Re-or ganising the Urban Stratum
vor gelegt von
Dipl.-Ing.
Katleen De Flander
geb. in Sint-T ruiden (BE)
von der Fakultät VI – Planen Bauen Umwelt
der T echnischen Universität Berlin
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
Doktorin der Ingenieurwissenschaften
Dr .-Ing.
genehmigte Dissertation
Promotionsausschuss:
V orsitzender: Prof. Dr . Philipp Misselwitz
Gutachterin: Prof. Dr . Angela Million
Gutachter: Prof. Ir . Ronald Rovers (Zuyd University)
T ag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 8 Juli 2016
Berlin 2017

Contents 3
Contents
Abstract 7
Kurzfassung 9
Glossar 11
Prologue
The Urban Stratum 15
Chapter 1
Introduction 19
1.1 Introduction 19
1.2 Conceptual Framework 20
1.3 Thesis Objective, Methods and Outline 27
Chapter 2
Resource-Centred Cities and the Opportunity of Shrinkage 33
2.1 Introduction 36
2.2 Myth Busters 36
2.3 From Consumption-Centered to Resource-Centered Cities 37
2.4 From Consuming to Producing Cities 38
2.5 The Opportunity of Shrinking Cities: ‘Less is More” 40
2.6 Density in the Light of Shrinkage 41
2.7 Climate Change Mitigation 43
2.8 Conclusions 43
2.9 References 44
Chapter 3
Closed Cycles - Open City 47
3.1 Fixing the ruptures 49
3.2 Cities are Complex Adaptive Systems 51
3.3 T ranslating complexity in the city 56
3.4 Closing Cycles - Opening City 63
3.5 Conclusions 65

4 Contents
3.7 References 66
3.6 Aknowledgements 66
Chapter 4
Pressure-Point Strategy
Leverages for Urban T ransformation 69
4.1 Introduction 71
4.2 From Intuitive Practice to Strategy 72
4.3 The Pressure-Point Approach 73
4.4 A Case Example: Neighbourhood Regeneration in Chicago 78
4.5 Discussion 80
4.6 Conclusions 80
4.7 References 81
Chapter 5
Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook 85
5.1 The intrinsic link between the nature of urban resource flows and the
production of urban space 86
5.2 The conscious use of necessity for socio-ecological transformations 90
Bibliography 95
Statement of Contribution 107
Acknowledgements 109
Appendix
Appendix 1
Expert W orkshop
Closed Cycles - Open City 11 3
Appendix 2
Expert W orkshop
Urban Pressure Point Method 11 7
Appendix 3
Public Debate
Critical Dialogue.01: Overriding the Urban/Non-Urban Divide 121
Appendix 4
Expert W orkshop
Critical Dialogue.02:
LAB2: Dif ferent Urbanisations 131

Contents 5
Appendix 5
Public Debate
Critical Dialogue.02:
Dif ferent Urbanisations 135
Appendix 6
Operationalising Holistic Urban Concepts 137

Abstract 7
Abstract
This dissertation explores the ‘Urban Stratum’, a global layer of urban influence that is
obstructing the earth’ s natural cycles. Going out from urgency to deal with the wicked
global environmental problems of our era, this thesis develops strategies for transforming
complex urban systems in the condition of planetary urbanisation, based on the potential
leverages of shock and necessity . I therefore construct an interplay of four theoretical
concept lines: Planetary Urbanisation, Complexity , T ransformation and Necessity; and use
practical evidence to support my ar guments. A central part of the methodology consists
of T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshops, of which some were conceptualised as ‘active-
peer -review’ and others as ‘creative LAB’. The main contribution of this dissertation to the
scientific debates is twofold and lies in the new interconnections it makes. First, this thesis
establishes the, intrinsic but lar gely ignored, link between the nature of urban resource flows
and the production of urban space. I conclude that to come to an ef fective transition of our
extended urban systems, a transition of urban resource flows (from ‘linear ’ to ‘circular ’)
will need to go hand in hand with a transition in urban space governance (from ‘closed’ to
‘open’ cities). In other words: a paradigm shift regarding resource flows will demand an
appropriate (re-)production of urban space: “Closing Cycles - Opening Cities”. Failing to do
so will lead to a further cultivation of ‘tree-like’ structures, which lack complexity and ‘de-
urbanise’ the city . Based on this, I suggest that the closing of resource cycles can also serve
as a possible new driver for the ‘Open City’. Second, this thesis proposes a conscious use of
necessity for socio-ecological transformations. Inspite the visibility of counterevidence, the
need for innovation or change is currently mostly approached from situations of comfort,
safety and predictability . These are, I argue, not able to produce enough energy to push the
necessary transformation. Next to posing natural resource (re-)appropriation processes and
‘shrinking cities’ as strategic points of entry , this thesis develops a ‘pressure-point strategy’
which highlights the potential to evolve what has often been an intuitive practice, led by

8 Abstract
community or elected leaders into a more accessible strategy for shaping socio-ecological
transformation in urban practice. This method for customised complex problem handling
starts from stress states in the urban system(s) and uses their initial momentum to encourage
systemic change through ‘intraventions’ at selected pressure points. In the discussion, both
contributions lead to the need for cities to become responsive again to their social and natural
environment. The knowledge to do this is stored for instance in vernacular architecture and
other forgotten techniques that answered to the earths natural cycles, but most of all in the
common sense of aborting the consumption-centered paradigm for respect and simplicity ,
traits that are hard to obtain without immediate pressure.

Kurzfassung 9
Kurzfassung
Diese Dissertation untersucht das ‘Urban Stratum’, eine planetarische Schicht urbanen
Einflusses, die die natürlichen Zyklen der Erde stört. Ausgehend von der Dringlichkeit
den ‘wicked’ globalen Umweltprobleme unserer Zeit zu begegnen, werden Strategien für
die T ransformation komplexer urbaner Systeme im Zustand der ‘Planetary Urbanisation’
entwickelt. Diese basieren im W esentlich auf Überlegungen zu Potentialen, die Schocks
und ‘Necessity’ entfalten können, um als Hebelwirkung für V eränderung zu fungieren. Im
Rahmen der Arbeit werden vier theoretische Ansätze miteinander verknüpft - Planetary
Urbanisation, Komplexität, T ransformation und Notwendigkeit - und die Ar gumentation
durch Praxisbeispiele untermauert. Kern der methodischen V or gehensweise sind
darüberhinaus T ransdisziplinäre Expertenworkshops, die einerseits als ‘active-peer -review’
sowie andererseits als ‘creative LAB’ V eranstaltungen konzipiert sind. Die vorliegende
Arbeit leistet in zweifacher Hinsicht einen wichtigen Beitrag zu der wissenschaftlichen
Debatte, der sich auf neue V erbindungen zwischen den theoretischen Zugängen bezieht.
Zum einen bezieht sich dies auf die augenscheinlich enge, aber bisher weitgehend ignorierte
V erbindung zwischen der Art urbaner Ressourcenströme und der Produktion urbanen
Raumes. Argumentiert wird, dass ein Übergang urbaner Ressourcenströme (von ‘linear ’ zu
‘kreisförmig’) mit einem Übergang urbaner Governance (von ‘geschlossenen’ zu ‘of fenen’
Städten) Hand in Hand gehen muss, um urbane Systeme wirksam zu transformieren. Anders
gesagt, ein Paradigmenwechsel mit Blick auf Ressourcenströme erfordert eine entsprechende
(Re-)Produktion urbaner Räume: “Closing Cycles - Opening Cities”. W erden diese beiden
Über gänge nicht zusammengedacht, führt dies unweigerlich dazu, dass ‘tree-like’ Strukturen,
denen Komplexität fehlt und die die Stadt ‘de-urbanisieren’, weiter kultiviert werden.
Ein Ergebnis der Arbeit ist die Erkenntnis, dass die Schließung der Ressourcenkreisläufe
auch als ein möglicher neuer T reiber für die ‘offene Stadt’ verstanden werden muss. Zum
anderen wird mit dieser Dissertation für eine bewusste Berücksichtigung von ‘Necessity’

10 Kurzfassung
als T reiber für eine sozial-ökologische T ransformation eingetreten. Dies steht entgegen
gegenwärtigen gesellschaftlichen und technologischen Entwicklungen, bei denen sich
der Bedarf an Innovationen und V eränderungen meist aus Situationen von W ohlfahrt,
Sicherheit und V orhersehbarkeit speist. Derartige Zustände können jedoch kaum genügend
Ener gie erzeugen, um eine notwendige sozial-ökologische T ransformation voranzubringen.
V ielmehr , so ein weiteres Forschungsergebnis, sollten zukünftig schrumpfende Städte
und ‘Necessity’-basierte (Rück-)gewinnungsprozesse von natürlichen Ressourcen als
Ausgangspunkte für T ransformation stärker berücksichtig werden. W ie dies praktisch
umgesetzt werden kann, verdeutlich die ‘pressure point’ Strategie, die im Rahmen der
vorliegenden Dissertation entwickelt wird. Sie greift Ansätze zur Gestaltung einer sozio-
ökologischen T ransformation im urbanen Raum auf, die oft als intuitives Handeln von
lokalen und gewählten ‘Leaders’ praktiziert werden, und überführt diese in eine anwendbare
Strategie. Sie nimmt ihren Ausgangspunkt in fallspezifischen Spannungszuständen urbaner
Systeme und macht sich das initiale Momentum zunutze, um systemische V eränderungen
durch ‘intraventions’ an bestimmten ‘pressure points’ zu forcieren. Die Diskussion beider
Er gebnisse verdeutlicht letztlich auch, dass urbane Räume notwendigerweise ihre soziale
und natürliche Umwelt wieder berücksichtigen. Erforderliches W issen, wie dies gehen
kann, verbirgt sich beispielsweise in lokalspezifischer , einheimischer Architektur oder
den vielfach in V ergessenheit geratenen T echniken W issen, um auf die natürlichen Zyklen
der Erde einzugehen. V ielmehr noch gilt es jedoch ein an Konsum orientiertes Paradigma
zugunsten von Merkmalen wie Respekt und Einfachheit zu brechen; Charakteristiken, die
ohne umgehenden Druck nur schwerlich erlangt werden können.

Glossar 11
Glossar
Complexity
The best way to define complexity is I believe by explaining the dif ference between something
that is simple, something that is complicated and something that is complex. Glouberman
and Zimmeman (2002, vi) explain in a simple and illustrative way the distinction between
simple, complicated and complex problems: “In simple problems like cooking by following
a recipe, the recipe is essential. It is often tested to assure easy replication without the need
for any particular expertise. Recipes produce standardized products and the best recipes
give good results every time. Complicated problems, like sending a rocket to the moon, are
dif ferent. Formulae or recipes are critical and necessary to resolve them but are often not
sufficient. High levels of expertise in a variety of fields are necessary for success. Sending
one rocket increases assurance that the next mission will be a success. In some critical ways,
rockets are similar to each other and because of this there can be a relatively high degree
of certainty of outcome. Raising a child, on the other hand, is a complex problem. Here,
formulae have a much more limited application. Raising one child provides experience but
no assurance of success with the next. Although expertise can contribute to the process in
valuable ways, it provides neither necessary nor sufficient conditions to assure success. T o
some extent this is because every child is unique and must be understood as an individual.
As a result there is always some uncertainty of the outcome. The complexity of the process
and the lack of certainty do not lead us to the conclusion that it is impossible to raise a child.”
Something that is complex is thus non-linear and carries elements of ambiguity , emer gence
and uncertainty . It is constituted out of many constantly changing, interconnected and
interdependent parts in which big changes can occur from small interventions. Complicated
solutions to complex problems (e.g. climate change, poverty) usually fail since the linear
cause ef fect chain does not exist for complex problems.

12 Glossar
Necessity
The word ‘necessity’, often used interchangeable with the word ‘need’, has a spectrum of
interpretations that ranges from a more hard definition: ‘something that is essential rather
than just desirable’ to a more soft one: ‘something that is wanted or required’ (Oxford Living
Dictionaries). In the same line, its synonyms range from ‘essential’ to ‘wish’, its antonyms
from ‘nonessential’ to ‘comfort’ and even ‘luxury’. W e could say that the dif ference comes
down to, on the one end, basic human needs (for water , food, shelter , health care, ener gy ,
social wellbeing, …) and on the other hand, people’ s wishes or dreams.
In this thesis, the term ’necessity’ is used from the ‘basic human needs’ perspective in the
context of earth’ s limited and shrinking resources basis. As Gandhi stated: “Earth provides
enough to satisfy each person’ s need, but not his greed.” If we think of urban areas and
go back to the basic functions they need to provide for their residents, we see that these
functions can be provided in various ways e.g. from I ‘need’ a car , which I would argue has
a a strong ‘wish’ element, to I ‘need’ to be mobile, which goes lot more in the direction of a
basic human need. I therefore see a lot of transformation potential by going back from the
‘wishes’ of people to their basic human ‘needs’ and the way in which these are provided
for (and not more). This, I am aware, will often mean a clash with existing paradigms and
beliefs.
If basic human needs are not met, there is either a physical or a mental stress state. If
persistent over longer periods of time, this can lead to diseases, conflicts and in the case
of the most vital basic needs, even death. However , there are also good things that come
from stress states, as they create a kind of ener gy that is normally not there. As the proverb
‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ teaches us: when the need for something becomes
essential, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it. Y ou could call it our built-in
survival strategy . The third paper in this dissertation will take exactly this as a starting point
to discuss urban transformations, using necessity as leverage.
Space
The word ‘space’ in ‘urban space’ relates in this dissertation to both physical and social
space. Urban sociologists will ar gue that all space is social and that urbanisation in itself is
a social process. Key for this dissertation is that physical space defines very much the social
interactions that take place (or don’ t take place) in it while at the same time, social forces,
structures and relations determine how space is produced in a physical way . In practice,
we see that segregated societies mostly have physically visible divisions, whether it is a
highway dividing a rich and a poor neighbourhood or less obvious, but sometimes even

Glossar 13
harsher , a ‘rich’ and a ‘poor ’ door to enter a residential building that was originally intended
to ‘mix’ the socially divided.
Adding the element of transformation, Castells (2008, 316) argues that “spatial transformation
must be understood in the broader context of social transformation: space does not reflect
society , it expresses it, it is a fundamental dimension of society , inseparable from the overall
process of social or ganisation and social change.” He illustrates this by a.o. the example of
the crises of the patriarchal family which gradually shifts sociability from family units to
networks of individualised units, with considerable consequences in the uses and forms of
housing, neighbourhoods, public space and transportation systems.
As this thesis deals with urban transformations with a focus on resource flows, I am interested
in the interlinkages between urban space and natural resources. Therefore, the third factor
which this dissertation brings in as being closely related to the production of physical and
social urban space is the way in which a certain society deals with natural resources. One of
my key arguments is that if we are to adopt a new paradigm concerning resource flows, we
will have to produce and appropriate urban space (both physical and social) to accommodate
this new paradigm.

Prologue 15
Pr ologue
The Urban Stratum
The name ‘Urban Stratum’ originally comes from geologists describing what the boundary
layer of the Anthropocene will look like. They question what Earth scientists in the far future
would find in the strata of the Anthropocene epoch, and what evidence might lead them to
conclude the Anthropocene Earth was markedly different from the planet in the preceding
epoch known as the Holocene. The geologists argue that similar to the lava flows that
launched the Jurassic era, the fossilised remains of our cities could serve as a stratigraphic
marker of the next planetary transition’ s root cause.
One could however also see the ‘Urban Stratum’ in a broader way , namely as a global layer of
urban influence that has extended all over the planet: from the (mega)city to the small village
where urban-made products are consumed; from the vast agricultural lands to the garbage
patches in the middle of the oceans and from the petroleum rigs on the Arctic to the logged
rainforests of Borneo where a web of roads is woven through as if they were silk strands
produced by some erratic spider . Global land, resources and water are claimed and degraded
for urban food and material production but also for urban waste and pollution absorption.
T ourism is taking over the last remote areas. Even the Amazon is not a jungle anymore but
is left to be the lungs of the Global City and a resources reserve for future urban needs.
Building on Lefebvre’ s radical hypothesis of the complete urbanisation of society , Neil
Brenner ar gues in this respect that the geographies of urbanisation, which have long been
understood with reference to the densely concentrated populations and built environments of
cities, are assuming new , increasingly large-scale morphologies that perforate, crosscut, and
ultimately explode the erstwhile urban/rural divide. He calls it “Planetary Urbanisation”, an
unevenly woven fabric of worldwide urbanisation.

16 Prologue
This Urban Stratum thickens, changing the planet’ s atmosphere, oceans and soils, and it is
becoming an increasingly impervious layer obstructing the natural cycles of the biosphere
as if it was sealing off it’ s processes of exchange. One of the most obvious examples is the
sealing of fertile soils by urbanisation, obstructing directly the nutrient and water cycles.
However , in a similar way are CO2 emissions, chemical fertilisers, sewage and waste
disposal, deforestation, overfishing, etc. all bringing the natural cycles of the biosphere out
of balance. Being realistic, within human timeframes it will be impossible to return back to
Nature and get rid of the Urban Stratum, or will it be possible to prevent further urbanisation.
What we can question however is how we can change the Urban Stratum in such a way that
it becomes more of a membrane, a porous layer that doesn’t obstruct the natural cycles of
the biosphere but works with them.
The knowledge of how to transform from stratum to membrane is stored for instance in
vernacular architecture and other for gotten techniques that answered to the earths natural
cycles, but most of all in the common sense of aborting consumption-centred thinking for
respect and simplicity , traits that are hard to obtain without immediate pressure.
This essay has been published as:
De Flander , Katleen. 2015. “The Urban Stratum.” In Fragile Beauty , edited by
Antonia Stolz, Ioan Brumer , and Manuel Rivera. Berlin: Round not Square.

Chapter 1. Introduction 19
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Introduction
Humankind is a major ecological factor on the planet (Steffen et al. 2007, 614; Crutzen
2002, 23) and urbanisation is its major instrument. Steffen et al. (2007, 620) argue
‘enormous, immediate challenges confront humanity over the next few decades as it
attempts to pass through a bottleneck of continued population growth, excessive resource
use and environmental deterioration’. At the same time, they recognise that humanity is now
becoming a self-conscious, active agent in the operation of its own life support system, what
they call the ‘third stage of the Anthropocene’, in which ‘whatever unfolds, the next few
decades will surely be a tipping point in the evolution of the Anthropocene’.
Already several decades ago Lefebvre (2003, 1 (1970)) put forward the radical hypothesis
that society has been completely urbanised. This reconceptualization of the urban as a global
phenomenon – an urban stratum - and not just as ‘in the city’ is crucial, I ar gue, to deal
with the complexity of current global environmental problems and their handling; foremost
if we are aiming to see any kind of transformation in the current paths of deterioration of
the earth’ s natural systems within human time frames. (A sobering fact is of course that in
geological terms, human existence on earth is negligible). However , a systematic application
of Lefebvre’ s fundamental thesis has yet to be undertaken (Brenner and Schmid 201 1, 13),
scholars such as Brenner and Schmid (201 1, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2015) are taking the lead
in this by pushing their urban theory of Planetary Urbanisation.
This thesis explores the ‘Urban Stratum’, a global layer of urban influence that is obstructing
the earth’ s natural cycles. Going out from the fact that it is impossible to get rid of the Urban

20 Chapter 1. Introduction
Stratum or prevent further urbanisation (Angel 201 1, 20), I question how we can change
this layer so that it becomes more permeable for the biosphere’ s natural cycles to flow .
Following Sassen’ s (2010a, 3) claim that it is not density or urbanisation itself but the urban
systems we have created that are at the core of our current global ecological conditions,
this thesis ar gues for a necessary transformation of our urban systems based on a shift from
consumption-centred to resource-centred thinking (Nair 201 1, 136). This approach stands in
sharp contrast to the current dominant strategies that focus on efficiency improvements and
start from the current status quo. Systemic transformation, I argue, is needed to tackle the
externalities of our current urban systems and to ‘reduce the geographies of extraction and
environmental damage’ (Sassen and Dotan 201 1, 833) caused through urban consumption
and production.
Going out from urgency to deal with the wicked global environmental problems of our
era, this thesis develops strategies for transforming complex urban systems in the condition
of planetary urbanisation, based on the potential leverages of shock and necessity . T o
achieve this objective, this dissertation constructs an interplay of four theoretical concept
lines: Planetary Urbanisation, Complexity , T ransformation and Necessity; and uses
practical evidence to support its arguments. A central part of the methodology consists of
T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshops, of which some were conceptualised as ‘active-peer-
review’ and others as ‘creative LAB’.
The remainder of this introductory chapter presents the conceptual framework with the
before mentioned four concept lines, further specifies the objective and methods of this
thesis and briefly introduces the next chapters.
1.2 Conceptual Framework
Planetary Urbanisation
Brenner and Schmid (201 1, 13) follow Lefebvre (2003, 1 (1970)) in his radical hypothesis
of the complete urbanisation of society and demand a radical shift in analysis from urban
form (settlement type) to urban processes. They ar gue the last thirty years have witnessed
several far -reaching worldwide socio-spatial transformations including the creation of new
scales of urbanisations, the blurring and re-articulation of urban territories, the disintegration
of the “hinterland” and the end of the “wilderness” and that these require a foundational
reconceptualization of our image of the urban. An urban theory without an outside! (Brenner
2014, 14)

Chapter 1. Introduction 21
Planetary urbanisation theory therefore strongly criticises the ‘Urban Age’ discourse, w h i c h
a ss u me s t he te r r it or i al bou nd ed n es s, coh er en ce a nd d isc re te ne ss of t he spa t ial u n its i n
wh ich so cia l r elat ion s u n f ol d a nd con ce pt u al is es u r ba n is at ion pr i m a r i ly o r exclusively wit h
re f erence to the concen t ration o f population withi n ci ties or u rban set tl ements. U rban Age
th eo r y ( e . g. B urd ett and S ud je c 200 7 ; 20 1 1 ) is bas ed o n th e u n der l yin g theo re ti cal ass ump ti o ns
t ha t ( 1 ) a ll s pa ce s i n t he world a re d i f f e re nt iat ed a mo ng d ist i n ct t y p e s o f se t tle me nt, (2 )
all spa ces i n t he wo rl d are either “ u rban ” or “r u ral” ( st ron g versi on ) o r cl assified alon g t h e
u r ba n /r u r al c ont i nuu m ( wea k ver sion ), a nd ( 3 ) s pat ia l ch an ge e nt a il s t h e r ed i st r i but ion of
pop ulati on amon g these onto lo gic all y fi x ed set tl emen t t y pes ( B ren n er and Sc h mi d 20 1 4 , 325-
326). Nevertheless, this discourse has become the mainstream in recent decades and its
assumptions are also at the basis of the current strong focus on urban-rural linkages (which
implicitly assumes an opposition) and the urban-rural continuum (the weaker version of the
same assumption) in global and national policy circles and programmes (e.g. UN, BMUB,
Habitat 3).
Brenner and Schmid (2014, 314) claim that the urban age thesis is a flawed basis on which to
conceptualise contemporary urbanisation patterns and that ‘the geographies of urbanization
[…] are assuming new , increasingly lar ge-scale morphologies that perforate, crosscut,
and ultimately explode the erstwhile urban/rural divide’ (Brenner 2013, 87). They suggest
that ‘the conditions and trajectories of agglomerations (cities, city-regions, etc.) must be
connected analytically to larger -scale processes of territorial reor ganization, circulation (of
labor , commodities, raw materials, nutrients, energy), and resource extraction that ultimately
encompass the space of the entire world. At the same time, this perspective suggests that
important socioenvironmental transformations in zones that are not generally linked to
urban conditions, from circuits of agribusiness and extractive landscapes for oil, natural
gas and coal to transoceanic infrastructural networks, underground pipelines, and satellite
obits, have in fact been ever more tightly intertwined with the developmental rhythms of
urban agglomerations. Consequently whatever their administrative demarcation, socio-
spatial morphology , population density , or positionality within the global capitalist system,
such spaces must be considered integral components of an extended, worldwide urban
fabric.’ (Brenner 2013, 103-104) Thus ‘urbanization contains two dialectically intertwined
moments: concentration and extension’ (Brenner 2013, 102)
I argue that this proposed shift in the conceptualisation of contemporary urbanisation strongly
supports the systemic thinking that is needed to tackle the wicked problems we have to deal
with in the ‘third stage of the Anthropocene’ (Stef fen et al. 2007, 618). The explosion of the
bounded spatial unit is crucial when we want to focus on resource flows and the externalities
of the urban systems we have developed. Resource extraction and environmental pollution
(air , water , soil) most often lie outside of the administrative boundaries of the city but are

22 Chapter 1. Introduction
undoubtedly inherently connected to the urban systems of consumption and production.
Therefore, seeing an extractive mining landscape as an urban landscape just as much as a city
centre is, opens a new way of thinking that actually lies much closer to reality than a mere
focus on population distribution and urban settlement types. Similarly are peasant struggles
in landscapes of extended urbanisation as much related to urban processes as struggles over
local commons in megacities (Brenner 2013, 108). Also the spread of societal phenomena
such as the obesity epidemic, until recently strongly associated with ‘cities’, to remote places
can be easily understood by the extended nature of current urban food systems.
Complexity
Complexity theory has its roots in mathematics, physics and computer science but is now
being widely used outside of these disciplines and has made its way into urban studies
and the social sciences. Already in the sixties, Jacobs (1992, 428 (1961)) described cities
as ‘complex systems whose infrastructural, economic and social components are strongly
interrelated and therefore difficult to understand in isolation’. A single complexity theory
doesn’ t exist but I want to refer to two main approaches, which use complexity theory to
study urban areas and phenomena. A first group of scholars sees cites as complex self-
or ganised systems with emerging properties and mathematical regularities (e.g. fractality).
They study urban morphology from this perspective (Salat 201 1; Salingaros 2005 and 1999)
and look for scaling relations that apply to all urban systems (Batty 2008; Bettencourt
2013a and 2013b). A second group of scholars turned to complexity theory because
it offers them ‘a new set of conceptual tools to help explain the diversity of changes in
contemporary modernities under going globalisation’ (W alby 2003, 1). The emphasised core
feature of complexity theory here is, as W alby (2003, 3) describes, ‘its anti-reductionist
analytic strategy , which is inextricably connected to a fundamental re-think of the nature
of systems, so as to better conceptualise the simultaneously dynamic and systematic inter-
relationships between phenomena’. Similarly , Gershenson (2008 in Haken 2012, 7) defines
a complex system as ‘one in which elements interact and affect each other so that it is
difficult to separate the behaviour of individual elements. In each of these systems, the state
of an element depends partly on the states of other elements, and af fects them in turn’. He
concludes that ‘this makes it difficult to study complex systems with traditional linear and
reductionist approaches’, which is the mainstream approach in many scientific disciplines.
Reductionism is also the way in which urban sustainability is mostly approached in practice:
a sectorial set-up (e.g. only focus on ener gy), expecting predictable outcomes and without
anticipating (or ignoring) feedbacks on/from other systems. The complexity of reality
therefore often backfires on these approaches, causing rebound effects (e.g. increased energy
efficiency leading to more consumption) or other unexpected feedbacks. Also V oss and Kemp
(2005, 5) see ‘rationalist problem-solving, with its central feature to eliminate uncertainty ,

Chapter 1. Introduction 23
ambivalence and interference of uncontrolled influence, problematic as a central orientation
for governance in modern societies’. They acknowledge that ‘the reduction of complexity
of this problem-solving approach has yielded tremendous technological developments,
sophisticated patterns of social regulation and a high economic efficiency of production’.
However , in the context of sustainability , they argue that ‘the more the process of problem-
solving is disengaged with the full messy intermingled natural reality , but oriented towards
the worlds of specialists, the lar ger is the share of interdependencies and dimensions of
embeddedness, which are ignored in developing and implementing of what appears as
solutions’. Against this backdrop, V oss and Kemp (2005, 4) claim that ‘sustainability should
be understood as a specific type of problem framing which emphasises the interlinkage of
dif ferent problems and scales, as well as long-term and indirect ef fects of actions that result
from it.’ They thus rely heavily on complexity theory and see this as the only way in which
to handle the wicked problems of our age, calling the problem of sustainable development
the most “wicked” problem of modernity . W icked problems (as opposed to “tame” ones), a
term coined by Rittel and W ebber (1973, 160), have a number of characteristics that demand
a complexity approach, under which the following: they are difficult to clearly define, they
have many interdependencies and are often multi-causal, attempts to address them often
lead to unforeseen consequences, they are not stable, have no clear solution, are socially
complex, hardly ever sit conveniently within the responsibility of any one organisation,
involve changing behaviour and are sometimes characterised by chronic policy failure
(APSC, 2012). Next to V oss and Kemp’ s (2005; 2006) Reflexive Governance theory , also
T ransition Management, defined as ‘fostering sustainability transitions’ (Rotmans et al. 2001
in Rotmans and Loorbach 2009, 185), is strongly based on key notions of complex systems
theory , such as variation and selection, emergence, coevolution, and self-or ganization
(Rotmans and Loorbach 2009, 186).
W alby (2003, 3) discusses two main ways in which complexity theory has inspired addressing
the issue of change: ‘The first involves the concept of the co-evolution of complex adaptive
systems, where the concept of co-evolution replaces any simple notion of single directional
impact. The second involves the notion of saltation, of sudden, critical turning points, in
which small changes, in the context of complex systems, give rise to bifurcations and new
paths of development that are self-sustaining.’ Sassen (2009, 49) adds the particularly
relevant notion that complex systems are multi-scalar systems as opposed to multilevel
systems, and that the complexity of urban systems resides precisely in the relations across
scales. She claims: ‘when broad overarching events appear to be closely related to details,
a system requires treatment as a complex system’. Because of this, she ar gues for a multi-
scalar ecological urban analysis as opposed to one of multilevel systems based on either/or
conditions: local vs. global, markets vs. non-market mechanisms).

