Location: International
Website:righttothecity.org
Through shared principles and a common frame and theory of change, RTTC is building a national movement for racial justice, urban justice, human rights, and democracy. RTTC seeks to create regional and national impacts in the fields of housing, human rights, urban land, community development, civic engagement, criminal justice, environmental justice, and more.
Right to the City was born out of desire and need by organizers and allies around the country to have a stronger movement for urban justice. But it was also born out of the power of an idea of a new kind of urban politics that asserts that everyone, particularly the disenfranchised, not only has a right to the city, but as inhabitants, have a right to shape it, design it, and operationalize an urban human rights agenda.
In the realm of ideas, a key resource and touchstone is “Le droite à la ville” (Right to the City) a book published in 1968 by French intellectual and philosopher Henri Lefebvre. In the sphere of human rights, this powerful idea was adopted by the World Urban Forum and elaborated into the World Charter of the Right to the City in 2004. Building from this powerful idea, international principles, and forward-looking grassroots organizing, the Right to the City Alliance was established in January 2007.
THE RIGHT TO THE CITY PLATFORM
Land for People vs. Land for Speculation:
The right to land and housing that is free from market speculation and that serves the interests of community building, sustainable economies, and cultural and political space.
Land Ownership:
The right to permanent ownership of urban territories for public use.
Economic Justice:
The right of working class communities of color, women, queer and transgender people to an economy that serves their interests.
Indigenous Justice:
The right of First Nation indigenous people to their ancestral lands that have historical or spiritual significance, regardless of state borders and urban or rural settings.
Environmental Justice:
The right to sustainable and healthy neighborhoods, workplaces, healing, quality health care, and reparations for the legacy of toxic abuses such as brown fields, cancer clusters, and superfund sites.
Freedom from Police State Harassment:
The right to safe neighborhoods and protection from police, INS/ICE, and vigilante repression, which has historically targeted communities of color, women, queer and transgender people.
Immigrant Justice:
The right of equal access to housing, employment, and public services regardless of race, ethnicity, and immigration status and without the threat of deportation by landlords, ICE, or employers.
Services and Community Institutions:
The right of working class communities of color to transportation, infrastructure and services that reflect and support their cultural and social integrity.
Democracy and Participation:
The right of community control and decision making over the planning and governance of the cities where we live and work, with full transparency and accountability, including the right to public information without interrogation.
Reparations:
The right of working class communities of color to economic reciprocity and restoration from all local, nation and transnational institutions that have exploited and/or displaced the local economy.
The right to support and build solidarity between cities across national boundaries, without state intervention.
The right of rural people to economically healthy and stable communities that are protected from environmental degradation and economic pressures that force migration to urban areas.
Showing posts with label Urban Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Urban Environment. Show all posts
Friday, April 8, 2016
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Future Ready Cities
Location: Nationwide
Website: futureready.dell.com
For many decades, creating a future-ready local economy meant attracting industry. With industry came jobs, people to fill the jobs, and even more jobs from suppliers who supported the lifestyle of the people who came. It was a virtuous circle. Through their economic development efforts, cities reduced the traditional economic frictions of business: those of time, of distance, access to capital and information. To attract industry, they improved their ports, established railroads, built highways and schools, and created financial incentives for growth. And, historically, that worked very, very well.
But in recent years, technology has begun to eliminate or greatly reduce most of those economic frictions. Information is ubiquitous. Virtual infrastructure is as important as physical infrastructure. And access to capital has grown exponentially through democratization and the network effect. Rather than jobs drawing people, today, people draw jobs. But as always, there are winners and losers. Some metro areas are growing rapidly and creating audacious opportunities for members of their communities. While others struggle to march in place. So what strategies should cities adopt to grow and thrive in the future?
Recently Dell and Harvard University posed this question to several dozen experts at the 2015 Strategic Innovation Summit: Enabling Economies for the Future: Enabling Economies for the Future. Economists, educators, local elected officials and administrators, tech infrastructure builders, entrepreneurs and chief innovation officers convened to identify the factors that make cities best poised to thrive in our increasingly frictionless economy.
The consensus at the summit was that communities should focus on three key enablers: 1) attracting and nurturing human capital 2) fostering collaborative, growth-oriented commercial environments; and 3) building an enabling foundation of technology, telecom and physical infrastructure. In a frictionless economy, human capital is critical. Rather than jobs drawing people, today, people draw jobs. Workers care more about what they work on and who they work with than whom they work for, causing companies to pursue talent than the other way around. People arrive for the lifestyle offered by the community. They are attracted by continuous opportunities to learn from others, to collaborate together and to experience culture in all its diversity.
