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Urban Community in the Postmodern Urban Context
Abstract
Society faces various daily urban living problems – cities are becoming denser, green spaces and recreation areas for citizens are at the bottom of the policymakers’ priority list, and infrastructure decisions mainly satisfy business interests. We stand in traffic jams for hours. At the same time, climate change makes it increasingly difficult for cities to live in every summer. To understand how society should operate these challenges to shift the urban environment in the desired direction, empowering city dwellers and allowing them to participate in this multi-layered phenomenon entirely, we must fundamentally understand the importance of the urban community. The central thesis of this paper is that in urban studies, it is necessary to discuss what an urban community is and in what critical dimensions it shapes the identity of a city, or vice versa, the city shapes it. This article presents an interdisciplinary scientific literature analysis conducted using the method of comparative analysis to identify critical dimensions of a contemporary urban community.
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Despite the inherently dynamic nature of the urban identity concept and its interconnections among various academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, environmental studies, and urbanism, the term is employed in distinct contexts within each field. This divergence in usage has resulted in ambiguity and a lack of clarity regarding the meaning of urban identity. This research aims to scrutinize the existing literature on identity and urban identity across various scientific disciplines, reaching a better understanding of the term. As a methodological approach, we undertake a systematic analysis of the theoretical debate to identify and comprehend the descriptive and analytical perspectives on identity and urban identity concepts, the evaluation processes of urban identity, and the identification of primary debates, issues, and related gaps. The findings of this research will facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the urban identity concept and its identification, thereby contributing to the evolution of academic research on urban identity.
For more than a decade, the importance of urban social movements has been systematically increasing in the Polish public sphere. However, available theories of social movements cannot account for the variety of forms of urban mobilization or for the ideological differences between organizations. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social class for research on urban movements. Using the concepts of “capital” and “habitus,” the paper explores the social vision and process of the emergence of two activist organizations in Warsaw, Poland. The study is based on qualitative research conducted from 2016 to 2019, which included an analysis of secondary resources and individual in-depth interviews with members from each organization. Bourdieu’s theory of social class facilitates consideration of different aspects of the functioning of urban social movements, including the role of resources and competences, ideological divisions, and chances of success. The theory also provides an explanation for the importance of class within urban social movements. The article shows that, even though the demands of social movements appear to be values-led, in fact, they are based on the class interests of their members.
This article explores six craft-based urban social innovation initiatives implemented in Venice between 2014 and 2021, considered decisive for the candidature of the city in the New European Bauhaus programme. Adopting a qualitative approach based on multiple case study methods, it reconstructs how the promotion of traditional craft enterprises entered the local policy agenda through mechanisms that strengthen the embeddedness of the issue. The article emphasises the polycentrism of social innovation initiatives and highlights the importance of creativity as a tool to trigger co-design processes, of the projects as contexts for knowledge and information sharing, and of events and happenings as contexts for strengthening social capital and increasing its accessibility. In the final part of the paper, some limitations that are emerging and new research lines for the future are suggested.
This editorial for the thematic issue on “Co-Creation and the City: Arts-Based Methods and Participatory Approaches in Urban Planning” draws together the key themes of the ten articles in the issue. Firstly, the concept of Co-Creation is defined as a collective creative process involving artists, academics, and communities. Co-creation results in tangible or intangible outputs in the form of artwork or artefacts, and knowledge generated by multiple partners that, in a planning context, can feed into shared understandings of more socially just cities. The ten articles are summarized, and the emerging conclusions are drawn out, under three broad themes. The first set of conclusions deals with power imbalances and the risks of instrumentalization within co-creative processes. Contributors dismiss romanticizing assumptions that expect artistic practices to inevitably disrupt power hierarchies and strengthen democracy. The second set of outcomes relates to how arts-based strategies and methods can help address the translation of issues between urban planning and art. Finally, the third group of conclusions focuses on practices of listening within co-creation processes, raising the issue of voices that are less audible, rather than unheard or not listened to. In their concluding remarks, the authors recommend further research to be undertaken in this emerging field to explore the constraints and possibilities for urban planners to listen to arts-based expressions, in order to integrate a broader range of understandings and knowledge into plans for the city of the future.