24 Chapter 1. Introduction
Complex system properties such as non-linear cause-effect relationships, unexpected
feedbacks and interdependencies are important throughout this thesis. As Sassen (2009, 46)
concludes: ‘it is within the complexity of the city that we must find the solutions to much
environmental damage and the formulas for reconfiguring the socio-ecological system that
is urbanisation’.
T ransformation
I focus here on the use of the term transformation in two ways that are of importance in
this dissertation. First, to describe the human impact on the planet’ s systems in the new
geological epoch of the Anthropocene and second, to describe the non-linear fundamental
changes that are needed to tackle current global multiple crises.
Anthropogenic transformation of the earth’ s systems is now widely recognised by science
and society . Scientists claim that this transformation has forced a new epoch in geological
time: the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000, 17; Crutzen 2002, 23), which is
characterised by mass species extinction and fundamental changes in geophysical systems.
Whitehead (2014,1) describes: ‘for Crutzen, what marked humans out as a force, at least,
equivalent to nature were two key processes: 1) the range of different ways in which humans
had transformed the environment; and 2) the ways in which these transformations were
increasingly expressed at a planetary level’. Also the nine planetary boundaries defined by
Rockström et al. (2009, 472), clearly point to the fact that humanity is causing systemic
transformations which result in a dif ferent state once certain tipping points are crossed.
Although both the Anthropocene and the planetary boundaries are in the end a social
construct and anthropogenic earth system transformation is marked by persistent uncertainty
and functional and spatial interdependence (Biermann 2014), they also mark a clear societal
acknowledgment of the scale of human impact and indirectly mean that humanity is now
becoming a ‘self-conscious, active agent in the operation of its own life support system’,
what Stef fen et al. (2007, 618) call the ‘third stage of the Anthropocene’.
The second use of the term transformation is more blurry and encompasses a wide range of
understandings of what can or should be done by humanity to address todays great challenges,
not least the ones caused by the first described anthropogenic transformation of the earth’ s
systems. Brand (2016, 23) calls (socio-ecological or societal) “transformation” an umbrella
term, which places the ecological crises in a broader context and unites dif ferent fields of
thinking and action against business-as-usual strategies in a global context of complexity
and non-linearity , ur gency and multiple crises. However , Brand (2016, 24) ar gues, beyond a
general consensus that fundamental system change is required; the concept of transformation
remains vague and reflects dif ferent worldviews and entry points. In a prior review , Brand

Chapter 1. Introduction 25
et al. (2013, 481) state for instance that transformation implies non-linear change and no
prioritisation of any temporal – i.e., short, medium or long term – or spatial scale, e.g.,
national or international. This statement clearly counters Geels’ (2002, 1259; 201 1, 26)
multi-level perspective on transitions. Despite the many dif ferent approaches, Brand (2016,
24), in his literature review , dif ferentiates between two main uses and understandings of
transformations in the current research field: transformation as a Strategic Concept and
transformation as an Analytical Concept. He ar gues that the first (and more commonly used)
relies on a liberal understanding of societies and a strong degree of trust in innovation and
existing institutions to solve problems and that it fails to pay sufficient attention to the
structural obstacles to far -reaching processes. The second more analytical understanding of
transformation, he ar gues, can complement and correct some of these shortcomings in order
to better understand the obstacles to policy change by questioning existing political and
economical structures and underlying rationales. When failing to incorporate this analytical
dimension, Brand (2016, 27) warns in the end, the strategic concept of transformation runs
the danger of preparing the epistemic-political terrain for a greening of capitalism that might
safeguard acceptable living conditions in a spatially and temporally highly selective form.
This thesis supports the second understanding of transformation and sees the need to rethink
the (concentrated and extended) urban systems we have created starting from their very
foundations and question their underlying rationales (e.g. consumption-centred thinking,
‘growth’ principle). Most strategies are still trying to solve the problems within the same
systems that created them, heavily relying on technological innovations and operating
de facto within existing institutional structures and economic systems, often resulting in
further exclusion and the strengthening of existing power relations. Eco-cities are a good
example of this and will be discussed. If we see transformation as fundamental change,
it will therefore intrinsically affect existing power relations and underlying structures.
Fundamental transformation will therefore always spark resistance from those that have
advantages by staying with the old system, those that are usually the most powerful.
Necessity
The fourth line of thought that runs through this thesis is based on the heuristic that in times
of necessity or shock, people and systems are much more flexible than we initially think
they are.
If we look at history , it takes a disruption in the normal food supply to reveal a city’ s real
productive potential. Examples are London after the Second W orld W ar and Cuban cities
in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union (Steel 2009, 313) when the country

26 Chapter 1. Introduction
was cut off from 80% of its food imports and 50% of its oil imports. These disruptions
also brought different regulations and political changes that facilitated a transition. In these
cases, necessity and an environment that facilitated change turned these cities into food
producing cities. W ith the best intentions of the world, the current urban farming movement
in the W est will not even get close to the city’ s real production potential because there is first
of all no real necessity and second, there is no facilitation for change.
T aleb (2012, 3) introduces the term ‘antifragile’ (not the same as resilience) as the exact
opposite to ‘fragile’ and ar gues that things or persons that are ‘antifragile’ actually benefit
from shock. These positive responses to stress are however often ignored. Basing himself
on the wisdom of the ancients (and grandmothers), T aleb (2012, 55) ar gues that ‘innovation
sparks from initial situations of necessity , in ways that go far beyond the satisfaction of such
necessity . The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates! His
answer to the question: ‘How do you innovate?’ is therefore: ‘First, try to get in trouble.
I mean serious, but not terminal, trouble.’ This strongly contradicts modern methods and
ideas of innovation and progress: ‘Moderns try today to create inventions from situations of
comfort, safety , and predictability instead of accepting the notion that “necessity really is
the mother of invention.” Thus in spite of the visibility of the counterevidence, the need for
innovation or change is currently mostly approached by the development of new ‘products’
or technological solutions. Referring to the previous line of thinking on complexity , this
belief that technology will solve our problems does however not work when we are dealing
with wicked problems in complex systems. Also the focus on the copy-pasting of best
practices is, I argue, an unpredictable endeavour in complex systems. This thesis focuses on
stress states and context-specific necessity as starting points for transformation.
From a totally different perspective, Klein (2008, 6) describes the opportunistic use of
shock of the Friedmanites (followers of Milton Friedman, grand guru of the movement for
unfettered capitalism) to impose their free market systems on entire populations. One of
the examples she describes is the shock doctrine in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina, a strategy which resulted in: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers, a
private instead of a public school system and the replacement of public housing projects
with condos. Klein (2008, 6) refers to one of Friedman’ s essays ‘Capitalism and Freedom’,
in which he observes that ‘only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When
that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I
believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive
and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.’ Is the same
potential available to push our urban systems away from their destructive nature.

Chapter 1. Introduction 27
Interplay
It is exactly the interconnection of these 4 strands of thinking that fills an existing research
gap. This therefore defines the objective and hypotheses of this dissertation and forms its
main contribution to the current scientific debates.
1.3 Thesis Objective, Methods and Outline
Objective and Hypotheses
The preceding discussion has highlighted the context and theoretical setting in which this
thesis frames its objective:
Going out from urgency to deal with the wicked global environmental problems of our era,
this thesis develops strategies for transforming complex urban systems in the condition of
planetary urbanisation, based on the potential leverages of shock and necessity .
This thesis starts from the following hypotheses:
• It is the - concentrated and extended - urban systems we created that are at the core
of our global environmental problems. (Planetary Urbanisation)
• W e need to focus on a transformation of these urban systems. The basis of most
current strategies - efficiency improvements, model approaches and optimisation
- will never get us far enough given the ur gency and severity of current global
problems. (T ransformation)
• It is within the complexity of the urban that we must look for the formulas for
reconfiguring the socio-ecological system that is urbanisation. Failing to do so
will lead to unexpected feedbacks and ‘de-urbanise the city’ (Sassen in Guadalupe
2013, 66) (Complexity)
• T o activate the urban potential for change, we need to look in places of necessity ,
which can serve as leverages for systemic change. (Necessity)
Research Methods
The two central research methods of this dissertation are: Theoretical Analysis and
T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshops. As Parnell and Pieterse (2015, 237) ar gue:

28 Chapter 1. Introduction
“understanding the fundamental issue - of what ultimately shapes the city (and the
associated question of the impact of a city or system of cities) - is also a prerequisite for
knowing what can be done to ef fect city change. Theory is thus key to any transformative
urban engagement”. In line with the thought that “by definition, research in ‘the urban’
traverses disciplines, scales and philosophical and methodological paradigms” (Parnell and
Pieterse 2015, 242), the construction of the interplay between the four theoretical concept
lines - planetary urbanisation, necessity , transformation and complexity - has been central
to the theoretical analysis of this dissertation, and more specifically , their joint relation to
urban space. However , rather than engaging into a spatial analysis, adopting a researcher
perspective towards a specific “social arrangement” that appears to be “geographically
fixed” (Baur et al. 2014, 1 1), this work invites to find the normally hidden reality of space
(Appadurai in Graham and McFarlane 2014, xii). Similar to the analytical lens that the
authors of the volume ‘Infrastructural Lives’ (Graham and McFarlane 2014) take to make
infrastructure more visible by tackling it not as a dimension of urban technology but as a
dimension of urban everyday life, this dissertation aims to bring the topic of urban systems
transformations out of its experts seclusion of engineering and technology development
into the more open daylight of anthropology , sociology , political science, and urban studies
(Appadurai in Graham and McFarlane 2014, xii).
In addition to the construction of this interplay , a qualitative content analysis (Mayring
2000) of the T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshops (described below) was done based on a
variety of objects including: protocols, observations, video material and produced materials
(boards, drawings, collages, etc.) from these workshops. Dif ferent levels of content (Becker
and Lissmann 1973) were regarded important in this analysis, including both primary
content - the main ideas and arguments - and latent content - e.g. the points of agreement/
disagreement, the particular standpoints of the academics/politicians/practitioners and their
interactions, the contextual backgrounds of the participants (both cultural and geographical)
and their relation with particular ar gumentations.
The methodology of ‘T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshops’ contains two different kinds
of workshops, a first kind, defined as ‘active-peer -review’, and a second kind, defined as
‘creative LAB’ with unusual suspects.
Both the 2012 ‘Closed Cycles - Open City’ and the 2014 ‘Pressure Point Strategy’ workshops
were ‘active-peer-review’ workshops. Their role was to directly test the hypotheses and
proposed strategies of this dissertation with practical experience, tacit knowledge and
theoretical rigour . These workshops brought together both scholars, from different strands
and methodological backgrounds, and practitioners in a transdisciplinary setting. I, as the
researcher , facilitated the workshop process through a series of structured sessions.
As one method of collecting expert opinion, the emphasis of these workshops is on
identifying differing opinions and divergent responses through a process of debate rather than

Chapter 1. Introduction 29
on consensus finding and aggregating expert opinion as in for instance the Delphi Method
or Nominal Group T echnique. Gathering expert opinion in a group setting rather than by
conducting separate expert interviews has the advantage of allowing different perspectives
and opinions to be mutually confronted and discussed. This can be particularly interesting
in areas where no clear cut solutions are likely to be found, as stimulating discussions can
result from the numerous angles the participants look from. For the purpose of this work, the
‘experts’ were chosen for their particular tacit or theoretical knowledge. ‘Experts’ included
city officials, urban consultants, urban strategists, people from city networks, academics and
people with on-the-ground urban experience.
Because of the ‘active-peer -review’ nature of these workshops, their outcomes fed directly
into the further development of the related chapters. The discussions clearly brought out the
dif fering opinions and interpretations of the proposed strategies, showed the weak points
and inconsistencies in the ar guments as well as the need for clarifications and theoretical
underpinnings. The constellation of the workshop participants worked out very positively as
I could count with active participation from almost all invitees and managed to include people
with directly opposite opinions, which lead to the most interesting parts of the discussions.
The second type of T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshop was set up in a dif ferent context and
with a different structure and participant constellation. Instead of the ‘active-peer -review’
setting, which focussed on my own hypotheses and proposed strategies, the context of the
‘creative LAB’ was set in the ongoing process of Habitat III - the United Nations Conference
on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to take place in Quito, Ecuador , in October
2016. The approach was to take a critical and, most importantly , ‘on the ground’ perspective
to several issues that are of cross-cutting nature in this process and are at the same time
closely related with the hypotheses and proposed strategies of this dissertation.
The invited participants were a dif ferent kind of experts, I call them the ‘unusual suspects’.
They came from very different local contexts all over the globe, in which they were all
strongly involved in ‘on the ground’ action. Most had a hybrid profile, being part academic
and part activist/artist/practitioner . Instead of a conventional round-table setting, the physical
workshop setting (space, food, working materials) became much more important and also
specific practical tasks (e.g. copy-pasting urban patterns, remaking the 1950s ‘3 little pigs’
story in a futuristic 2050 setting, or hacking a municipal water system) were set up to spark
creativity , energy and discussion on particular topics. In addition, much more attention was
given to the written, graphic and photo/video documentation which resulted in a joint LAB
publication and video production from all participants.
Next to the LAB, I or ganised a series of ‘Public Debates’ of which one was linked with
the LAB on ‘Dif ferent Urbanisations’ and one was convened around the topic of Planetary
Urbanisation (‘Overriding the Urban/Non-Urban Divide’). The disadvantage of such
public debates is that the actual public discussion leads its own life and I realised that as a

30 Chapter 1. Introduction
researcher , I got very little focussed content out of them in comparison to the other expert
workshops. This is why I decided to not have another public debate for the third topic that
is still to come.
The exercise of tar geting critique towards a clear focus (UN New Urban Agenda) became
a method in itself and ended up being an excellent approach to spark ar gumentation around
a specific topic. The Critical Dialogues Series will continue beyond the scope of this
dissertation further expanding it’ s methodology (see: www .criticalurbanagenda.de). In July-
October 2016, practical field work in three cities will take place as part of a process which
includes co-design, field work, co-production and presentation of the results around the
topic of ‘UN-Data’. The Appendix contains additional information on the above introduced
expert workshops and public debates.
• Expert W orkshop: ‘Closed Cycles – Open City’ (Appendix 1)
• Expert W orkshop: ’Urban Pressure Point Method’ (Appendix 2)
• Public Debate: ‘Critical Dialogue.01: Overriding the Urban/Non-Urban Divide’
(Appendix 3)
• Expert W orkshop: ‘Critical Dialogue.02: LAB2: Dif ferent Urbanisations’
(Appendix 4)
• Public Debate: ‘Critical Dialogue.02: Dif ferent Urbanisations’ (Appendix 5)
Thesis Outline
The core of this thesis comprises of three peer -reviewed articles of which two are published
and one is in the process of peer-review . These articles, outlined below , are contained in
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 and are or ganised so that they lead from more abstract to more concrete
proposals for practice.
Chapter 2: Resour ce-Centr ed Cities and the Opportunity of Shrinkage
Our planet is being anthroposized at high speed with Climate Change and other global
environmental damages as its consequence. As home of most consumers, many are looking
at cities for solutions. Urban densification is often seen as ‘the’ way towards more urban
sustainability . However , externalities of urban consumption and the complexity of the urban
system are mostly left out of consideration, leading to unexpected results. This chapter

Chapter 1. Introduction 31
advocates a transition from consumption-centred to resource-centred cities. In an age of rapid
urbanisation, this chapter further argues how shrinking cities could unexpectedly function
as catalysts for change. A shrinking population and a retreat of the current economic system
give shrinking cities the potential for becoming front-running resource-centred cities.
This article has been peer -reviewed, accepted and published as:
De Flander , Katleen. 2013. “Resource-Centered Cities and the Opportunity of
Shrinkage.” In Mitigating Climate Change , edited by Anshuman Khare and T erry
Beckman, 45–57. Berlin Heidelber g: Springer V erlag.
The final publication is available at Springer via:
http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3
Statement of Contribution: Katleen De Flander is the single author .
Chapter 3: Closed Cycles - Open City
This chapter places the Urban Climate Challenge within the wider context of urban resource
flows and draws our attention to the ruptures in the biosphere’ s natural cycles that are caused
by the specific types of urban systems we have created. This brings us to the task of restoring
these ruptures, for which we will need to go beyond mitigation and adaptation to an urban
systems transformation that places resources, and not consumption, at its centre. I suggest
that to come to an effective transition of our extended urban systems, to tackle global climate
change and other global environmental problems, a transition of urban resource flows
(from linear back to circular) will need to go hand in hand with a transition in urban space
governance. In other words, a paradigm shift regarding resource flows will also demand an
appropriate (re-)production of urban space. Closing Cycles - Opening City!
This article has been peer -reviewed, accepted and published as:
De Flander , Katleen. 2015. “Closed Cycles - Open City .” In The Urban Climate
Challenge , edited by Craig Johnson, Noah T oly , and Heike Schroeder , 37–59. New
Y ork: Routledge.
The final publication is available at T aylor and Francis via:
http://doi.or g/10.4324/9781315772981
Statement of Contribution: Katleen De Flander is the single author .
Chapter 4: Pr essur e-Point Strategy - Leverages for Urban Systemic T ransformation
This chapter understands sustainability as a specific kind of problem framing that emphasises
the interconnectedness of different problems and scales and calls for new forms of problem
handling that are much more process-oriented, reflexive and iterative in nature. Closely

32 Chapter 1. Introduction
related with the notion of reflexive governance, we propose an alternative strategy for societal
problem handling and change management in the urban context. The strategy starts from
stress states in the urban system(s) and uses their initial momentum to encourage systemic
change through intraventions - rather than interventions - at selected pressure points. This
chapter highlights the potential to evolve what has often been an intuitive practice, led by
community or elected leaders with unique wisdom about functions and pressure points in their
urban system into a more accessible strategy for shaping socio-ecological transformation in
urban practice.
This article has been peer -reviewed, accepted and published as:
De Flander , Katleen and Jeb Brugmann. 2017. Pressure-Point Strategy: Leverages
for Urban Systemic T ransformation.” Sustainability 9 (99).
The final publication is available (open access) at MDPI via:
http://doi.or g/10.3390/su9010099
This paper has been presented at the conference: International Sustainability
T ransitions IST 2016. W uppertal. 6-9 September 2016.
Statement of Contribution: Both authors jointly developed the Pressure-Point
Strategy in a working paper and hosted an expert workshop at the IASS Potsdam
(November 2014) to critically discuss the approach with a number of experts from
both academia and practice, which led to new insights and the further development
of the working paper . Katleen De Flander transformed the working paper into a
scientific paper and brought in additional theoretical framings. Jeb Brugmann
brought in most cases from practice, and specifically the Chicago case.
Chapter 5 synthesises and discusses the main insights of the previous chapters and presents
an outlook for further research.
Appendix 6 contains an additional peer -reviewed Opinion Paper “Operationalizing Holistic
Urban Concepts” published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences in 2014,
which relates to the content of this thesis.
This article has been peer -reviewed, accepted and published as:
De Flander , Katleen. 2014 online. “Operationalizing Holistic Urban Concepts.”
Journal of Envir onmental Studies and Sciences .
The final publication is available at Springer via:
http://doi.or g/10.1007/s13412-014-0193-9
Statement of Contribution: Katleen De Flander is the single author .

Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 33
Chapter 2
Resource-Centred Cities and the
Opportunity of Shrinkage
Katleen De Flander
This paper has been published as:
De Flander , Katleen. 2013. “Resource-Centered Cities and the Opportunity of
Shrinkage.” In Mitigating Climate Change , edited by Anshuman Khare and T erry
Beckman, 45–57. Berlin Heidelber g: Springer V erlag.
The final publication is available at Springer via:
http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 35
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

Resource  CenteredCiti esandtheOppor tunityofS hrinkage 


KatleenDe Flander 


Abstrac t: Our  plane t is b eing a nthrop osiz ed at hi gh spe ed with  Clima te Chan ge and ot her gl obal 
environmental damages as its consequence. As home of m ost consumers, many are lo oking at ci ties f or
solutions. Urban densification is often seen as ‘the’ way towards more urb an su stainabili ty. However,
externaliti es of urban consumption and the complexity of the urban system are mostly l eft out of
consideration, leading to unexpected res ults. This paper adv ocates a transition fro m consum ption 
centered to resource  centered cities. In an age of rapid urbanization, this paper further argues how
shrinkingcities couldunexpectedly functionas catalyst sfor change.  Ashrinki ngpopulationan daretreat
of the current economic syst em give shrinking cit ies the potentia l for becoming front  running reso urce 
centeredcities. 

Keywords:  resource  centered,complexsystems,transition,shrinkingcities, closedcycles 


36 Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

Resource  CenteredCiti esandtheOpportunityofShrinkage 


1.0  Introdu ction 

 Climate Change has em er ged as one of the most challenging politica l and scienti fic issues of our times.
Wit hever  i nc rea si ngtre nds inurban  c ons umpt io nandprodu ct ion pract ic es ,a c al lforact io ntomiti gat e
climate change is often seen as a way to foster sustainable development. Considerable attention is now
being paid to determine w hat  urban sustai nabilit y would include . Is a ´sustai nable city´ a ci ty that uses
25or50 perc entlessenergy?Acitythatis carbo nneutral,whether withorwithout carbonoffsetting?A
city that doesn’t have cars or that has green roofs and solar panels? M any
cities/neighborhoods/buildings are called ‘sustainable’ or ‘eco’ because they are doing better than
main str eam but i s th istherighta pproach?  

In resp onse to t he questio n “Wha t is the sing le most im portant e nvironm ental/po pulation p roblem
facing the  world today?”  Diamond (20 06; p.498 cited in F rey & Yaneske , 2007; p.61) capture s the
essence in his answer: “The single most  important  problem  is our m isguided focus on id entifying the
single most important problem!” In other words, the real wo rl d is full of interactions and connections.
“Complexity science is moving us away from a linear, mechanistic view of the world, to o ne based on
nonlinear dynamics, evoluti onary development, and syst ems thi nking” (Sanders, 2008; p.276). Climate
Change shoul d theref ore beunderstood asa complex syst em. Int erestingl y,cities are  asw el l.Bai (2010;
p.130) indi cates that  “citi es are incr easingly r ecognized as c omplex adaptive s ystems 1  that integrate,
respond  to, and influ ence a dive rse range of social, eco nomic an d ecological p rocesses opera ting across
a range of spatial and temporal sc ales. Connections between urban systems and regional and global
change are thereforecharacterized by significantnonlinearities and cross  scale interactionsam ong slow
andfastmovingprocesses.”Thisunderstandingavoidsusgett ingonareductionisttrack, whichdealsfor
instan ce only with  Carbon n eutrality. It m akes us fo cus on a b roader tr ansition p rocess in cit ies and
recognize  not only their non  linear beha vior but also  their transfo rmative ca pacity while  staying
functiona l. 

2.0  Myt h bu ste rs  

Although i t isw i dely i gnored, weare not going tosolve Clim ate Change and other global environmental
problems within our current economic system. The story that more free markets, more consumption
and new technology (these are the o nes that created our p r oblems in the fir st place) are going to save
us urgently needs some myth busters.  Technology can help,  but pre tending that we can get away w i th
our current  lifes tyles because ‘green’ technology will solve everything,  is bei ng naive at the very least, 
especially withaneyeon theexpectedpopulati ongrowth. 
“Conve ntionaleconomics ascurr entlypr acticedi slarge lyrespons iblefor theincr easings trainon
globalresources.The economicperformance ofnationsisgenerallym easuredasgross domestic
product (GDP), a large component of which is generat ed by consumption . The wa y to  in crease
economic performance is therefore by incr easing consumption, which in turn demands

1  ‘ Complex Adaptive Sys tems’  (CAS) are a sp ecific category of co mplex system s – open evoluti onary
systems such as a rain fo rest,  a business, a society, our immune  systems, the World W ide W eb, or the
rapidly globalizing  wo rld eco nomy – where the componen ts are stro ngly  interr elat ed,  self  orga nizing, 
anddynamic(Sanders, 2008;p.275) . 

Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 37
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

increas ed produ ction. In con ventional ec onomics , the produc tive capacit y that produ ces the
goods an d services is considered to be a function of human  m ade capital only, excluding non 
renewa ble and  renew able n atural cap ital, which  is conside red to be  a free goo d that can not be 
depleted(Daly,2001 citedin Fr ey &Yaneske,2007). Furt herexcluded arethe cost sfor repair  of
damage to the envir onment as a r esult of pr oduction and consumption.”  (Frey & Yaneske,
2007;p.56) 
One of t hese myt h bust ers i s Chand ran Nai r (2 010) who d escri bes t he rol e of As ia i n res haping 
capitalism, arguing that it is reali stically impo ssibl e for Asia to follow the same path as t he developed
countries due to m ere numerical facts. “ The world has reached a stage where econom ic growth, and in
particul ar tryi ng to maintain i t via cons umption  driven capi talis m, has become the driv er of our
problems” (Nai r, 2010;  p.76). “ We hav e t o pu t limits on th e use of lim ited resou rces. So as w ell as
focussing  on the quan tity of consump tion, we need to  look at its quality  what consu mption  is
composed of and what changes can be m ade to it” (Nair, 2010; p.80). This is of course not a popu lar 
viewpoi nt. Many stakehol ders have advanta ges of stay ing with the ol d system, but a s Einstei n
pinpointed:  ‘You can’ t solv e a problem wit h the same mind that  createdit’. A changein mind  set nee ds
totakeplace whereconsum ptionceasestobea tthecentre.Instead  ofconsumption,  what is tr uly at the 
centerofeverythingareresources.  Natural capi tal hasmade ourc onvent ional economi csys temposs ible 
in the first place. N atural resou rces have a lso made  it possible t o develop  c ities. A failure  t o recognize 
that nat ural resources  can be depleted has already lead to the demise of several cities and em pi res in
the past. ‘Histo ry te lls th at the destruction of th e bioproductive cap acity of a city’s hinterland thro ugh
the exhau stion of its fertility and the ava il able wate r sup ply h as happened qu ite freq uently, leading to
theself  imp osedcolla pseofcities’(F reyandYa neske,200 7;p.80). 

Girar det(1999; p.17citedinFreyandYaneske ,2007;p.85)seesRome’sfateasthedire ctresult 
of t he massiv e expl oitationof its  very largehinterland. (next toother major contributing factors
such a s lead poison i ng and plagues). According to Mumford (1984 cited in Frey an d Yaneske,
2007; p 85), due to the overex ploitation of Rome’s hi nterland and the damage done to the
environmen tas aresult ofthis, theemp ire’sbioprodu ctivecapac itybecame increasingly smaller
and result ed ina shortage offood for Rome’sone and a half  milli on orso inhabitants.M umford
sees the disintegration of Rome as the ultimate result of its ov er  growth , which resulte d in a
lapse of fu nction, and a  loss of co ntrol o ver the econo mic fa ctors an d hum an a gents that w ere
essential for i ts continued existence.  Prosperity and populati on were declining and the
barbarians begant oinfi ltrate theover  extendedemp ire. 

Is the sam e ha ppening  to mo dern cities?  The  follow ing ex ample sh ows the m assiveness  of the p roblem
we are  faci ng in  real  time:  Chin a wil l bui ld new housing for 400 mi lli on peop le in  the ne xt 12 years.  If
they us e brick as the main cons truction materi al, they will use all their soil and burn all their coal and
theywillhave citi eswithno energyandnofoo d(McDono ugh,2005). 

3.0  FromConsumption  Centeredt oResource  Center edCiti es 

As Nair (2010; p.136)  suggest s: “The big change wil l li e in putt ing valu es on thin gs huma ns have lo ng
takenfo rfreeorn earlyfree  theenvironm entinwh ichwelivea ndthereso urcesitprovide suswith[...]
Putting resource m anagement at the center of poli cy making will shape ho w individuals consume, how
companies do business, how food is produced and water is used, how the balance of rural and urban is
reworke d.” Sassen (2010 ; p.3) poses the follow ing crucial questio n: “Are these glob al ecological
conditions theresults of urbanagglom erati on and densityor are the y theresults ofthe specific typesof

38 Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

urban syste ms that we have developed t o handle trans port, waste  disposal,  building,  heating and
cooling, food provision, and the industrial processes by which we extract, grow, make ,  package,
distri bute, and dispose o f the foods, service s an d m aterials that we use?” Com bining Nair’s suggestio n
with  Sasse n’squestion  leads  us to  an appr oach t hat f ocuse s on a tr ansi ti on of our  urba n syst ems bas ed
on rethinking their resource management. Thi s stands in shar p contrast with  the commo n app roach o f
technolo gical fixes and efficien cy improvem ents. While ‘imp roving efficiency’ starts  from the statu s quo
of the curr ent system, and ends up with a 20 or 30 perce nt ‘less bad’ sys tem, the Resour ce  Centered
City st ands for a tr ansiti o n to a new syste m. Not ‘new’ inthe way of building ‘ new eco  cities’, but ‘new’
inthew ayofre  organizing oururban systems. 

“ The inevitabl e outcome of the continuing pursui t of economic growth and of incr eased
consumption and p roduction will be an even tu al shortage of re sources. [...] Atte mpts to reduce
resource w astage in the p roduction and c onsumption  process, a Factor 4  approach (von 
Wei zäc ker etal ., 1998 cit edinFr ey & Y ane ske ,20 07) ,wil l reduc eres ou rce cons umpt io nbutwi ll 
only buy us ti me, as this reduction  will soon be caugh t up by increasing  po pulat ion and
consumptionlevels ”(Frey&Yaneske,2007) .
Another conse quence of a res ource  centered approach is that it forces us to think about the
externaliti es of urban consumption and the relationsh ip of the city with its hinterland . Be cause we are
offsett ing the negative consequences of urban consumption outside the ci ty, they are hidden from the
eyes and minds of most of the consumers. Externaliti es of urban consumption are one of the main
causes o f in equality, be it rural/urban , rich/poor, N orth/South. A resource  centered city is not a o ne 
resource exploiting ord ependent cityb utis asfar aspo ssibleself  reliant when itcom esto resources. By
tackling consum ptionatitssource,theresource  cent eredcityavoi dsexternaliti esinthemostdirectway
possible.  For inst ance: “By res tricti ng emissions di rectl y at the sourc e, there would be no ne ed for
indirec t scheme s which te nd to rew ard establis hed com panies, in b oth financ e and the energ y industry, 
andhavealread y provedreadilyopenforabuse ”(Nair,2010; p.148) .

The rural  urban re lationshi p, or as Sas sen (2009) sug gests urban and non  urba n 2 , in o ur curren t
consumption  cen tred cit ies could in many cases be d escri bed as parasitic. Since natural c apital and
resources  are see n as a free go od, the urban hin terland is emptied out from  natural but also human 
resources  (in the form of cheap labo ur w orking in the  cities) at almost no costs. On the other han d,
expensive products from the city return to ru ral areas for consum ption. Attempts to  av oid rural  urban
migr at ion or exp ort ur bani ty to rur al are as hav emos tly f ail ed. An int er est ing the si sNa ir (20 10) br ing sup 
is that weakenin gthe links betw een wealth and major metro politan centres (by switch ingto  a resource 
centred approach) could lessen the pressure to create m ega  cities and could rework the urban  rural
balance.  

4.0  FromConsumingtoProducingciti es 


2  “Cities have a pronounced effect on traditional rural economies and their long  standing cultural
adaptation to biological diversity. Rural populations have become consumers of product s produce d in
the industrial econom y, on e m uch less sen sitive to biologica l diversity. The rural condition  has evolve d
into a ne w sys tem of socia l relatio ns, on e that  does  not w ork w ith bio diversity. The se dev elopmen ts all
s ignalth attheurba ncondition isamajorfa ctorinanye nvironme ntalfuture ”(Sassen,20 09). 


Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 39
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

At the moment, our cities have a linea r approach to using resource s. Materials , energy, food and water
enter the city from  its global hinterlands (leaving its traces there in the form of ao. soil degradation,
water  poll uti on and d efor esta tion ), a re par tl y cons umed and t he re st l eaves  the c ity  in t he for m of
waste , waste water  and pollute d air (als o  affecti ng of course inner city air quality). This means that  the
externaliti es of urban consumption are carri ed by a large number of global hinterlands and for a large
part hidden from the urban consumers. If we are to understand and respect our limited r esource base,
cities need to adapt from  a linear to a circular resource u se and evolve from  consum ing to producing
citiesw herewaste doesn’t exist,  resourcecycles areclosed and impacts onthe environment (air,water,
soil) are neutral or eve n positive. At the same time, cities need to reduce the geographies of extrac tion
andenvironmentaldamagecausedt hroughurbanconsumption(Sassen andDotan,2011). 

Becoming a Resource  Centered cit y thus means that cities will have to stop their  parasitic  behavior and
provide their  own res ources. On the one hand, if markets  have to w ork w ithin se t limits of re sources,
cities will be forced to start h arvesti ng 3  their own  resourc e stream s such  as rain, wa stewater, materials
and nutrients. This closing of resource cycle s is nothing ne w. In pre  ind ustrial cities it w as (a nd in  som e
parts of the worl d stil l is) normal to collect for inst ance urban organic w ast e (al so from animals and
humans) and reuse it s nutr ients for food production. Modern cities  have forgotten their po tential of
beingpar tof aresourc ecycle instead ofdamaging it. 

Maki ng th e transitionfrom consuming toproducing cities,theywillhav etofindspa cewithinthe irurban
fabric to produ ce resourc es locally: space fo r energy, materials and foo d produ cti on,  space for water
treatmen t and  infiltration. Th is will nee d to g o mu ch fu rther tha n by ju st putting  solar  p anels o r urban 
gardens on top of the roofs. The whole city will need to be activated and re  organiz ed, star ting fr om
changes in consum ption and p roduction  patterns, to re  organizing t he urban syst ems and changing
urban land  us e (for instance by taking space from car  infrastruc ture for creat ing a decen tralized wat er
treatmen t system in the ne ighborhood). A ll  parts of so ciety will need to be  tackled,  not just  private
consumersbutalsocompan ies, industryandagriculture. 

Consequently,  in the resource  centered city, not efficiency improvemen t but re  organisati on is key. The
starting po i nt is therefore n ot a pro duct or specific material (as in Life C ycle approaches) b ut includes
exploring the ‘f unction’ or ‘provi ded service’ for  which work is needed; and leaving space for re 
organisat ion and tr end  change in the urban environm ent. ‘Shelter’ for instance can be provided by a
building,  al so bya building  that was initially not mea ntfo rh ousing (re  organi singspace). I f wego a step
further saying  that this shelter shou ld provide  a ce rtain therm al com fort level to the peop le needing  its
service, this can be solved in different ways. Th e shelter can be ins ulat ed (material ) and/or heate d
(energy) and/or people ca n wear more cloth es (materia l + lifestyle change) a nd/or m aybe we need to 
look at  a seasona l building us e. Each of th ese solutio ns will have a  different res ource dem and and 
decisions  have to be taken  looking at th e integrate d outcom e. In a closed  cycle approach, using the
exergy principle for both energy and material s, Rovers R&V (2011) come to the con cl usion that against
the regular w ay of thinking, “it seem s m ore efficient to just he at th e non  insul ated houses with solar
collectors instead of growing materials for its insulation”. Osw alt and  Sch midt (2010) co me to a  sim il ar
type of conclusion: “It n eeds to  be weighed  whe ther the  energy  expen ded in optim ising the buildings
doesnot outweight heenergy  savedforits operation.” 


3  ‘Urba nHarve sting’isa concep tthatis basedo ntrackin gandh arvesting allther esources inthec ityand
bringing  them back in an endles s resource c ycle. Als o  called ‘Urban Mining’, definitions may differ
includ ingorexclud ingcertainre sourcesan dmetho dologies. 

40 Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

By looking at  our urban syst ems through a network  of resources  (soil,  air,  water, materi als, ener gy,
nutrient s), which by natur e are highl y interconnected (influencing one resource can have both posit ive
or negative feedback on the oth ers), we are forced to tak e a complex systems approa ch an d avoid the
danger of foc using only on one r esource, a pr oblem often ari sing from the c ompartmentaliza tion in
sectors, departments, profession s, etc.  After all, a change in our food system  wil l probab ly have a
greater effect on our energy consum ption than simply aiming for a m ore effici ent dom esti c energy u se. 
As arepercussion,  inter  and trans  discipl inarity  becomes amust to real ize anysuccessfultransitionin a
complex system.Also product ion cho icesin the city will have to be seen from within the inter connected 
network of resources and prior ities will have to be set. For example : producing energy by placing solar
panels on fertile soil is not the sm ar test solution because you block your f ertile soil to be used for food
production.  On the other hand, placing solar panels on existi ng buildings or placi ng windmil ls between
foodpro ductionareascrea tesadoublespace function. 

So far, instead of rethinking the syst ems we h ave developed,  sys tems that resulted  in climate change,
resource crises and oth er environme ntal problems, w e are still trying to solve the prob lems they ha ve
created within the same system. A good example is our transportation system that is for a large part
based onthe ca r and is a vast contributor to oil depe ndencies, climate cha nge, health problem s,air an d
water  poll uti on, i mperv ious  soil s, u nli veabl e ci ties , et c. I nst ead of  reth inki ng th e sys tem and  star t
thinking in functions  (‘I n eed to be mob ile’) an d n ot in  go ods ( ‘I n eed a  car’), depen dencies  o n cars  a re
now nurtured under the name of green cars, biofuel or electr ic mobili ty and car companies  are bailed
out in the name of ‘ saving j obs’. I nstead, the f ocus should no l onger lie on i ncreasing  consumption,
leadin gto m orethroughputofresources.Companieswillhavetofindneww ays ofcreatingvalue.There
will be a shiftfro m s ell ingprodu ctstosell ing servic es, whichwillgive a newmeani ngtoproduct qualit y,
durabili tyand re  usabil ity. Therewil lals obea shift fromtaxin gincometotaxing consumption . 

The shi ft from consumption  centered to resource  centered cities is at the same time an im portant key
to mitigate clim ate change since ch anging the way w e d eal with resources w ill  tackle ma ny causes of
climate cha nge. When we re  organise f or instanc e our urban food sys tem by re  localising  food
productionandchang ingourfoodhabit s,this willimmenselyr educegreenhousegasemis sionsbecause 
it will red uce transp ortation dis tances, redu ce packag ing and red uce ind ustrial agriculture  (pr oducing
lots of CO 2  and N 2 O emissi ons becau se of its  high ener gy and commerc ial  ferti li ser use ). On top of tha t,
land u se change s (from fore sts to indus trial animal a nd food p roduction o r because  soils have b een
exhausted bychemical s andfertilisers) canb elimited or turneda round.O urdiets might have tochan ge
but we definit ely don’t  have to miss out on v ariety nor  on good nutriti on. Another ex ample is the
change of our transportation system in and  between cities, which is a major  contributor to climate
change.Tacklingthe‘car’isamaincha l lengebutwh owouldhavebelievedsom eyearsagothatsmoking
would b e proh ibi ted i n publ ic sp aces ? If c iti es ha ve to  become mor e sel f  reliant w hen it comes to 
resources , the space fo r car in frastructure in cities w ill prove to h ave a lot of potentia l. A revival of h igh
quality public spacesand publict ransportat ionwill becruc ialt okeepthe ‘mobilit y’func tionworki ngand
tocreatene wqualityoflifeinourcitiesbygivingaga inpriority  tothehuma nscale. 

5.0  Theopport unityof ShrinkingCi ties  ‘LessisM ore’ 

I argue d that we  need a tra nsition fro m consu mption  centered to resource  centered citi es. Since
producing re sources demands space,  density  plays an importa nt role in bal ancing out demand and
supply in aspecific system. In thisview, shrinking citieshave a clear advantage when itcom esto closing
resource c ycles since through  shrinkage proce sses in cities, “concen trations” can be e ased so as to
accommodatetheprinciple ofc losedcyc lesinthecity . 

Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 41
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3


Lessdenselivingisoftenassociatedwithw asteofspaceandresources,butw hatifthatspacewouldnot
be “wasted” but used to produce the neces sary urban resources instead of scavenging outside the city
boundaries.  What if a shrinking urban popu lati on is the ideal catalyst for introducing a Re source 
Centered approach? Maybe the question becomes: how  much shrinkage is necessary for a city to be
abletocl oseitsr esourcecycles andbecomeself  reliant?Couldw esay:‘Thelessp eople,thebet ter?’ 

Urban pl anning  and tra nsporta tion t heorie s such a s ‘Smart  growth’ , ‘C ompact Ci ty’ a nd ‘Urba n
Inten sification’ all as sert that h igh  densit y citi es are more sust ainable than l ow  density cit ies. Thi s is
most ly affi li ate d wi th t he higher  p etrol use of low  density cit ies (as for ins tance many car dependent
NorthA merican cit ies) ,and thegr eater use ofpubl ict ranspor tati onsys temsa ndsmal lerh ousing units in
densersettl ements.However,“therelat ionshipbetweenurbanpopulati ondensityandtheenvironment
in its broader sens eis furth erco mplicated by the spa tiald isplaceme nto fen vironmen talc osts. Although 
itis often argue dtha tdens erurb anset tlements make more efficien tuse of land ando therre sources, at
least som e of this can  be a t tributed to their ‘ec ological footprints ’ outside th e spatial bo undaries of the
city” (Wa ckernagel & Rees 1995; Wackernagel et al., 2006, cited in Dodman, 2009; pp.3  4). Most cities
impo rt the majo rity of their res ources suc h as energy , food and m aterials fro m outside the ir city
boundaries and are theref ore mostly consuming places . Resource depleti on, polluti on, energy use (for 
example embodied energy) and waste outside the city can theref ore often be linked to the l inear
resource approa chof cities which i nputand output startsand endsoutsideofthecity.Therefore,taking
into accoun tthe spatial displac ement ofen vironme ntalco stsof dense areas, the stateme nttha t“hig her
densityciti esaremore sus tainable”becomesquestionabl eand is clearlybasedon  the currentline arcity
systemthinking. 

From a resource  centered perspective, we want to internalize these environmental costs by m oving
from a linear to a circular system . The urba n system will nee d to provid e as mu ch as poss ible in its ow n
resource n e eds,instead of scavenging outside.  This perspecti ve puts densityinto a whole new light.W e
arenottal kinganymoreaboutperc apitaenergyuse orpercapit aCO2emissionsbutaboutwhat density
means  f or the city’ s produ cti on capac ity  an d ab out  it s resou rce deman d and supp ly possibilities. Less
denseciti eshaveal otmorespacefor resourcepr oductionandat thesametime,t heyhaveles sdemand
for resources (mind the ‘reb ound effect’ 4  wh ich is  a perfec t exampl e of an unexp ecte d outcome  in a
complex syst em). In short,  while in the current linear ci ty system thinki ng, density m ight be increasing
sustainability, from a chan ged resource  centered system pe rspecti ve, lowe r de nsit ies bring many more
possibil ities . Now this is  not an advocacy for  reducing dens it y everywhere to suburban levels and
stimulating urban spraw l. I t is however an argu ment that by changing ou r system’s perspective, the
roles can b e turned aroun d and ‘Less beco mes More ’.  In this persp ective, Shrinking Citie s show high
potential . 

6.0  Dens ityinthelight ofshrinka ge 

When di sc us sin g den si ty int he l igh t of s hri nk age , th ef ol lo win gp oi nts a re i mpor ta nt: 


4  The ‘rebound effect ‘ is an unexpected behavi oral or systemic  response that reduces or  even turns
around the expected result of f or instance an effi ciency measure. An exam ple in this context: the
benefici al eff ects of a reduced population leadi ng to less demand for resources could be offs et by an
increas einperson alconsum ptioncau sedbyprice decreaseso fgoodsres ultingfrom excessives tocks. 

42 Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

First, I believe it is important to lose the image of a shrinking city being an empty vil lage that doesn’t
have enough children to fill a  class  room. M any large  cities a re also shrinking; e specially old industrial
cities (f or instance Osaka,Liverpoo l,  Detroit)are losing population in favorof service cities.  Besides this,
shrinkage can take d if ferent forms. Next to  an  overall thinning out , we more often se e a po larization 
with in th e cit y: f rom th e cent er t o the p erip hery  or fr om one pa rt of  the c ity  to ano ther . Thi s
polariz ation resul ts ofte n in even bigg er social  and racial  segregati on and inequali ties.  Shrinking  cities 
arealready acomm on phenomenonworldwideandw i llbeeven moresoin t hefuture. “Since yearsone
can observe demog raphic de cl ine in great parts of Europe. Even on a global scale urban shrinkage is a
wides prea d phenomenon.  Ac cord ing to diffe rent  s tudi es every 6th to 4th la rge city worldwide has lost
population i n the 1990s” (Wiec hmann, 2006). Whi le  man y ar e f ocu si ng t hei r a tt ent io n on g ro win g
(mega  ) cities, it has  become cle ar in the last years  that it makes a  lot of sense to  set a parallel focu s on
currentshrinkingcitie ssi ncetheyareashapeofthingstocome. 

“Even though urban growth will  continue to dominate in the coming decades, the number of
shrinking cities is continually increasing. An end is in sight, how ever: around 2070  2100, the
worl d popula tion  will  reac h its  zenith and the process of urbanization will largel y come to an
end. Then the processes of growth and shrinkage will reach a balance, an d urban shrinkage w i ll
be a proce ss ascom mon asit was before  industr ializa tion began.  [.. .] Shri nkage wil l infut ur e be
considered asnorm ala processof development as growth.It willlose itsstigma and come tobe
seen as a scenario th at has advantages as well as disadvantag es and that leads to distinct forms
of renewal and change.  In the discour ses on the city in the USA the shift in terminolo gy awa y
from 'urba n decay ’ and 'urban  decline’ tow ards 'shrin king cities’ indica tes that suc h a chang e in
thinkingisund erway”(Oswa lt, n.d.). 

Second,it isimportantt orealize thaturbandensity inrelat iontosustai nabili tyisusuallydiscusse dinthe
light of co ntinuous growt h. This seem s logic when  lo oking at the  b ooming mega  cities. Ho wever, w hen
discussi ng t hisin thelight ofshrinking,  i t becomesa wholedifferentissue.W edon’t hav e todebate any
more ifth egro win gpopulationwillbe housedby densifyingtheexistingurban fabric,byusing i nnercity
brownfieldsorby devel opingnew peri pheralgreenfields. W earenoteven inapositiontodiscussideal
densiti esforacompact, walkablec ityandarg ueagainstt he unsus tainables uburbansprawli ng(alt hough
sprawling is one of the m ain causes of urban shrinkage). Realistically, turning Shrinking Cities into a
compactcityisoftenautopia. 

Third, urban densit y in shrinki ng cities i s mostly seen as a proble m: costs  of basi c servic es and
infrastru cture are ca rried by less p eople and  become  too expen sive or are sim ply abolis hed, public
funding  is reduced, cultural and  s ocial activities are aban doned, etc . A ll this leads to  ev en more  p eople
leaving  the city . Because  ma ny shrinking ci ties are falling more and more out of the current economic
system, they have been ‘spit out’ or h ave becom e ‘disposable’ as some  local activists call themselves,
they o ften have no o ther choice than to rely on themse lves. We se e example s of local food pro duction,
places where local  currencies have been int roduced as a lifeboat to rev italiz e a local economy, local bio
energy production by farmers, s pace pioneers with new initiati ves, etc. These are al l attempts to
become more self  reliant and at the same ti me more resilient to ou t side factors (such as cutting public
funds). A lthough attem pts for re localizatio n are alread y found in S hrinking Citie s, for some  reason,
maki ng the compl ete  trans iti on has not happ ened . Why n ot? One answe r could  be t he ‘F rog eff ect’.
When you put af rog in boi li ng wat er, i tj umps imme di ate ly out of the wat er bec aus eof th es hoc k. If you 
put him in cold water and bring it  slowly to boil, the frog stays and dies . An example  of a shock that
resulted in  action  is Cub a. Af ter the  coun try wa s cut o ff from 80% of its food  imp orts and  50%  of its o il 
impo rts when t he Soviet U nion collap sed in the 1 990s, Cub a transitione d from an  industrial to  an

Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 43
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

organic f ossil  fuel independe nt agriculture in the  course of a few y ears. We could  say that shrinking
cities a re also in a state of shock b ut since it h as been often a gradual p rocess, it didn’t result in a cti on
butin aslow death. 

Consideri ng the above poi nts, fr om a resource  centered perspective, density gets a new meaning in the
li ghtofshrinkage.Withtheaimtobringaboutaresources  basedtr ansiti on,iti smorepromisi ngtowork
toward s a new  syste m in a  place  w here the old system is already retreating then  to chan ge a  syste m
that is fully running. Instead of reducing fund s, ab olishing services and activi ties in Shri nking Cities, we
can switch to a more prod ucti ve approach to shrinkage. Seeing shrinkage as a catalys t for change,
Shrinking Citi es can become front  runners in the tran sition process tow ards a post fossil  fuel an d a
resource  cen tr ed society. They can become urban labs of how to downscale and re  localize ou r
agriculture,  ho w to dignif y food production, how  to b ecome fossil fuel independent and decentralize
resource produc tion,how to increase quality oflife andu seth eavailable spaceforresourceproduction.
Not with t he aim to  creat e ‘cl osed ci ties ’ but as  catal yst  points  for a tr ansi tion tha t can s pread out
regionallyan dbeyond. 

7.0  Cli mateChangeMit igatio n 

It migh t not be o bvious at  first sight, bu t as stated and illustrated before,  there is a direc t relation
betweenaswitchto aresourc e  centeredap proachforcities andmitigatingClimate Change.As amatter
of fact , the relationship is a lot more direct then wit h some systems that were specif ically  invented to
mit iga te Clima te Change . For i nst anc e, the Carbon  Credi ts tr ading syst em often avoids  direct solutions
at source by offsett ing actions (but also ext ernalities ) to other parts of the worl d while stimulating
business  as  us ual atsource. Bytackling urban con sumption and its externalit ies directly,b yre  localizing
productionandurban harves tingand,m or egenerally,byplacingresourcesat thecenterofurban polic y
and management, we are tackling several pri ority areas for  mitigating Cli mate Change, inclu di ng
greenhousegasemissions,landuse changeanddeforestation. 

