[oberlist] NL* cfp: MONU #26 - DECENTRALISED URBANISM

[ober]

NEW CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU #26 - DECENTRALISED URBANISM
http://www.monu-magazine.com/submit.htm

When in 2007, almost ten years ago, we conducted an interview with Floris
Alkemade for MONU's issue #7 on "2ND RATE URBANISM" about a Dutch city
called Almere that was founded in the 1980s as a decentralised town with
multiple centres, he explained that once, when he tried to find a place to
have a beer there, he passed by an endless number of similar-looking
houses but could not find any centre where a bar or café might have been,
as the city never became dense anywhere. He described this experience to
us as being dumped somewhere close to hell. In the interview, we fittingly
called "Dumped in Almere", Alkemade, who was at that time one of the
partners of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and today is
the Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands, further stated that at
one point Almere realized this situation was the result of the
decentralisation of the city. Thus, decentralisation became viewed as a
problem at a time when the city grew to around 80.000 inhabitants; it
needed a recognizable urban identity with one single, clearly identifiable
centre.

However, the eventual failure or unsustainability of the decentralisation
of Almere does not necessarily mean that "Decentralised Urbanism" in
general is a bad thing. Particularly in relation to politics and with a
focus on more than one city, "Decentralised Urbanism", which in this case
means giving individual cities more autonomy and freedom, could help
cities thrive. For example, England has applied that thinking recently and
initiated the softening of the power of its capital London in order
gradually to get rid of the country's extraordinarily centralised
situation. Empowering cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, or Manchester,
would probably represent the biggest change to the way Britain's cities
are organised and run since the Second World War. And what works on the
scale of a larger region - or even nation - would probably function within
singular cities, and particularly within singular big cities and their
metropolitan areas, as well.

Nevertheless, things do not appear to be that simple when it comes to
singular cities instead of groups of cities, as the case of Almere
demonstrates. The city of Paris currently discusses whether the city's
metropolitan areas should become politically less autonomous, as their
autonomy offers challenges when it comes to, for example, establishing
common infrastructure or implementing housing regulations. Paris actively
contemplates making the city and its metropolitan areas more centrally
organized. The case of Paris clearly shows that there can be as many
advantages as disadvantages to a "Decentralised Urbanism". Our recent
issue #19, entitled "Greater Urbanism", already touched upon this topic,
which means that in this new issue we wish, to a certain extent, to
continue the discussion on how metropolitan areas of cities should be
organized in terms of governance, politics, space, architecture,
sociology, ecology, and economics, but now with a focus on "Decentralised
Urbanism".

The moment we start talking about metropolitan areas we need to bring
topics such as sprawl and suburbia into the discussion as well. This will
offer a great chance to look at and re-think issues that have been
discussed exhaustively over the last decades with a fresh eye through the
perspective of "Decentralised Urbanism". This means also that
"Decentralised Urbanism" is not a topic that merely focuses on big cities
and metropoles - typically London, Paris or Moscow - but also on smaller
cities. Furthermore, investigations on "Decentralised Urbanism" should not
be reduced to Europe and European cities, but include cities in the rest
of the world too. Because in the emerging world - Asia and Africa, and do
not overlook South America - almost every metropolis is growing in size
faster than its population. Despite the recent tendency of people and
companies, at least in the Western world, to move back to the city
centres, it becomes ever more obvious that our planet as a whole is
gradually becoming more suburban. Thus, with this new issue we aim to
discuss to what extent "Decentralised Urbanism" could help to organize
cities around the globe in a better way, creating and planning the right
kind of sprawl, orchestrated in an advanced and sustainable way, providing
enough space, infrastructure, and affordable housing for a dignified life
for everybody.

But we would also like to explore how we have to judge "Decentralised
Urbanism" in general, as a strategy to plan the growth of cities and their
metropolitan areas today. As the organisation of cities in a decentralised
way is nothing new and has been envisioned and executed in the past, this
issue should look into the history of urban planning too. One could think
of Ebenezer Howard's Garden City or Frank Lloyd Wright´s Broadacre City.
To discuss all this we invite with this new call for submissions for MONU
#26 on "Decentralised Urbanism" innovative thinking, critical texts,
exemplary projects, utopian visions from the past and present, simulating
photography and intelligent illustrations. Abstracts of around 500 words,
and images and illustrations in low resolution, should be sent, together
with a short biography and a publication list, as one single pdf-file that
is not bigger than 1mb to info at monu-magazine.com before December 31, 2016.
MONU's spring issue #26 will be published in April 2017.
Bernd Upmeyer, October 2016


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