In-Sourcing the Future: notes from 'We Make the City Festival' June 2018, Amsterdam

This is a summary of We Make the City Festival held in Amsterdam between the 20th to 24th of June 2018. I was fortunate enough to attend this inaugural event, and to place my research and practice in a broader context. The programme for We Make the City was diverse and extensive and I only managed to attend a fraction of the events, but I have summarised some of the themes and learnings in this short article.

Underpinning the festival was the necessity for a human-centred foundation for sustainable development. The scene was set by Kate Raworth author of Doughnut Economics during the opening keynotes, urging all the actors who contribute to city development to be ‘regenerative and distributive by design’, to change mindsets from extractive (consumptive/individual with financial outcomes) to generative (inclusive/collaborative with human benefit). Under this paradigm the ‘top-heavy’ economic model of MARKET – STATE needs to somehow make room for the domain of the HOUSEHOLD - COMMONS, the domains of Civil Society where human interests prevail (Figure A).

The conference sessions initially focused on Co-creation and forms of collaborative practice which engage the Household – Commons axis. The governance structures of cities and regions in Europe are quite advanced around innovation and participation - there is a Directorate of Public Participation at The Hague, a Vice Mayor for Democratic Innovation in Amsterdam (Rutger Groot Wassnik) and Department of Inclusion at the City of Madrid (Jose Maria Becerra Gonzalez). However it was the essential step of creating a culture of social responsibility in communities of work, local governance, household and neighbourhoods that underpinned much of the discourse. Tapping into and fostering this sense of social responsibility could drive a more collaborative approach to the production of urban development which promises inclusion, satisfaction and respect. In part what Toni L Griffin referred to as design for a ‘Just City’. Overall it was this sense of social durability in the urban environment which pervaded discussion and was substantially linked to the goal of sustainability - extending the definition beyond the conventional quantitative measures of consumption and emissions.

'First you have to build trust' states Rui Franco (speaking in the image - City of Lisbon) with Karl-Filip Coenegrachts (City of Gehent) & Sheila Foster (Professor of Public policy, Georgetown),

This was heartening for our ‘remote’ research and practice outpost - the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC) - all the way on the West coast of Australia reinforcing the engagement we have been undertaking with local community groups and governments who are mustering the resources of civil society, to empower citizens in decision making, such as our friends over at the Vic Park Collective.

With this focus on the Household - Commons the scales of city, local and neighbourhood governance become increasingly important for enabling the agency of citizens in the urban development process. Particularly, as it was pointed out, that many states and nations have become increasingly centrist/corporatized and socially disempowered/ineffectual. At local scales people have the ability to contribute to, and shape outcomes which may offer translatable solutions for other localities. For example Annet van Otterloo discussed the social organisation and capacity building of the predominantly migrant community in South Rotterdam’s Feijenoord area. The Afrikaanderwijk Co?peratie emerged from an art project and now sees residents use their competences through establishing a neighbourhood kitchen and catering company, a textile workshop and a cleaning company, offering services on the market and bidding for municipal commissions, in order to keep revenues in the area and create jobs for locals.

A few provocative thoughts punctuated the presentations and panel discussions. The pitfall of fixating on the ‘Future City’. Whilst visioning can be important the idolisation of the future as the ‘other’ can be a convenient way (think smokescreen) to avoid the engaging with the real challenges and lives of the people, families and communities embedded in the present. Gordon Douglas, author of The Help Yourself City also questioned the presumed inclusivity of DIY Urbanism, for example do parklets spatially reproduce inequality through use of a specific cultural and aesthetic code?

Finally then in reflection on the Co-created City, as a spatial designer, our task would seem to be integrating the processes, formats and spaces for true democratic dialogue, exchange and participation into our thinking and practice. How does our work foster this sense of inclusion and help build the ‘Commons’? The challenge for our design research and practice is to critically reassess each step of our thoughts and actions in terms of their social and cultural legitimacy. Who are we leaving out? And who are we leaving behind?

The last day of the festival conference programme saw a focus on the idea and concept of Place and specifically the integration of place into contemporary urban redevelopment models. At first it was slightly perplexing that Ethan Kent from the Project for Public Places in New York took something of a centre stage when it would seem that European cities have been ‘doing’ place led development for centuries. What became clear is that the redevelopment models have changed and the traditional authority led projects which embedded place aspects have taken a backseat to the international capital led projects which can ‘wreak havoc’, or overlook local place identity.

Ethan Kent discusses witnessing the mugging of a lonely stranger perched against Frank Gehry's ('I dont do context') museum in Bilbao.

The North American models potentially offer hope to (re)embed these aspects in the contemporary development models and therefore offer hope for European cities trying to hold on to, and further build civic values. Ethan espoused the need to bend the market to capture place value, to make public space ‘the new anchor tenant’ and transition from ‘liveable to loveable cities’.

The approach of inclusivity and Co-creation demands a considered process and engagement, which can take time, however there is an opportunity to learn from the methods and tools which have succeeded. Participants clearly reinforced that place led development needs a phase of exploration and discovery, to find out what is genuine and authentic, not to hoard over and then uncover the result. Co-creation of the problem/challenge and Co-creation of the tools. Acts of crafting/making, expeditions/experience and pioneering/enterprise were discussed by Catherine Veyrat-Durebex from the City of Nantes’ ambitious, yet successful city wide engagement programme Ma Ville Demain ("my city of tomorrow") 2030. An important role for urban designers, implicated in this approach, is to practice listening, and to acknowledge that cities are built as much (maybe more) with words than bricks.

City planners take off their shoes to engage in collaborative exploration at the Close to Reality exhibition which formed part of the festival (1:20,000 interactive city model by Minke Van Voorthuizen)

Who is the ‘We’? In “We make the city’ was a common thread of enquiry. A conventional approach might place the festival delegates as the ‘we’, although this would undermine the inclusivity which is underpinning the collaborative approach. It is perhaps those citizens who struggle to find voice in the urban development process, and yet live with the consequences who are the ‘We’. With this in mind contemporary government’s role is to facilitate those who have plans - to invite knowledge.

Finally, and perhaps in summary of proceedings, the functional and healthy future city must be built from within the commons, the shared spaces of interaction, decision making, inclusion - without this the future city risks disharmony, disruption, exclusion and segregation. As practitioners we must work in the commons, learn how to facilitate this future rather than imagine we can design it.

We need new tools to help us achieve this, and cooperative and collaborative processes are touted as an essential method. To this end, interactive models were presented as such a tool with their inherently inclusive format and potential to create a common ground for discussion and knowledge sharing. It’s heartening for my own practice in this area to be somewhat validated on a global stage and gives confidence to keep pursuing this work as it promises to help unlock the challenges of the future/present city through revealing and building on the strengths and opportunities that are already there.