Cities
A collection of good reads
As you probably know, We Seek is presented by e180, the company that invented and runs braindates at events — a way to facilitate the sharing of knowledge in new and meaningful ways. This year is the 5th anniversary of Braindate at C2 Montréal and also the launch of the new brand and platform for e180. We thought it would be a good occasion to try something new on the magazine; we normally write about learning but now we want to help you learn by providing the actual content. We are looking at three topics taken in part from the event’s Ecosystems theme, providing you with selections of articles as well as books and videos. We first looked atTalent & The Future of Work.
And now; Cities.
“How do we rethink and redesign our cities? Smart cities, megacities, remote communities: big or small, these breathing ecosystems deal with humanity’s greatest challenges and opportunities — diversity, inclusivity, connectivity, mobility, security and sustainability.”
Well said. We’ve put together our own list of favorites ideas and articles, concentrating on the human aspects of our cities and on bottom up smarts. Making cities better by focusing on people instead of thinking of automation and efficiency first.
On Cities
Network Urbanism
Dan Hill, 7 min read
The presence of the internet is changing how we experience cities and how they evolve, we need to take that “layer” into account more and more and architecture, planification and urbanism need to start understanding the use of the network as a material. Be sure to follow some of the other links he includes and have a look at his collection on Medium which is full of other ideas to explore.
It seems to me that the most interesting layer in cities at the moment is best thought of as the objects, spaces, services and movements at street level — scaling from a phone up to a building, and zooming back and forth from individual to urban. There are people here, structures, vehicles, spaces, surfaces, objects, infrastructure, flora, fauna. This is the layer where change tends to happen; it’s where the city is played out. A new kind of urbanism could emerge from this synthesis of disciplines, contexts and experiences.
And from “way back” in 2013, his On the smart city; Or, a ‘manifesto’ for smart citizens instead which is a must read when considering smart cities.
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Reimagining cities from the internet up
Daniel L. Doctoroff, 11 min read
An update on the Alphabet (Google) Sidewalk Labs, starting with their thought experiment / research project where they imagined what a city would look like if it was built from the ground up taking into account the presence of ubiquitous internet connectivity.
In the process, we wrestled together with the technologist-urbanist divide. Our technologists pushed the teams to think big, challenge conventional assumptions about how things work, and leapfrog slow change. Our urbanists reminded us of the importance of data privacy, the complexity of land use, the greatness of diverse communities and vibrant streets, and the many other externalities that are ever-present in dense environments.
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Postcapitalism and the city
Paul Mason, 12 min read
Cities have stopped eviscerating their centres; young, networked people want to live right in the centre — sometimes two or three to a room — because they understand the city is the closest the analog world comes to a network. The city is where the networked individual wants to live — at least for some of their life, and for some of their working year or week.
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Making cities smarter
William D. Eggers, Jim Guszcza, Michael Greene, 20 min read
Who owns our cities — and why this urban takeover should concern us all
Saskia Sassen, 10 min read
City States
Are cities the new countries?
Sean Coughlan, 5 min read
Big cities have a lot in common, sometimes more than they do with the country they belong to, should they, could they be the new power centres? Perhaps better placed to take action on many of the challenges we face.
The modern mega-city is also intensely international. Whether it’s food, languages being spoken, local media, the multicultural mix of people, the rapid flux of money, ideas and fashions — these world cities are increasingly unlike anywhere else within their own countries.
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Why The Future Will Be Dictated By Cities, Not Nations
Ben Schiller, 3 min read
“It is often said that great cities survived great empires. So it is not unrealistic to think of cities as discrete entities that compete and collaborate with each other, independently from the states to which they belong.”
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How to fix climate change: put cities, not countries, in charge
Benjamin Barber, 5 min read
[T]here is an ample menu of sustainable options available to cities wishing to address climate change aggressively — and they can amplify their impact by coordinating their policies. The list includes divestment of public funds from carbon energy companies; investment to encourage renewable energy and green infrastructure; municipal carbon taxes; fracking and drilling bans; new waste incineration technologies; regulation of the use of plastic bottles and bags; policies to improve public transport and reduce car use; and recycling.
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Cities of The World Unite
Ouishare, 5 min read
Megacities, not nations, are the world’s dominant, enduring social structures
Parag Khanna, 4 min read
The Economic Power of Cities Compared to Nations
Richard Florida, 3 min read
Commons
City as a Commons: Flint to Italy
Jay Walljasper, 6 min read
“+The city is an open resource where all people can share public space and interact.
+The city exists for widespread collaboration and cooperation.
+The city is generative, producing for human nourishment and human need.
+The city is a partner in creating conditions where commons can flourish.”
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How Can We Redesign Cities as Shared Spaces?
David Bollier, 32 min video
An excellent talk by David Bollier on commons vs market enclosure, more specifically in this case, in cities.
Also by Bolllier;
Barcelona’s brave struggle to advance the-commons, 6 min read
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Urban commons have radical potential
Justin McGuirk, 6 min read
Rethinking the city through the commons
Rosalie Salaün interviews Eric Piolle (mayor of Grenoble), 10 min read
Transport
The case for bicycles’ inevitable triumph over cars
Matt McFarland, 5 min read
“Bikes, long an underdog on streets, will rule the roads eventually.” Amid all the talk about autonomous cars and how they will change cities, Horace Dediu argues that electric bikes and bike sharing will be even bigger disrupters and completely change urban transport. (Pay special attention to the astonishing bike share numbers in China.)
Bikes’ flexible nature will aid their popularity. You can park a bicycle in your home or your office. A bike can be carried on a bus, car or train. A car doesn’t offer this versatility. A similar case of disruption played out with cameras, as the always-in-your-pocket nature of smartphones helped them leave traditional cameras in the dust.
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Cars and second order consequences
Benedict Evans, 15 min read
Benedict Evans, of Andreessen Horowitz fame, takes us to some of the massive changes autonomous vehicles — and a transition to sharing them — could bring top cities. For example; what are parkings and lanes replaced with when current cars are replaced with an autonomous, constantly moving, swarm of “bots”?
Finally, remember the cameras. Pretty much every vision of automatic cars involves them using HD, 360 degree computer vision. That means that every AV will be watching everything that goes on around it — even the things that are not related to driving. An autonomous car is a moving panopticon. They might not be saving and uploading every part of that data. But they could be.
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Framing the future of mobility
Derek M. Pankratz, Philipp Willigmann, Sarah Kovar, Jordan Sanders, 27 min read
End of the car age: how cities are outgrowing the automobile
Stephen Moss, 27 min read
Six Things Cities Need to Know About the Future of Autonomous Vehicles
Anthony Townsend, 3 min read
Helsinki bike share teamed with transit and ridership boomed instantly
Michael Andersen, 4 min read
Ideas & Projects
- Civic Futures: How film and speculative design help us envision big ideas
- Amsterdam harnesses the sharing economy for social good
- The stuff of night mayors: Amsterdam pioneers new way to run cities after dark
- What Citizens Can Teach Civil Servants About Open Government
- Amsterdam Institute For Advanced Metropolitan Solutions
- Civic commons
- Participatory City
- The Connectors Society
- The Bootstrap Company
Books
This story was originally written for e180, a social business from Montreal that seeks to unlock human greatness by helping people learn from each other.