From this fertile talent pool emerge the innovators who will ultimately transform industries and create significant opportunities for economic growth. Future-ready cities understand the need to create a collaborative business environment, supporting not only established firms, with their employees and growing numbers of independent contributors, but growth-oriented entrepreneurs as well. We now know that entrepreneurs drive 50% of GDP and 75% of new jobs. And summit participants suggested that cities put particular focus on nurturing “gazelles”, high-growth companies that have an outsize impact on regional economic growth. Creating public-private partnerships with shared risks and rewards is one important tool that future ready economies can use to spur innovation. The infrastructure that serves citizens has to be robust.
Beyond just transportation, communities must also have the mobile networks, broadband connections and open data platforms that allow value creators to work on their own terms and businesses to provide public services with limited public funds. Coming out of the summit at Harvard, Dell partnered with IHS Economics, an industry-leading macroeconomics firm, to build an economic model for evaluating the future-readiness of cities. The Dell Future Ready Economies Model measures the performance of leading metro areas against the three pillars of human capital, commerce and infrastructure. The model has allowed Dell to identify the Top 25 Future Ready Economies in the U.S. and let public and private sector community leaders compare their own strengths to those of other Future-Ready Economies. (Spoiler alert. The San Jose metro area, home of the Silicon Valley, was ranked number one.)
The 25 cities on the list are well-distributed across the U.S., suggesting that success is no longer just about location, but rather a strong embrace of the factors that enable cities to become future ready.
Website: futureready.dell.com
For many decades, creating a future-ready local economy meant attracting industry. With industry came jobs, people to fill the jobs, and even more jobs from suppliers who supported the lifestyle of the people who came. It was a virtuous circle. Through their economic development efforts, cities reduced the traditional economic frictions of business: those of time, of distance, access to capital and information. To attract industry, they improved their ports, established railroads, built highways and schools, and created financial incentives for growth. And, historically, that worked very, very well.
But in recent years, technology has begun to eliminate or greatly reduce most of those economic frictions. Information is ubiquitous. Virtual infrastructure is as important as physical infrastructure. And access to capital has grown exponentially through democratization and the network effect. Rather than jobs drawing people, today, people draw jobs. But as always, there are winners and losers. Some metro areas are growing rapidly and creating audacious opportunities for members of their communities. While others struggle to march in place. So what strategies should cities adopt to grow and thrive in the future?
Recently Dell and Harvard University posed this question to several dozen experts at the 2015 Strategic Innovation Summit: Enabling Economies for the Future: Enabling Economies for the Future. Economists, educators, local elected officials and administrators, tech infrastructure builders, entrepreneurs and chief innovation officers convened to identify the factors that make cities best poised to thrive in our increasingly frictionless economy.
The consensus at the summit was that communities should focus on three key enablers: 1) attracting and nurturing human capital 2) fostering collaborative, growth-oriented commercial environments; and 3) building an enabling foundation of technology, telecom and physical infrastructure. In a frictionless economy, human capital is critical. Rather than jobs drawing people, today, people draw jobs. Workers care more about what they work on and who they work with than whom they work for, causing companies to pursue talent than the other way around. People arrive for the lifestyle offered by the community. They are attracted by continuous opportunities to learn from others, to collaborate together and to experience culture in all its diversity.
From this fertile talent pool emerge the innovators who will ultimately transform industries and create significant opportunities for economic growth. Future-ready cities understand the need to create a collaborative business environment, supporting not only established firms, with their employees and growing numbers of independent contributors, but growth-oriented entrepreneurs as well. We now know that entrepreneurs drive 50% of GDP and 75% of new jobs. And summit participants suggested that cities put particular focus on nurturing “gazelles”, high-growth companies that have an outsize impact on regional economic growth. Creating public-private partnerships with shared risks and rewards is one important tool that future ready economies can use to spur innovation. The infrastructure that serves citizens has to be robust.
