An Urban Manifesto 2

1) Bring light industry back to the center

Creative economies are all fine and good but they have to make things too. Cities that depend on big brands to keep their economies humming should create conditions that encourage more ateliers and workshops in employment centers. Stockholm might want to think about this to keep H&M competitive.

2) Engineer a round-the-clock culture

We're convinced a city as big as Tokyo keeps its streets safe because it never sleeps. Yes, well-behaved residents have a lot to do with it but life on the streets also keeps more deviant forces in check.

3) Appoint a creative director

Cities now suffer from commoditization, particularly as corporate components have consolidated to multinationals. Branding is the antidote. All strong brands have a creative director with a strong vision. Cities need them too. And no, they're not called mayors.

4) Make outdoor space a right

All new residential buildings should offer outdoor space for residents. Perhaps this should be expanded to include all buildings: Where possible, older buildings should be retro-fitted with balconies or roof terraces. This might help curtail development in locations that require massive technological intervention to make them habitable by humans, and provide a natural check against polluters.

5) Focus on building urban villages

Urban villages not only keep people out of cars but they also create a sense of community and in many cases encourage small businesses to flourish.

This is modified/excerpted from issue five of Monocle magazine.

These 5 urban design points are right on. I will hang onto these for future work... now, how can we integrate them with McDonough & Braungart's (2002) suggestions from cradle to cradle?

A. waste equals food (nutrient flow cycles and biological consumption etc. end the concept of waste);

B. respect diversity and promote abundance (thrivation in interdependent relationships with intermeshed needs and desires, enhanced ways to connect, use local materials/talent, live within diverse and renewing natural energy flows like the wind, the discipline of solar income & budgeting, creating living machines); and

C: promote eco-effectiveness (living like/with nature instead of against it, following five steps: 1. get free of known culprits like toxins and carcinogenics, 2. act on informed personal preferences, often before the definitive data come in, assigning priority to eco-intelligence, respect, delight, celebration, fun, 3. create a passive positive list, evaluating components for the X-list and phaseout, the gray list of unavoidable horrors, or the P-list of preferred positives, 4. activate the positives, begin the process of substituting the better for the worse, stop trying to be less bad and start figuring out how to be good, 5. reinvent and recast our systems to require less bad and more good, think systemic change without limits, and guided by five principles: 1. signal your intentions, by committing to a new paradigm, not just extending modifications to the old, 2. restore, planting "seeds" everywhere you can, 3. be ready to innovate further, "feedforward," open yourself to signals from elsewhere, 4. understand and prepare for the learning curve, as it will take something "extra" to get us to the next steps, and 5. exert intergenerational responsibility, for the earth belongs to the living rather than the dead).

The excellent Monocle magazine article in June above requires an excellent response...

I think the real challenges lie in getting the masses to support public policies that make the necessary fundamental and by now quite radical changes needed to sustain life as we know it through the constrictions just ahead into a better era of real thriving glory.

With admiration,
Paul M. Suckow,
Urban Planning-Environmental Policy
832-231-8373
suckow@hotmail.com
http://paulsuckow.tripod.com/