The world is undergoing dramatic change in its social and physical environments, resulting in cultural confrontation and conflict. Rapid urban growth, displacement, and gentrification increase urban pressure while jeopardising social cohesion, multicultural values, and local economies. In addition, environmental factors associated with climate change challenge how our cities respond and adapt, prompting the need for urban centre regeneration to confront the urban century challenges (Sassen, 2011). However, adaptation to these changes is also a source of conflict, as urban policies lack citizen engagement in the redefinition of public space, resulting in more disagreement and inefficient use of resources.
One way to respond to this ongoing crisis is adaptive reuse, repurposing an underused system for a new use. This process can enhance positive environmental impacts, encourage social and participatory processes, and promote economic dynamism through culture. However, the success of such an intervention will depend on the underlying approach.
The paper aims to explore how Jem Bendell’s ambitious four-pronged Deep Adaptation strategy (Bendell, 2018) combined with the cultural resilience approach can result in adaptive reuse processes that act as development catalysers and peace-building mechanisms.
As a principle of industrial and spatial organisation, self-management enabled Yugoslavia to shape its own socialism after the breakup with the Soviet Union and the rest of the Eastern Bloc — in 1986. It even represented the paradigmatic element of a proposal for an urban restructuring of New Belgrade submitted by Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre and architects Renaudie and Gilbaud. The Yugoslav experience of self-management is not the only one. The oldest precedent probably is the Paris Commune. Bottom-up self-management has unravelled the planet over, in factories of Eastern Europe, neighbourhoods in South American cities, and rural communities in North Africa and the Middle East, to mention some.
This essay will look at self-management as a critical socio-political paradigm inherently connected to spatial determinants and both a means and a goal of reorganising society in the contemporary moment and for the ever nearer future.
The narrative is positioned in a broader temporal context of mass misappropriation of space by mechanisms of power: be it state, corporate, state-corporate, or architectural; the context, that is, of “flat hierarchies” as the new office ping pong tables and bean bags and corporate campuses as the new public spaces, and in the narrower temporal context of a global pandemic forcing a redefinition of public and private, of work and labour relations.
This paper addresses Jem Bendell’s concept of “deep adaptation” in the Anthropocene through the lens of everyday urban practices in contemporary Northern Europe. It proposes that this “deep adaptation” should be defined less in relation to a socio-ecological “collapse” and more through everyday occurrences in present-day urban environments.
Entering into a critical conversation with Bendell’s conceptual “4 Rs” framework, the paper draws on primary data from several cities in Sweden and Germany to show how, in practice, resilience can be found in the “quiet activism” of leisure gardeners; how ingrained notions of restricted land use may be relinquished through “commoning” urban space; how novel constellations of co-living restores old ideas of intragenerational urban cohabitation; and, finally, how a path to reconciliation may be articulated through an ontological shift away from an anthropocentric urban planning, towards one that recognises other-than-human beings as legitimate dwellers in the urban landscape.
Accounting for urbanities of enmeshed societal, ecological, and spatial trajectories, the paper reveals an inhibiting anthropocentrism in Bendell’s framework and ultimately points to how his “creatively constructed hope” for the future may be found, not in an impending global collapse, but in everyday adaptations and embodied acts that stretch far beyond the human.
The crises we face today call for a careful assessment of our collective and individual understandings and responses. The past decades have shown us that acknowledgement of the emergencies alone is not sufficient to address the problems, especially within the complex context and conditions of the built environment. In the face of ‘inevitable’ change, and of current and future challenges, this urges us to direct a critical glance towards how we understand and frame the problems as spatial practitioners, how we position ourselves towards them, and how our ethical and professional responsibilities and agencies must change. As an open question and a long-term endeavour, this echoes within the context of academia. However, a central position has yet to emerge. In this article, we give an account of our experiences by taking a closer look at the approaches, formats, and method we have employed at the Professorship of Urban Design at TU Munich and elaborate on how these concerns can be embedded in the content, systems, and structures of teaching, and how the Deep Adaptation Agenda plays a facilitating role in this ongoing attempt.
