EPISODE 005
Future Urban Design for the Emergence of a Fluid Sense of Self
In this article, inspired by the movement of open spaces in cities across the world and resilience theory, I argue that city and human resilience are tightly interlinked, and it is possible to positively influence both through utilising the transformative power of open spaces in novel ways.
“Urban Anatomy” by Alexander Hirka
Human resilience makes cities more resilient.
Future cities provide a fertile ground to integrate and synthesise different properties of space and help us realise our abilities to become more resilient. Rapid urbanisation requires developing cohesive and resilient communities, so discussing how we can better design our cities is crucial. In the future, urban design must harness the transformative function of open spaces to help people explore new sociocultural possibilities and increase our resilience: resilient people help form the responsible citizenry necessary for the emergence of more resilient urban systems.
Cities are complex adaptive systems.
Cities are complex adaptive systems which consist of many interacting parts with different degrees of flexibility, and open urban spaces hold the potential for embedding flexible platforms into the future urban design; they invoke the possibility of adopting a different set of values and behaviours related to our cities, such as flexible structures designed to change how we imagine the collective social space or intersubjective space. Transportation grids are for functional movement and coordination in cities. Still, open spaces can be seen as avenues for personal growth and development, social activities, learning, collective play and gaming (figure 1). They help us adjust and align our perception of reality in real time and for free. All we need is our willingness to let go of the old and allow the new to guide us toward evolution, transcendence and resilience.
Open spaces also encourage another important process: the emergence of a fluid sense of one’s self as an integral part of a city’s design. Urban design can help citizens feel invited to explore and unearth parts of the internal landscape.
PORT’s design for the Urban Wilderness Gateway in Knoxville, Tennessee, transforms a highway underpass into a formal entry to a park. Credit: PORT
Mindfulness Engineering and the practice of resiliencing
Drawing on my research on the resilience of people, places, critical infrastructure systems and socio-ecological systems, I have collected 152 different ways of defining resilience, and here I propose an urban-friendly view of resilience which I developed during my PhD:
Resilience is about mastering change and is a continuous process of becoming and expanding one’s radius of comfort zone until the whole world becomes mapped into one’s awareness.
In this view, our continuous exposure to new conditions helps us align with the new change tempo. Resilience is naturally embedded in all of us, and we need to find those key principles and pathways through which we can practise our natural potential for resilience and adaptability to change daily. This is what I call ‘mindfulness engineering’ and the practice of ‘resiliencing’. There is no secret to resilience; Ann S. Masten even calls it ‘ordinary magic’.
Building resilient and sustainable cities
Future cities provide us with the opportunity to increase our resilience. There is no fixed human essence, and we are always in a state of dynamic unfolding. So the paradox for the future is this: the only thing fixed about the future is a constant state of change. As an existential philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard said, “the only thing repeated is the impossibility of repetition.” It is only through this shift of perspective to becoming in tune with one’s adaptation and resilience style that we can change our mental models and become better at handling change.
Footnotes
1. The movement of resilience as the capacity to withstand setbacks and continue to grow started in the early 70s. Today, the concept of resilience has transformed into a platform for the global conversation on the future of human development worldwide.
By Shima Beigi, this article was originally published in 2016 on Future Cities — UK Government Office for Science.
Comment below with your thoughts.
INSPIRING PEOPLE AND RESOURCES TO LEARN FROM
NYM
Founded by Harry Halpin, NYM is a Switzerland-based project with the vision to provide the next generation of privacy infrastructure.
What We Owe the Future
A new book on our radar is William MacAskill, which speaks about the potential of effective altruism for our times. The hopeful vision MacAskill resonates with our vision of a world that is co-created by intentional and mindful actions. That is why we want to learn more about him and decided to put this book on our curation list.