Shrinkage has the potential  to accelerate the pr ocess of becoming a resource  centered city.Front
running cities hav e pro ven their exemplary fun ction by rippling their success to other citie s. Think for
instan ce of the inn ovative public t ransportat ion syste m ‘Bus  Rapid Transit (BRT) System ’ that was firs t
introd uced in Curitiba and has since  the n be en taken up in several cities globa lly. Th is low  cost (to use
but also to construct if you comp are w it h expensive sub way lines),  separate  lanes  and high  fre quency
bus system has effected a modal shift from automobil e to bus travel in Curiti ba. It al so el iminated a
great part of the localinformal transport mafias and motivated ci tizens totake a ne wview on  mobi lit y.
It was so succes sfult hat many othe rcitie saro und the world h ave adopted the BR Ts ystem. A city that is
able to lead change in its urban systems and in the use of it’s resources can ripple its succes to other
cities.Inthi sview,shri nkingci tiesc ouldplay anunexpected exemplaryrol einmit igating ClimateChang e
incities. 

8.0  Concl usions 

In the  light of mitig ating Clim ate Chan ge and ur ban susta inability, this  paper disc ussed w hy it is
impo rtant t o start  think ing from  a resour ces perspective and why shri nking cities  have a high potent ial
following thisviewpoint. 

A shift  from our curre nt consumption  centered cities to resource  centered cities by putting resource
manag emen t at the center  of polic y making  will shap e how indiv idu als  consume, how comp anies do

44 Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

business,  how food is produced and water  is used, how urban space is activated and how  our urban
systemsarereworked.ThiswillhaveamajoreffectonmitigatingClimateChang e. 

Wher eas inthe‘Smar tGrow th’ debat edens if ic ati on is seenas ‘the’  way tosustainabil ity(with the main
argument that dense cities ar e more efficient and use less energ y per person, however completely
ignorin g the extern alities of urb an consum ption), a res ource  centered ap proach allows us to look at
de nsity i n a differ ent way. If  we can see the opportuni ties of  shrinking  and couple this  with the big
environmental challenge we are faci ng in the 21st century,  the current shri nking citiescan be the front 
runners ofasyste mchange .Whole newque stionsemerge suchas: ‘Howmu chshrinking dowe needfor
thecitytobeab letocloseitsresourcecycles?’ 

9.0  Referenc es 

1. Bai, X.,  McAllist er, R., Beaty, M. & Tayl or, B. ( 2010). Urban pol icy and governa nce in a global 
environment: complex systems, scale mismatch es and public part icipation. Cur rent Opinion in
EnvironmentalSust ainabilit y.Vol. 2,pp.129  135. 

2. Dodman,D.(20 09).Unit edNation sPopulati onFund(UNFPA) .Analy tical ReviewoftheIn terac tion
between Urban Growth Trends and Environmental Changes. Pape r 1: Urban  D ensity an d Clima te
Change. Revis ed Draft – April  2, 2009. Ret rieved Augus t 23, 2012 f rom
http:// www.unfpa.org/webdav/ site/gl obal/users / schensul/pub li c/CCPD/pa pers/Dodman%2 0Pap
er.pdf 

3. Frey, H.  & Yaneske, P. (2007). Visions of Sustainability. Cities and Regions. New York: Tailor and
Francis. 

4. McDo noug h,  W. ( 200 5).  Cr adl e t o cr ad le d esi gn . TE D Ta lk s. R et ri eve d Oc tob er 2 8,  201 2 fr om
http:// www.ted .com/ tal ks/wi lli am_mcdo nough_ on_cr adle _to_c radl e_de sign .html 

5. Nair,  C. (20 10). Co nsumptio nomics:  Asia’ s rol e in re shapin g and sav ing the  planet . Oxfor d, UK: 
Infinite Ideas. 

6. Oswalt , P.  (n.d. ) Hypo these s on urba n shri nkin g in t he 21st  centu ry. Retrie ved August 23, 2012 
from http://www.shrink ingciti es.com/hypothes en.0.html 

7. Oswalt  P. and  Schmidt  A. ( 2010).  Aft er the  End of t he Foss il E nergy  Era:  The Cli mate a nd the
Energy Landscape in S axony  Anhalt  2050. In:  Saxony  Anhalt Mini stry of Re gional Devel opment
and Transport. Inter national Building Exhibition Urban Redevelopment Saxony  Anhalt 2010. Less
IsFutu re.19Cities   10Themes.Jovis; pp.830  847. 

8. Rovers, R. & Rovers, V. (2011). Zero im pact b uilt en vironmen ts, trans ition to wards 2050. A case
study using Urban Harvest+ methodology in Kerkrade West. Executive summery of the original
reportinDu tch.RetrievedSepte mber19,2011from  www .sustainable building.info 

9. Sanders,I. (2008).Complex Systems Thinki ng andN ewUrbanism. In Haas,  T.(ed.), NewU r banism
andBeyond:Designing Citiesf ortheFuture. (pp.275  279).NewYork: Rizzol i. 


Chapter 2. Resource-Centered Cities 45
This is the submitted version of a book chapter published by Springer in Mitigating Climate Change. The Emer ging Face of Modern
Cities. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.or g/10.1007/978-3-642-37030-4_3

10. Sassen,S. (2009).Bridging theEcologies of Ci tiesan dof Nature.  The4th Inter nationalConference
ofthe Intern ational  Forum of Urbanism(IFoU) 2009Am ster dam/Delft.The New Urban Question 
Urbani sm beyond Neo  Li beralism. (pp.45  52). Retri eved August 23, 2012 from
http:// newurbanquestion. ifou.or g/proceedings /index.ht ml 

11. Sassen,S. (2010).Ci tiesare thecenter ofourenvironmental future.S. A.P.I.E. N.S.Vol.2 (3), 1 8 

12. Sassen,S. &Dotan,N.( 2011).Delegati ng,notr eturning,t otheb iosphe re:Howto usethe  multi 
scalarandecologicalpropertiesofcities.GlobalEnvironmentalChange.Vol.21,pp.823  834. 

13. Wie chma nn,  T.  (20 06 ).  Typ es o f Sh ri nki ng  Cit ie s  Introdu ctive Note s on a Glo bal Issue.
Intern ational Sym posium  "Copin g with Cit y Shrinkage and D emographic Change  Lessons from
around the Globe". Retrieved August 23,  2012 from http:// www.schader 
stiftung.de/wohn_ wandel/966.php 

10.0  Author Biogr aphy 

Katleen De F la nder  is an Architect and Urba n En vironmen tal M anager curren tly w orking as a  Rese arch
Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustai nability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany. H er past and
currentresearchfocusesonCities,ResourcesandTransitionsandth eir interrelat ion. 



Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 47
Chapter 3
Closed Cycles - Open City
Katleen De Flander
This paper has been published as:
De Flander , Katleen. 2015. “Closed Cycles - Open City .” In The Urban Climate
Challenge , edited by Craig Johnson, Noah T oly , and Heike Schroeder , 37–59. New
Y ork: Routledge.
The final publication is available at T aylor and Francis via:
http://doi.or g/10.4324/9781315772981
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The
Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the Role of Cities in the Global Climate
Regime on March 2015, available online:
https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-
of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 49
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
Closed Cycles - Open City
Katleen De Flander
Fixing the ruptur es
In a context where international and national actions seem to be moving too slowly to ‘seriously’
tackle climate change, cities often find themselves in a situation of ‘necessity ,’ one in which local
realities simply demand that climate change be addressed. Looming natural disasters, acute air
pollution, and water scarcity , among other challenges, are often exacerbated by growing populations
and increasing inequality . These challenges often prompt cities to take action, and even unexpected
cities might sense the need to take a leadership role in urban climate action.
On the positive side, from engineering to medicine, actions stemming from practical necessity have
proven much more innovative and ef fective c ! ompared to theoretically created solutions in places 1
where the acuteness of the problem is more abstract (e.g. national and global political debates on
climate change) but not physically present (T aleb, 2012). The fact that much of the key and emerging
global climate risks are concentrated in urban areas (Revi et al., 2014), coupled with the possibility of
extensive co-benefits, suggests that cities might play a pivotal role in the global climate regime. In
practice, however , there is often still a huge gap between climate actions (e.g as direct threat -
response) and thinking through urban transformations in a systemic way . Such a systemic approach is
crucial to leverage climate actions for an integrated urban strategy , which manages to tackle multiple
environmental and social threats and stressors and align ef forts towards a city’ s progressive

transformation (Brugmann, 2009, p. 226).
“For the first time humankind is the major consumer in all the significant ecosystems. And

urbanization has been a major instrument” (Sassen, 2009, p.45). While the significance of the city as
part of the solution is apparent, our current global ecological conditions are not the result of urban
agglomeration and density in itself but they are the results of the specific types of urban systems that
we have developed to handle transport, waste disposal, building, heating and cooling, food provision,
and the industrial processes by which we extract, grow , make, package, distribute, and dispose of the
foods, services and materials that we use (Sassen, 2010). These systems concentrate in cities but
extend far beyond their boundaries and form a variegated urban fabric that is now woven unevenly
across vast stretches of the globe (Brenner , 2013). So far , instead of rethinking these systems, most
current urban environmental strategies are stuck in trying to solve the problems within the same
systems that created them. Instead, they could serve as a platform for rethinking these systems. Our
transportation system is for instance for a large part based on the car and is a vast contributor to oil
dependencies, climate change, health problems, air and water pollution, impervious soils, unliveable
cities, etc. Instead of rethinking the system and thinking in functions (‘mobility’) and not in goods (‘I
! of ! 1 20

50 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
need a car ’), dependencies on cars are now nurtured under the name of green cars, biofuel or electric
mobility and car companies are bailed out in the name of ‘saving jobs’. In addition, the proposed
solutions are often so well packaged that they seem to be the right way to go. Their externalities are

‘for gotten’ or they are contributing to other non-related factors; a good example is the carbon-
of fsetting scheme. In Haughton (1997, p.190)’ s words:
External impacts are the least talked about or understood aspects of the sustainable urban
development debate at the moment, and yet ar guably the very ability to use urban (and other
political- administrative) boundaries to avoid accepting responsibility for external impacts
helps fuel our current patterns of non-sustainable behaviour , as we transfer the costs of our
consumption preferences to other people, other species, and other areas. W e need to reform
not just the city , but the way in which the city interacts with the rest of the global economy

and environment.
Countering the epistemological focus on ef ficiency improvements and impact offsetting, this chapter
explores the conceptual nature of urban systems transformations, placing urban resource flows at its
basis. According to Sassen and Dotan (201 1), cities have multiple articulations with the biosphere,
which produce a number of negative externalities. First, cities produce ruptures in the biosphere’ s
continuous flows. Second, their consumption of biospheric resources is “unbiological” in the sense
that they take more than the biosphere can replace. At the same time, the capabilities of cities can be
used to redress the above negatives by activating biospheric capacities in urbanized settings (as well
as multiple human-made technical and knowledge innovations and instruments). This framing
suggests that taking up the urban climate challenge will require strategies that go beyond adaptation

and mitigation to restoring the ruptures in the biosphere’ s continuous flows.
The following hypotheses guide this chapter:
* Cities produce ruptures in the biosphere's continuous flows, and their consumption of biospeheric
resources is ‘unbiological’ in the sense that they take more than the biosphere can replace (Sassen and

Dotan, 201 1).
* Urban transformations entail the study of processes, not models. Models, which include replicable
ready-made designed eco-cities and other technological 'fixes', exclude the citizens from the transition
and are therefore likely to fail. Moreover , they greatly simplify the complexity of a city and lead to

unexpected outcomes.
* T o come to an effective transition of our extended urban systems (i.e. to tackle global climate
change), a transition of urban resource flows (going back from ‘open’ to ‘closed’) will need to go
hand in hand with a transition in urban space governance (going back form ‘closed’ to ‘open’). In
other words, a paradigm shift regarding resource flows will also demand an appropriate

‘(re-)production of urban space’ (Lefebvre, 1991).
! / ! 2 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 51
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
Cities ar e Complex Adaptive Systems
Countering the negative externalities of cities entails a transition from linear to circular resource flows
in urban areas. T o explore what influences a city’ s ability to close its resource cycles (in other words
to match resource production with consumption), this section starts with an abstraction of an urban
area, outside of any economic or social system, with well-defined boundaries and with a specific
supply and demand for the various resources (e.g. water , energy , food, nutrient, materials).
Theoretically , in order to close a resource cycle within the edges of this system, we need to match the
demand for this resource with the supply of this resource. At a certain point, demand and supply find
equilibrium and the cycle closes (Fig 1).
!

FIGURE 1: MA TCHING DEMAND AND SUPPL Y
SOURCE: AUTHOR
This equilibrium for one resource within a specific urban area is influenced by four key parameters:
resource production, resource consumption, scale of the (closed) resource cycle area, and population
density . T o illustrate this, picture a closed cycle (e.g. energy) as an area in the city within which there
is equilibrium between the supply and the demand. Note that this is an abstract system and in physical
space; this area does not match any social or administrative boundaries (Fig 2).
If at a certain moment in time the equilibrium is disturbed and the supply cannot cover the demand of
the area anymore, there are several ways to react:
1) The area increases its resource production (supply) to be able to meet the demand.
2) The area reduces its demand by reducing resource consumption.
3) The area reduces its size to reduce the resource demand (of course this depends on the
physical location of the resource production capacity) or increases its size to be able to
produce more resources (Fig 3).
4) The area reduces its population density to reduce the resource demand (Fig 4).
5) Or a combination of some or all of the previous.
! / ! 3 20

52 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
!
FIGURE 2: CLOSED ENERGY CYCLE (GREY AREA) IN AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM
SOURCE: AUTHOR
!
FIGURE 3: REDUCE AND INCREASE SIZE OF CLOSED CYCLE AREA IN AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM
SOURCE: AUTHOR
!
FIGURE 4: REDUCE DENSITY IN CLOSED CYCLE AREA IN AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM
SOURCE: AUTHOR
! / ! 4 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 53
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
In the same way , when resource supply exceeds demand, several things can be manipulated to balance

the production and demand of resources:
1) The area decreases its resource production (supply) or redirects overproduction to another

area.
2) The area can allow for a higher consumption of resources.
3) The area increases its size to enable a higher resource demand (Fig 5).
4) The area increases its population density (Fig 6).
5) Or a combination of some or all of the previous.
!
FIGURE 5: INCREASE SIZE OF CLOSED CYCLE AREA IN AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM
SOURCE: AUTHOR
!
FIGURE 6: INCREASE DENSITY IN CLOSED CYCLE AREA IN AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM
SOURCE: AUTHOR
! / ! 5 20

54 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
A first important observation is that when one parameter changes, the others are all affected and play

a role in finding a new balance.
An increase in resour ce production
in a certain area allows for a) a higher population density in that
area; b) an increased resource consumption in that area or c) an expansion in size of the closed cycle
area to take up more consumers (or a combination of these). A decrease in resource production on the
other hand, means that a) consumption will need to be reduced; b) the closed cycle area will need to
shrink in size to reduce consumers; or c) population density should decrease (or a combination of

these).
An increase in r esource consumption
in a certain area will demand a) an increase in resource
production in that area; b) an expansion of the closed-cycle area to be able to increase production; or

c) a decrease in population density to allow for a higher per capita consumption rate (or a combination
of these). A decrease in resource consumption on the other hand, could allow for a) production to be
reduced or partly exported; b) the area to expand to take up more consumers; or c) the population

density of the area can increase (or a combination of these).
An increase in the scale of the closed cycle area mostly a) increases the number of consumers, which
often leads to a higher resource consumption; b) increases the production capacity of the area (except
in the case of resource deserts); and c) changes the overall density of the area. A decrease in the scale

of the closed area has the opposite ef fect.
An increase in population density
in a certain area correlates with a) an increased overall resource
consumption; b) a reduced availability of production space and therefore a reduced resource
production capacity; c) a need to expand the area to increase production capacity . A shrinking
population density on the other hand, opens opportunities for a) an increased individual consumption;
or b) a reduced production rate or export potential of excessive production; or c) an expansion of the

area to take up more consumers.
Besides their interdependencies, each of the four parameters is in turn influenced by a number of

variables:
V ariables that influence the maximum production
capacity of a certain area for a certain resource
(e.g. ener gy) are: current available technologies, (alterations in) the physical environment, possible
innovations, etc. The actual production of an area can, however , be very different from the maximum
production capacity due to a number of reasons including regulations, private property , technology
choices, financial limitations, the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) phenomenon, etc. Some physical
places might not have any production capacity for a particular resource because of physical, natural or
other restraints. These ‘resource deserts’ will have to become part of another cycle that can cover their

demand (Fig 7).
! / ! 6 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 55
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
!
FIGURE 7: RESOURCE DESERTS
SOURCE: AUTHOR
V ariables that influence resour ce consumption in an area include: financial power of inhabitants,
property prices, cultural and social influences, advertisement, accessibility , type of urban systems, etc.
The scale of a closed cycle area can be influenced by variables such as: specific urban fabric;
technical, legal or natural restrictions; local actor initiatives; etc.
Population density is influenced by a number of variables such as regulations, property/rental prices,
location, transportation options, job opportunity , immigration, social structure, etc. and can change
drastically over time. A closed cycle area (dotted area in Fig 8) can have different densities inside
(grey-scales in Fig 8), including lower density peri-urban areas or shrinking urban areas, which can
boost the productivity of the closed cycle area while not adding much on the demand side.
!

FIGURE 8: DIFFERENT DENSITIES IN CLOSED CYCLE AREA IN AN ABSTRACT SYSTEM
SOURCE: AUTHOR
! / ! 7 20

56 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
The preceding suggests that the four parameters and their variables are in reality constantly changing
and interacting in interdependent and unpredictable ways, creating non-linear feedback loops in a

dynamic urban system.
Through the lens of complexity , we see that cities and communities are not linear cause-and-ef fect
systems, but rather dynamic systems or ‘complex adaptive systems’, where the variables are

constantly interacting and changing— for better or worse—in response to each other , creating non-
linear feedback loops that either promote or deplete the life energy upon which their futures depend
(Sanders, 2008). “This new , more complete, whole-systems approach is replacing the old reductionist
paradigm, where scientists traditionally tried to understand and describe the dynamics of systems by
studying and describing their component parts. Complexity science is moving us away from a linear ,
mechanistic view of the world, to one based on nonlinear dynamics, evolutionary development, and

systems thinking” (Sanders, 2008, p.276).
This recognition of complexity proves crucial when dealing with urban resource flows. W e need to
understand that it is not one parameter that determines success or failure of closing resource cycles

(e.g. low or high density) but rather the way they work together and the proportions in which they do.
This means that there is no ‘right’ density or ‘right’ scale to close a resource cycle, nor does it make
sense to define strict rules or prescribe specific urban forms. A well-known example is the rebound
ef fect, whereby improving energy ef ficiency actually leads, through various feedback mechanisms on
prices, to an increase in the demand for ener gy . This means that the current policy focus of most
governments to improve energy ef ficiency as a means to reduce emissions, may be more dif ficult than
linear calculations suggests (Fanning, 2012). Similarly , Eidlin (2010) describes the danger of ‘dense
sprawl’ as an unexpected result of tackling ‘suburban sprawl’ by rigid densification strategies. ‘Dense
sprawl’ is the phenomenon where our disconnected cities become denser and denser without

becoming more complex, resulting in even poorer urban conditions.
Therefore, urban models that only focus on one of the parameters and expect to have a linear cause-
ef fect outcome when manipulating that parameter often fail. There are plenty of practical examples
where ‘Smart Growth’ or ‘Urban Intensification’ implementations have failed, exactly because they
didn’ t recognise the complexity of the city and only focussed on densification. They tried to
reproduce vibrant quarters inspired by old city centres but didn’t recognise that most of all, the urban

form of older metropolitan areas is one of great variance, not great density (Eidlin, 2010).
T ranslating complexity in the City
Adding to the complexity , there are also wider processes that influence the four parameters and make
cities move to the left or right of the “resource demand/resource supply” graph (Fig 1). Economic
growth and an increasing GDP often lead to increased consumption and make cities move further to
the left of the graph. This is the reason for the current attempts to decouple economic growth from
resou rce c onsumpti on (U NEP , 20 13). Also g lobalisat ion, and th e und erlying p rinciples of

! / ! 8 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 57
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
neoliberalism, strongly influences a shift to the left as production is often outsourced to other parts of
the world (decreasing local production) and consumption is placed as a central paradigm. The
functional specializations of cities or an aging (and shrinking) population are other examples of such

wider influencing factors.
Also, taking more than one resource flow into account will lead unavoidably to a competition for
production space within the urban fabric. Energy production will compete with food production, with
spaces for water infiltration or with other urban functions such as a car park. A simple overlap of a
solar potential map (already available in many cities) with a potential map for food production and a
map of the existing car infrastructure would show immediately where trade-offs will need to be
discussed. In addition, Rovers (2013) ar gues that when urban areas become resource producers, there
is a necessity of seeing urban space in 3D. He uses the example of a high-rise building, which takes

the solar potential away from the buildings in its shade.
Approaching the city as a complex system suggests that existing methods to land-use planning have
become out-dated and that there is a need to move to a system that doesn’t describe size or form.
Instead, it should define the processes around which form can be generated, processes that allow for
maximum flexibility in local problem-solving. The idea of creating something whose size or form is
not going to be known is alien to engineering and architectural practices. However , scale-free system

design has been achieved before, for instance the Internet (Hélie, 2008).
One of the characteristics of a complex adaptive system is its unpredictability . This means that a high
degree of uncertainty is a normal circumstance and the idea of prescribing a future (e.g. model
approach to cities) or even the idea of roadmaps is too simplistic to serve as an adequate design.
“Roads are linear . Roads lead to a certain destination. In a complex and uncertain world it is even
dangerous to determine a final destination. Instead, notions like resilience provide guidance to actions
but without a fixed point in the future” (in 't V eld, 201 1, p.82). Formulated dif ferently , the structural
uncertainties surrounding future development of cities necessitate more explorative, experimental, and

reflexive approaches (Loorbach, 2010).
The preceding suggests that urban transformations can be usefully understood as a dynamic process in
a complex system with constantly changing parameters (each influenced by its own variables),
keeping in mind the uncertainty of the system, leaving space for multiple pathways and without
expecting linear cause-and-effect outcomes (Fig 9). When we fail to acknowledge this when working
on a transition of our urban systems, there is a realistic danger that the physical structures we end up
with are not containing this complexity and therefore fail as urban structures. A “real city is complex
and incomplete” (Sassen in: Guadalupe, 2013, p.66) in which simplifications, too much technology or

models lead to unexpected outcomes and “de-urbanise the city” (Sassen in: Guadalupe, 2013, p.66)

! / ! 9 20

58 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
!
FIGURE 9: DYNAMIC INTERDEPENDENT P ARAMETERS
SOURCE: AUTHOR
In ‘A city is not a tree’, Alexander (1965) describes the dif ference between ‘natural’ cities, which have
arisen more or less spontaneously over many years, and artificial cities, those cities and parts of cities
which have been deliberately created by designers and planners. He ar gues that compared with
ancient cities that have acquired the patina of life, there is some essential ingredient missing from
artificial cities and calls them from a human point of view , entirely unsuccessful. Alexander (1965)
then formulates two ways of thinking about how a large collection of many small systems goes to
make up a lar ge and complex system and calls them the tree and the semi-lattice. More generally , they

are both names for (abstract) structures of sets.
> T ree
A tree is a structure in which no overlap occurs. The units of which an artificial city is made up are
always organised to form a tree. Whenever we have a tree structure, it means that within this structure
no piece of any unit is ever connected to other units, except through the medium of that unit as a

whole (Fig 10).
!
FIGURE 10: TREE STRUCTURE
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: A CITY IS NOT A TREE (REDRA WN BY AUTHOR).
! / ! 10 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 59
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
> Semi-lattice
A semi-lattice is a structure in which overlap occurs. The idea of overlap, ambiguity , multiplicity of
aspect and the semi-lattice are not less orderly than the rigid tree, but more so. They represent a

thicker , tougher , more subtle and more complex view of structure (Fig 1 1).
!
FIGURE 1 1: SEMI-LA TTICE STRUCTURE
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: A CITY IS NOT A TREE (REDRA WN BY AUTHOR).
Alexander (1965) ar gues that it is this lack of structural complexity , characteristic of trees, which is
crippling our conceptions of the city . He illustrates this by analysing a number of modern ‘designed’
cities and describing them as ‘tree’ structures. Experiments suggest strongly that people have an

underlying tendency , when faced by a complex organisation, to reor ganise it mentally in terms of non-
overlapping units. The complexity of the semi-lattice is replaced by the simpler and more easily

grasped tree form (Fig 12).
!
FIGURE 12: SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF A NEIGHBOURHOOD
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER: A CITY IS NOT A TREE (REDRA WN BY AUTHOR).
! / ! 11 20

60 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
Eco-cities are a good example to unfold the failings of a tree-type of structure. Eco-cities, mostly all-
new developments with clearly defined borders and lar gely based on high-tech solutions, are one of
the contemporary manifestations to tackle environmental problems in cities and change urban
resource flows. Although in itself the idea of building ‘sustainable’ cities and creating incubators for
innovations is a good thing, one could ar gue first that from a resources point of view , in many
countries, it doesn’ t make sense to build cities from scratch. If we look at the demographics of Europe

for instance, it is clear that we have to make the systems change in our existing cities.
Second, the design of these eco-cities is often based on units or clusters and sub-units and even

though mixed-use is intended, a tree-like translation still endures. The designers of Dongtan Eco-
City , ‑
for instance, describe a model in which ‘village clusters form the basis of the city plan where

1
the idea is that people live, work and shop in the same neighbourhood, reducing transport and creating
a mixed-use street life typical of traditional city centres’ (Steel, 2009, p.287). This sounds nice but
will people really live, work and shop in the same village cluster? It might be more complex than this.
After analysing the Abercrombie plan for London, Alexander (1965) concludes that ‘the individual
community in a greater city has no reality as a functioning unit. In London, as in any great city , almost
no one manages to find work that suits him near his home. There are therefore many hundreds of
thousands of worker-workplace systems, each consisting of individuals plus the factory they work in,
which cut across the boundaries defined by Abercrombie's tree. The existence of these units, and their
overlapping nature, indicates that the living systems of London form a semi-lattice. Only in the
planner's mind has it become a tree.’ Similarly , in her discussion on urban neighbourhoods, Jacobs
(1992, pp. 1 14-1 17) ar gues that we must first of all drop any ideal of neighbourhoods in the city as
self-contained or introvert units. The often-used ideal unit of 7,000 persons is silly and even harmful
for cities as there is a basic difference between city and town life. City people are ‘mobile’, they can
and do pick and choose from the entire city (and beyond) for everything from a job, a dentist,
recreation, or friends to shops, entertainment, or even in some cases their children’ s schools (Jacobs,