Beyond just transportation, communities must also have the mobile networks, broadband connections and open data platforms that allow value creators to work on their own terms and businesses to provide public services with limited public funds. Coming out of the summit at Harvard, Dell partnered with IHS Economics, an industry-leading macroeconomics firm, to build an economic model for evaluating the future-readiness of cities. The Dell Future Ready Economies Model measures the performance of leading metro areas against the three pillars of human capital, commerce and infrastructure. The model has allowed Dell to identify the Top 25 Future Ready Economies in the U.S. and let public and private sector community leaders compare their own strengths to those of other Future-Ready Economies. (Spoiler alert. The San Jose metro area, home of the Silicon Valley, was ranked number one.)
The 25 cities on the list are well-distributed across the U.S., suggesting that success is no longer just about location, but rather a strong embrace of the factors that enable cities to become future ready.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Million Trees NYC
Location: New York, NY
Website://www.milliontreesnyc.org
MillionTreesNYC, one of the 132 PlaNYC initiatives, is a citywide, public-private program with an ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the City's five boroughs over the next decade. By planting one million trees, New York City can increase its urban forest—our most valuable environmental asset made up of street trees, park trees, and trees on public, private and commercial land—by an astounding 20%, while achieving the many quality-of-life benefits that come with planting trees. The City of New York will plant 70% of trees in parks and other public spaces. The other 30% will come from private organizations, homeowners, and community organizations.
Trees enrich and improve our environment and dramatically increase the overall quality of life in New York City. Our urban forest totals over 5 million trees and 168 species. It can be found throughout the city along streets, highways, in neighborhood playgrounds, backyards, community gardens, and even along commercial developments. There are 6,000 acres of woodlands in parks alone! The benefits provided by trees are numerous and diverse, making it important to quantify their value to our city and its residents. The primary benefits provided by New York City's urban forest come in three key areas:
Environmental Benefits, Slowing Global Climate Change: Urban trees help offset climate change by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide in their tissue, reducing energy used by buildings, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel based power plants. Our City’s trees store about 1.35 million tons of carbon valued at $24.9 million. In addition, our trees remove over 42,000 tons of carbon each year. Recently, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development cited a study by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) which advocates planting trees and increasing topsoil as preferable methods of combating global climate change. Since soil and trees effectively store carbon dioxide and other pollutants, ecosystems have been proven to play an essential role in climate mitigation.
Water Quality Protection: Urban trees capture rainfall on their leaves and branches and take up water, acting as natural stormwater capture and retention devices. Street trees intercept 890.6 million gallons of stormwater annually, or 1,525 gallons per tree on average. The total value of this benefit to New York City is over $35 million each year.
Improved Air Quality: Trees remove dust and other pollutants from the air. In fact, one tree can remove 26 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of 11,000 miles of car emissions. Our trees remove about 2,200 tons of air pollution per year, valued at $10 million annually.
Lower Summer Air Temperature: According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urban forests reduce urban temperatures significantly by shading buildings and concrete and returning humidity to the air through evaporative cooling.
Natural Resource Conservation: By using trees to modify temperatures, the amount of fossil fuels used for cooling and heating by homeowners and businesses is reduced. Our City’s street trees provide $27 million a year in energy savings.
Wildlife Habitat: New York City’s urban forest provides habitat - including food and shelter for many species of birds, insects, and other wildlife, as well as environmental education resources for New Yorkers of all ages. A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times outlines many of the environmental benefits of trees, including the role of riparian tree planting in fertilizing plankton populations which in turn feeds the local fish population. The effect of such riparian plantings in Japan have been studied by a recipient of the United Nations Forest Heroes Award.
High Return of Investment: Over the years the City has invested millions in its urban forest. Trees provide $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on tree planting and care.
Increased Property Values: A significant link exists between the value of a property and its proximity to parks, greenbelts, and other green spaces. Smart Money magazine indicated that consumers value a landscaped home up to 11.3 percent higher than its base price. Street trees provide $52 million each year in increased property values. A recent article in the New York Observer illustrates an increase in property values for buildings in proximity to parks and large street tree species, especially the Callery Pear, Honeylocust, and Pin Oak.
Community and Business District Appeal: The greening of business districts increases community pride and positive perception of an area, drawing customers to the businesses.
Improved Health: There is growing evidence that trees help reduce air pollutants that can trigger asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Green spaces also encourage physical activity - a healthy habit for any New Yorker.
Crime Prevention: Tree canopy is associated with a decrease in neighborhood crime. Strategically planted trees as well as community stewardship of the urban forest correlated with lower crime rates according to several studies performed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities.
