Strategic urbanism does seem to me a useful frame…

2012-10-03T19:04:00-04:00

The problem is, that I think the rise of tactical urbanism actually reflects the paralysis of city-wide and systems-focused efforts...Tactical urbanism is cool; but the enthusiasm with which we’ve all embraced it is a tell for what we don’t talk about, which is fundamentally broken city governance.

With the recent focus on all things tactical, urban and interventionist, Alex Steffen has been thinking about what it all means. Prompted (at least in part by Adam Greenfield’s extremely interesting notes on Ed Glaser’s Triumph of the City) he has begun to wonder how one could go beyond an incremental, task focused approach to urbanism. Because what is really needed is a long-term strategy for addressing "fundamentally broken city governance" not just some useful tactics for dealing with the lack of results.

Alex Steffen @ TED Talks

2011-08-11T21:46:16-04:00

What we are finding is that what we want is access to things...Our cities I would put to you are stockpiles of surplus capacities...What we probably will find is that turning these products into services that we have access to when we want them is a far smarter way to go. In fact even space itself is turning into a service.

How can cities help save the future? In this TED talk Alex Steffen discusses why he thinks if we view climate change as a problem of "clean energy generation" we are setting ourselves up for a problem. He suggests the future lie in fact in "the shareable future of cities". He then highlights some cool neighborhood-based green projects that expand our access to things we want and need -- while reducing the time we spend in cars.

Archinect - News

Strategic urbanism does seem to me a useful frame…

Alex Steffen @ TED Talks