Why City futures?
Sohail Inayatullah
www.metafuture.org
Professor, Tamkang University, Taiwan, Sunshine
Coast Uni, Australia, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
CITIES AS AGENTS OF GLOBAL CHANGE
Recently the Mayor of Seattle stated that even
though the Federal government did not sign the Kyoto Protocols, Seattle
would do its best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The former Lord
Mayor of Brisbane, at the onset of the Iraq war, raised the UN flag
above city hall. These two events should not be seen per se as
challenging federal sovereignty but more of evoking the agency of the
city.
Cities are beginning to imagine alternative futures
for themselves, going beyond the tradition of only supplying roads,
rates and rubbish. With many of them bursting with growing populations
and with citizens feeling overwhelmed, even exhausted, by the roller
coaster of globalization and associated systemic crisis (financial,
health, natural), the local has become even more important.
In this context, cities have begun to plan their
future. Often this is a shallow adventure of merely purchasing the used
futures of other cities. For example, while many American and Australian
cities have moved away from the "big city" model of Los Angelization
(sprawl, size and money with associated problems of loss of place, crime
and health) and toward creating urban , most Asian cities remain locked
in the battle for the tallest building (see villages
http://www.apcsummit.org/history/content/?id=175).
In contrast is the emergence of the healthy
cities movement. Healthy city futures are predicated on the physical
determinants of health (the quality of water, air, efficient transport
systems), the social determinants of health (social inclusion, walking
areas, ie city design that enables individual and group health, and
community making) and more radically, as I argue the spiritual
determinants of health (issues of meaning, medical research on the
impacts of meditation, diet on individual and collective health).
From the days of roads, rates and rubbish, city
issues are now associated with the triple bottom line – prosperity,
environmental sustainability and social justice – and now perhaps the
quadruple bottom line, spirituality as the organizing and the depth
factor (see
www.metafuture.org/Articles/ spirituality_bottom_line.htm)
EMERGING ISSUES
Is the spiritual city next? Perhaps, in the
meantime the classical definitions of the city (city beautiful, city
efficient, city radical) are being challenged by emerging issues. These
issues include:
(1) Smart Growth, especially, urban husbandry –
creating civil spaces
(2) Transforming Transportation Planning,
rethinking the role of the car in the city (car free cities and
dual-model transportation systems) and rethinking the role of transport
(from a Car to all to Mobility for all)
(3) The Smart City, wired city, moving to the
intelligent city, even imagining the E-topian city.
(4) The Green City, moving from recycling to green
architecture to deep sustainability (sustainability as the operating
paradigm)
(5) The Community and Healthy City, moving from
creating community through appropriate design to a community bill of
rights to new indicators of economic development that are community
matched. And:
(6) Globalization. This last issue is fraught with
tension and diversity, between the grand super cities (in size,
postmodern) and global-local variations.
MACROTRENDS
Taking these trends further, we can speculate on
some possible macro trends of city futures?
The city defined by geography (by a river, for example) to city defined
by temporality. While cities have focused on land use policy
(spatiality) the next wave is likely to be temporal policy. Cities are
caught in, and part of, multiple temporalities – industrial 9/5 time;
cyber 24/7 time, slow time and the slow city movement; and hyper time
(the quickening of time). Developing temporal policy will be an
important challenge as more and evidence comes out from the health costs
of industrial 9/5 time (deadlines and heart attacks -
http://www.ediets.com/news/article.cfm/cmi_990411) and postmodern 24/7
time (the frazzled family)
City as one space (vertical) to multiple space
(flat) to desired space (vertical plus horizontal). Imagining and
creating desired city futures is becoming a new, while not core,
certainly an important activity (See the work of Steve Ames -
www.communityvisioning.com/stevenamesbio/). Of course, there is resistance here, not
from citizens but from local counselors. Staying within traditional
notions of representative democracy, they question the role of citizens
in visioning broader city futures. Is that not the role of the local
counselor. More forward looking politicians, however, are likely to see
this as a way of enhancing the efficacy of their role and the role of
local government, not diminishing it. To do, the counselor will need to
rethink their fundamental role as that merely of representing their
constituents to that of leadership, brokering ideas and mediating
disputing visions
The city as "neutral" arbiters of interests groups to city as ethical
space. With triple bottom one, a long term orientation, cities more and
more are challenged to do the right thing, to be central actors in
creating and modeling the good society. They are no longer merely
facilitating in a neutral manner various interests (developers,
community groups), they have their own meta interest. See, for example,
Galtung, Cities for people, cities for peace, cities for the future.
http://www.transcend.org/t_database/articles.php?ida=138
The city as a place where public policy occurs to city as public policy
Cities, particularly,
the postmodern city is now seen as policy, its actions (naming of
streets, for example) iconic. Public policy is not a political process
but a representational process – essentially this means that the city
itself is a global brand, not only a place where people live. Economy
policy is now moving to the notion of a dream economy (Korea
as the Wave of a Future:The Emerging Dream Society of Icons and
Aesthetic Experience
http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tddx/jfs/, ). At the very least, creative
policy is becoming a crucial dimension in being a global economic
player.
5. The city as infrastructure – roads,
water, bricks – to the city as living. The city is moving to biological
notions of what it is, not merely industrial ones. This may lead to the
gaian city – sensing the needs of inhabitants (technology
becoming invisible), that is, a convergence of smart technology with
green values.
6. The city as essentially secular to the city as
a spiritual node in planetary consciousness. This perhaps is the most
challenging macrotrend. This is the notion that the city, and the
thoughts of its inhabitants are becoming part of a noetic transformation
of our collective consciousness (http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tddx/jfs/,
Daffara, Macrohistory and City Futures.
CHANGING THE GLOBAL POLITICAL LANDSCAPE
Can we then imagine a world future where along with
nations, corporations, nongovernmental organizations, cities will be
full players. Are we entering a spiral turn with the return of the
City-State (is Singapore a leading indicator). It is far from clear if
this is the case, certainly as the nation-state loses its relative
importance, other actors are moving in. Cities are crucial in this
transformation of global space.
Along with global changes are local changes.
Citizens are far more active. E-democracy, neighborhood mediation
centres, community visioning and even local community consultation are
changing local politics.
From above and below, cities are influencing what
is, and what can be.
For
more on city futures, including access to City Futures: A Scan, email
s.inayatullah@qut.edu.au (www.metafuture.org)