WELCOME TO THE URBAN REVOLUTION

HOW CITIES ARE CHANGING THE WORLD

JEB BRUGMANN

“As of this decade, more than half the earth’s population lives in cities; our
world is not just globalized, but urbanized. This powerful reappraisal draws
on two decades of fieldwork and reserach to show how the metropolis has
become a medium for revolutionary social change. Not just political up-
heaval and business growth but technological, economic, and cultural inno-
vations are forged in our urban centers. From Chicago to Mumbai, in every
corner of the world, the city is now society’s laboratory, brewing potential
solutions to poverty, inequality, and sustainability. Bridging urban studies,
economics, and sociology, Jeb Brugmann’s Welcome to the Ubran Revolu-
tion turns traditional urbanism on its head and offers an inspiring new way
of understanding our cities.”
OVERVIEW
1. proposing ideas for the future development of cities
2. understanding cities and systems

Key Concepts:

small events in one city will affect international events because of the citysystem
(the interconnectivity of global cities)
new global urbanism
valued gained from urban environments
bottom-up activism
globalization is best looked at from a local scale
“grow organically”
“trial-and-error”
urban individualism

Global Problems:

Poverty
Marginalization
Conflict
Environmental Decline
CONTENTS

PART I: THE URBAN REVOLUTION

1 Look Again: A View from the Expanding Edge of the Global City
2 The Improbable Life of an Urban Patch: Deciphering the Hidden Logic of Global Urban Growth
3 The Great Migration: The Rise of Homo Urbanis
4 Anatomy of Urban Revolution: The Inevitable Democracy of the City
5 The Tyrants’ Demise: The Irrepressible Economics of Urban Association
6 What We Can Learn from the Way That Migrants Build Their Cities: Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

PART II: THE CITY ADRIFT

7 The Final Phase: Two Billion New City Dwellers in Search of New Urbanism
8 Cities of Crisis: Sources of Global Vulnerability
9 Great Opportunities Cities: Stuck in Negotiation
10 A Planet Transformed: Urban Ecosystems or Global Dystopia?

PART III: STRATEGY FOR AN URBAN PLANET

11 The Strategic City: From Global Burden to Global Solution
12 Designing the Ecosystem: A New City Rises on the Serra do Mar Plateau
13 Building Local Culture: Reclaiming the Streets of Gracia District, Barcelona
14 Governing the Entrepreneurial City: Local Markets and the Resurgence of Chicago
15 Cocreating the Citysystem: Toward a World of Urban Regimes
CONTENTS

PART I: THE URBAN REVOLUTION

1 Look Again: A View from the Expanding Edge of the Global City
2 The Improbable Life of an Urban Patch: Deciphering the Hidden Logic of Global Urban Growth
3 The Great Migration: The Rise of Homo Urbanis
4 Anatomy of Urban Revolution: The Inevitable Democracy of the City
5 The Tyrants’ Demise: The Irrepressible Economics of Urban Association
6 What We Can Learn from the Way That Migrants Build Their Cities: Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

PART II: THE CITY ADRIFT

7 The Final Phase: Two Billion New City Dwellers in Search of New Urbanism
8 Cities of Crisis: Sources of Global Vulnerability
9 Great Opportunities Cities: Stuck in Negotiation
10 A Planet Transformed: Urban Ecosystems or Global Dystopia?

PART III: STRATEGY FOR AN URBAN PLANET

11 The Strategic City: From Global Burden to Global Solution
12 Designing the Ecosystem: A New City Rises on the Serra do Mar Plateau
13 Building Local Culture: Reclaiming the Streets of Gracia District, Barcelona
14 Governing the Entrepreneurial City: Local Markets and the Resurgence of Chicago
15 Cocreating the Citysystem: Toward a World of Urban Regimes
1 Look Again
A View from the Expanding Edge of the Global City

“...the urbanized part of the planet, which counts 3.5 billion residents and nearly two hundred metropolitan areas
with more than two million people...” (4).