Website://www.milliontreesnyc.org
MillionTreesNYC, one of the 132 PlaNYC initiatives, is a citywide, public-private program with an ambitious goal: to plant and care for one million new trees across the City's five boroughs over the next decade. By planting one million trees, New York City can increase its urban forest—our most valuable environmental asset made up of street trees, park trees, and trees on public, private and commercial land—by an astounding 20%, while achieving the many quality-of-life benefits that come with planting trees. The City of New York will plant 70% of trees in parks and other public spaces. The other 30% will come from private organizations, homeowners, and community organizations.
Trees enrich and improve our environment and dramatically increase the overall quality of life in New York City. Our urban forest totals over 5 million trees and 168 species. It can be found throughout the city along streets, highways, in neighborhood playgrounds, backyards, community gardens, and even along commercial developments. There are 6,000 acres of woodlands in parks alone! The benefits provided by trees are numerous and diverse, making it important to quantify their value to our city and its residents. The primary benefits provided by New York City's urban forest come in three key areas:
Environmental Benefits, Slowing Global Climate Change: Urban trees help offset climate change by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide in their tissue, reducing energy used by buildings, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel based power plants. Our City’s trees store about 1.35 million tons of carbon valued at $24.9 million. In addition, our trees remove over 42,000 tons of carbon each year. Recently, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development cited a study by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) which advocates planting trees and increasing topsoil as preferable methods of combating global climate change. Since soil and trees effectively store carbon dioxide and other pollutants, ecosystems have been proven to play an essential role in climate mitigation.
Water Quality Protection: Urban trees capture rainfall on their leaves and branches and take up water, acting as natural stormwater capture and retention devices. Street trees intercept 890.6 million gallons of stormwater annually, or 1,525 gallons per tree on average. The total value of this benefit to New York City is over $35 million each year.
Improved Air Quality: Trees remove dust and other pollutants from the air. In fact, one tree can remove 26 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of 11,000 miles of car emissions. Our trees remove about 2,200 tons of air pollution per year, valued at $10 million annually.
Lower Summer Air Temperature: According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urban forests reduce urban temperatures significantly by shading buildings and concrete and returning humidity to the air through evaporative cooling.
Natural Resource Conservation: By using trees to modify temperatures, the amount of fossil fuels used for cooling and heating by homeowners and businesses is reduced. Our City’s street trees provide $27 million a year in energy savings.
Wildlife Habitat: New York City’s urban forest provides habitat - including food and shelter for many species of birds, insects, and other wildlife, as well as environmental education resources for New Yorkers of all ages. A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times outlines many of the environmental benefits of trees, including the role of riparian tree planting in fertilizing plankton populations which in turn feeds the local fish population. The effect of such riparian plantings in Japan have been studied by a recipient of the United Nations Forest Heroes Award.
High Return of Investment: Over the years the City has invested millions in its urban forest. Trees provide $5.60 in benefits for every dollar spent on tree planting and care.
Increased Property Values: A significant link exists between the value of a property and its proximity to parks, greenbelts, and other green spaces. Smart Money magazine indicated that consumers value a landscaped home up to 11.3 percent higher than its base price. Street trees provide $52 million each year in increased property values. A recent article in the New York Observer illustrates an increase in property values for buildings in proximity to parks and large street tree species, especially the Callery Pear, Honeylocust, and Pin Oak.
Community and Business District Appeal: The greening of business districts increases community pride and positive perception of an area, drawing customers to the businesses.
Improved Health: There is growing evidence that trees help reduce air pollutants that can trigger asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Green spaces also encourage physical activity - a healthy habit for any New Yorker.
Crime Prevention: Tree canopy is associated with a decrease in neighborhood crime. Strategically planted trees as well as community stewardship of the urban forest correlated with lower crime rates according to several studies performed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
American Urbex
Location: Nationwide
Website: www.americanurbex.com
The main goal of American Urbex is to mashup three categories of research material: rich visual media, geolocation, and information. This website began as a project for a Library Media Sciences course at UW-Whitewater. The site is operated by Ken Fager – grad student, Wisconsin licensed instructor, photographer and adventurer.
America has a rich tapestry of historical places throughout the nation. Some are pretty difficult to find, but most are hidden in plain sight.
Every day people walk past them without bothering to ask questions. Why are they there? What function did they serve? Who were the people that dwelled here? Why did they leave? Beyond the main goal this website advocates the exploration of urbex locations in the interest of education, adventure, and preservation.
