THE PURSUIT of LEGIBLE POLICY: Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems of the Contemporary Megalopolis
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GREY CITIES, GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE THE PURSUIT OF LEGIBLE POLICY: Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems of the Contemporary Megalopolis Newton Fund British Council CONACYT IIMAS - UNAM Laboratorio para la Ciudad Future Cities Catapult Superflux Royal College of Art Unidad de Protocolos Buró–Buró GREY CITIES, GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE THE PURSUIT OF LEGIBLE POLICY: Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems of the Contemporary Megalopolis Newton Fund British Council CONACYT IIMAS - UNAM Laboratorio para la Ciudad Future Cities Catapult Superflux Royal College of Art Unidad de Protocolos Buró–Buró The digital publication The Pursuit of Legible Policy: Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems of the Contemporary Megalopolis was conceived with the support of the Newton Fund and is product of the collaboration between the following institutions: The British Council, The Newton Fund, CONACYT, IIMAS - UNAM, Laboratorio para la Ciudad, Future Cities Catapult, Royal College of Art and Superflux. First edition, 2016 Editor Lacey Pipkin Designer Diego Aguirre Fernández Illustrations Juanjo Güitrón Editorial Coordinator Jorge Munguía Matute This electronic publication is for free distribution in its digi- tal presentation. Any printed version of this publication is not recognised by the publisher and is not registered under this ISBN. Digital ISBN of future publication: 978-607-96255-5-9 ©2016 by Buró Buró Oficina de proyectos culturales, S.C.; and the authors, illustrators and photographers. Published by: Buró Buró Oficina de proyectos culturales, S.C. Jalapa 27, Colonia Roma Mexico City, Mexico 06700 buroburo.org Mexico GREY CITIES, GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE THE PURSUIT OF LEGIBLE POLICY: Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems of the Contemporary Megalopolis Iván Abreu | Jon Ardern | Roberto Ascencio | Sofía Bosch | Jorge Camacho | Sergio R. Coria | Laura Ferrarello | Gyorgyi Galik | Carlos Gershenson | Gabriella Gómez-Mont | Begoña Irazabal | Anab Jain | Vytautas Jankauskas | Pablo Kobayashi | John Lynch | Dan Lockton | Leticia Lozano | Isaac Serrano | Rodrigo Téllez and Anastasia Vikhornova Newton Fund | British Council | CONACYT | IIMAS - UNAM | Laboratorio para la Ciudad | Future Cities Catapult | Superflux | Royal College of the Art | Unidad de Protocolos Buró—Buró The Pursuit of Legible Policy Agency and Participation in the Complex Systems of the Contemporary Megalopolis Introduction Prototyping the City 10 by Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Laboratorio para la Ciudad Project Presentation 12 The City as a Product of its Citizens 15 Perspectives 19 Institutional Actors 23 Individual Actors 28 The Urban Context of Mexico City, London and Global Megacities 35 Photo Essay of the Binational Collaboration 38 Creating a Case for Legibility 43 Legible Policy in the Participatory City 45 by John Lynch, Future Cities Catapult Designing Agency in the City 53 by Dan Lockton, Royal College of Art Citizen Engagement In and Beyond ‘Smart Cities’ 63 by Gyorgyi Galik, Future Cities Catapult/Royal College of Art The Ecology of Public Spaces 73 by Laura Ferrarello, Royal College of Art Dimensioning Legibility 81 Political Imagination: Towards an Experimental Theory of Legible Policy 83 by Gabriella Gómez-Mont, Laboratorio para la Ciudad Design’s Role in Policymaking 89 by Sofía Bosch, Laboratorio para la Ciudad Encouraging (and Inciting) Participation in the Architecture of the Public Space 95 by Leticia Lozano, Laboratorio para la Ciudad An Approach to a Museum City 101 by Begoña Irazabal, Laboratorio para la Ciudad Practicing Legibility 105 Shifting the Balance—Design for Equitable Cities 107 by Anab Jain, Vytautas Jankauskas and Jon Ardern, Superflux A Case from Mexico City: Laboratorio para la Ciudad’s Mapatón CDMX 121 by Rodrigo Téllez, Laboratorio para la Ciudad Hacks and Probes 125 The Value of Disruption 137 by Iván Abreu, Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión Applying Legibility Within the City’s Complex Systems: Mobility in Mexico City Systemic Design and Writable Policy 141 by Jorge Camacho, Machina Speculatrix Improving Urban Mobility by Understanding its Complexity 149 by Carlos Gershenson, IIMAS - UNAM Open Data on Road Traffic Incidents in Mexico City: 153 Current Situation and Perspectives by Sergio R. Coria, Laboratorio para la Ciudad Mapping Initiatives and Spatial Analysis 167 by Isaac Serrano, Laboratorio para la Ciudad The Democratic Dilemma: The Incentives for Long-Term Policy 173 By Roberto Ascencio, Laboratorio para la Ciudad A Blinking Pixel 177 by Pablo Kobayashi, Unidad de Protocolos A Point of Comparison: Mobility in London 181 by