1992, p.1 16).
A third aspect is that closed resource cycles are usually ‘designed-in’ to these Eco-Cities lacking

consideration of the ways in which cities inter-act with their regional and global hinterlands. ARUP , ‑

2
for instance, planned Dongtan Eco-City (China) as a self-sufficient city , generating all its energy from
renewable resources, growing all food and recycling all waste (incoming packaging will be stripped
and recycled in consolidation centres at the borders) (Steel, 2009). However , questions can be asked
about the ways in which the design principles will accommodate the complexity of urban life.
Interestingly , the designers at ARUP have already raised concerns that populations living in Dongtan

The Dongtan Eco-City project has not been executed as planned by ARUP
1

I do not want to claim that cities were 100% self- sufficient in the past but they had a much stronger

2
connection with the natural resource cycles and had a much stronger component of primary and secondary

resource production
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Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 61
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
will ultimately be tempted to purchase cheaper food coming from outside the city (Steel, 2009, p.
289).
Fourth, here there is a danger that closed resource cycles will exacerbate dif ferentiation and exclusion
among different socioeconomic groups and communities. Eco-cities such as Masdar (United Arab
Emirates) are already being criticized for being the gated communities of the 21st century (Hodson
and Marvin, 2009, 2010). Hodson and Marvin (2010, p.310-31 1) ar gue that “this style of development
is much more concerned with integration at the scale of development than with the wider
transformation of the existing city or its incumbent infrastructure networks”. As such, they continue,
“we should see them (eco-cities) as the purest attempt to create neo-liberalised environmental
security , not at the scale of the whole city or even the planet, but a more bounded divisible security in
order to try to guarantee ecological security for elites”. These critiques seem very similar to the one
Marx had on the proposals for Utopian Cities, which he believed were necessarily doomed to failure

because they attempted to create a perfect world, rather than change the existing one (Steel, 2009, p.
297). (Fig 13, 14, 15).
!
FIGURE 13: LIL YP AD FLOA TING ECOPOLIS
SOURCE: VINCENT CALLEBAUT ARCHITECTE; HTTP://VINCENT .CALLEBAUT .ORG
! / ! 13 20

62 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
! !
FIGURES 14 AND 15: MASDAR CITY
SOURCE: (LEFT) UNKNOWN; (RIGHT) MASDAR CITY , WWW .MASDARCITY .AE
Finally , what seems to be missing in tree-like cities, including the ready-made eco-cities, is the
dimension of time. Ready-made cities short-cut the process phase of transition and ignore the
transformative nature of cities. The power of a complex system lies in its ability to transform itself
while remaining functional through this transformation. Idealised cities are simply too naïve with
respect to the workings of the development process (Batty , 2008). This was the case during modernist
planning, but we could say the same about the contemporary master -planned Eco-Cities. The notion
that cities are managed by urban planners with master plans has always been a fiction (McGranahan,

2005). (Fig 16)
!
FIGURE 16: SHORT -CUT P A TH
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
Alexander (1965) warns that tree-like city structures create lifeless cities. Similarly , Christiaanse
(2007) raises the concern that “The City has become a tree’, a patchwork of disjoined, sterile, and
partially inaccessible sectors”. W ith the emergence of the automobile as a private mass-transit
technology , many cities have transformed from walkable to car cities (as cars often replaced rail
service and pedestrianism). This allowed at the same time for a great acceleration of urban sprawl and
functional separation. In addition, “a heightened demand for security has promoted restricted access
to increasingly larger urban spaces, which are only open to certain people during certain times of the

! / ! 14 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 63
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
day or night. Circulation within the city increasingly means traveling along main transportation axis,
and turning off only for the purpose of entering gated or enclosed sectors” (Christiaanse, 2007, p.13).
Since access to services and access to the city are closely linked with physical structures, this physical
separation in the urban fabric has contributed to the segregation and differentiation of socio-economic

groups in urban areas. “Cities are no longer the spatial backdrop against which social inequalities may
unfold, today the built environment itself is a means to determine inequality” (Esen, 2009, p.20). At
the same time, the role of public space as a place of social interaction has changed radically . People in
the streets are almost exclusively of one kind: consumers (Christiaanse, 2007). W e could say that
cities have evolved from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, not just literally in the form of gated communities,
campuses and shopping malls (that are divided by highways and other boundaries), but also in the

form of social segregation and functional specialisation.
The leading consumption paradigm is one of the reasons behind this evolution. In many instances,

marketing professionals have applied the logic of market segmentation to consumption patterns within
the city (de Mello Franco, 201 1). Factors such as social class, income and age, including sexual
orientation, are often used to define the specialized character of new urban developments. The city
becomes fragmented into specific marketing niches, which, in their intrinsic logic, group similar
people and avoid the confrontation with different social values and models of behaviour while

dissolving the common forms of coexistence (de Mello Franco, 201 1, p.186).
Closing Cycles – Opening City
I suggest that this transformation from ‘open’ to ‘closed’ cities went hand in hand with a
transformation of the urban metabolism from ‘circular ’ to ‘linear ’. In other words, resource flows

evolved at the same time from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ ‑
(e.g. water , nutrients, food). It is particularly

3
noteworthy that both transformations were facilitated by the availability of cheap energy and
resources in a globalizing world. This changed metabolism means that the urban populations have
become completely disconnected from the externalities of urban consumption and thus from the
biosphere’ s natural cycles. Many cities have lost their role in both primary and secondary resource
production and live of f their global hinterlands. This has in turn a considerable negative influence on
urban resilience (e.g. resource provision), which is becoming increasingly important with global

Climate Change.
(Re-)pr oduction of space
Several urban environmental strategies are now advocating a return to a circular metabolism (e.g.
WFC, 2014). However , many pay inadequate attention to the role of urban space. This paper suggests
that to come to an effective transition of our extended urban systems (i.e. to tackle global climate

! / ! 15 20

64 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
change), a transition of urban resource flows (going back from ‘open’ to ‘closed’) will need to go
hand in hand with a transition in urban space governance (going back from ‘closed’ to ‘open’). In
other words, a paradigm shift regarding resource flows will also demand an appropriate

‘(re-)production of urban space’ (Lefebvre, 1991).
Lefebvre (1991) criticized Soviet urban planners for failing to produce a socialist space, having just
reproduced the modernist model of urban design and applied it onto that context. Could the same be
said from current environmental strategies and eco-cities? Are they failing to produce an appropriate
urban space to a new paradigm concerning urban resource flows? Are they fostering ‘tree’-structures

or ‘closed’ cities while they intend to tackle environmental problems?
The reason why both ‘resource flows’ and ‘spatial’ transitions should go hand in hand is the intrinsic
link between the urban systems we have developed to handle transport, waste disposal, building,
heating and cooling, food provision (Sassen, 2010) and the way we organise, use and move in urban
space. T ake, for instance, the fact that currently over 65-70% of public space in many cities is
reserved exclusively for car infrastructure (Rueda, 2007). This exceptional spatial dominance of the
car has a large impact on urban mobility and therefore on urban resource consumption (not only in
terms of ener gy but also in terms of materials and embodied resources). Allocating urban space for
automobile use precludes using urban space for other purposes, such as the production of resources,
water treatment, etc. Another example is the urban water system, which evolved from an integrated
system on various city scales (water was supplied and treated on a local level, rainwater was collected
and stored, drainage was part of the street and alley design and there was a close link to agriculture) to
a centralised, invisible ‘big pipes’ system where several scales have been erased. The urbanites
became completely disconnected from the biospheric water cycle because it has physically been

reduced to the opening of a tap.
(Re-) appr opriation of r esources
Urban contexts in need of solutions have produced alternative streams of action that could trace
another path to act on climate change and urban resource flows. Although focusing mainly on urban
space and infrastructure development, schemes such as participatory budgeting enjoy a certain
acceptance on multiple levels of the political sphere. Could this scheme of participation also work on
a broader level, integrating the biospheric water cycle in the urban political discussions? W ater , for
instance, is being re-appropriated by communities in poverty belts around many cities. In Medellin
(Colombia), the ‘right to water ’ features as a continuous conflict between the service provider and the
inhabitants of some sectors of the city , who are re-claiming water as a natural resource rather than a
commodity service provided by the state (Lopez, 2014). In this particular process, several ideas spark
as people seem to finally understand where the water comes from, how to handle it and how to
preserve and protect its sources. Contrary to megaprojects bringing entire watersheds into dams, small

communal water reservoirs and micro-distribution systems seem to have found a way to re-
! / ! 16 20

Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City 65
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
appropriate water into the physical realm of the urbanites; often of course led by necessity . Could we
similarly argue for the ‘right to energy’, allowing communities to engage in re-appropriation

processes for understanding, managing and producing electricity?
Conclusions
This chapter places the urban climate challenge within a wider context of urban resource flows,
exploring the idea that the current ruptures in the biosphere’ s cycles are caused by the urban systems
we have created. This brings us to the task of restoring these ruptures, for which we will need to go
beyond mitigation and adaptation strategies to urban system transformations centered on resources. I
ar gued that changing urban systems should start from within the existing cities, trusting the

transformative potential of the city and taking the citizens along in the process. Furthermore, an urban
transition that is based on a paradigm change regarding urban resource flows (from ‘open’ to
‘closed’), will need to go hand in hand with an appropriate (re-)production of urban space (from

‘closed’ to ‘open’). Failing to do so will lead to a further fostering of tree-like structures, which ‘de-
urbanise’ the city .
Thus, finding a balance between the four interdependent parameters this chapter started with (resource
production, resource consumption, scale of the (closed) resource cycle area, and population density),
should not be taken as a rigorous goal but as a guiding principle for a long-term transformation of a

complex adaptive system (the city); one that leads towards dif ferent urban systems, a change in urban
lifestyles and consumption behavior and a recognition of a considerable urban productivity potential
once the possibility of a re-production of urban space is taken seriously . Only an integrated urban
strategy , which manages to tackle multiple environmental and social threats and stressors together in

an ongoing and incomplete process, can support the complexity of a semi-lattice and will avoid tree-
like structures.
The ‘where’ and ‘how’ these transformations can be initiated within cities opens a new research field

that goes beyond most current urban environmental methodologies. Since models have proven not to
work, we should turn to more experimental and reflexive approaches, which will demand trans-
disciplinarity at its process basis. The Closed Cycles – Open City cannot be designed, it has to be

produced via an ongoing process of intraventions, triggering learning in real time how to optimize and
reapply the learning. This is a very dif ferent process to planning. Intraventions, therefore, are attempts
to transform the system from within, as opposed to interventions, which attempt to influence a system
from outside (in 't V eld, 201 1). Incremental demonstration through project-specific planning, and the
learning that stakeholders derive from innovation at the project scale, provide us an important
technique in urban strategy practice, because the focus is more on aligning interests and inventing

new practices in pursuit of policy objectives. Lessons from successful project-scale interventions can
then be used to determine how policy , regulatory and institutional contexts can be changed to support

the scaling of new forms of development (Brugmann, 2009).
! / ! 17 20

66 Chapter 3. Closed Cycles - Open City
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The Urban Climate Challenge. Rethinking the
Role of Cities in the Global Climate Regime on March 2015, available online: https://www .routledge.com/The-Urban-Climate-
Challenge-Rethinking-the-Role-of-Cities-in-the-Global/Johnson-T oly-Schroeder/p/book/9781 138776883
The introduction of the ‘superblocks’ in Barcelona, a new urban unit joining several existing urban

blocks, is an example of re-thinking urban space together with re-organizing resource flows starting in
specific pressure points in the city . These units do not just change the local mobility system by
blocking all pass-through car traffic, but they also push new learning: how to rethink the way people
use and move in public space and become citizens again (and not just consumers), how to rethink

resource flows and make these units more self-suf ficient, how to re-activate urban space?
Another example to learn from is the ZEIS tool (Special Zones of Social Interest), which originally

appeared since the 80s in Recife, Brazil. ZEIS are demarcated areas in the territory of a city consisting
of low-income housing settlements (arising spontaneously , existing, consolidated or proposed by the
Government), which are given the possibility of upgrading and land tenure regularization. This tool

eased the urbanization process (led by the massive rural migration to cities), which would have been a
catastrophe if those cities were following the conventional planning legislation, and activated
participatory processes to improve urban space. Could such a tool be used for demarking areas in the
city to start closing resource cycles, sparking local organization and a re-appropriation of resources to

the citizens while empowering public space?
W e may find answers on ‘how to close resource cycles’ while studying cases of struggle for resources.
The closing of a resource cycle is not a process that should be in the hands of a private service
provider , neither by top-down city management structures, ‘owning’ the resources. The transgression
of this status quo (service provider owning the resource, urban segregation, etc.) relies on further
research focusing on local social movements and successful cases of resource appropriation, which

could inform new or ganizational processes and dynamics to urban climate and resource governance.
Acknowledgements
W ith special thanks to Juan Pablo A yala Cortés for the many inspiring discussions.
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! / ! 20 20

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 69
Chapter 4
Pressure-Point Strategy
Leverages for Urban T ransformation
Katleen De Flander
Jeb Brugmann
This paper has been published as:
De Flander , Katleen and Jeb Brugmann. 2017. Pressure-Point Strategy: Leverages
for Urban Systemic T ransformation.” Sustainability 9 (99).
The final publication is available (open access) at MDPI via:
http://doi.or g/10.3390/su9010099
This paper has been pr esented at the confer ence:
International Sustainability T ransitions IST 2016. W uppertal. 6-9 September 2016.

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 71
sustainability
Article
Pressure-Point Strategy: Leverages for Urban
Systemic T ransformation
Katleen De Flander 1, * and Jeb Brugmann 2
1
IASS Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam, Berliner Strasse 130, Potsdam 14467, Germany
2
The Next Practice, 58 Ravina Crescent, T oronto, ON M4J 3M2, Canada; [email protected]
* Correspondence: [email protected] ; T el.: +49-331-28822-346
Academic Editor: T an Y igitcanlar
Received: 7 November 2016; Accepted: 9 January 2017; Published: 11 January 2017
Abstract:
Sustainability can be understood as a specific kind of problem framing that emphasizes the
interconnectedness of dif ferent pr oblems and scales and calls for new forms of pr oblem handling that
are much mor e process-oriented, reflexive and iterative in natur e. Closely related with the notion
of reflexive governance, we pr opose such an alternative strategy for societal problem handling and
change management in the urban context. The strategy starts from str ess states in the urban system(s)
and uses their initial momentum to encourage systemic change thr ough intraventions—rather than
interventions—at selected pressu re points. This paper highlights the potential to evolve what has
often been an intuitive practice, led by community or elected leaders with unique wisdom about
functions and pressur e points in their urban system, into a more accessible strategy for shaping
socio-ecological transformation in urban practice.
Keywords: pressur e points; urban; sustainability; transformation; reflexive governance; complexity
1. Introduction
In line with transition discourses that are based on complexity theory , V oss and Kemp [
1
,
2
] argue
that sustainability , as the main second-order pr oblem of modernist pr oblem-solving, calls for new
forms of pr oblem handling and that these differ fr om the forms that are adequate for delimitable,
decomposable problems that can be managed in a linear way . They suggest that if we understand
sustainability as a specific kind of problem framing that emphasizes the inter connectedness of differ ent
problems and scales, then ‘sustainable development is mor e about the organisation of pr ocesses than
about particular outcomes’ [
2
] (p. 4). This paper pr oposes such a strategy for complex problem
handling and change management in the urban context. The result of such a strategy is a set of
intraventions—rather than interventions—at selected ‘pr essure points’, to facilitate desir ed systemic
‘transformation’ [ 3 , 4 ].
W e follow Sassen [
5
] in her argument that our curr ent global ecological conditions are not the
result of urban agglomeration and density in itself but they ar e the results of the specific types of urban
systems that we have developed. These infrastructur es, and their r elated consumption patterns and
management processes, have become institutionally globalised, r epr oducing relatively similar and
even predictable envir onmental transitions in the worldwide process of urbanisation [
6
,
7
]. As with
globalised production generally , urban systems today are scaled thr ough widely standar dised forms
of technology , design, and business models, supported by globalised institutional arrangements in the
arenas of regulation, finance, and governance [
8
–
10
]. These systems r eproduce globalised patterns of
consumption and lifestyle that are widely understood as being unsustainable for a gr owing human
population. If we set out to tackle the (local and global, social and environmental) externalities
of these urban systems and processes, then we will clearly have to go beyond ef ficiency strategies
and move towards transformations in the pr oduction and renewal of urban places and systems.
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99; doi:10.3390/su9010099 www .mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

72 Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 2 of 12
Such transformations, we ar gue, involve a shift from the scaling of standardised typologies and
systems to the development of capacity for more customised urban development [
11
]. The question is
‘where to start changing urban systems’ [
12
] (p. 56), considering their planetary nature [
13
–
16
], their
tensions among scales [ 17 , 18 ] and their vested power relations [ 19 , 20 ].
W e learn fr om times and places of shock that people and systems are mor e flexible for change
than we normally consider them to be. W e also see that most innovations do not come fr om places
of abundance and equilibrium but from the places wher e necessity (‘the mother of invention’) and
low budgets demand new and sometimes radical interventions that go way beyond high-tech fixes.
The latter are often sold as niche innovations but ar e more often co-opted experiments by the existing
neoliberal system [
21
]. Klein [
22
], in addition, underlines that shock is commonly used as an “effective”
strategy in neoliberal tactics. Based on this simple underlying idea that it is more dif ficult to af fect
significant change in a situation of r elative comfort than in a situation where the curr ent systems
(including social and institutional systems) ar e under stress or in decay [
23
], this strategy starts from
stress states in the urban system(s). This active state of necessity produces the initial momentum
for change in the system(s). Systemic change however , goes much further than only symptom relief.
Pressur e points are those places in the system(s), either directly or indir ectly inter connected with
the stress states, which ar e found to have the most potential to push the initial momentum in the
desired dir ection through intravention. In’t V eld [
24
] defines ‘intraventions’ as attempts to change
real-world configurations fr om within, as opposed to interventions, which attempt to influence a
system from outside. However , ‘since any governing intervention into a system is necessarily part of
that system and system boundaries can always be drawn wider ’ [
25
], we use the term intravention
here to highlight the fact that the iterative pr ocess of locating and analysing the stress states in the
urban system(s) and designing the set of intraventions is a process that should be str ongly based on
local knowledge, leadership and ingenuity . Refer encing the evidence from documented cases and
practices, this paper highlights the potential to evolve what has often been an intuitive practice, led
by community or elected leaders with unique wisdom about functions and pr essure points in their
urban system, into a mor e accessible process strategy for shaping socio-ecological transformation in
urban places.
The proposed Pr essure-Point Strategy leans closely towar ds the notion of ‘reflexive governance’,
the strategy elements and procedural r equirements of which pr ovide a useful framework for it.
Reflexive governance r efers to the problem of shaping societal development in the light of the r eflexivity
of steering strategies and ‘acknowledges that governing activities are entangled in wider societal
feedback loops that are partly shaped by the (side-)ef fects of its own working’ [
1
] (p. 4). At the
same time, the focus on stress states and intraventions in pr essure points answers to the critique of
Karvonen et al. [
21
] (p. 114), who state that, to date, ‘urban experiments [
...
] have lar gely reinfor ced
rather than r eoriented existing power geometries [
...
] and on the whole exhibit the paradoxical
qualities of promising radical change while practicing business as usual’, by proposing that experiments
initiated at times and places of stress have mor e potential for systemic change (in one direction or another).
After giving a short background on the use of pr essure points as an intuitive practice, we pr esent
a framework of elements that underlie a methodological approach of such a practice, followed by the
introduction of the strategy itself with its thr ee consecutive steps: identifying, understanding and
designing. W e discuss a practical r etrospective case fr om Chicago to illustrate the method and end
with a discussion.
2. From Intuitive Practice to Strategy
The idea of finding and beginning a process of change thr ough identified pressur e points has
been used, often intuitively , in many locations and settings throughout the world. Excellent leadership,
deep local knowledge and often a very low budget forced practitioners to focus limited r esources
on small opportunities that were ripe for intravention and change, and which would also carry
maximum possible social, political and economic influence at lar ger urban scales and across the

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 73
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 3 of 12
arenas of community or ganising, policy , planning, design, and public investment. For instance,
the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, Jaime Lerner , has been a leading practitioner of a pressur e
point approach, which he has described as ‘urban acupunctur e’ [
26
]. Lerner ’s appr oach involved
the selection and or chestration of site-specific intraventions to advance both civic understanding and
material demonstration of new system-wide development concepts (e.g., the downtown pedestrian
mall, BR T integration stations, flood plain land swapping, establishment of ethnic community cultural
facilities and identities in public parks) within the context of limited means. Lerner argues that tackling
urban problems at appr opriate pressur e points can cause a positive ripple ef fect throughout entir e
communities. ‘Sometimes urban planning is too slow’, he states, ‘The idea is to create ener gy’ [
26
].
One well-known intravention involved the night-time demolition of a block of downtown roadway to
establish the first demonstration of the city’s central pedestrian mall. The stress state ar ose fr om chr onic
congestion of the main downtown avenue by cars and private bus operators (often in violation of their
concession terms) and the status quo auto-focused demands of downtown commercial inter ests, on
the one hand, and the municipality’s strategy for transit-oriented gr owth and transformation of the
bus concession regime on the other hand. In this instance, the intravention—a middle-of-the-night
bulldozing of one block of the downtown avenue and its repavement as a pedestrian str eet—created
evidence of the commercial potential of the new form of str eetscape. It surfaced the public support for
transformation and the political pressur es both for and against it.
A second example is the transition of Barcelona’s modernist typology of illes (i.e., blocks) into a new
typological unit, the ‘super-ille’, joining nine urban traditional illes [
27
]. The sour ce of disequilibrium
was the increasing cong estion of residential ar eas and their narrow str eets and neighbour hood plazas
(increasingly used for parking), along with changing r esidential demographics. The desired systemic
outcome is to r oute cars around the neighbour hood illes and to re-establish pedestrian-friendly living
at the neighbour hood scale, reinfor cing traditional neighbourhood r elations, uses of public space and
commercial life. The intr oduction of the super-ille began with the first strategic pr oject in the Ribera
district following extensive neighbour hood discussions, upon which basis the physical design, traf fic
planning, and stakeholder engagement pr ocess for transitions in other districts could be understood
and ultimately codified.
Such intraventions at local-scale pressur e points are also a fundamental method in various
community-organising traditions, be these the building occupations of squatters in central Eur ope,
the neighbour hood-scale intraventions of community organisers who pushed for change in the face of
entrenched political mac hines in the cities of the northeast and midwest United States (e.g., Chicago),
the 1990s squatter movement in Berlin which surfaced the demand and need for affor dable housing at
a time when international investment was flooding into the city , or the ‘Wächterhäuser ’ scheme in
Leipzig [ 28 ].
These examples of pressur e-point intraventions supported the emergence of new models of urban
(re)development and ther eby had impacts that reached far beyond a specific point in space. In the
following section we discuss the strategic elements and steps of a more explicit pr ocess method,
building upon the lessons from such successful cases.
3. The Pressure-Point Approach
Before intr oducing the three steps of the Pr essure-Point Appr oach in more detail, we take a step
back to discuss the strategic elements that lie at its basis.
3.1. Strategic Elements
The six strategic elements presented by V oss and Kemp [
1
,
2
], as criteria to evaluate the actual
working of reflexive governance arrangements, apply to this appr oach. W e touch upon several of them
here in a contextualised manner and add elements that ar e more specific to this strategy .

74 Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 4 of 12
Local Process . The mapping of symptoms, their analysis, and the design of the intravention set to
trigger transformation at pressur e points should be executed by local people, drawing upon their local
tacit knowledge and ingenuity .
T ransition Brokers . A critical ingredient for urban change pr ocesses is ‘transition brokers’
(or ‘change agents’ as they are often called) [
29
,
30
] such as Salvador Rueda (dir ector and founder
of the Bar celona Urban Ecology Agency , instigated the first super-illes pr oject in Bar celona) or
community organisers (r eferenced below) in Chicago. These are important community leaders
(not necessarily public officials) who facilitate the transition pr ocess and the transfer and exchange
of knowledge, using narratives to inspire and cr eate co-responsibility and usually acting at multiple
scales. The mapping, diagnostic and intravention processes will most definitely need the agency of
such local transition brokers.
Iterative Nature of the Pr ocess. Urban change is itself a constant negotiation. The Pressure-Point
Approach is a pr ocess that should be cycled through several times, taking into account the flux of
urban reality , the high probability of unintended side-ef fects of the intravention set, changing values
and perceptions and feedback loops.
T ime Factor . One of the key notions of shock is ‘time’. Openings for intravention ar e often bound by
specific ‘opportunity time frames’, which can be very limited in length. This means that the mapping
and diagnostics are in constant flux, linking back to the need for an iterative pr ocess strategy .
Opening up before Closing down. Responding to the ef ficacy paradox of r eflexive governance,
namely what V oss and Kemp [
1
] describe as the contradicting requir ements of opening-up problem
handling for conceptualisation (to adequately grasp the factual embedding of decision-making in
complex contexts with heter ogeneous values and distributed power) and closing-down for keeping up
action capacity , this Pressur e-Point Approach handles the sequential opening and closing as follows:
the first two steps of identifying and understanding ar e meant to ‘open up’ the process to grasp the
complexity , let the information flow openly , and understand interconnectedness, power relations,
differ ent viewpoints, layers and contradictions. Depending upon the degree of conflict manifest in
the problem context, the opening-up pr ocess may be more or less explicit and open to br oad public
engagement. The third and ‘intravention’ step is the ‘closing down’ phase, necessary to be able to take
coordinated action in the urban reality . In effect, such a process is typical of successful local leaders,
who may spend years taking a broad ‘r eading’ of the environment on which basis they may then make
a strong, decided intravention at a critical window of opportunity . In a similar way , Stirling [
31
] pleads
for more plural and conditional appr oaches before the actual decision-making pr ocess, ar guing that
when knowledge is uncertain, one should ‘keep it complex’ in or der to see the range of perspectives
and divergent interpr etations for decision-making on complex and contested issues.
Set Guiding Direction. Once there is a suf ficient level of understanding and a desire to intravene,
the third step of designing the set of i ntraventions at selected pressur e points will need to be preceded
by a decision on the guiding direction in which change is pushed. This is the guiding direction for the
alignment of the intraventions as we will introduce below .
3.2. A Thr ee-Step Iterative Process
The Pressur e-Point Approach is an iterative pr ocess which consists of the following three steps
as visualised in Figur e 1 : (1) identifying str ess states thr ough symptom mapping; (2) understanding
complexity thr ough diagnostic mapping and symptom analysis; and (3) designing the intravention set
at selected pressur e points. In what follows, we go deeper into each of these steps.