The proposed research aims to investigate the concept of creative urban sustainability. We asked, what are the factors conditioning creativity in spaces where cultures meet in cities and how do they stimulate urban sustainable development. The empirical material analysed are the results of interviews conducted with cultural managers. We introduce philosophical and sociological approaches based mainly on criticism of writing and the analytical and synthetic method. In the framework of the creative city we illustrate Lublin’s model of spatial innovations, in which culture and creativity have convergence with economic development. We conclude with a conceptual discussion of the creative urban sustainability problems. In particular, we reveal how these issues could help in shaping a theoretic consensus about the function of spaces planning in sustainable development strategies emphasising the importance of creativity as a social resource and also as an agent of social and economic change.
The sustainability crisis entails high levels of complexity, not approachable from linear or reductionist stances. Unveiled from a holistic stance as a multilevel phenomenon characterized by qualitative novelty, emergence pertains to complex self-organizing systems. Emergent properties and behaviors arise only when system parts interact in a wider whole. This article positions emergence for enhancing solution processes to meet sustainability challenges. It proposes the systemic approach as a catalyst for emergence of wise creative solutions tackling wicked unsustainability problems. This requires observation and entails analyzing open systems altogether and recognizing the impact of navigating across macro- and micro- scales on causal and creative emergence. Sustainable development requires circumventing past conventional practices, in an accelerated way. The emergence phenomenon at work between systems levels, coupled with purposefully structured creative processes, holds the potential for catalyzing sustainable development efforts. Systemic analysis at varying scales is to foster creative emergence aligned with sustainability-oriented innovation.
The current analysis addresses cases of both informal and illegal settlements in Vilnius, Lithuania. By using semiotic means (specifically, semiotic squares), the author presents the Romani district (tabors), as well the Šnipiškės district, describing the circumstances of their emerging and comparing these cases. In addition to that, the philosophical questions about the dichotomies ‘formal/informal’, ‘temporal/eternal’, ‘order/chaos’, ‘legal/illegal’, ‘sustainable/unsustainable’ are discussed. On the one hand, illegal buildings serve as a signal about too high a barrier of bureaucracy, about a surfeit of law and even about the violation of certain rights. On the other hand, some urban districts can become illegal because of a changed urban vision reflected in a new General Plan. The paper also analyzes the issue of public interest. Additionally, the tendency of democratic society to turn into bureaucratic society is analyzed. The paper addresses sensitive issues related to sustainable development of cities, intercultural dialogue and equal opportunities.
While innovation has become a pervasive term, many of today's organizations still find innovation elusive. One reason may be that much of what is being said about innovation contributes to misunderstanding. To truly manifest innovation and reap its benefits, one must recognize that innovation is three different things: innovation is an outcome, innovation is a process, and innovation is a mindset. Innovation as an outcome emphasizes what output is sought, including product innovation, process innovation, marketing innovation, business model innovation, supply chain innovation, and organizational innovation. Innovation as a process attends to the way in which innovation should be organized so that outcomes can come to fruition; this includes an overall innovation process and a new product development process. Innovation as a mindset addresses the internalization of innovation by individual members of the organization where innovation is instilled and ingrained along with the creation of a supportive organizational culture that allows innovation to flourish. Such an understanding defines necessary elements, considerations, and vernacular surrounding the term so that better decisions can be made, thereby enabling innovation and having a greater propensity to succeed.
For the people of Vilnius, it is helpful to consider its image in the eyes of strangers. They reflect the strangeness of Vilnius itself. The concept of strangeness will be developed by considering the related spectrum of these strangers’ acquaintance with the city. We consider images of Vilnius formed by noteworthy Europeans who passed through there or spent some part of their life there, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Romain Gary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Josif Brodsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Vladimir Toporov, Aron Gurwitsch, and Czesław Miłosz. For some of them (Napoleon, F. Dostoyevsky), Vilnius was strange as a not yet assimilated territory. For others (L. Tolstoy, J. Brodsky), Vilnius was an important point of transition between geopolitical spheres. For some of them (R. Gary, M. Bakhtin), Vilnius was the environment of their maturation and a springboard to other cities. Vilnius has also been a city of studies and science (for J. G. A. Forster, Cz. Miłosz), a city that formed philosophical attitudes (M. Bakhtin, A. Gurwitsch), and a city of heritages: Russian (for F. Dostoyevsky, L. Tolstoy), Polish (Cz. Miłosz), German (A. Döblin, J. G. A. Forster), Jewish (A. Gurwitsch), pagan (V. Toporov). By appealing to the above mentioned images, the paper deals with philosophical aspects of strangeness, regionalism, and urban environments.
