#urbact

1. Interest around the integrated city

In thinking about the integrated city. For me the most important thing is to recognize, first of all, that there are at least three distinct interests around this concept.

A. The first interest is urban planners. If you look at the history of urban planning. You look at post Second World War and there’s full of examples of urban planners coming up with what they call integrated city designs.

B. The second group of interests actually are Corporal business interests. For urban planners the integrated city is the holy grail. But for business interests and particular corporate interests, it is business. The integrated city is money making. And best encapsulated I think currently, the concept of smart cities and what the smart city conjures up in terms of an integrated city.

C. The third key player, obviously, are governance. Local, regional, national and EU governments. Because here, you come into the process whereby the integrated city becomes a process.

One element is about combining different disciplines. The second element around the integrated process is about integrated governance. Recognizing that there is a need for multi-stakeholder and a multi sectoral participation, in the process.

2. The evidence that we have integrated cities?

The second thing I really want to stress. What is the evidence that we actually have integrated cities?

A. It’s a dream in a way, because in reality on the ground, the evidence is that what we’ve had instead, is top-down processes for integrated cities. In other words it’s a very technocratic driven process.

B. The second thing, I think, which is also evidence-based and very clear. Is that most of integrated development or so-called integrated city development has been infrastructure biased.

In other words, the proportion of money being spent on infrastructure has been in the ratio of about three to one.

That element of infrastructure development, in my view, has actually accelerated.

C. The other evidence, is that what we now have increasingly, are not integrated cities. We have segregated cities. Spatially segregated and increasingly economically segregated. Especially in capital and big cities. Where as I say, you’ve seen these big flows of foreign investment have come in and one of the best ways of making money, in the current economic climate has been through infrastructure and property speculation.

3. Business as usual models vs reactions from the ground

My third point is that since what I referred to as the 2008 watershed. Because for me, it wasn’t just about the economic crash, that we’re referring to. I also think it’s remarkable to remember that it’s 2008 that smartphone emerged.

It created the fourth dimension I think, to our lives, in a much much more fundamental way than the internet had prior to that. So since 2008, I think, that there’s been an increasing realization that the environmental impact of climate change is happening faster than anyone actually thought. And this has gone a higher up the agenda

Since then, I think the whole concept of the integrated city has become more contested and in some places a real conflict. Between business as usual models versus reactions from the ground, independent movements.

Classic example for example the Ghazi Park in Turkey, which was blocked by protests for a business-as-usual model to convert green space into a shopping mall.

If you look at other examples, not so successful for example Stuttgart. The mobilization and a referendum to block the development of Stuttgart. And the local people are still complaining about how they were row roaded.

And here in Brussels, where we are, you’ve had the movement which was called picnic. Which sounds very quaint, but actually was fundamental, because it was about addressing the issue of pollution in the city center and now as a result of that. We’ve actually seen that suddenly we’ve got a car free center of Brussels. Which in the past it was thought could never happen.

What we also need to recognize. Is that the old model is decaying, in my view. But, it’s not dead and because of that I think we’re in a period right now.

We have the new model emerging. But it’s not largely under the radar. You can see it in small components. But you don’t see it in its entirety and I think historically moments of this kind, take time to work through and I think we will see, hopefully, in the next decade, that that new model becomes more dominant and that leads me to my last thing

4. THE INTEGRATED CITY

What do I see as the integrated city? For me there are some key components of an integrated city that have to be addressed.

A. Firstly it has to focus on people and planets. We have to move away from the idea that city development is infrastructure led. There has to be infrastructure changes. I’m not denying it, but the primary focus has to be on people and on actually recognizing the constraints of the planet.

B. Second thing, we have to rethink our local democracies. We need more more radical verb forms of direct democracy. We need to re-engage people in local politics.

Because if we do not do that, the integrated city becomes simply a technocratic concept, because ultimately for me, cities are people and it is people that we have to actually engage with in order to integrate the city

C. The third thing which is related to that. I actually feel that it’s essential to engage people not in an abstract way. But to engage them in actually defining what they want in terms of neighborhood services. That people actually have a say in how they are involved in designing and defining the spaces that they live in.

D. The fourth thing is the most contentious. It is about developing an integrated housing market. Because unless we’re able to do that, then the housing market and housing as a tool increasingly is just for speculation. It is causing segregation and segregation not just in terms of where people live, but also segregation in terms of the places and services that people use.

So you take the city that were’re in Brussels for an example. There are parts of this city now, where if you walk into a primary or secondary school you will find that part of the local population is not represented there. Because even though we live there, their children go elsewhere, because they can afford to. And it’s only those who can’t, who are then in those schools and those schools are failing. Then you have a vicious cycle.

E. Then the fifth point for me is about moving towards a municipal or people ownership of energy, water and what I would call mobility solutions. I think hose have to be locally owned and locally defined and we see examples of this already, in the way that energy companies are doing it. Hamburg as a city is taking over its own energy supply.

F. The last point simply is that, we have to have integrated cities that are globally connected. But which actually trade and produce locally. That meas using new technology. 3D printing for an example opens all kinds of possibilities for having global supply chains. But with a low low co2 footprint attached to them and a local source, sourcing and production.

It is also the idea of the integrated city as reintegrating itself into its hinterland and therefore creating viable and sustainable rural communities around it. Whereas right now, what we have is our city centers, urban sprawl and rural dormitories where people escape.