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 75
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 5 of 12
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 9 9 5 of 12

Figure 1. Pressure point approach—a th ree- step it erative p r ocess.
3. 3. Ste p 1: I d e n ti f y Stre ss S t ates—E m pi ri c a l Sym p tom M a ppi n g Sec t ion
The first step is a straightfo rward mapping proc ess of the symptoms of the comp lex problem. A
symptom ref l ects the presence of a n “un u su al state ” o r “stre ss st ate” in the urban system, such as an
a r e a o f co n c e n t ra t e d a i r p o l l u t i o n o r f o o d s ec u r i t y d i s t u r b a n c e s . T h i s a c t i v e s t a t e o f n e c e s s i t y g i v es
an in it i a l mo ment um for change in t h e syst em. In pract i ce, it i s unl i ke ly t o find t h e n ece ssa ry
wil lingne ss a n d resou rces t o t a ckle a co mplex proble m in plac es where there is an over all state of
eq ui li brium and comf ort a s a sta r ti ng poi n t, or even where v u lne r abil it ie s are c o nsider ed t o be hi gh
(e.g ., t h e perc ept i ons o f do wnt o wn shop owners whe n consi derin g pedest r i an is a t ion, as in Cu rit i ba ).
Syst emic cha n ge, however , goes m u ch furt her t h an only s y mpt o m relie f. We can id ent i f y severa l
types of stres s state s :
x Need to Ac t: Active State of Necessity. T h e re i s r i s k i n t h e c u r r e n t s i t u a t i o n t h a t r e q u i r e s c h a n g e,
either because of the potential loss of function o r i m p o s i t i o n o f c o s t s t h a t w i l l d e s t a b i l i z e
systems bey o nd the acce pted limits o f toler a nc e. The consequences of inaction are c l e a r.
Symptoms or stresse s can be of a so cial, demogr aphic, environmental, po li ti ca l, techni cal or
economical n a ture o r o f ten a specific co mbination o f these.
x Shock . In som e case s this ‘n eed to act’ can come very sudden , as a shock. The s e ‘breakin g ne ws’
stress states c a n be of n a tu ral origin s u c h as a hurric a ne, a flood or an earthquake (o f co urse,
human in f l ue nce on, f or in st ance, c lim at e change co ul d incre a se t h e i r fre q u ency and int e n s it y ) ,
or of manm ade origin, suc h as the collapse of th e fin a ncial system or the housing market, o r an
epidemic or an emb a rgo (e.g., the well-known US emba rgo a g ainst Cuba) . Note tha t systemi c
shocks c a n be interconnect ed.
x Laten t N eed to Ac t. T h e r e i s f r a g i l i t y i n t h e u r b a n s y s t e m tha t wil l exa c erb a te the i m p a cts of a
shock, ‘ i t i s just a m a tter of ti me’ [ 32] .
x Mana ge d Crea tion of Stress or Socio-Political ‘Heat ’. Th is is bas i c a lly self-in d uce d stress, wh ic h
represent s a c o mmonly use d t a ct ic t o t rig ger act i on in t h e s y st em, s u ch a s Lerne r’s bu lldo z in g o f
t h e d o w n t o w n a v e n u e . M e d i a c a n p l a y a n i m p o r t a n t r o l e h e r e.
3. 4. Ste p 2: Un ders tan d —Di a gnos ti c Map p i ng a nd S y m p t o m A nal ysi s
There ar e no easy line ar c a uses o r so lutions to com p lex problem s . A f a i l ur e t o recogni s e t h is
often le ads to unexpected f eed back s [33] (e.g., the well -known ex ample of bui l d i n g t raf fic flyov ers t o
s o l v e a t r a f f i c p r o b l e m , o n l y l e a d i n g t o i n c r e a s ed c a r u se ) . T h i s d i a g n o st i c s t e p i n t en ds t o p r e v e n t
simpl i st ic s o l u t i ons for co mplex proble ms and seek s t o unrave l t h e int erconnect ions, pot ent ial

1: I d ent i fy i ng
St r e s s St a t e s
2: U nd e r s t a nd i
ng

Co m p l ex i ty
3: I nt r av ent i on S e t

i n P r es s ur e P oi nt s
I
t e r a t i v e
p r o c e s s
OP E N I NG UP
CL O S I NG DOW N
OP E N I NG UP
As s e m b l ag e
Di agn os t i c M ap p i ng

Sy m p t o m An a l ysi s
Ma p p i ng S y m p t o m s
Figure 1. Pr essur e point approach—a thr ee-step iterative process.
3.3. Step 1: Identify Stress States—Empirical Symptom Mapping Section
The first step is a straightforward mapping pr ocess of the symptoms of the complex problem.
A symptom re flects the presence of an “unusual state” or “str ess state” in the urban system, such
as an area of concentrated air pollution or food security disturbances. This active state of necessity
gives an initial momentum for change in the system. In practice, it is unlikely to find the necessary
willingness and resour ces to tackle a complex problem in places wher e there is an overall state of
equilibrium and comfort as a starting point, or even wher e vulnerabilities are consider ed to be high
(e.g., the percepti ons of downtown shop owners when considering pedestrianisation, as in Curitiba).
Systemic change, however , goes much further than only symptom relief. W e can identify several types
of stress states:
•
Need to Act: Active State of Necessity . There is risk in the curr ent situation that r equires change,
either because of the potential loss of function or imposition of costs that will destabilize systems
beyond the accepted limits of tolerance. The consequences of inaction are clear . Symptoms or
stresses can be of a social, demographic, environmental, political, technical or economical natur e
or often a specific combination of these.
•
Shock . In some cases this ‘need to act’ can come very sudden, as a shock. These ‘breaking news’
stress states can be of natural origin such as a hurricane, a flood or an earthquake (of course, human
influence on, for instance, climate change could increase their frequency and intensity), or of
manmade origin, such as the collapse of the financial system or the housing market, or an epidemic
or an embargo (e.g., the well-known US embar go against Cuba). Note that systemic shocks can
be interconnected.
•
Latent Need to Act. There is fragility in the urban system that will exacerbate the impacts of a shock,
‘it is just a matter of time’ [ 32 ].
•
Managed Creation of Str ess or Socio-Political ‘Heat ’. This is basically self-induced str ess, which
repr esents a commonly used tactic to trigger action in the system, such as Lerner ’s bulldozing of
the downtown avenue. Media can play an important r ole here.
3.4. Step 2: Understand—Diagnostic Mapping and Symptom Analysis
There ar e no easy linear causes or solutions to complex problems. A failure to r ecognise this
often leads to unexpected feedbacks [
33
] (e.g., the well-known example of building traffic flyovers
to solve a traffic pr oblem, only leading to increased car use). This diagnostic step intends to prevent

76 Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 6 of 12
simplistic solutions for complex problems and seeks to unravel the inter connections, potential triggers,
relations, inter dependencies and forces at work that underlie the manifestation of the symptoms that
were identified in step 1. We p r o p o s e t h e u s e o f b o t h d i a g n o s t i c m a p p i n g a n d s y m p t o m a n a l y s i s f o r t h i s .
Diagnostic Mapping. Once the symptoms are mapped in step 1, diagnostic mapping seeks to
visually reveal the underlying causes, flows and inter connections of the identified symptoms that
have accumulated in specific urban systems. The function of mapping here is less to mirr or r eality
than to r eveal and realise the potential and triggers for change [
34
]. W e ar e not mapping design or
form but strategic dynamics, potential triggers and interconnections that can be leveraged later to
advance a transition process. Depending on the landscape, the diagnostic mapping can go beyond the
city’s administrative bor ders in the extended urban systems. Whether specific intraventions will be
able to influence these extended systems is not the question being explored at this stage. This is the
stage of opening up in which we should accept complexity . Experts might identify dif fer ent triggers or
interconnections than communi ty actors or public officials but these dif ferent interpr etations ar e all
respected items of the same map.
Symptom Analysis . In association with diagnostic mapping, symptom analysis seeks to analyse
the forces in the particular symptom that are facilitating or r estraining the momentum moving out of
its stress state. Symptom analysis falls in the realm of ‘momentum analysis’. Since a momentum is a
vector quantity , it is described by both magnitude and dir ection. W e can evaluate the following for ces
in the specific symptoms:
•
Size of the net facilitating forces (for a given moment of time) that ar e increasing the momentum
(moving away from the str ess state).
•
Size of the net hindering forces (for a given moment of time) that ar e restraining the momentum
(from moving away fr om the stress state).
• Direction of the net for ces and the ability for their alignment.
Figure 2 is a visualisation of a symptom analysis breaking down the dif fer ent kinds of forces and
attributing them a size and extent of direction. Note that this is a snapshot in time as the dynamics
in a particular point in urban space are constantly changing. This step is still part of the ‘opening
up’ phase. The analysis should be done in an open and descriptive way . It is all about describing the
present situation.
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 9 9 6 of 12
t r i g g e r s , r e l a t i o n s , i n t e r d e p e n d e n c i es a n d f o r c e s at work t h at u n derl ie t h e m a ni fest at ion of t h e
symptoms th at were iden tifie d in step 1. We prop o se the use o f both dia g no stic m a pping a n d
symptom a n alysis for this.
Di agnos t i c M a ppi n g . O n c e t h e s y m p t o m s a r e m a p p e d i n s t ep 1, di agnosti c ma ppi ng seeks to
v i su al ly rev e al t h e unde rl ying c a uses , f l ows and in terconnecti o ns of the i d entif i ed symptoms tha t
have acc u mu lat ed in spec i f ic urban syst ems. The f u n c t i on of map p ing here is l ess t o mirro r rea lit y
tha n to reveal a nd real i s e the potenti a l and tri ggers f o r cha nge [ 3 4 ] . We a r e not ma ppi ng design or
fo r m b u t s t r a t e g ic d y n a m i c s , p o t e n t i a l t r ig g e r s a n d i n t e r c o n n e c t i o n s t h a t c a n b e l ev e r a g e d l a t e r t o
advanc e a transition process. Depend in g on the la ndscape, the diagnostic mapp ing c a n go beyond
the ci ty’s a d mi ni stra ti ve borders i n the extended ur ban sy stems. Whether spec ific intr aventions will
be a b l e to i n f l uence these extended systems i s not th e que st i on be in g explor ed at t h is st age . T h is is
t h e st age of opening up i n which we shoul d accep t complexit y . Expert s m i g h t ident i fy di ffer ent
tri ggers or interconnecti ons tha n communi ty a c to r s o r p u b l i c o f f i c i als but these different
in t e r p r e t a t io n s a r e a l l r e s p e c t e d it e m s o f t h e s a m e m a p .
Sym p tom Ana l ysis . In a ssoc i at ion w i t h di agnost ic m a p p ing, s ym p t o m ana l ys is se eks t o an al ys e
the forc es in t he particular symptom that are fac i li ta ting or restrai n i n g the momentum movi ng out of
its stres s st ate. Symptom analy s is fa ll s in the re alm of ‘momentum a n a l y s i s ’ . S i n c e a m o m en t u m i s a
vect or qu ant i t y , it is desc r i bed by bot h magn it ude a n d di rect ion. We c a n eva l uat e t h e fo llo wing
forces in t h e s p ecif ic s y mpt o ms:
x S i z e o f t h e n e t f a c i l i t a t i n g f o r c e s ( f o r a g i v en m o m en t o f t i m e) t h a t a r e i n c r e a s i n g t h e m o m en t u m
(moving aw ay from the str ess state).
x Size o f the net hindering forces (for a given mome nt of ti me) tha t a r e restrai n i n g the momentum
(from mov i n g aw ay from the str es s stat e).
x Direction o f t h e net forc es and the abilit y for their alignment.
Fig u re 2 i s a v i su al is at ion of a sym p t o m ana l ys is b r eak i ng down t h e dif f erent kinds o f forc es
an d at t r i b u t i n g t h e m a s i ze an d e x t e n t o f d i r e c t i o n . N o t e t h at t h i s i s a s n ap s h o t i n t i m e as t h e
dynam i cs in a p a rt ic ul ar p o int in urb a n spac e are co nst a nt ly chan ging. Thi s st e p is st i l l pa rt of t h e
‘ o p en i n g u p ’ p h a s e . T h e a n a l y s i s s h o u l d b e d o n e i n a n o p e n a n d d e s c r i p t i v e w a y . I t i s a l l a b o u t
describ i ng th e present situation.

Figure 2. S y m p t o m a n a l y s i s ( b a s e d o n t h e f o r c e f i e l d a n a l y s i s , o r i g i n a l l y c r e a t e d b y t h e p s y c h o l o g i s t
Kurt Lewin in t h e 1940s for use in social situa tions).

Figure 2.
Symptom analysis (based on the force field analysis, originally cr eated by the psychologist
Kurt Lewin in the 1940s for use in social situations).

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 77
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 7 of 12
3.5. Step 3: Set Direction and Design the Intravention Set at Selected Pr essure Points
After ‘keeping it complex’ [
31
], having mapped and diagnosed the symptoms and analysed the
interdependencies and the for ces that are working within them, this thir d step is the moment where
the strategy needs a ‘closing-down’ phase, necessary to allow for action to be taken in practice. On the
basis of the diagnostic analysis in step 2, a joint decision to act or not, and in which dir ection to act,
should be taken.
Pressur e points are those places in the urban system(s), either dir ectly or indirectly inter connected
with the symptom(s), which ar e found to have the most potential to push the initial momentum
in the desir ed direction thr ough intravention. They are the points wher e you apply pressur e
(via intraventions) to relieve the str ess state. Designing the set of intraventions is all about deciding
where and how to instigate change in the system, amplify the useful and dampen the less useful for ces,
and align forces towar ds the chosen direction. Pressur e points are thus used as leverages for pushing
the momentum in the desired dir ection, and to release and steer ener gies fr om the existing stress.
A pressur e-point intravention may be a single, bold measur e, such the citizen occupation of a
building. However , to affect a truly new momentum, an ef fective intravention is typically a designed
set of actions meant to harvest, apply , direct, and align for ces in one or several pressur e points of an
entire system to push in the desired dir ection. For instance, in the Curitiba case, the effectiveness of
the intravention depended on the new str eetscape design and the establishment of a ‘24-Hour Str eet’
(a gallery with shops, bars and restaurants which was open 24 h), which attracted people and cr eated
safety in the new pedestrian zone while addressing the business concerns of local commer cial interests.
One may therefor e speak of an ‘intravention set’. The intravention set has three key components
(Figure 3 ):
A.
Intraventions that create openings to weaken or by-pass the hindering for ces towards the
desired dir ection. The hindering forces, which ar e often systemic dependencies or vested power
structur es, ar e impeding systemic change. These hindering forces can be weakened or by-passed
by cr eating openings (disruptions) in the curr ent systems to make space for alternative systems
to develop and ideally outcompete the old system.
B.
Intraventions that strengthen or add facilitating for ces that increase the momentum towar ds the
desired dir ection.
C.
Align the pressur e point intraventions collectively towards the desir ed dir ection. The openings
and forces of the intravention set should be aligned in such a way that they r einforce each other
and do not adversely affect each other .
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 9 9 7 of 12
3.5. Ste p 3: Se t Direction an d Design the In traven tion Set a t Selec t e d Pr es sure Poin ts
Aft er ‘keepin g it complex’ [3 1] , h a vin g mapped an d d i a g n o s e d t h e s y m p t o m s a n d an a l y s e d t h e
interdepende ncies and the forces th at ar e workin g wi thi n them, thi s thi r d step i s the moment where
the strategy n eeds a ‘clo sin g -down’ ph ase, nec ess ary to a l l o w for acti o n to be tak en i n pra c ti c e. On
t h e b a s i s o f t h e d i a g n o s t i c a n a l y s i s i n s t e p 2 , a j o i n t d ec i s i o n t o a c t o r n o t , a n d i n w h i c h d i r e c t i o n t o
ac t , s h o u l d b e t ak e n .
Pressure points are those place s in the urban system(s), either dir ectly or ind i rec t ly
in t e r c o n n e c t e d w it h t h e s y m p t o m (s ), w h ic h a r e fo u n d to ha ve the most potentia l to p u sh the i n i tia l
momentum in the desi red di rect i o n through i n tra venti on. They a r e the poi n t s where you a pply
pressu re (via intravention s ) to re lieve th e stre ss st at e . Design ing t h e set of int r av ent i ons is al l ab out
decid i ng whe re and how t o inst ig at e ch ange in t h e system, amp l ify the use f ul and dampen t he less
use f ul for c es, and align forces toward s the chosen d i r e c t i o n . P re s s u r e p o i n t s a r e t hu s u s e d a s
lever a ges fo r pushing the momentum in the de sire d di rection , an d to re le ase and steer ener gies from
the existin g st ress.
A pressure-p oint intra v ention m a y be a single, bo ld m e a s u r e , s u c h t h e c it iz e n o c c u p a t io n o f a
build ing . Ho wever, t o a ffe ct a t rul y new moment um, an e f f ect ive in t ravent i on is t y pica ll y a des i gne d
set of a c ti ons mea n t t o ha rvest, a p ply, di rect, a n d a l ig n forces in on e or sever a l p ress u re point s of an
entire sy stem to push in the desir ed dire ction. For in stance, in the Curitib a case, t h e effect ivene ss of
t h e i n t r a v e n t i o n d e p e n d e d o n t h e n ew s t r e e t s c a p e d e s i g n a n d t h e e s t a b l i s h m e n t o f a ‘ 2 4 - H o u r S tr e e t ’
(a galle ry with shops, bar s and r estaur a nts wh i c h w a s o p e n 2 4 h ) , w h i c h a t t ra c t ed p eo p l e a n d
c rea t ed s a f et y i n t h e n e w p edes t r i a n z o n e w h i l e a ddre s s i n g t h e b u s i n es s c o n c e rn s o f l o c a l
commercial interests. One may therefor e spe a k of an ‘i ntra venti o n set’. The i n traventi on set has three
key compone n ts (F igure 3):
A. Intraventions that c r eate openings to weaken or b y -pass the h i ndering forc es tow a rds t he
desir ed direction. The hin d ering forces, which ar e oft en systemic d ependencie s or vested power
structure s , are impe ding sy stemic ch ange. The s e hind ering forces c a n be we akened or
by-pas sed by cre a t i n g o p enings (d is rupt ions ) in t h e curr ent syst ems t o make sp ace for
altern ative sy stems to deve lop an d ideal l y outcompete the ol d system.
B. Intra venti ons tha t strengthen or add fa cil i t a t i n g fo r c e s t h a t in c r e a s e t h e m o m e n t u m t o w a r d s t h e
desir ed d i rect ion.
C. Ali g n t h e pressur e point in t ravent i ons c o llect ive l y t o wards t h e de sired direct io n. The openin gs
an d f o r c e s o f t h e i n t r av e n t i o n s e t s h o u l d b e a l i g n e d i n s u c h a w a y t h a t t h e y r e i n f o r c e e a c h o t h er
and do not adversely affec t each other .

Figure 3. T h e t h r e e c o m p o n e n t s o f the intra v ention se t.

Figure 3. The thr ee components of the intravention set.

78 Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 8 of 12
An intravention thus does not necessarily need to be a ‘pr oject’; it can just as well be ‘taking
away’ something (e.g., taking away 3% of parking places per year in Copenhagen [
35
]), ‘facilitating’
something that was not possible befor e or ‘consequently changing priorities’ from the existing to an
alternative system.
Questions that can guide actors to conceptualize and design intravention sets are: What is the
balance of losers/winners of this intravention set? How would the intravention set affect the power
relations in its context and would it create openings for new alignment or alliances? Can we foresee
externalities of the intravention set? W ould ther e be a demonstration value? W e have to accept that it
is impossible to pr edict the exact outcomes of an intravention set as there will always be unintended
consequences and unexpected side-effects. These should be evaluated and taken up in the next round
of the iterative process.
4. A Case Example: Neighbourhood Regeneration in Chicago
This section discusses the mix of measures that kick-started the r egeneration in Chicago’s
Edgewater neighbourhood in the 1980s and pr ovides a fascinating, retr ospective example of the
use of stress states and the discovery and consolidation of pr essure-point intraventions.
4.1. The Local Context
The Great Depr ession and then all-out production for the Second W orld W ar left post-W ar Chicago
with a base of early 20th century infrastructur e, plants and equipment that could not compete in the
late 20th century . Between 1965 and 2000, Chicago lost 70% of its manufacturing jobs to newly
built suburban areas. Chicago’s residents followed. Between 1960 and 1990, Chicago’s population
dropped by almost 800,000 people, gutting the city’s mixed-use r esidential/industrial/commercial
neighbourhoods [ 36 ].
Adding to the momentum of decline, over the course of two decades, four business models
stripped the remaining value fr om neighbourhood buildings. Predatory finance for home mortgages
on inner city properties filled the void of r egulated bank finance, driving inner city households
further into poverty . Then local real estate agents used ‘blockbusting’ racial scar e tactics to secure
properties at r educed prices from fleeing white households and then sell them at a pr emium price to
African American households. The resulting high rates of loan defaults and tax delinquency created
openings for slum lords to secur e properties at minimal prices in for eclosur e sales or city tax auctions.
The slumlord’s basic business model was to squeeze as much short-term cash r ent as possible from a
building, without making any capital investment in its maintenance. Finally , once a slum building
was all but uninhabitable, the slumlords hir ed arsonists to burn their building and collect on their fire
insurance policies. Drug dealers inhabited abandoned buildings and took territorial contr ol of clear ed
lots and unmaintained parks [ 36 ].
T ogether these models of stripping value fr om the city cr eated a continuous cycle or momentum
of decline. Chicago’s unrivalled grassroots community or ganisers had to discover how to map and
read the emer ging stress, triggers and interconnections in this cycle of decline, how and where to
intravene to stop the negative momentum, and how and where to create openings for alternative
models of reinvestment.
4.2. The Pr ocess
In the formerly middle-class, European Edgewater neighbour hood in the north shore ar ea of
Chicago, one of the first actions taken by the new neighbourhood and block associations that formed in
the late 1980s was detailed mapping of each building, park, and street corner under str ess from
the value-stripping disinvestment process and crime. An inventory was taken of every lot, park,
and building—300 buildings involving 10,000 units. A special focus was given to the corridor constituted by
Kenmore and W inthrop A venues, infamously known at the time as ‘Arson Alley’. The mapping exercise
(i.e., a broad-based ‘opening-up process’) documented ownership, occupancy , and each building

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 79
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 9 of 12
and unit’s status and underlying inter connections within the context of the above-described cycle of
decline. The community associations then evaluated the remaining use-value in each building and
lot (i.e., ‘understanding complexity’), and developed a set of strategies and tactics (i.e., intraventions)
for pursuing the r enewal of that value and the regeneration of their neighbour hood. These strategies
and tactics implicitly reflected a r esident analysis of the facilitating and restraining forces at work
in various systems and levels, and a car eful selection of aligned points for intraventions to push the
momentum towards their desir ed direction.
T o trigger the transition pr ocess in the Edgewater neighbour hood, the local activists, as relatively
new and poorly resour ced change agents, implemented intraventions both simple and complex.
One of these was to establish a neighbour hood source of funding for community planning that was
independent of the infamous political machine of Mayor Richar d Daley . They leveraged one of the
new forces that was changing the dir ection of momentum in the American urban landscape: the
establishment of federal government programs for community-based or ganizations and initiatives.
The securing of this source of support, external to the existing local political-economic machine or r egime,
established a local planning capacity that ultimately r esulted in the Edgewater neighbourhood establishing
its own Planning and Zoning Committee. T oday , that committee still previews development pr oposals
prior to consideration by the respective, of ficial city council committee.
W ith their mapping exercise they identified and made intraventions, at first around specific
buildings, proactively recruiting new owners for buildings and training them to manage the buildings
according to their plans and objectives. In some of the mor e tr oubled parks and street corners, they
took direct intravening action to pr essure the police to inter vene. For instance, when neighbourhood
activist Mary Ann Smith was first elected to the city council, she took to setting up a lawn chair and
sitting at notoriously dangerous locations and called the police while sitting ther e to let them know .
This triggered discussions with the police to schedule more r egular patr ols of these ar eas, and to
make arrests.
Eventually , the model of new building ownership r ecruitment and training was institutionalized
as a city-wide process thr ough the establishment of the Chicago Community Investment Corporation
(CIC). In other words, the initial tactical intraventions tested a foundation of practices for a new
city-wide strategic process.
It is to be highlighted that the intraventions to increase positive momentum in the neighbour hood
(i.e., for the most part by strengthening the capacity and know-how of local associations) wer e
matched with intraventions to weaken the power of hindering for ces (i.e., by securing funds that wer e
independent of City Hall, and by recr uiting and financially aiding alternative owners and political
powers in the neighbourhood).
The above, initial intravention set formed part of a growing number of similar strategies in other
stress ar eas across the city at the neighbour hood scale. These were then steadily scaled up citywide,
initially through grassr oots transfer from one block or fr om one neighbour hood to another . Ultimately ,
they were mer ged into a new body of practices for urban regeneration at a gr eat scale, acr oss the city ,
and finally embraced in the 1990s by the r eform of Chicago’s governing regime. As long-time activist
and University of Chicago scholar T erry Nichols Clark put it, ‘Few governments have changed as
deeply and as rapidly as Chicago’s—without a visible or violent revolution.’ Chicago politics between
the 1970s and 1990s have ‘been revolutionized in many similar r espects to the revolutions in Eastern
Europe, Latin America and Asia’ during the same years [ 11 ], [ 37 ] (p. 2).
This case example [
36
] is based on in-depth interviews undertaken in 1988 and 2008 by Jeb
Brugmann, including: Lee Botts, Alliance for Great Lakes (2008); W alter Burnett, Alderman, City
of Chicago (2008); Gail Cincotta, National People’s Action (1988); Prof. T erry Clark, University of
Chicago (2008); Forrest Claypool, Cook County Commissioner (2008); Mayor Richar d Daley (2008);
Dave Doig, Park National Bank (2008); Pr of. Paul Greene, Roosevelt University (2008); Gr eg Harris,
State Representative, State of Illinois (2008); Jack Markowski, Community Investment Corporation