This paper aims to give an overview of the existing models of co-creation and create meta-models from these existing ones. The existing models were found in academic and popular or business publications. A total of 50 models was analysed and clustered and used to create 4 meta-models of co-creation. These meta-models depict the ‘joint space of co-creation’, ‘the co-creation spectrum’, ‘the co-creation types’ and ‘the co-creation steps’. They form a framework to classify existing research as well as define boundaries for upcoming projects. These meta-models should contribute to the clarity, understanding and application of co- creation.
The article deals with the urban spaces in the perspective of the cultural narratives. The main thesis is followed: the urban life spaces open after clash between the aspects of cultural visuality and narrativeness. The minor theses are followed: a city is the place of existential education, where we transit to a new life space over and over; a city is the space of both historical signs and utopia without any place; a city is the public place for realization of private aims; every change of urban place influences other urban spaces; spacesness is to be characterized as capability to transit from one existential region to another one; temporality by opening new historical regions is an aspect of spacesness; a city is the autarchic formation as much as it ensures the transition from narrativeness to visuality and from spacesness to temporality; a city is both the environment of communication and communicative actor; the mobile connection of the urban spaces follows from certain cultural narration. The author uses the tools of existential phenomenology and cultural regionalistics.
Santrauka
Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos miesto erdvės iš kultūros naratyvų perspektyvos. Iškeliama didžioji tezė: miesto gyvenamosios erdvės atsiveria susidūrus kultūros vaizdiškumo ir pasakojamumo aspektams. Mažosios tezės: miestas – egzistencinio ugdymo vieta, kur pereinama į vis naują gyvenamąją erdvę; miestas – ir istorinių žymenų santalkos vieta, ir utopiškai bevietis; miestas – viešoji erdvė, skirta privatiems tikslams įgyvendinti; kiekvienos miesto vietos pokytis veikia visas kitas jo erdves; erdviškumas apibūdintinas kaip geba pereiti nuo vieno egzistencijos regiono prie kito; laikiškumas atverdamas naujus istorinius regionus yra erdviškumo aspektas; miestas – savipakankamas darinys tiek, kiek jis užtikrina perėjimą nuo pasakojamumo prie vaizdumo ir nuo erdviškumo prie laikiškumo; miestas – ir komunikacijos aplinka, ir komunikacinis veikėjas; miesto erdvių judri sankiba susiklosto kaip kultūros naratyvo pasekmė. Straipsnyje egzistencijos fenomenologijos priemonės derinamos su kultūrinės regionalistikos prieigomis.
First Publish Online: 22 May 2013
Reikšminiai žodžiai: miesto erdvės, kultūros naratyvai, egzistencijos regionas.
What is critical urban theory? While this phrase is often used in a descriptive sense, to characterize the tradition of post‐1968 leftist or radical urban studies, I argue that it also has determinate social–theoretical content. To this end, building on the work of several Frankfurt School social philosophers, this paper interprets critical theory with reference to four, mutually interconnected elements—its theoretical character; its reflexivity; its critique of instrumental reason; and its emphasis on the disjuncture between the actual and the possible. On this basis, a brief concluding section considers the status of urban questions within critical social theory. In the early 21st century, I argue, each of the four key elements within critical social theory requires sustained engagement with contemporary patterns of capitalist urbanization. Under conditions of increasingly generalized, worldwide urbanization, the project of critical social theory and that of critical urban theory have been intertwined as never before.
This article argues that if we want to discuss the contemporary community, we may look at them as being formed by a set of projects that continue to contribute to its ongoing existence in order to remain active. To offer a concrete example of this argument, the article is based on the work done by the authors over several years in the field of Design for Social Innovation, on a research line entitled ‘Design for Collaborative Cities’, forming part of the international network Desis Network and the Polimi Desis Lab. In order to observe the relationship between communities and projects more closely, a particular context is referenced, which can be generalised in terms of similar urban contexts. This is a case of urban regeneration, which also leads to the regeneration of the community that lives there and has realised the power of change not only through associations rooted in the territory but also through informal ‘social street’ groups, a typical Italian phenomenon for getting to know one’s neighbours. The case study refers to a transformation that has occurred in the last few years in Nolo, a semi-peripheral neighbourhood of Milan, Italy.
