Deurbanization and the right to the deurbanizaed city

Abstract

Cities are historically created as a collaborative work of different generations and derive from the possibilities created bylocal and climatic conditions, social relations and culture. Today, urbanization may appear as a way of organizing everyday hierarchical, exclusive, discriminatory and exploitative life through industrialized mass production of temporary, privatized, homogenized, fragmented, and power-oriented spaces. This mind-set and application generates several social and ecological problems. This article discusses the right to the city concept, and links it to the deurbanization approach as a social and ecological answer to the problems associated with current urban development. The methodology is supported by a review of the literature and an analysis of examples of works created in the De-Urban Design Studio. Results indicate that the deurbanization approach envisions creating resilient, equitable, non-hierarchical cities composed of communities that replace consumption via harmony with nature, that replace individualism and competition viacollaboration and solidarity, and that replace hegemonic relations via an equitable distribution of power. ResumenLas ciudades se crean históricamente como un trabajo colaborativo de diferentes generaciones y derivan de las posibilidades de las condiciones locales y climáticas, las relaciones sociales y la cultura. Hoy en día, la urbanización puede aparecer como una forma de organizar la vida cotidiana jerárquica, exclusiva, discriminativa y explotadora a través de la producción en masa industrializada de espacios temporales, privatizados, homogeneizados, fragmentados y orientados hacia el poder. Esta mentalidad y aplicación genera varios problemas sociales y ecológicos. Este artículo pretende discutir el concepto de derecho a la ciudad y vincularlo con el enfoque de desurbanización como una respuesta social y ecológica a los problemas de la urbanización actual. La metodología se apoya en la revisión de la literatura y el análisis de ejemplos de los trabajos creados en De-UrbanDesign Studio.Los resultados indican que el enfoque de desurbanización prevé crear ciudades resilientes, equitativas y no jerárquicas, compuestas por comunidades que reemplazan el consumo por la creación en armonía con la naturaleza; que reemplazan el individualismo y la competencia por la colaboración y la solidaridad y que reemplazan las relaciones hegemónicas por la distribución equitativa del poder.Palabras clave: desurbanización, diseño des-urbano, el derecho a la ciudad, ciudad, urbanización Anduli • Revista Andaluza de Ciencias Sociales Nº 17 -2018 • 206 •

The Future of Climate-Resilient and Climate-Neutral City in the Temperate Climate Zone

“…They should also intertwine building areas with forests and lakes, develop urbanized areas toward greenery, and create decentralized systems with highly amorphous, organic shapes. Inside the designed cities, they should diversify the environment, improve the distribution of buildings, roads, and BGI elements [ 168 , 172 ], reduce the amount of industrial and commercial areas, limit road transport (by planning ring roads and smart transport links), and promote a zero-emission life [ 90 ].…”

“…Many tools have been developed to mitigate the elevated city temperature related to (1) reducing the emission of anthropogenic heat, (2) increasing albedo and evapotranspiration, (3) introducing nature-based solutions such as the blue and green infrastructure (BGI), (4) the use of regenerative design practices taking into account the local climate, and (5) modification of city geometry and de-urbanization [ 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 ]. However, the most efficient and striking root cause solution seems to be creating the BGI, which is introducing and increasing greenery and water object areas [ 91 ].…”

Urbanization as taxidermy: “Man”hattanization of Mannahatta

“…Lefebvre expresses the formation of human habitats as a process of appropriating space through everyday activities and the spontaneous formation of adequate areas for these diverse activities based on the needs of the various generations through the collective life of diverse inhabitants during a long period of time. It can be emphasized that there are similarities between the creation of habitats in the works of nature and the collaborative, multigenerational and cooperative habitat creation by humans (Lefebvre, 1991; Sadri and Zeybekoglu Sadri, 2018).…”

“…In this view, in contrast with oeuvre spaces as “products” are designed and constructed within the domination of ruling power and as outcomes of collaboration between state, capital and institutional knowledge; particularly so in architecture and planning. Lefebvre calls these spaces abstract, since architecture and planning as oppressive arms of power produce such spaces that in effect abstract everyday life (Lefebvre, 1991; Sadri and Zeybekoglu Sadri, 2018).…”

Deurbanized cities as strongly sustainable human settlements

“…Weak sustainability downplays the importance of the political and social dimensions of sustainability and its proposed solutions fail to adequately remain within the planetary boundaries (Steffen et al, 2015), and may in fact increase the vulnerability of cities. In this context, we propose the idea of deurbanization (Sadri & Zeybekoglu, 2018a), a concept emerging from the de-urban design field, as an integral approach to sustainability in cities. We argue that, based on its features, deurbanization can lead to the strongly sustainable redesign of cities that views the human and non-human natural world as equally valuable and necessary for life to flourish.…”