80 Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 10 of 12
(2008); John McCarron, Chicago T ribune (2008); David Orr , Alderman, City of Chicago and Clerk, Cook
County (1988); Mary Ann Smith, Alderman, City of Chicago (2008).
5. Discussion
This paper outlines a method for complex problem handling based upon what has her etofore
been an intuitive process used by successful city leaders. The method focuses on explicit mapping
of symptoms in urban system(s). An analysis of those stress states is then undertaken to inform the
design of an intravention set at selected pr essure points for the desirable transformation of systemic
functions, uses and dynamics. Practitioners, from city planners to community activists, will likely
agree with the simple underlying idea of this strategy , namely that it is easier to start change in places
that are confr onted by a range of accumulated stresses than in places wher e the system is in a stable
equilibrium (even if there is a consciousness in the latter that this system has obvious envir onmental
and societal externalities). Therefor e, for people dealing with complex urban problems, this appr oach
can be a useful tool (for both top-down and bottom-up initiatives) to instigate systemic change.
The question as to ‘who’ uses this appr oach and who decides on the direction in which change is
to be steered is a contested one. Societal discourse on sustainability has highlighted the ambiguity
of social goals and, at the same time, sustainability itself is a moving target [
1
,
2
]. W e propose a
process with str ong input of local knowledge and leadership throughout the thr ee steps but we ar e
aware that every transformation pr ocess includes a struggle over power and opportunistic behaviour
with the danger of the process bein g co-opted or dominated by the views and interests of the most
powerful actors.
T ypically , the development of specific pressur e-point intraventions to reinfor ce momentum and
to create new openings for desir ed change is a process of trial and error , as it is not certain how
‘the system’ will respond to each intravention or set. This brings us to the dif ficult question of the
possibility of ‘upscaling’ a successful intravention set to other places or systems. As we argued, urban
systems today are scaled thr ough widely standardised forms of technology , design, and business
models, supported by institutional arrangements in the arenas of r egulation, finance, and governance.
The strategic premise underlying this article is that fundamental changes in sustainability outcomes
requir e the development of capacity for more customised urban development. The pressur e-point
approach is pr oposed to support the customisation of problem handling to a specific context. W e do
envision that the resulting intravention set could have a high demonstration value and could trigger
pressur e and learning in other places or communities.
However , uncertainty is intrinsic to this approach and we ar gue hereby for an incr eased tolerance
for failure, which overr ules the curr ent trend of best-practice imitation. A culture of trying and failing
should become part of urban change management together with a stronger tr ust in local ingenuity
and phronesis. The art of urban ‘acupuncture’ is still little developed and most certainly has its limits.
The cases we have used are r etrospective and not based on its application specifically . Therefor e, further
investigation should focus on the practical testing and evaluating of this approach in dif ferent contexts
and with differ ent types of stress states, which will also bring forwar d its limitations mor e clearly .
6. Conclusions
Based on the urgency to deal with the wicked pr oblems of our era, this paper has developed
a strategy for transforming complex urban systems based on the potential leverages of shock and
necessity . While there is an emer ging academic interest in ‘urban experiments’ and ‘living labs’,
they are at the same time being criticised for lar gely reinfor cing rather than reorienting existing
power geometries. Similarly , high-tech fixes are often sold as niche innovations but ar e mor e often
co-opted experiments by the existing neo-liberal system. W e welcome the move to a context-based
and customised appr oach, but argue for a need to go back to heuristics. Most innovations do not
come from places of abundance and equilibrium but fr om the places where necessity (‘the mother of
invention’) and low budgets demand new and sometimes radical interventions that go way beyond

Chapter 4. Pressure-Point Strategy 81
Sustainability 2017 , 9 , 99 11 of 12
high-tech fixes. The energy needed to leverage the transformation towar ds the widely shar ed vision of
sustainability will come from the political power from underneath, fr om the slums and from crises,
which will for ce us to adapt. Thus, we suggest consciously leveraging the momentum and ener gy that
times and places of str ess create to move towar ds transformations in the production and r enewal of
urban places and systems.
Acknowledgments:
The authors thank Kathrine Brekke, Andreas Brück, Galina Churkina, Klaus Hoppe,
Kate Houghton, Arun Jain, Stephen Kovats, Holger Kuhle, Hans Mönninghof, Manuel Rivera, Ania Rok,
Ronald Rovers and Matt W atson for their participation in the IASS T ransdisciplinary Expert W orkshop:
“Urban Pressur e-Point Method” (November 2014). The Expert W orkshop and its debates formed part of the
methodology to test our strategy with practical experience, tacit knowledge and theoretical rigour and were
therefor e a valuable source for the further development of our Pressur e-Point approach. W e are grateful to the
IASS for hosting this Expert W orkshop and for covering the costs to publish in open access.
Author Contributions:
Both authors jointly developed the Pressur e-Point Strategy in a working paper and hosted
an expert workshop at the IASS Potsdam (November 2014) to critically discuss the appr oach with a number of
experts from both academia and practice, which led to new insights and the further development of the working
paper . Katleen De Flander transformed the working paper into a scientific paper and brought in additional
theoretical framings. Jeb Brugmann brought in most cases fr om practice, and specifically the Chicago case.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declar e no conflict of inter est.
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Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook 85
Chapter 5
Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook
This thesis set out to explore the ‘Urban Stratum’, a global layer of urban influence that is
obstructing the earth’ s natural cycles. Going out from the fact that it is impossible to get
rid of the Urban Stratum or prevent further urbanisation, I questioned how we can change
this layer so that it becomes more permeable for the biosphere’ s natural cycles to flow and
started from Sassen’ s (2010) claim that it is not density or urbanisation itself but the urban
systems we have created that are at the core of our current global ecological conditions.
Consequently , this thesis argued for a necessary transformation of these urban systems,
framing its objective as follows: “Going out from ur gency to deal with the wicked global
environmental problems of our era, this thesis develops strategies for transforming complex
urban systems in the condition of planetary urbanisation based on the potential leverages of
shock and necessity .” T o achieve this objective, this dissertation constructed an interplay
of four theoretical concept lines: Planetary Urbanisation, Complexity , T ransformation and
Necessity; and used practical evidence and expert knowledge to build its case in three
chapters guided by the following four hypotheses: 1) It is the - concentrated and extended
- urban systems we created that are at the core of our global environmental problems; 2)
W e need to focus on a transformation of these urban systems. The basis of most current
strategies - efficiency improvements, model approaches and optimisation - will never get
us far enough given the ur gency and severity of current global problems; 3) It is within the
complexity of the urban that we must look for the formulas for reconfiguring the socio-
ecological system that is urbanisation. Failing to do so will lead to unexpected feedbacks

86 Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook
and de-urbanise the city; and 4) T o activate the urban potential for change, we need to look
in places of necessity , which can serve as leverages for systemic change. The three chapters
each approached these hypotheses from different angles, supported them with practical
evidence and produced proposals for urban transformations ranging from conceptual entry
points to a strategic method for urban practice. This chapter summarises and discusses the
main contributions of this dissertation in two sections and points out its limits and remaining
research needs.
5.1 The intrinsic link between the nature of urban resource
flows and the production of urban space
The first main contribution of this thesis is the establishment of the, I ar gue necessary
but largely ignored, link between the urban metabolism and urban space. Underlying this
ar gument is the intrinsic connection between the urban systems we have developed and the
way we or ganise, use and move in urban space.
Over the course of the last decades, the transformation from ‘open’ to ‘closed’ cities; the
latter characterised by strong physical, functional and social separation; went hand in hand
with the transformation from a ‘circular ’ to a ‘linear ’ urban metabolism. In other words,
resource flows evolved from ‘closed’ to ‘open’. Both transformations were facilitated by the
availability of cheap energy and resources in a globalising world and the strong rise of the
consumption paradigm in modern societies. I suggest that the change from consumption-
centred to resource-centred cities and the closing of resource cycles can serve as breeding
grounds for the ‘open city’. However , through the lens of complexity , I discussed that cities
and communities are not linear cause-effect-systems but rather complex dynamic systems.
This implies that existing methods to land-use planning have become out-dated and we
should move to a system that doesn’t prescribe form or size but instead, defines processes
around which form can be generated. In the same line of thinking, there is no ‘right’ density
or ‘right’ scale to close a resource cycle, and closing one cycle might have unpredictable
feedbacks on another . A real city is complex and incomplete, in which simplifications, too
much technology or models lead to unexpected outcomes and de-urbanise the city . Because of
the unpredictability of complex systems, there is a need for more explorative, experimental,
and reflexive approaches to urban transformations, rather than those that determine final
destinations.
I concluded that to come to an effective transition of our extended urban systems (i.e. to tackle
global climate change and other wicked problems), a transition of urban resource flows (from
‘linear ’ to ‘circular ’) will need to go hand in hand with a transition in urban space governance

Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook 87
(from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ cities). In other words: a paradigm shift regarding resource flows
will demand an appropriate (re-)production of urban space: “Closing Cycles – Opening
Cities”. Failing to do so will lead to a further cultivation of what Christopher Alexander
called ‘tree-like structures’, which lack complexity and de-urbanise the city . Ready-made
eco-cities are a good example of such failure. They have a circular resource approach (to
a certain extent and mostly based on high-tech solutions) but they greatly simplify urban
complexity (leading to unexpected outcomes) and are more and more recognised as places
of exclusion to the extent that they are termed ‘the gated communities of the 21st century’
(meaning ‘closed cities’). Eco-cities thus assume a new approach concerning urban resource
flows but they fail to produce an appropriate urban space to go with this new paradigm.
The importance of this contribution is that it brings together the work of two largely separate
research fields. On the one hand, the work on ‘open cities’ based in the social sciences (e.g.
social production of space) and urban studies, but also lending from open systems theory
(cities as complex adaptive systems); on the other hand, the work on resource flows and
circular metabolism, based mainly in environmental and natural sciences.
This contribution is also very timely . In the framework of Habitat III - the United Nations
Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development to take place in Quito, Ecuador ,
in October 2016 - a manifesto is being prepared. Sennett, Sassen and Burdett are currently
writing a ‘New Charter of Athens’, which is supposed to be a new mental guide for urban
development in the 21st century addressing emerging issues as environmental crises, the
uses of technology and big data, and the challenge of social inclusion. The manifesto aims to
replace the guidance given by Le Corbusier and others nearly a century ago, in a document
they called ‘The Charter of Athens’, which had a huge influence on Urban Planning and
Development after WWII. Le Corbusier ’ s guidance was lar gely based on the rationalisation
of urban space, resulting in an over -determination of form and function. The original charter
supported a strong functional and circulation segregation with a distribution of the population
into tall apartment blocks at widely spread intervals, erasing life on the ground plane and
creating what I called ‘closed’ cities. If you look at the resources side, this was only possible
with the introduction of the automobile as ‘the’ mode of transportation and of new industrial
construction methods and materials (steel, plate glass and reinforced concrete) allowing for
skyscraper construction, standardisation, lar ge infrastructure projects, etc. This paradigm is
until today strongly influencing global urban development and has been lar gely internalised
by international housing and infrastructure developers who copy-paste ‘closed’ settlements
throughout the globe (currently booming in Africa), while ignoring completely any local
cultural, resources or climatic specificities. In an exercise of copy-pasting urban patterns
during the LAB on ‘Dif ferent Urbanisations’, participants matched several of these ‘closed’

88 Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook
settlements in various cities and experienced how disconnected and indifferent contemporary
urban planning works in comparison to carefully studied and locally committed interventions.
Interestingly , the ‘New Charter of Athens’ will be based on the idea of the ‘open city’
and will bring in the elements of porosity (ambiguous edges between spaces, places and
functions instead of separation), incompleteness (against the over-determination of form
and function) and informality , borrowing strongly from complexity theory . A focus on ‘open
cities’ is therefore active and several drivers for an open system are being identified. This
thesis has made the case for the missing connection between urban resource flows and urban
space and suggests the closing of resource cycles as a possible new driver for ‘openness’?
More research is needed on the ‘how’, which has I believe a lot to do with the question
how cities can become responsive again to their social and natural environment. Think here
of the dif ference between vernacular architecture and the standardised building typologies
that came with globalisation and have made our cities all look the same. At RE_PUBLICA
2016 in Berlin, Sennett describes this homogeneity of built urban form the most familiar
sign of cities becoming closed systems and contributes it mainly to the new dominant mode
of investment called ‘core investing’, meaning exogenous investors invest in space and
specifications (e.g. 40 stories, grade B building quality , x square feet), not in built form.
These specifications are completely delinked from the actual place of construction and are
not reactive to anything locally on the ground besides to the available territory . There is no
feedback into the nature of the form from what the place is.
One of the answers lies likely in the reinvention of craft and craftsmanship and the potential
of cultural practices to overcome the problems of the 21st century cities. Indian architect
Radhakrishnan (2015), one of the unusual suspects of the creative LAB on ‘Different
Urbanisations’, ar gues that against the background of increasingly homogenous urban
development, craft is pivotal to preserving local identities. Craft is organic, informal,
community-based and evolved out of need as opposed to greed. It is traditional, vernacular ,
informed by oral processes and, more importantly , always responsive to climate, the
prevailing culture, local politics and social values. He makes a clear link to resources,
explaining that craftsmanship is not just the skill of making things well; it is also about
the responsible use of local materials. He concludes that the process of ‘making’ is highly
conscious of resources and their relation to time, and that therefore, there is an ur gent need
to transfer the knowledge of ‘making’ to our urban practices. Further research on this would
be very useful.
Also the route of ‘Choice Architecture’, which changes the focus from consumer responsibility
to changing the environment of action has a great potential for further exploring the link
between urban resource flows and urban space. Urban morphology and the organisation of

Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook 89
public space have a great influence on how people use the city and move in it, which in turn
af fects matters such as lifestyle, safety , pollution levels and consumption patterns. These
insights are not new . In the sixties, Jacobs (1992 (1961)) described in great detail what
makes a street safe and what makes a public park popular . The work of Gehl (2004) focuses
on the “life between buildings” and demonstrates how (small) changes in public space
change the behaviour of people in the city . This is not because they were told to do so, but
because the context in which they make choices (e.g. on how to move through the city) has
changed. In other words, the ‘choice architecture’ changed. This term, which was first coined
by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), is used to describe the different ways in which choices can be
presented to consumers, and the impact of that presentation on consumers’ decision-making.
Applied to an urban context, the way we design, construct and operate urban systems and
the way we or ganise urban space creates a socio-technical environment that shapes the ‘way
of life’ of the citizens, how they use and move in the city , and how they procure, use and
dispose of the resources they require. In behavioural change theory , Thaler and Sunstein
(2008) dif ferentiate between two systems of the human brain that generate behaviour: the
‘automatic’ system, which is uncontrolled, ef fortless, associative, fast, unconscious and
skilled, and the ‘reflective’ system, which is controlled, effortful, deductive, slow , self-
aware and rule-following. They claim that the former is far more important than the latter ,
which would favour shifting the focus away from facts and information towards altering the
context in which people act. Questioning to what extent we can apply the idea of changing
‘choice architecture’ to urban space and urban systems to bring about a transformative
change concerning resource cycles would be highly interesting? A connecting question is
the role of dif ferent actors (e.g government, citizens) in this respect.
Another area where more research is needed is how we can turn the current prevailing
paradigm of ‘smart cities’ and ‘smart’ ways of dealing with urban resource flows around.
Sennett (2012) describes smart cities as stupefying, as systems of control (repressing)
rather than enablement (empowering). They ‘close’ the city in. Now this is not a problem
of the technology in itself, but the way technology is applied in social systems. Think for
instance of the pre-paid water meters which are making sure that the water companies don’ t
have to deal with the poor people themselves. These people can just self-disconnect from
the water ‘network’ when they are unable to pay and are subsequently stigmatised as ‘the
disconnected’, those excluded from public services. Interestingly , these ‘excluded’ have in
their need of solutions produced alternative streams of action and have found ways to re-
appropriate water into the physical realm of the urbanites and integrate the biospheric water
cycle into the urban political discussion. Studying such cases of struggle for resources and
processes of re-appropriation of resources (often of course led by necessity), may inform
new organisational processes and dynamics to resource governance in urban space, ones that
are more organic, locally responsive and ‘open’. This idea to learn from places of struggle
links strongly to the second main contribution of this thesis, which I will discuss in the next
section.

90 Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook
Related to this growing phenomenon of exclusion, in her latest book ‘Expulsions’, Sassen
(2014) discusses the new systemic logics she sees arising since the past two decades, in
which we are not anymore talking about increasing poverty or growing inequality but we are
talking about larger subterranean trends leading to radical expulsions (be it social, economic
or biospheric): elementary brutalities produced by complexity , expelling everything
and everyone that stands in the way of ‘corporate’ economic growth. Similar to Brenner
and Schmid (2013), who plea for a new conceptualisation of the urban under the name
of planetary urbanisation, Sassen pleas for the need for new tools to interpret these new
planetary conditions (expulsions of people, economies, life spaces), and understand them as
material moments of a more complex dynamic of lar ger transversal subterranean trends that
cut across our familiar and well-established conceptual/historical boundaries. She ar gues that
since the spaces of the expelled are invisible to the standard measures of our modern states
and economies, they should be made conceptually visible as they are potentially the new
spaces for making – making local economies, new histories, and new modes of membership.
Sassen’ s book reveals how the complexity of the global economy makes it hard to trace lines
of responsibility for the displacements, evictions and eradications it produces – and equally
hard for those who benefit from the system to feel responsible for its depredations. Exactly
because of this complexity , I am wary of all the global political promises of reaching the
goals (e.g. SDGs) of an equal and sustainable world. This is also why I expect that shock and
necessity will be unavoidable if we are to achieve any socio-ecological transition and why
places of stress and strategies of the expelled are the ones we need to start and learn from.
5.2 The conscious use of necessity for socio-ecological
transformations
The second main contribution of this thesis is based on the ar gument that the ur gent change,
necessary to tackle our global wicked problems, is not likely to happen in times and places of
relative comfort, but in times and places of stress. Therefore, this thesis proposes a conscious
use of necessity for socio-ecological transformations.
In Chapter 2, I ar gued that moving from a linear to a circular resource perspective sheds
a whole new light on density . While in the current linear system thinking, density might
increase sustainability , by taking into account the spatial displacement of environmental
costs of dense areas and by changing our system’ s perspective, ’Less becomes More’ (not to
be understood as promoting urban sprawl). In this light, shrinking cities, now mostly seen as
a problem, show high potential and could unexpectedly function as catalysts for change. In
addition, shrinking cities are falling more and more out of the economic system, they have
been ‘spit out’ or have become ‘disposable’ as some local activists claim. This at the same
time means that they often have no choice than to rely on themselves and are more open to

Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook 91
trying out something ‘new’ (out of necessity). Thus, because of both the new handling space
arising from the retreating current systems and the changed meaning of density in the light
of a circular resource perspective, I ar gued for a more productive approach to shrinkage
by activating the potential of shrinking cities to make them function as front-runners in
the transition process towards a post fossil-fuel and resource-centred society . As comfort
is retreating, can shrinking cities be the places where change happens first in the highly
developed parts of the world?
As already mentioned in the previous section, Chapter 3 pointed to the fact that urban contexts
in need of solutions have produced alternative streams of action that could trace another path
to act on climate change and urban resource flows. Out of necessity , the ‘excluded’, in their
struggle for the ‘right to water ’, have found ways to re-appropriate water into the physical
realm of the urbanites and integrate the biospheric water cycle into the urban political
discussion. Similarly , we could argue for the ‘right to ener gy’, allowing communities to
engage in re-appropriation processes for understanding, managing and producing electricity .
I suggested that we can find insights for ‘Closing Cycles - Opening City’ by studying such
cases of struggle for resources. Further research is thus needed on local social movements
and successful cases of resources (re-)appropriation which could inform new or ganisational
processes and dynamics to resource governance in urban space, ones that are more locally
responsive and ‘open’.
Chapter 4 outlines a method for customised complex problem handling that starts from
stress states in the urban system(s) and uses their initial momentum to encourage systemic
change through intraventions at selected pressure points. W e highlighted the potential
to evolve what has often been an intuitive practice, led by community or elected leaders
with unique wisdom about functions and pressure points in their urban system into a more
accessible strategy for shaping socio-ecological transformation in urban practice. The limit
of this strategy , widely discussed in the expert workshop, is that it has so far been based
on retrospective examples and practical expert knowledge. The next step will be to test
the pressure-point strategy in dif ferent urban contexts to be able to make the move from
retrospective to prospective examples to make its case.
The importance of this second contribution is the demonstration of the, so far non-explicit,
connection between necessity and socio-ecological transformations. In the introduction
I referred to T aleb’ s (2012) term ‘antifragility’, which he describes as the exact opposite
of ‘fragility’. Things or persons that are ‘antifragile’ actually benefit from shock. These
positive responses to stress are however often ignored and inspite of the visibility of the
counterevidence, the need for innovation or change is currently mostly approached from
situations of comfort, safety , and predictability . These are, I argue, not able to produce enough

92 Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook
ener gy to push the necessary transformation. Abundance makes us numb and vulnerable
while scarcity makes us alert and strong. Neo-liberalists have long understood the potential
of crises for pushing their own agenda of free market systems. Is the same potential available
to push our urban systems away from their destructive nature? The workshop discussions
showed that this is quite a controversial proposal.
Since a few decades, we are however stuck in a technological and production fetishism
in which even the environmental movement has become trapped. According to Zehner
(2012, 163), in the 1980s and ‘90s, environmental or ganisations began to disengage from
the dominant 1960 ideals, which entered on the earth’ s limits to growth. He refers to the
famous Brundtland Commission’ s 1987 report, Our Common Future, which stated: “New
and emerging technologies offer enormous opportunities for raising productivity and living
standards, for improving health, and for conserving the natural resource base”; and signified
a new overwhelming reliance on technological fixes.
From green consumerism to eco-cities, mainstream environmental strategies are trying to
solve our global crises by focussing on ‘more’ technology and ‘more’ production, missing
the point to take a step back and look at the basic functions that need to be provided by
our urban systems, and failing to address the underlying causes of our wicked global
problems. W e see for instance that the answer given to food and nutrition insecurity is a
single focus on increased agricultural output, even if the problem is first, often one of access
than of availability and second, in great part caused by the very nature of the globalised
food system. In the same way , the current answer to our energy production problems is
producing more ener gy . Zehner (2012, 155) argues that the productionist paradigm reduces
the energy problem to a contest between alternative energy technologies and conventional
fossil fuels and prevents, amongst other , from looking into the negative side ef fects of
alternative energy technologies. An obvious example is the production of biofuels, which
externalities have been widely debated over the last years. Few are also questioning the
ef fects of the Energiewende (towards all renewables) on materials. There will obviously
be a need for a large increase in metal mining and a likely scenario is this will be sold
as ‘development’ in parts of Africa, Asia and South-America. This smells like yet another
chapter of extractivism serving globalisation, where a countries’ very few will benefit from
lar ge scale resource extraction while most (including natural ecosystems) will have to suf fer
the negative side ef fects from these, mostly foreign, mining activities. At the same time,
some European countries will receive the award for achieving their ‘Ener giewende’ without
having to change their own consumption-centred lifestyles.
Another side effect of pitting production against production is that it effectively sidelines
reduction options and non-technology alternatives, as if productivity methods are the only

Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook 93
choices available. Since the world of alternative energy and green technology operate in
the same economic system which rewards the commoditisation of knowledge and resources
for profit, it is clear that conservation and simplicity undermine consumption patterns and
corporate interests (Zehner 2012, 162). This duality between ‘green’ solutions ‘for profit’
versus ‘common sense’ solutions features in all urban systems: underground concrete rain
water reservoirs with electric pump system (corporate technology) versus gravity-based attic
rain water storage tanks (common sense); passive solar ener gy strategies (age-old wisdom)
versus solar panels (corporate technology); natural ventilation (age-old wisdom) versus air -
tight passive houses; genetically modified seeds (patented) versus seeds from last year ’ s
crop (not patentable); and ‘drug research (commodifiable) versus preventive health (not
commodifiable). Our common sense knows which one of these choices is the ‘right’ one but
we also know that as long as the underlying paradigms keep in place, the ‘other ’ choice will
keep coming out on top (supported by an eco-label).
The same is true for the current Habitat III process that I brought up before, which aims
to define the ‘New Urban Agenda’ for the coming 20 years. There is a broad consensus on
the vision of having ‘inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ cities (as also formulated in
Goal 1 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals). However , when nobody starts to seriously
talk about how to re-shuffle the power relations and break down the fortresses of interests
that rule our urban world, the real estate developers and multinational corporations will
keep coming out on top (probably with an eco-label but re-creating closed and excluding
places, treating inhabitants as customers and thus continue ‘fostering’ - to use UN language
- negative social and environmental externalities). As one of the ‘unsusual suspects’ of the
LAB kept reminding us: ‘What about corporations?’ Getting to the above ‘vision’ is not
a problem of financing nor of technology , but instead of leadership and getting priorities
right. As Schellnhuber pointed out in the German Habitat Forum (June 2016): “we will
transform or be transformed”, bringing in the sobering geological time scale perspective
that climate scientists (as well as geologists) have on the world. In the same Forum, Clare
Short interestingly pointed to the fact that the energy needed to leverage the transformation
towards the shared future vision will come from the political power from underneath, from
the slums and from crises which will force us to adapt; thus supporting this thesis. Also
history supports this thesis and taught us that it takes the disruption of normal food supplies
to reveal a city’ s productive potential. Such disruptions produced necessity , which in turn
sparked invention and created a political and regulatory environment that facilitated change.
Necessity forced the citizens and their political leaders to re-or ganise their urban systems
and brought back the focus to the basic functions: nutrition, shelter , mobility , indoor climate,
etc. One of the interesting changes the Cuban crises brought for instance was a re-valuation
of the traditional court-yard architecture for its natural ventilation and local material use.
This thus goes exactly in the opposite direction of ‘more’ technology and ‘more’ production.

94 Chapter 5. Conclusions, Discussion and Outlook
Instead, it goes back to the basics, back to common sense. In contrary to the current approach
of ‘adding’ things to our cities, even if they are ‘green’ or ‘eco’, we need to start taking
things out. T aleb (2012) calls this the ‘V ia Negativa’.
T o repeat the last paragraph of the prologue: “The knowledge of how to transform from
stratum to membrane is stored for instance in vernacular architecture and other forgotten
techniques that answered to the earths natural cycles, but most of all in the common sense
of aborting consumption-centred thinking for respect and simplicity , traits that are hard to
obtain without immediate pressure.” Going out from urgency to deal with the wicked global
environmental problems of our era, this thesis has developed strategies for transforming
complex urban systems in the condition of planetary urbanisation based on the potential
leverages of shock and necessity .

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Statement of Contribution 107
Statement of Contribution
The contribution of the author to the three core chapters of this thesis (Chapters 2, 3 and 4)
is indicated in the following:
Chapter 2: Resour ce-Center ed Cities and the Opportunity of Shrinkage
Katleen De Flander is the single author .
Chapter 3: Closed Cycles - Open City
Katleen De Flander is the single author .
Chapter 4: Pressur e-Point Strategy . Leverages for Urban Systemic
T ransformation
Both authors jointly developed the Pressure-Point Strategy in a working paper and
hosted an expert workshop at the IASS Potsdam (November 2014) to critically
discuss the approach with a number of experts from both academia and practice,
which led to new insights and the further development of the working paper .
Katleen De Flander transformed the working paper into a scientific paper and
brought in additional theoretical framings. Jeb Brugmann brought in most cases
from practice, and specifically the Chicago case.