A firm’s connections into its ecosystem influences its ability to innovate. Much research on innovation ecosystems has examined high technology firms and locations and has used interview, survey, or science and technology data methods. Our study focuses on a resource-based ecosystem—agri-food in a medium-sized region—and explores a novel method using media sources to identify ecosystem links. We use this method to capture the innovation ecosystem around two plant-based protein firms and a conventional food processor in Winnipeg, Canada. We extract organisational actors from the full text of business and news articles, link co-occurring actors in social networks, and use modularity partitioning to detect communities in these networks. Our results show that the focal agri-food firms vary in their ecosystem associations, with little duplication in the actor organisations across the different firms’ networks. The plant-based protein firm networks had a greater innovation orientation than was noticeable in the established food producer’s network, particularly with industry and civic association intermediaries, government, and other agricultural companies. Insights from using the method and implications of the findings are discussed.
The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control,” and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples from three federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which is designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens’ power in determining the plan and/or program.
Three orders of simulacra: 1. counterfeits and false images: from renaissance to industrial revolution, signs become mode of exchange, these signs are obviously flase. 2. Dominated by production and series: mass produced signs as commodities, signs refer not to reality but to other signs (money, posters). 3. Pure simulacra: simulacra mask over the idea that there is no reality, reality is an effect of simulacra (disneyland masks simulacra of LA, Prison masks nonfreedom outside the walls).
The city as innovation machine. Regional Studies. This paper puts cities and urban regions at the very centre of the processes of innovation and entrepreneurship. It combines the insights of Jane Jacobs and recent urban research on the role of the city with the literature on innovation and entrepreneurship going back to Joseph Schumpeter. Innovation and entrepreneurship and their geography privileges the firm, industry clusters and/or the individual and poses the city as a container for them. By marrying Jacobs’ insights on cities to those of Schumpeter on innovation, it is argued that innovation and entrepreneurship do not simply take in place in cities but in fact require them.
Contemporary design professionals have been struggling with the challenges posed by addressing the core concepts of sustainable development in earnest for over thirty years (Fletcher & Giggin, 2001; Fuad-Luke, 2009). The sustainable development agendas are providing an opportunity to ask fundamental questions of design itself. In recent years design professionals have been pushing design beyond being just engaged with consumer culture and exploring new forms of practice. This is particularly evident when design is used to tackle social issues to create innovative solutions (Margolin & Margolin, 2002; Fuad-Luke, 2009). There is growing consensus that design can be a mode of innovation that provides a set of skills, tools and methods that guide people to new socially innovative solutions or improvement of existing ones (Brooks, 2011; Emilson, Seravalli & Hillgren, 2011; Social Innovation Exchange, 2011a). Social innovation is “innovation that is explicitly for the social and public good. It is innovation inspired by the desire to meet social needs which can be neglected by traditional forms of private market provision and which have often been poorly served or unresolved by services organised by the state” (Murray, Caulier-Grice & Mulgan, 2010:10). After a very brief review of sustainable development and how design professionals have addressed the concepts, this paper will explore ‘design for social innovation’, its emerging principles and approaches and the opportunities and challenges for design professionals engaging in it.
Living with people who differ—racially, ethnically, religiously, or economically—is the most urgent challenge facing civil society today. We tend socially to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves, and modern politics encourages the politics of the tribe rather than of the city. In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett discusses why this has happened and what might be done about it.
Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. In Together he explores how people can cooperate online, on street corners, in schools, at work, and in local politics. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris, and workers on Wall Street. Divided into three parts, the book addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened. The author warns that we must learn the craft of cooperation if we are to make our complex society prosper, yet he reassures us that we can do this, for the capacity for cooperation is embedded in human nature.
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Bendruomeniškumo sklaida Lietuvoje: monografija. Vilnius: Mykolo Romerio universitetas
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