“The evolution of individual cities into a city system, which I call the City, has radically changed the relationship be-
tween local and global affairs. Through the City, local conditions and events...are amplified into global events and
accelerated into global trends...” (5).

“...cities (are) having direct relationships with each other independent of relations between nations...” (11).

Whereas global affairs have always had impacts on local systems; local affairs now also have global impacts.
2 The Improbable Life of an Urban Patch
Deciphering the Hidden Logic of Global Urban Growth

Urban Advantage

Economies of:
density (increases efficiency)
scale (increases the volume of an opportunity)
association (collaborative)
extension (to other cities)
“...use technologies to link the unique advantages of different cities to create whole new strat
egies for advantage in the world” (28).

“Globalization is this process of developing new advantage from the unique economics of an extended group of cit-
ies - from their spatial urban affairs, therefore, are more (not less) important in the global era. They define the poten-
tial and the burdens of the expanding City” (28).
6 What We Can Learn from the Way Migrants Build Their Cities
Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

Four City-Building Approaches:

1 Ad Hoc City Building

2 Citysystems

3 City Models

4 The Master-Planned City (city district)

We will see, “...two billion more people joining the world’s cities by 2035...” (110).
6 What We Can Learn from the Way Migrants Build Their Cities
Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

1 Ad Hoc City Building

“...each incremental addition to the city is designed for the tactical purposes of individual users...” (103).
without relations to others

small and selective group of users for each building

work of beauty / public attraction

“...this type of growth does not create any purposeful nature for the city...” (103).

often dilutes the total advantage of an area

individual purposes
6 What We Can Learn from the Way Migrants Build Their Cities
Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

2 Citysystems

urbanism

codesign / cobuild / cogovern / combine / cocreate

creates social and market economy

community advantage

enhances the city’s utility, efficiency, productivity, emotional benefit “sense of place”

designed and built by the users

6 What We Can Learn from the Way Migrants Build Their Cities
Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

3 City Models

standardized units of cities (shopping malls / residential subdivisions)

cost-optimized

particular kind of zone

compartmentalization of cities

city plan + business model

convenience and predictability

6 What We Can Learn from the Way Migrants Build Their Cities
Buildings, City Models, and Citysystems

4 The Master-Planned City (city district)

create a special purpose area

little room for users to reshape the city’s spatial economics

“Master planning can achieve great social purposes when the dogmas of planners or architects about
the ‘right’ or ‘best’ city are outweighed by deep insight about the city’s users and their values and strate
gies...” (110).

“Architects, engineers, planners, and developers play roles along the way, but they
can’t design citysystems alone... A citysystem has to be designed and brought to life by
the community of people who will use it as a hyper-productive system to achieve their
own ambitious common purpose. The citysystem is the most potent way to build a city
to gain strategic advantage in an urbanizing world because it is the product of a com-
munity, rich or poor, that has mastered a very robust practice of urbanism” (107).
8 Cities of Crisis
Sources of Global Vulnerability
the constant chain of negative effects from every possible source
cities without collaboration: the inability to cocreate a new urbanism

organized crime riots

water collapsing buildings

diseases energy

waste disposal pollution

floods economics

To aliviate crisis: create a new urbanism don’t imitate models of other cities

“But to overcome the impasse, space must be created for more innovative design. In cities, design is the method
that makes alignment of urban strategies possible” (155).

TRANSFORM : DON’T SIMPLY REPLACE

9 Great Opportunities Cities
Stuck in Negotiation

there is no urbanism

no alliance of interests

no lack of funds just lack of creativity

imitate global models rather than building on their city’s history and uniquiness

lacks a strategy
only develops by negotiating deal by deal
11 The Strategic City
From Global Burden to Global Solution

Cities must become the centers of worl’d solutions

Barcelona, Chicago, Curitiba

1. Stable governing alliance to create common advantage

negotiate the city’s cocreation

2. Urbanist practices of:

productivity
efficiency
livability

3. Institutions to develop and implement these practices of urbanism

to make these creations work in every space and every aspect through the ever-changing city

The Ability To Transform