Book review: New Companion to Urban Design

Aseem Inam: The Journal of Urban Design published my review of a recent and remarkable book, The New Companion to Urban Design.

Urban design is a multifaceted and evolving field.  However, it does not become multifaceted and evolve by itself.  We make it so.  The "we" is the community of inquirers and enactors such as academic scholars, urban practitioners, and citizen activists.  From time to time, the field also needs a good shake.  This is just such a time.  Cities all over the world are confronting the climate crisis, urban inequality, structural racism and health emergencies such as the current Covid-19 global pandemic.  How is urban design engaging with such realities and challenges?  The book, New Companion to Urban Design, provides some valuable answers.  Indeed, the New Companion is a monumental and path-breaking tome in an increasingly welcome and crowded field of urban design readers and companions.  The breadth and scope of the issues it covers, at 50 chapters and 714 pages, is a breathtakingly impressive achievement.  As significant as this is, the New Companion is monumental in another, equally impressive, manner, which is the outstanding quality of its most remarkable chapters—all of which bring fresh and potentially transformative perspectives to the field of urban design. 

 The editors of the New Companion, the distinguished and prolific scholars Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, state that the present book should be seen more as an aspirational sequel to their earlier project, Companion to Urban Design (2011), which was more foundational.  The Companion to Urban Design was focused on what I would call a passive observation of past research and current trends, as revealed in the titles of its nine parts:  roots, theoretical perspectives, influences, technologies and methods, process, components, debates, global trends, and new directions.  In contrast, the New Companion concentrates much more on substantive issues and future possibilities in its fifteen sections:  part 1: Comparative Urbanism (i.e. arguments and observations, regional experiences,), part II: Challenges (i.e. claims and conflicts, informality, explosive growth versus shrinkage, large-scale development, gentrification and displacement, mimesis and simulacra) and part III: Aspirations (i.e. reliance and sustainability, health, conservation / restoration, justice, intelligence, mobility and access, arts and culture).

As this summary list attests, the chapters and their authors cover a wide range of facets of cities that are being increasingly recognized for their importance in city-design-and-building processes and their spatial products.  Within this overall structure, a number of chapters are especially outstanding for their fresh empirical analysis, theoretical contributions and new directions for practice in urban design.  These chapters share a number of themes that are vital for shaping the future of urban design. Three themes are especially pertinent: the first challenges Euro-American centric modes of thinking by learning from the global south, the second recognizes the complicity of urban design in urban inequality by engaging with theories of social justice, and the third complements an exclusive focus on urban form and space by theorizing about new modes of transformative practice.

The rest of the original and detailed book review and essay can be viewed and downloaded from this website. The shorter and edited version, as published by the Journal of Urban Design, can be viewed here. AI.

Cover image of the recent book, The New Companion to Urban Design. Source: Routledge.

First paragraph of the published book review. Source: Journal of Urban Design.

Designing the "Off-Grid" City: Empowering the Transactions of Infrastructure

Aseem Inam: What is the relationship between informality and sustainability as seen through the lens of design?

Through such a powerful lens, we acknowledge that while cities face enormous challenges and crises, they also constitute places and networks of innovation and transformation. A significant source of innovation are informal urbanisms. I define informal urbanisms as the transactional conditions of ambiguity that exist between that which is acceptable and that which is unacceptable in cities. Thus, informal urbanisms constitute the transactive realm between coded formalities (e.g. planning regulations, engineered infrastructures), and fluid informalities (e.g. social networks around housing issues, political negotiations over use of public spaces). In fact, informal urbanisms are not marginalized forms of places and practices; rather, they are central to understanding the logics of urbanism.

