Transurbanism

Description

Agatino Rizzo and Michail Galanakis:

"The term Transurbanism has been previously used in 2002 to refer to the contemporary state of urbanisation in which continuous transformations produce the “multiplication of information” . According to Arjen Mulder,

“...Transurbanism is urbanism in the era of globalization. The design challenge for architecture in this context is, instead of trying to create a single public domain, to create an atmosphere for the establishment and coexistence of a diversity of public domains...you cannot design a city, but you can help a city organize itself as a living structure - not by breaking down all barriers to the streams of information and commodities, but by allowing specific obstacles, channels, retardations and accelerations to be designed for individual streams, and thus to be informed by the city itself...”"

However, Mulder’s transurbanism is not a framework of participatory, interdisciplinary, action research but rather it refers to the old concept of proprietor, mono-disciplinary architecture. 2002 Transurbanism is a theory to understand contemporary urbanisation in the age of Internet but do not provide new tools to deal with it. New tools may be old tools used in inspiring way that are relevant nowadays. Such tools are urban metaphors that help us come up with situations in urban space that act as “quasi objects” to pull people together, facilitate communication and interaction and potentially fix relations.

...

Our idea of transurbanism refers to transdisciplinary urbanism, the latter being an emerging field of study/intervention in which social, action- researchers, artistic performers, and activists come together to contest space and re-negotiate power openly in the public space. Traces of this practice can be found in many protests and interventions organised to claim minority rights, to protest global warming, or to cancel the debt of African countries. The social aspects of urbanism connect different practices, ideological frameworks and disciplines in order to foreground issues important to everyday life and people.

Paraphrasing the words on transdisciplinary research by Christian Pohl and Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn (2007:26) , we argue that transurbanism transcends and integrates disciplinary paradigms; builds upon participatory design processes; addresses problems of social relevance that deal with everyday life experience; and searches for unity of knowledge beyond disciplines.

These key points indicate a promising paradigm for research practices in urban studies that can lead to a more inclusive, open-ended, socially informed and bottom-up organisation of cities. Within this context John Kaliski’s (2008) everyday urban design is relevant.

Kaliski argues that “there are three key concepts that relate to the open approach just suggested [everyday urban design]: interest in present contexts as starting points, acceptance of democratic design discourses to reform these starting points, and application of design intelligence to addressing the concerns and needs of everyday design discourses.” Transurbanism with its preoccupation with the everyday, the small scale and its interventionist character, temporary empowers researchers of urban space/phenomena to engage with various stake holders and the public at large, to get out of their comfort zones of colleagues and the academic community, and to facilitate a more inclusive, humane, and democratic organisation for more just cities.

Participatory Action Research is a main component of transurbanism. In UAIs researchers may or may not engage in community projects as such; however, UAIs require public participation. The role of public in UAIs is as important as that of the researchers setting it. An UAI takes place in order for public participation and interaction to be facilitated; this is the data researchers will collect and work on. Although the output (analysis, reports, etc.) of UAIs must be part of open shared knowledge, it is the process itself of an UAI that is its output; therefore, public participation adds an important element of co-production. An UAI is not necessarily a community project however it must be open for public use, facilitate public appropriation and interaction, and address social issues. We want to connect stake holders to output a more participatory and inclusive understanding of research on urban phenomena. However, it is the public that we would like to engage with in constructive ways; it is peoples’ needs and aspirations that we want researchers to better understand.

Finally, through a multilayered analysis of transurbanism we realise its close relation to Peer to Peer (P2P) research and open source urbanism advocated by the P2P foundation. Michel Bauwens shows how P2P principles are not new in human nature. Yet the idea of open/shared commons got new inputs with the informalisation of contemporary society, the free-software movements, and the spreading of cheap, fast-speed Internet access points worldwide. As Michael Peter Smith shows in his “Transnational Urbanism” a P2P society exploiting Internet capabilities to relate the different micro-agencies of transnational actors such as, amongst others, workers, NGOs, environmental activists, minorities, and other stakeholders is a fact. Theory, utopia, simulation, activism, transdisciplinary thinking, participatory research, and P2P, open-source technologies are the keywords for Transurbanism; a practical science or a new, possible ethnomethodological umbrella for contemporary urbanism."

Source

• Paper: TransUrbanism: Towards a new approach in architecture and urban planning? Two experiences in the Baltic region. by Agatino Rizzo and Michail Galanakis