All legitimate requests can be sent to the administrator. American Urbex reserves the right not to divulge location information.
Website: www.americanurbex.com
The main goal of American Urbex is to mashup three categories of research material: rich visual media, geolocation, and information. This website began as a project for a Library Media Sciences course at UW-Whitewater. The site is operated by Ken Fager – grad student, Wisconsin licensed instructor, photographer and adventurer.
America has a rich tapestry of historical places throughout the nation. Some are pretty difficult to find, but most are hidden in plain sight.
Every day people walk past them without bothering to ask questions. Why are they there? What function did they serve? Who were the people that dwelled here? Why did they leave? Beyond the main goal this website advocates the exploration of urbex locations in the interest of education, adventure, and preservation.
All legitimate requests can be sent to the administrator. American Urbex reserves the right not to divulge location information.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Metropolitan Cityscapes
Location: International
Website: www.metropolitan-cityscapes.org
As devotees of Architecture we often travelled to visit famous buildings, not satisfied to only view them in books. Each Architectural quest brought us to places we might never have thought to visit, walking streets we otherwise would not have walked. In the end, it was the journey and not the destination that mattered. In these places and on these streets, we bore witness to scenes outside our usual experience. The array of foreign sights, sounds and smells quickened our senses as we breathed in these new vignettes of urban life.
Each journey's end left a growing desire, a need to create something we could hold onto to remind us of where we had been, a special keepsake to rekindle our memories and enable us to share stories with friends. And so the expeditions began.
We started with Sydney, then our home, walking every street, recording every building. We then moved onto Berlin, explored Paris and then London. It became an addiction. Eckard cycled for two solid weeks to capture the dense, intricate hive of Tokyo. He hiked up and down the steep lanes of Hong Kong and travelled twice to Beijing to document a city that was rapidly changing for the Olympics, taking more than 3000 photographs.
Cities are divided by a multitude of invisible boundaries; surprises are waiting around every corner. Walking every street means crossing these boundaries, a tedious process leading to exciting discoveries. We became accidental explorers, and inevitably perceived the city through different eyes.
The centre of a city, its beating heart, is a palimpsest overflowing with imagery. Layers upon layers of stories have accumulated and disappeared through time. Behind each facade, each brick, each pathway, untold stories, memories and dreams are waiting to be narrated. Above all the noise, if you listen carefully, you can hear your own tale of the city.
To tell our stories of the city, we peeled away all the complex urban layers so that only the bare bones of place remains. Each line drawn and cut on every cityscape has a distinct story. Metropolitan Cityscapes are a new vision of the city as organism. Each city is as different, and as beautiful, as we are.
Metropolitan Cityscapes is an homage to the cities we have visited and those that have inspired us. In making them, we hope to create a starting point for your own stories and experiences.
Current and former residents of Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo, Chauntelle Trinh and Eckard Buscher have a long held fascination for cities and the urban milieu. Working in the fields of Architecture and Design, they dealt with the minutiae of the city but yearned to explore the macrocosm of metropolitan life. They have been making art collaboratively since 2007.
Website: www.metropolitan-cityscapes.org
As devotees of Architecture we often travelled to visit famous buildings, not satisfied to only view them in books. Each Architectural quest brought us to places we might never have thought to visit, walking streets we otherwise would not have walked. In the end, it was the journey and not the destination that mattered. In these places and on these streets, we bore witness to scenes outside our usual experience. The array of foreign sights, sounds and smells quickened our senses as we breathed in these new vignettes of urban life.
Each journey's end left a growing desire, a need to create something we could hold onto to remind us of where we had been, a special keepsake to rekindle our memories and enable us to share stories with friends. And so the expeditions began.
We started with Sydney, then our home, walking every street, recording every building. We then moved onto Berlin, explored Paris and then London. It became an addiction. Eckard cycled for two solid weeks to capture the dense, intricate hive of Tokyo. He hiked up and down the steep lanes of Hong Kong and travelled twice to Beijing to document a city that was rapidly changing for the Olympics, taking more than 3000 photographs.
Cities are divided by a multitude of invisible boundaries; surprises are waiting around every corner. Walking every street means crossing these boundaries, a tedious process leading to exciting discoveries. We became accidental explorers, and inevitably perceived the city through different eyes.
