What Burning Man Can Teach Us About Reinventing Society

The world is currently on the cusp of a creative renaissance fueled by technology and human ingenuity. Increasingly, we see new opportunities for personal expression driven by urban planning: spaces for citizen action, the arts, and entrepreneurship. Tech culture has blended with grassroots art culture to form new possibilities. At the heart of this atomic collision is an unlikely force: celebration. 

 

 

Urban Planning and the Christchurch Recovery

“To hell with resilience, more action, please.”

These words of a disgruntled, uncited local have restrained me from writing an anticipated article on Christchurch’s ‘urban resilience’. While resilience might well be urbanism’s most prevalent buzzword since ‘sustainability’ itself, I feel I must honour the above-quoted, unnamed radio personality who rhetorically asked: “can we please stop patronising people by gushing about their resilience?”

Indeed Cantabrians, being those who hail from the Canterbury region in which Christchurch City is located, dealt and are dealing with the earthquakes of 2010 to present remarkably well. But people are resilient. It’s what we do. Notwithstanding how fantastically adaptable humans are, this article instead considers the positive urban planning outcomes which have come out of Christchurch’s preliminary recovery.

The Effects of Natural Disaster on Community Resilience

There are many factors that can impact on the ability of a community to handle external and internal stressors, though arguably none so much as natural disasters. In the wake of the 2011 Queensland floods, numerous studies on social cohesion, wellbeing, and adaptation have taken the opportunity to explore the link between these important benchmarks of community resilience, and how they have been impacted by this devastating natural disaster.

International Society of City and Regional Planners Annual Congress

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNERS ANNUAL CONGRESS | BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA | OCTOBER 2013

The International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP) is hosting its international congress in Brisbane from 1 – 4 October, 2013 at the rejuvenated Royal International Convention Centre at the RNA. Details on this unique opportunity to take advantage of renowned international presenters are provided below, but with specific regard to the value of this event to Young Planners, you may consider the following benefits:

• exceptional low cost for such a high-calibre international congress;
• opportunity to immerse yourself in international dialogue of best practice planning theories and projects;
• access to an international planning conference in Australia, negating expensive travel and accommodation costs;
• opportunities to rub shoulders with 300-400 accomplished planning professionals from Australia and abroad; and
• network and gain connections in relevant fields of planning.

Keynote Speakers include Vanessa Watson, Professor of City Planning in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics at the University of Cape Town and Amos Brandeis, Chairman of Israel Planners Association (2006-2012) and Ambassador for the International River Foundation.

More than 150 papers have been accepted with speakers from more than 30 countries. A showcase of contemporary Australian and international planning will feature PIA national and state award winning projects. The Congress will provide an opportunity to network with more than 400 planning professionals from around the world. More information at the congress website.

Be in it!

Book Recommendation

The Endless City 

By The London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the world is faced with an unprecedented challenge. It must address a fundamental shift in the world’s population towards the cities, and away from mankind’s rural roots. The book’s foundation statistic is that in 1900, 10 percent of the population lived in cities. Today, that figure has edged over 50 percent and by 2050, within the career span of many of today’s urban design practitioners, 75 percent of the world’s population will be urbanites. This means serious change.

The book is the outcome of two years of investigation into six different cities: New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Berlin. The cities chosen give a broad description of the shades of global urban change, yet because the book is so good, even after five hundred-odd pages it still feels as though there could have been room for a few more cities to really complete the picture.

The book’s power is in making vast quantities of data accessible and interesting to the coffee table browser, while its essays have enough depth to appeal to the professional urbanist. Definitely a worthy browse, even for the pretty graphics.

Book Recommendation

Welcome to the greatest young planner book review page! Here we'll scourer the interweb in search of the best books out there and what better way to start off with one of the seminal books that changed the way people view cities, none other than Jane Jacobs' "Death and Life of Great American Cities".

"Death and Life of Great American Cities" 
By Jane Jacobs

Jacobs challenged conventional modern city planning and city architectural design. In the opening sentence, Jacobs declares war on the major schools of urban planning:

“This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding, different and even opposite from those now taught in everything from schools of architecture and planning to the Sunday supplements and women’s magazines.”

Conventional planning, she noticed, did not seem to create vibrant, livable neighborhoods but rather killed whatever good had once been present. Looking into how cities actually work, rather than how they should work according to urban designers and planners, Jacobs effectively describes the real factors affecting cities, and recommends strategies to enhance actual city performance.

"Death and Life" made four recommendations for creating municipal diversity:

1. A street or district must serve several primary functions.

2. Blocks must be short.

3. Buildings must vary in age, condition, use and rentals.

4. Population must be dense.

These seemingly simple notions represented a major rethinking of modern planning. They were coupled with fierce condemnations of the writings of the planners Sir Patrick Geddes and Ebenezer Howard, as well as those of the architect Le Corbusier and Lewis Mumford, who championed their ideal of graceful towers rising over exquisite open spaces.

Some critics, a few of whom had an axe to grind, such as Mumford, the eminent critic and social historian, wrote the following reply in a New Yorker article: "Like a construction gang bulldozing a site clean of all habitations, good or bad, she bulldozes out of existence every desirable innovation in urban planning during the last century, and every competing idea, without even a pretense of critical evaluation."

The book achieved a remarkably wide readership, perhaps because it's such a rare joy to read a book about cities written by someone who actually seems to appreciate what makes them fun to live in. Planners began to think about networks rather than grids; to whisper about pedestrians rather than motorists; to talk openly about urban infill rather than suburban sprawl; to speak out boldly on behalf of mixed-use buildings and diverse, self-governing neighbourhoods.

Jacobs’ ideas have been the foundation for the New Urbanism movement in an effort to promote social interaction by incorporating such Jacobean features as ground-floor retail in suburban developments.

You can get the 50^th anniversary edition on amazon for a mere 17.60 clamshells!! LINK