through adaptation to new milieus, to the new city, as a compensation system between two in favor of cultivars that are more profitable cultural and political initiatives such as has not yet manifested itself. The project economically unequal milieus and raises and more adapted to the context (cultivation social or citizen-powered movements, has the aim of building cultural bridges the question of the interaction of the city of cannabis and Indian hemp). solidarity-based assistance, and also between an environment with which people and the countryside. It is constructing groups from the areas of hip hop and rap. have not yet completely broken and the new identities and hybrid territorialities, The classic dividing line between city and Here, the suburbs of Dakar serve as an new milieu. This phenomenon is of the half urban, half rural, social spaces and countryside with their respective functions interesting example since their emergence. greatest interest to artists, economic and systems that are difficult for economists, is gradually dissolving; while at the same Although a reservoir of industrial labor political decision-makers and civil society sociologists and urbanists to interpret. time new functions are emerging that power at first, today they are the point organizations. It is a productive research field only when elude formal depiction. At first, the rural of arrival for migrants. The suburbs are taken together in interdisciplinary studies. area experienced an upgrading through gradually being gentrified in various areas, the regular delivery of basic goods, but this at the same time the influx of new residents MAGUÈYE KASSÉ is Professor for German studies The phenomenon of increased migration relationship changed increasingly through is leading to frustration and problems: at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop and director of the Senegalese Association for the promotion of appeared in Senegal in the late 1970’s in the migration from the countryside. a lack of access to basic social services, alternative development paths (ASPAD). In 2008 he course of an extended period of drought that At the same time, the rural-urban migration to health and educational facilities, curated the Dakar Biennale. affected all Sahel-zone countries and above leads to new social networks, both within of satisfactory living conditions, a lack all the rural regions. Although climatic the city as in relation to the countryside. of understanding of environmental issues, conditions were not viewed at that time as This relationship is being investigated in difficulties in adaptation, and finally the the cause of rural-urban flight, today it has numerous studies and is being taken into emergence of an urban rurality.

Rural Senegal © Eva Regnier A village in Senegal © Angelika Fitz Cities and Citizenship posters in the window of the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building © Goethe-Institut New York

CREDITS

Weltstadt Editors: Matthias Böttger, Angelika Fitz, Cities and Citizenship Tim Rieniets (until 2013) A project by the Goethe-Institut New York Editors for this issue: Leona Lynen, Project direction: Wenzel Bilger, Alissa Burmeister, Ioanna Theocharopolou and Ioanna Theocharopoulou Weltstadt Project Manager: Andrea Zell Co-curators: Peder Anker, Alissa Burmeister, (Goethe-Institut), Michael Marten (BMUB) Louise Harpman, Mitchell Joachim, Ioanna Theocharopoulou Graphic Design: Studio Matthias Görlich (Jan Aulbach, Matthias Görlich, Charalampos Lazos) Partners: Global Design NYU, the Gallatin School, Copy Editing: Leona Lynen New York University and Parsons the New School for Design Printing: Brandenburgische Universitätsdruckerei und Verlagsgesellschaft Potsdam mbH Special thanks to: Maria Aiolova, Peder Anker, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Susannah Drake, Stephen Duncombe, Avery Gray, Louise Harpman, Matthias V.i.S.d.D.P. Dr. Christoph Bartmann, Goethe-Institut Hollwich, Colin Jerolmack, Mitchell Joachim, New York Andreas Kalyvas, Maguèye Kassé, Eric Klinenberg, Copyright: The layout, graphics and other contents Carly Kracow, Jake Madoff, Victoria Marshall, of this publication are protected by copyright law. Brian McGrath, Miodrag Mitrasinovic, Mariana All rights reserved. Mogilevich, Brian Paul, Daniel Phelps, Sebastian Moll, Vyjayanthi Rao, Eric Sanderson, Susanne 1st edition, 2014 Schindler, Megan Sperry, Ioanna Theocharopoulou, Mark Torrey, Tyler Volk, Lynnette Widder, Center for Urban Pedagogy, Interboro Partners and Team Nomad City

THE PROJECT WELTSTADT – WHO CREATES THE CITY? IS A JOINT Partner: Media partner: INITIATIVE OF THE GOETHE-INSTITUT AND THE GERMAN FEDERAL MINISTRY FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, NATURE CONSERVATION, BUILDING AND NUCLEAR SAFETY (BMUB). CURATED BY MATTHIAS BÖTTGER, ANGELIKA FITZ AND UNTIL 2013 TIM RIENIETS. WWW.GOETHE.DE / WELTSTADT