The centre of a city, its beating heart, is a palimpsest overflowing with imagery. Layers upon layers of stories have accumulated and disappeared through time. Behind each facade, each brick, each pathway, untold stories, memories and dreams are waiting to be narrated. Above all the noise, if you listen carefully, you can hear your own tale of the city.
To tell our stories of the city, we peeled away all the complex urban layers so that only the bare bones of place remains. Each line drawn and cut on every cityscape has a distinct story. Metropolitan Cityscapes are a new vision of the city as organism. Each city is as different, and as beautiful, as we are.
Metropolitan Cityscapes is an homage to the cities we have visited and those that have inspired us. In making them, we hope to create a starting point for your own stories and experiences.
Current and former residents of Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo, Chauntelle Trinh and Eckard Buscher have a long held fascination for cities and the urban milieu. Working in the fields of Architecture and Design, they dealt with the minutiae of the city but yearned to explore the macrocosm of metropolitan life. They have been making art collaboratively since 2007.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Campaigning Architecture
Location: London, England
Website: www.chicago.aaschool.ac.uk
Campaigning Architecture is an international design workshop that operates across a range of scales and disciplines to explore more effective ways to make thought-provoking changes to our urban environment.
Campaigning Architecture:
The workshop will campaign architecture for strategies that engage the city like no other. Campaign strategies—from the London Cycling Campaign to provide a collective voice for the City’s cyclists; to the cross-party campaign to bring London’s air quality into compliance with World Health Organization standards; to London’s successful bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games—are executed as an amalgamation of military-like precision and haphazard logic.
We will mine the effectiveness of campaigning to enable architecture to successfully navigating the social, political, and economic networks that make a city tick.
The 2013 workshop will be held in London at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. Participants will work towards a collective project. The site will be pre-selected, but the design scope will be left open to be determined by the workshop participants.
The workshop will begin with a visit to the site and a series of rampant idea generation discussions, lubricated by a social event. This will be followed by a day of critiquing and editing these ideas down to a formal proposal, which will then be developed for the rest of the workshop—splitting into smaller subgroups as necessary to develop different aspects of the project.
The workshop is an excellent opportunity to enhance your design expertise and network with an international group of likeminded students and professors, all while enjoying what London has to offer.
Campaigning a Hedonistic Reactivation:
The workshop will campaign new modes of urban intervention for a hedonistic reactivation of a fatigued site in London’s East End. Workshop participants will combine the potential of design intelligence with the strategic power of propaganda in order to campaign provocative changes to our urban environment.
Campaigning the Creative Commons:
The traditional marriage between copyright law and designs that intend to create significant change is an ineffective scenario that must change. So while this project will have a specific site, we will campaign the Creative Commons to make it possible for this project to be copied, adapted, distributed, and deployed elsewhere.
Website: www.chicago.aaschool.ac.uk
Campaigning Architecture is an international design workshop that operates across a range of scales and disciplines to explore more effective ways to make thought-provoking changes to our urban environment.
Campaigning Architecture:
The workshop will campaign architecture for strategies that engage the city like no other. Campaign strategies—from the London Cycling Campaign to provide a collective voice for the City’s cyclists; to the cross-party campaign to bring London’s air quality into compliance with World Health Organization standards; to London’s successful bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games—are executed as an amalgamation of military-like precision and haphazard logic.
We will mine the effectiveness of campaigning to enable architecture to successfully navigating the social, political, and economic networks that make a city tick.
The 2013 workshop will be held in London at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. Participants will work towards a collective project. The site will be pre-selected, but the design scope will be left open to be determined by the workshop participants.
The workshop will begin with a visit to the site and a series of rampant idea generation discussions, lubricated by a social event. This will be followed by a day of critiquing and editing these ideas down to a formal proposal, which will then be developed for the rest of the workshop—splitting into smaller subgroups as necessary to develop different aspects of the project.
The workshop is an excellent opportunity to enhance your design expertise and network with an international group of likeminded students and professors, all while enjoying what London has to offer.
Campaigning a Hedonistic Reactivation:
The workshop will campaign new modes of urban intervention for a hedonistic reactivation of a fatigued site in London’s East End. Workshop participants will combine the potential of design intelligence with the strategic power of propaganda in order to campaign provocative changes to our urban environment.
Campaigning the Creative Commons:
The traditional marriage between copyright law and designs that intend to create significant change is an ineffective scenario that must change. So while this project will have a specific site, we will campaign the Creative Commons to make it possible for this project to be copied, adapted, distributed, and deployed elsewhere.
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