Gyorgyi Galik and Anastasia Vikhornova, Future Cities Catapult Epilogue 185 Collaboration Graphics 186 Tools for Legible Policy 189 A Glossary of Legible Policy 194 7 References 211 8 PROTOTYPING THE CITY BY GABRIELLA GÓMEZ-MONT, LABORATORIO PARA LA CIUDAD Our future is urban. As has been said over and over again, more than half of huma- nity is now living in cities, and by 2050 the number will jump to an astounding 70%. In this context, discovering different answers to the fundamental question of “What is a city is for?” poses an interesting challenge. We are long past the days where we thought a city’s purpose was to be as practical and efficient as possible, zipping us in cars from point A to B, from one bubble to the next. We have come to realize that a city is a multifaceted and complex cultural invention that we are constantly creating, all together, with many other possibilities to explore. Additionally, we now also have a better understanding of the effect of cities on the world—for better and for worse. In this shifting paradigm, in which cities can be great change-makers, where urbanity is suddenly seen as desirable again, but when the future of cities still needs urgent reinven- tion, what are the new ideas, areas, disciplines, technologies and ecosystems that cities could explore? What needs to happen for cities themselves to become intensive traveling 9 surfaces and enablers for ideas? What type of prompts, strange attractors, experiments and conditions are necessary and how do we go about generating them? During the collaborative sessions between the London and Mexico City teams, we found our explorations of these questions leading us to extended contemplation of the realities of Mexico City. We realized this has to do with how Mexico City epito- mizes so much of both the great potential and the many challenges that the City of tomorrow holds. As a megalopolis of the developing world, it shares many of the problems faced (or soon to be faced) by cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia; it emerges as an opportune place to try out future scenarios in the present. Because as one of the most important city economies of the world, it also has the necessary infrastructure to create important experiments and become a city capable of proto- typing, testing and implementing ideas that can later be exported to other cities. In that sense, Mexico City is the perfect bridge between first world and emerging world, since it exemplifies a complex and enticing mix of both. In recent years, Mexico City has quietly become one of the world’s most socially pro- gressive and creative urban areas in the global south. Its energy continues to ampli- fy as it embraces its density and cultural roots. Mexico City is getting bigger, more imaginative and is starting to defy stereotypes of what a Latin American megalopolis can and cannot do. Yes, we can pass progressive gay rights in DF despite Mexico being religiously conservative. Yes, we can have a successful bike-sharing program (with more than 20,000 rides a day, a number that continues to grow) despite our size. Yes, a metropolis with 22 million inhabitants can win international green transportation awards and significantly improve the quality of its air in less than ten years. At the same time, Mexico City also faces the many challenges that come with a city of its size and complexity, including social inequality, problems related to urban sprawl, a possible health crisis related to obesity and many other urgent issues. These difficult and complicated truths of contemporary urban life show there is still much to be done to realize this city’s full potential, and provide us with opportunities to rethink the way we make decisions and interact with the many facets of our urban environment. This is the crux of the work of an urban laboratory (in whatever city it operates), and the motivation behind its many activities, from gathering, analyzing, interpreting and visualizing data (as seen in the chapter Applying Legibility to the City’s Complex Systems, p. 141) to its forms of thinking and problem solving based in creativity, synthesis, collaboration and intuition (as described in Hacks and Probes, p. 125). As the natural course of the London-Mexico collaboration tended toward examining issues facing Mexico City and their implications for legible policy, much of the work presented in this publication considers this specific context from a binational point of view. The conclusions drawn and tools identified and developed will be the subject matter for future collaborations to contemplate in relation to London and other cities across the world. 10 PROJECT PRESENTATION The Mexico City/London Institutional Links program bridged two of the most impor- tant cities of the world, bringing together several award-wining teams from Mexico City and London to think about the present and future of cities. The program was composed of in-depth research, joint