Focusing on various types of urban infrastructure and examples of illuminating case studies, a forthcoming book chapter by me proposes an analytical framework to develop a systematic and in-depth understanding of these informal urbanisms, in order to develop their potential for transforming cities through "off-grid" strategies. The purpose of the framework is to harness the everyday knowledge and informal urbanisms of marginalized residents in order to flip the narrative from their marginalization to their empowerment in the face of urban crises. In this manner, our understanding of the design of the everyday city and its long-term sustainability will be broadened, deepened and ultimately, empowered.

In this manner, this chapter fundamentally rethinks what constitutes urban infrastructure and its future design by proposing a theoretical framework and attendant research agenda. The chapter investigates how residents transact i.e. have interactive exchanges, with urban infrastructure (e.g. water, sanitation, transportation, communication, energy), in the global south via “off-grid” approaches (i.e. highly creative ways, such as informal strategies and social innovations). The theoretical framework is based on two innovative premises. The first is that the conjunctions of people and their transactions with each other and with urban infrastructure in the global south in fact constitute a type of unique infrastructure itself i.e. people as infrastructure, following Simone (2004).

The second is that these types of people/people and people/infrastructure transactions can be further designed to empower residents and create transformative urban practices i.e. designing urban transformation, following Inam (2014). Integrating these two premises, the chapter further develops this theoretical framework via a research agenda focusing on the global south, where the most ground-breaking innovations in informality have been integral to cities for centuries e.g. in Africa, Asia, Latin America.

By pursuing this research agenda, the chapter proposes new ideas about the power of design, such as the everyday creativity of citizens, and the transdisciplinary collaborations necessary to redesign urban infrastructure. This is also an approach for learning and theorizing from the global south that is highly relevant to the global north (e.g. in terms of radically democratic design, innovation in the face of resource constraints, horizontal networks rather than top-down expertise). AI.

Note: The name of the forthcoming book is Informality Now, edited by Antonino Di Raimo, Steffen Lehmann, and Alessandro Melis, and to be published by Routledge in 2020-2021.

The Ocupação São João in São Paulo addresses the critical shortage of housing via a residential squatting strategy that also contributes to the cultural infrastructure of the city through a self-managed cultural center, the Centro Cultural São João. The mural in the cultural center symbolizes how citizens can empower the transactions of such infrastructure through radically democratic strategies and informal urbanisms. Source: Aseem Inam.

Caring for the City

Aseem Inam: What is the relationship between care and the city?

As I write this, we are in the midst of a  Covid-19 / coronavirus pandemic.  At the time of this writing, there are a staggering 1,309,439 confirmed cases and 72,637 deaths worldwide, with many more projected.  Many of these cases are in cities, since 55% of the world's population lives in cities, a percentage that continues to rise. 

 Some commentators, in a rush to judgement and with a superficial understanding of judgement, have blamed urban density as a major part of the reason the virus is spreading so quickly.  At one level, whenever there is a concentration of people, there is bound to be a concentration of illness and crime, but there is also flourishing of a vital exchange of ideas, collective cultural expressions and incredible mobilizations for problem-solving.

 Currently in the United Kingdom, where I am presently based, there is an efflorescence of mutual aid societies, in which people come together using social media to help each other [e.g. getting food and medicines for the elderly and the vulnerable].  Also in the United Kingdom, a staggering 700,000 volunteers have committed to helping the over-stretched doctors, nurses and healthcare workers of the National Health Service.

 There are many such examples from all over the world, including sacrificing their lives for the well-being of others.  There are many studies done about the motivations that drive such altruistic behavior, but I want to get back to the city as a place of care.  Cities are truly places of hope, because that is where we learn to deal with difference, with the other, and over time, cultivate a culture of mutual trust and care, without which cities would not thrive.

 Caring for the city is caring for each other in deep and meaningful ways.  Such type of compassion requires thoughts, feelings, words, actions and ultimately, effort, because it is by being actively intentional that we learn to love each other. AI

The love of public space: Friends and friends of friends enjoying the beautiful weather, the great music and each other’s company at the Butetown Music Festival in Cardiff in the summer of 2019.. Source: Aseem Inam.