CityReads│Book launch: The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda

UN Habitat 城读 2020-09-12

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Book launch: The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda

The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda suggests how governments, planners and citizens alike can learn from the mistakes of the past and create a more open city of the future.

Source: https://www.routledge.com/The-Quito-Papers-and-the-New-Urban-Agenda/Un-Habitat/p/book/9780815379294

The United Nations General Assembly has designated the 31st of October as World Cities Day since 2014. The Day is expected to greatly promote the international community’s interest in global urbanization, push forward cooperation among countries in meeting opportunities and addressing challenges of urbanization, and contributing to sustainable urban development around the world.

The general theme of World Cities Day is Better City, Better Life, while each year a different sub-theme is selected, to either promote successes of urbanization, or address specific challenges resulting from urbanization. This year, the United Nations has selected the theme Innovative Governance, Open Cities to highlight the important role of urbanization as a source of global development and social inclusion.

To celebrate the coming World Cities Day, UN Habitat and the Permanent Mission of Ecuador to the United Nations are going to organize the Pre - launch of The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda at the United Nations Headquarters on October 31, 2017.

UN-Habitat, Richard Sennett, Ricky Burdett, Saskia Sassen and other leading urbanists around the world have produced a critical new ‘anti-manifesto manifesto’ titled The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda, soon to be published by Routledge.

The future is urban. Indeed, the battle for sustainable development will be won or lost in cities. Not a moment too soon, then, that urbanization is suddenly at the center of global policy making. In 2015 the governments of the UN adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in 2016 they adopted the New Urban Agenda. However, the question of how these Agendas will be pursued concretely remains. Unfortunately, the prevailing model is rigidly technocratic Charter of Athens from 1933—the strict functionalist separation of activities that it prescribes still dominates planning practices worldwide. The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda suggests how governments, planners and citizens alike can learn from the mistakes of the past and create a more open city of the future.

The purpose of The Quito Papers and the New Urban Agenda is to start a discussion that both challenges this status quo and opens up new lines of enquiry. It intentionally does not propose a manifesto made up of simplistic slogans and recommendations as cities in the 21st century are more fragile and complex. Its content, therefore, is intentionally broad, ranging from architecture, planning and urban design, to land ownership and regulation, water management and environmental philosophy. This multifaceted assembly of perspectives critiques the tenets of the Charter of Athens, identify new trends and propose new insights on contemporary urbanization.

Part One outlines the overall challenges facing cities in the 21st century and Part Two offers a number of conceptual frameworks and approaches for dealing with those challenges. Each Part is also composed of a body of illustrated arguments, synthesized from selectively-abridged background papers from over 15 commissioned authors, interspersed with in-depth papers. Here are its contents.

Preface: Why The Quito Papers?

Richard Sennett and Ricky Burdett

Introduction

Joan Clos

1. Forces Shaping 21st Century Urbanization

Introduction

The Universe of Cities

1.1: Growing differences in population dynamics require focus and speed-differentiated approaches to good urbanization

1.2: A massive loss of habitat is accelerating and driving new flows of migration

1.3: Large-scale urban land acquisitions could de-urbanize cities and undermine public control

1.4: Lack of access to water and the risks caused by an excess of water require a rethinking on the place and shape of future urbanization

1.5: If democracy is to survive it will have to resist internal populism and embrace external cooperation

Who Owns the City?

Saskia Sassen

2. The Science of Urbanization and the Open City

Introduction

2.1: Good urbanization requires a three decade time horizon, a focus on value creation, capture and sharing and a compact between all levels of government

2.2: Open-system thinking and designing allow cities to evolve and change

2.3: Contemporary urbanism provides the opportunity to set aside the blank slate for an ethic of cohabitation

2.4: Planning and design should operate at both metropolitan and neighborhood scales and provide adaptable interventions that bridge social inequalities

2.5: UN-Habitat’s Sample of Cities shows that contemporary patterns of urbanization can reap greater benefits

2.6: Integrative networks combine government- and self-led approaches and expand the right to the city

2.7: Commons can compensate for public/private deficiencies if they achieve sufficiently large-scale application in cities

2.8: Planning without democracy or democracy without planning? How cities might have it both ways

The Open City

Richard Sennett

On Redistribution Policies and their Impact on Good Urbanization

Joan Clos

Contemporary Urbanism

Ricky Burdett

A Conversation

Richard Sennett and Joan Clos