Acknowledgements 109
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank
my husband Juan Pablo A yala Cortés for the many inspiring discussions that pushed
my thinking and moulded this thesis;
my parents for believing in me;
my supervisors Prof. Dr .-Ing. Angela Million and Prof. Ir . Ronald Rovers for their
support and advice when I needed it;
Jeb Brugmann for the pleasure of developing the Pressure-Point Strategy together;
the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam and especially Prof. Dr .
Dr . Klaus Töpfer for giving me the freedom and support to develop my research at
the IASS;
and the fantastic people that participated with great enthusiasm and knowledge in
the expert workshops and public debates.

Appendix 111
Appendix

Appendix 1 11 3
Appendix 1
Expert W orkshop
Closed Cycles - Open City
Potsdam, 7 December 2012
IASS Potsdam, Berliner Strasse 130, 14467 Potsdam

11 4 Appendix 1

1

AGENDA

09.00 – 09 .15

Welcome: Prof. Kl aus Töpfer and Kat leen De Flander

Block 1 :

09.15 – 11.00
Closed - Cycl es Open City - Urban Syst ems Tran siti ons i n the

Anthropocene
20 min

Katleen De Flander

Closed - Cycle s Open Cit y. Urban Systems Transi tions i n the Ant hropocene.
‘Approach’ and ‘Closed Resource Cycl es as breeding grounds of the Open
City’

10 - 15 min

Jeb Brugma nn - The Next Pr actice

‘Estab lishing a n ew prac tice’ (vis a vis the tec hnical/de sign profe ssions) a nd
‘estab lishing a n ew cate gory of pe rforman ce’ (vis as vis the pr operty
indus try) and the role that me asurem ent plays in this

Discus sion

1 1.00 – 11.15

Coffee - Break

Block 2:

11.15 – 13.00
Scales and Boundaries – Measur ement

5 min

Katleen De Flander

10 - 15 min

Xuemei Bai - Austral ian Nati onal Uni versity

Scales and Boundaries

Di scussion

- Do we n eed t o measur e?
- Scales and Boundaries
-

Urban - Rura l (or non - urban) relation

13.00 – 14.00

Lunch

Block 3:

14.00 – 15.45
Urban Sy stems Transi tions - Re - organisation and Shock

5 min

10 min
Stephen Kovats – r0g_agen cy for open culture and criti cal transformation ,

Berli n (@intertwilight)
#OSJUBA. Juba . The wo rld’s first Open Source City?
Join a special #OSJUB A / FOSSF A Tw eet -
up on ao.: "crowdsourcing and
open access to data for bett er transparency in government and resource

management"
(tags: #OSJU BA, #OpenSF, # MMJUBA, #FO SSF, #Africa)

10 - 15 min

Ronald Rov er s - Zuyd Universit y

10 min

Katleen De Flander

Closed - Cycle s Open Cit y. Urban Systems Transi tions i n the Ant hropocene.
Re - organisati on and Shock.

Discus sion

Review meeting and Ex pert Discuss ion
„Closed - Cycles Open Cit y“

Potsdam, 7 Decembe r 201 2, 9: 00 - 17:00 hours
IASS Potsda m, Berliner Strasse 130, 1446 7 Potsdam

Appendix 1 11 5

2

15.45 – 16.00

Coffee - Break

16.00 – 17.00

Concluding Round of Discussi on

Dinner in „Il T eatro“, S c hiff bauergasse 12, Potsdam

PAR T I CI PAN T S (i n a l p h a b e ti c a l o rd e r)

Xuem ei Ba i Au s t r a l i a n N a t i o n a l U n i v e r s i t y , C a n b e r r a

Je b Br u g m a n n Th e N e x t Pr a c t i c e , T o r o n t o

Il a n Ch a b a y IA S S

Ka t l e e n De F l a n d e r IA S S

Mi c h a e l Fu n c ke - Ba r t z GI Z – De u t s c h e Ge s e l l sch a f t f ü r I n t e r n a t i o n a l e Z u sa m m e n a r b e i t

Re i n e r Kl i n g h o l t z Be r l i n - In s ti tu t f ü r B e v ö l ke r u n g u n d E n t w i ckl u n g

St ep h en Ko v a t s r0 g _ a g e n c y f o r o p e n c u l tu re a n d c ri ti c a l tra n s f o rm a ti o n , B e r l i n

Fr a nç oi s e Lab b e A r chi t ect and U r ban P l anner , P a r i s

Jö rg Le B l an c IA S S

Al m u t Na g e l Feder a l M i ni s t r y f or Ec onom i c Cooper a t i on a nd D ev el opm ent - BM Z

Ma n u e l Ri v e r a IA S S

Ho l g e r Ro b r e c h t IC L E I E u ro p e

R onal d Ro v e r s Zu y d U n i v er s i t y , N e t h e r l a n d s

Ser g e Sa l a t Ur b a n M o r p h o l o g y L a b ( C S T B ) , P a r i s

Fa l k Sc hm i dt IA S S

Kl a u s Töpf e r IA S S

A ngel a Ut t k e Te c h n i s c h e U n i v e r s i t ä t Ber l i n

Mi c h a e l W agner ETH Zü r i c h – Sw i s s Fed er a l I n s t i t u t e of Tec h n ol og y Zü r i c h

Appendix 2 11 7
Appendix 2
Expert W orkshop
Urban Pressure Point Method
Potsdam, 20-21 November 2014.
IASS Potsdam, Berliner Strasse 130, 14467 Potsdam

11 8 Appendix 2

Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V.

Ver t r et ungs ber ec ht i gt er Vor s t a nd:
Pr of . D r . Kl a u s Töp f er
Pr of . D r . Ca r l o Ru b b i a
PD D r . M a r k G . L a w r en c e
Ver ei ns r egi s t er :

Am t s ger i c ht Pot s da m
VR - Nr . : 7365
Pos t a n s c h r i f t :

Be r l i n e r S t r . 1 3 0
D - 14467 Pot s dam
Tel . : + 49 331 - 28822 - 300
Fa x : + 49 331 - 28822 - 310
Ma i l : in f o @ ia s s - pot s dam . de
We b : www. i a s s - pot s dam . de

IASS Work shop:
Pressure Point Method – Levera ges fo r Urban Tra nsformati on

Agenda:

Day 1 – Thursday, 20 November
TIME

CONTENT

INPUT

1 3:0 0 - 14:00

Arrival and Lunch served at IASS

14:00 – 16:00

Session 1: Intro

- Welco me a nd int rodu cti ons , p urp ose and ex pect ati ons
- Urban Pr essur e Poi nt Met hod: key co ncept ual a nd
practice is sues
- Discussi on Rou nd 1: Urban system transformation s
th r ough “places’ under pressur e

- Katleen De Fla nder
- Jeb Brugma nn
16:00 - 16:30

Coffee Break

16:30 - 18:30

Session 2 : Storie s from Practi ce

- Storytelling: tell a story fro m your own p ractical urban
experience relating an urban (s ystems) transformation to
(a) particular place - based pressure(s)

- Discussi on Rou nd 2: Story harvesti ng

- Hans Mönni nghof f
- Klaus Ho ppe
- Stephen Kovats
- Ronald Rov ers

19:00

Dinner ‘Il Teatro’

Appendix 2 11 9
Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V.

2/ 2
Day 2 – Friday, 21 November
Mini Design Charrette
TIME

CONTENT

INPUT

09:30 - 12:00

Session 3 : Map pin g a nd Under st andi ng

- Pressure poi nts and Pressure Point Analysis
- Present ations
- Discuss ion Round 3 : “What are t he places and/or
communities in the city t hat have the greatest current and
latent mo mentum tow ards the desired change?”

* Coffe e served in between

- Breakout groups

12:00 - 13:00

Lunch serve d at IASS

13:00 - 15:30

Session 4: Desi gning the Intra venti on Se t

- Design the int raven tion set
- Presentatio ns
- Discuss ion Round 4 : “What ar e the el ements of an
intraventio n that can releas e the maximu m potential net
force at a P ressure Point to wards the desir ed change?”

* Coffe e serv ed in betwe en

- Breakout groups

15:30 - 16:00

Coffe e Break

16:00 - 17:00

Session 5: Harvesting

- Results worksho p
- C oncluding round
- Recommendati ons & next steps?

17:00

Farewell drink at IASS

Appendix 3 121
Appendix 3
Public Debate
Critical Dialogue.01: Overriding the
Urban/Non-Urban Divide
More info, images, videos and report available here:
http://criticalurbanagenda.de/overriding-the-urban-non-urban-divide
Berlin, 20 April 2015.
Scandic Hotel Berlin, Potsdamer Platz, 10963 Berlin

 ((&".
CRITICAL
DIAL OGUES
SERIES
The New Urban Agenda ‘on the ground’
The IASS is initiating and facilitating a Series of Critical
Dialogues on the practicalities of implementing the New Urban
Agenda – and its possible constraints – in the political context
of Habitat III (UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable
Urban Development, 2016). Each of these Public Dialogues
addresses a topic of central importance to Habitat III from 1) an
unconventional angle and 2) an ‘on the ground’ perspective.
The event will be in English .
Admission is free upon registration at
http:// iass-potsdam.de/dialogues
Scandic Hotel Berlin
Potsdamer Platz,
Gabriele-Tergit-Promenade 19, 10963 Berlin
Monday 20 April 2015, 14:00 – 18:00 Critical Public Debate
Ov er riding the
URB AN /
NON-URB AN
DIVIDE
This first dialogue takes an unconventional angle by
addressing new approaches that transcend the urban age
discussion (e.g. 50% live in cities) and break with the idea
of the bounded city in which the urban and the non-urban
are opposed and spaces are classified, according to their
form, on the urban-rural continuum.
What if, as Brenner and Schmid's critical urban theory on
planetary urbanisation suggests, the putative non-urban
is internalised in the theory of urbanisation and we no
longer talk about form but about processes of
concentrated and extended urbanisation? What does this
shift mean when we address resource flows, food security
and inequality issues?
The practical perspectives from Chennai , Bogota and
Jakarta ground the debate in reality and form the basis of
a critical discussion on the ‘New Urban Agenda’ and its
‘Urban-Rural Linkages’.
Dr Pushpa Arabindoo
Lecturer in geography and urban design, University College London; co-
director UCL Urban Laboratory; editor (CITY Journal, Geography)
Provincialising planetary urbanisation: situating Chennai between its
region and the global
Carolina Chica Builes
Director of regional, national and international integration
Secretariat of Planning - Bogotá
Special Administrative Planning Region - Central Region. A case of new
territorial arrangements that seek to overcome the urban-rural dichotomy
Prof. Dr AbdouMaliq Simone
Research professor, Max Planck Institute for Social and Ethnic Diversity and
visiting professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London
When does the urban come, does it go, or does it simply change course
        
Framed and moderated by
Dr Pieter de Vries
Senior lecturer and researcher, Chairgroup of Sociology of
Development and Change, Wageningen University
Introduced by
Katleen De Flander
Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam
With keynotes from

((&".




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o
b
a
l

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o
i
l

W
e
e
k

2
0
1
5

§
Summary of 1.3/Dialogue Ses sion
The ne w urban agenda ‘on the gr ound’
– o v erriding the urban/ non-urban
divide

M
o
n
d
a
y
,

2
0

A
p
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124 Appendix 3
2_Ra ppo rte urs_R e po rts_G lo ba l Soi l W ee k 2 0 15
1. 3 Th e n e w u r b a n a ge n d a ‘ o n t h e
gr o un d ’ – o v e rri d i n g t h e u r b an /
non- u r ba n d iv id e
Dialogue Session
Date M onday , 20 Ap ril 2015
Ra ppor teu r
Katleen D e Flander – I ASS
Ses sio n Host s
IASS – Ins titute f or A dvanc ed Sustainability S tudies ( Germany)
ANCB – The A edes Metr opolitan Labor atory ( Germany)
This session w as open to the wider public (upon regis tr ation)
31 GS W participants and 85 e xternal participan ts regis ter ed for this session
Ses sio n Descri ptio n
Crit ica l Dial ogu es Seri es
This se ssion is the firs t in a series of critical dialogu es, which th e IASS is initiating and fa cil itating
on the pra cticalities of implem enting the new urban age nda – and it s possible cons train t s – in
the political context of Habitat III ( UN Conference on Ho using and Susta inable Urb an Dev elop -
ment, 2 016). Each of these pu blic dialogues a ddresse s a t opic of central impor tance to Habitat
III f r om 1) an u nconventi ona l ang le and 2) a n ‘on the g rou nd’ p ers pec tive . The series a ims t o
not only inv olv e ‘ the usual suspec ts’ but p articularly b rings di ff erent exper t ise int o the deb at e .
Di alog ue.01: O v erri ding t he U rban /Non - Urba n Divi de
This firs t dialogue ta k e s an un c onvent iona l ang le by addressing new app r oache s that tran-
scend the urb an age discus sion ( e . g. 5 0 "" % l ive in ci ties ) a nd break with the idea of the boun ded
city in which the urb an and the no n-ur ban are oppose d and space s ar e classifie d, according t o
their form , on the urban -rural continuum . What if , a s Brenner a nd Schmid ’ s critical urb an theor y
on planeta ry urb anisation sugge sts , the putativ e non -urb an is int e rnalised in the theo ry of
urba ni zation and we no longe r talk about form but a bout process es of concentrat e d and ex -
tended ur banisation ? Wh a t doe s this shift m ean when we addres s r eso ur ce flows, food se curity
and ine quality is sues ?  The p ractic al perspe ctiv es f r om Ch enn ai, B ogota a nd J akar ta ground
the deb at e in realit y and form the basis of a critical discus sion on the ‘ New Urban Agen da’ and
its ‘ Urb an- Rural Linkage s’ .
20
!
DS

Appendix 3 125
Rapp orteurs _ Repor ts _Glo bal Soil Week 2015 _3
Di a l o g u e S e ss i o n

20
Vid eo doc ume ntat ion
Pleas e find the video do cumentation of this session h ere:
htt p:/ /ww w . ancb. de/ sixcms/ deta il.p hp ?id = 1550 9467#. V V 7 nos 59021
Programme
W elco me an d sho rt in tro
Katlee n De Flande r , IA SS ( G ermany ), Áine R yan, AN CB ( G ermany )
Ke ynote: P rovincia lisi ng pl anet ar y urba nis atio n: sit uat ing Ch enn ai
bet ween it s reg ion an d the g loba l
Pushp a Arabin doo, UC L Urba n Labo rat or y , U niv ersit y Colleg e L ondo n (UK )
Ke ynote: S peci al Admi nis trati v e Pla nni ng Regi on – Cent ral Reg ion .
A ca se of new ter ritoria l arra nge ment s th at seek t o o vercome t he
urb an -ru ral di chotomy
C ar olina Ch ica Buile s, Se cre tariat of Plan ning, B ogotá ( Colo mbia ),
Ke ynote: W hen d oes th e urba n come, d oes it g o, or doe s it sim ply
cha nge cou rse a nd fo rm, a ll of th e tim e ?  Re flec tion s fro m Jaka rt a
Abd ouMa l iq Simon e, Max Pla nck Ins t itute f or S ocial and Ethnic Diversit y ,
( G ermany ) a nd Gold smit hs Coll ege, Un iv ersit y o f London ( UK )
Co ff ee B rea k
Crit ica l deba te: The new u rban a gen da ‘on t he gro und ’ – ov errid ing t he
urb an/non - urba n divid e
Crit ica l fram ing a nd mod erat ion: Pieter de Vries , W a geninge n University
( The Nethe rlands )
Pushp a Arabin doo, UC L Urba n Labor at o ry , Universit y College Lond on (U K)
C ar olina Ch ica Buile s, Se cre tariat of Plan ning, B ogotá ( Colo mbia )
Abd ouMa l iq Simon e, Max Pla nck Ins t itute f or S ocial and Ethnic Diversit y ,
( G ermany ) a nd Gold smit hs Coll ege, Un iv ersit y o f London ( UK )
In form al Dis cuss ion s

14.00
14. 10
14.35
15.00
15.25
15.45
17 .05

126 Appendix 3
4_Ra p po rt eur s _R e po rts_ Gl oba l So i l W ee k 2 0 15
Dialogue Session
Su mma ry
Kat leen D e Flan der (I AS S) open ed the ses sion b y intr oducing the D ialogues S eries an d its
int entional critical ap pr oach of the H abitat III process , follo wed b y a brief intr o to the planetar y
urba nisation theor y . Ái ne Rya n (AN CB) w elcomed the p ublic from the ANC B side.
Pu shp a Arab indo o (UCL) refle cted on the planetar y urb anisation discourse f r om her 13 year s
of ethnograp hic r ese ar ch and expe rience in the Indian Cit y of Chennai . What happen s when we
post - c olonializ e it? What happen s when we t r y t o pro vincializ e plan etary u rbanisation ?
She reac ts on 3 core argument s from Brenne r and Schmid: 1) th e urban as a the ore tical con-
stru ct; 2) the spatiality / scale of the urb an and 3 ) t he urb an can not be red uced t o a categor y of
prac tice.
Som e extract s:
! In the In dian c onte xt , the driving analytic al t ool of the urba n is stil l the Cen sus ( every 1 0 y ear s )
and the r e is a value to the number s here:
! It helps to grasp India’ s nature o f urba nisation in the last 2 de cade s (in t erms of the spe ed
of urbanis at ion and in terms of ap ocalyptic scenarios that are often por tray ed).
! It shows the need to focus on the small to wns as m uch as on the metropolises .
! It forc es us to think what is the rural -urba n div ide. For ever y ci ty , the stor y is di ff erent.
It is of t e n more a ques tion o f gov ernan c e than the the or etical que stion of what is urban
and what is no n-urb an.
! Is the right to t he cit y stil l tenable whe n t he urb an condition is planetar y and the ge ogra -
phie s o f the political are being s o radically rearran ged? An o b vious conclusion to draw fr om
this analysis would be to r etr eat from the right to t he city a l together …. B ut instead, it s tands
as a challen ge t o produce new forms of critical urban th eor y and political pr actice that can
help promote more democratic, s ocially just, and e n vir onme ntally sane ways o f appropriating,
managing , and developing the common re sourc es of our ra pidly urbanizing planet. In C hennai,
peo ple do fight for the right t o the city (the example of slum ac ti vist s fighting against evic t ions
was given ).
Ca roli na Ch ica B uile s (Secret aria t of Plan nin g, B ogota) intr odu c ed a pra ctical c ase of new
territ orial arra ngement s that seek to o ver come the urba n-r ural dichot omy: Special Administra -
tiv e Planning Regio n – Central Region , an institutional mec hanism of t e rrit orial-regio nal man-
agem ent and coordination ( created in September 2 014 ).
Som e extract s:
! The region s ( c alled ‘ d epar tments’ in Colo mbia ) a gr ee d on the follo wing 5 line s of w ork: 1) En -
vironmental sust ainability and risk ma nagement (b asic aspec t of this is w at er , highly vulne rable
to c limat e chang e and pollution ); 2) transpor t infras truc tur e, logis tics , public ser vices; 3) Com -
petitiv e ness a nd int ernational outreach; 4) Food sec urity and r ural economy and 5 ) Go vernance
and go od gov ernme nt ( f unction al network of cit ies integrated wit h its r ural area in order to
assure a de -con c entrat ed mo del)
! The mo del is base d on the recognition that city sustaina bili ty d epends exclusiv ely on the
goo d managem ent o f its interdepen dent close links with its urb an and non -urb an immediate
surroundings . The city d ra ws 75% o f its water from the Param o systems (par t of 2 di ff erent
dep artme nts ), 77 % o f fresh foo d c ome s from 300 km radius a r ound B ogota.

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Di a l o g u e S e ss i o n

20
! This is above all a huge political ach ie v eme nt: the Central Region is a new figure of supra -local
gov ernm ent in Colombia with administrativ e and fi nancial autonomy .
! This is the fir st legally cons t itut ed region in Col ombia, others a r e int erested in follow ing
! Bo gota is pr ov iding 75 ! % of the financial res our ces of the Central Regio n, the other 4 de par t -
ment s bring the other 25 ! %
! The de cisions of the gener al c ouncil , a ff ect the 4 regio ns and Bo gota dir ec tl y . S o far , the de ci-
sion making proces s was consensus-b ased .
! There is now a political conflic t wit h the national gov ern ment, which feels threatened by this
new institutionalised Regio n.
Ab dou Mal iq Sim one (M ax Pla nck In sti tute ) g a v e a pas sionat e talk exposing the heter oge ne-
ity an d multiplici ty of Ja k ar ta, cele brating urban creativity and plu rality and exposing the ur ban
as a force i n its elf . The C ity as a fr agile, inconsistent and prec arious area but at the s ame a place
where peo ple experiment, cons truc t l ives, etc.
Som e extract s:
! Jakar ta has ma n y di ff erent kinds of int er faces . There are int e rf aces between th e c ore and the
perip her y but just as well within the periphe ry an d wi thin the core. These inter faces are of t en
not looked at in terms of their gene rat ivity or ins tability .
! Jakar ta of t en grew on the fac t of t he heterogeneit y of i ts b uilt en vir onme nt. Upscal ed built
envir onme n t s sometimes pro vide cov e r for the poor to liv e in contiguou s and pro ximate rela-
tions . W e ne ed t o know more abo ut the r elationship of these interf aces , wha t are the dynam -
ic s ? H o w do we describe the m so w e don’t jump to conclusions ?
! The relationship between th e in tensiv e and ex t e nsiv e is not a matter of one ruling out the
other , of an int erse ction betwee n the t op- down and the ground -up.
! The gra dation o f space into clearly delineated ownership and f unc t ions c an often impe de
the elabo rat ion of collaborativ e work. Th e only wa y that Jakar ta works is the ver y w ay that t he
W orldba nk critic iz es Ja karta for not working , which is tha t there is no urb an land. 1 ! % of all of
Jakar ta land is h eld in free title. That ambiguit y o f land s tatus enable s the kind of platform that
gen erat es the plur ality of di ff erent kinds of col lec tiv e possibilities that resident s can turn to in
order to k eep cost s down, to enable thems elv es to k eep so me kinds of place in the city .
! Built envir onme nts be c ome the obje ct s o f reshaping so they might mediate the pro visioning
of various a ff ordance s – t o a ct alternativ ely as residen c es , markets, com munity centres, work-
shops , storage space s, retail outlets , and social hubs .
! W e nee d t o in habit urban life as a pa rado x: nothing is completely ruled o ut or c ontrolled but
at the sam e t ime, not every thing is possible

128 Appendix 3
4_Ra p po rt eur s _R epo rts_ Gl oba l S o i l W ee k 2 0 15
Dialogue Session
Discussi on:
Af t er a shor t break Pie ter de Vries ( W age nin gen U nivers ity) brought the intr o duction a nd the
3 very di ff e r ent ke ynot es together
Som e extract s:
! The se wa ys of cr eating consensuse s ( as we heard this morning: we hav e to be unit ed as
human i ty in o r der to deal with the crises of hum anity ) are quite depoliticising, a kind of
post -po li tics
! What we see is the creation of v er y strong divides at the planetar y level, this policy talk is
of t e n used in order to make possible the age ndas of v er y big busine ss int erest s
! Exp ulsions are v er y impor tant, it is abo ut t he em ergence of new cat egorie s at the global level
(the par t of no par t ( a uthor: Ranciè r e ), peop le wi th wasted lives, think a bout the boat p eople in
the Me dit e rranea n )
! If we ar e going to talk about glo bal demo cracy , it is more about dis agr eeing tha n about
agreeing with each other
! Planning always assume s the idea of stab il ity . What to do wi th a city where pe ople are con-
tinuously moving around . Can we make a phot ograp h o f a situation that is al way s uns table,
inconsistent? Insurgent planning . Planning in places that are to out come of auto c ons truction .
City p lanning become s and intervention in the int er vent ions of pe ople themselves . What is
impor tant is the political p r ogram s tha t go together with it.

! Proposes to fra me the discussion aroun d Urban comm ons ( follo wing Hardt and N egri,
David Har v ey )
Ex tracts f rom the discus sion, q uestion/ point s raised:
Wh at role d o y ou s ee at th e UN level? ( confl ict betwee n global and lo cal lev el)
! Caro lin a: fa ci litat e coordinat ion bet w een the lo cal age n t s on the gr oun d, t o mediate on our
neg o tiat ions . Local gov ernm ents are gaining power , they ca n mak e decision s and decid e not t o
follo w the direction s o f the national gov ernm ent. Commun i ties are get t ing emp o wer ed (t o stop
mining, …) , they ar e getting mo r e in volv ed in public is sues .
! Pu shp a: W o rldbank was infl uencing strongly in Che nnai. Firs t thr ough Ma ster plans ( very
W estern view ). Nex t came p r oject b ased povert y eradic at ion . More r ecently ( W ashing t o n
consensu s ) pu blic –privat e par tnerships . Consultant s flying in sho wing Miami waterf r onts in
Che nnai ( unrealistic po licy models ). In terms of par ticipat or y planning ( remains a lip ser vice ), all
docum ents are in English ( not translated in local la nguage ) and m eeti ngs are held in 5 -sta r ho -
tels, ex cluding a large majorit y of t he commo n population. Ja r gon is s t ill t echn o- exper t driv en.
UN Su st. Cities progra mme influen ce no t clear .
! AbdouMaliq: some de cade s ago there w ere more t extures of bet w een U ND P , multi-lat eral
agen cies, … . that c ould be us ed for more experimentation at the loc al le vel. The se ha ve more
and mo r e disap peared, th er e is an increase d c onso l idation. Y ou have t o e nt e r in to t hat global
game so mehow , you hav e no choice. Th ese discourse s that are elaborated there are used on a
loc al le vel e.g. t o giv e co verage, to ex cuse thems elv e s et c

Appendix 3 129
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Di a l o g u e S e ss i o n

20
Conn ection bet w een th e pr ese nta tions an d Planetar y Urbanis ation = ha ve t o do with ope ra-
tional conne ctions rather tha n urban form . If y ou take these linkag es ( an d not f orm ) as a n ap-
proach to under standing d e velopment, what is the nex t step for planning ? We ha ve s upe r t o ols
and data ( GIS) at the macro sca le BUT we hav e so much rese ar ch in the ground but lit t le data
that we can work wit h in planning . How to ma ke the con nec tion b etwee n eth nogra phy an d
pl anet ar y urba nis atio n in term s of reso urces a nd too ls for u rban p lan nin g and d esig n ?
! Pushpa: every cit y has a histor y , brin g di ff er ent social scie nce methodologie s and ethnogr a-
phie s in to t he plan ning process to sho w that there is no such thing as a ‘b lank slat e’ . We do not
nee d sophistic a ted t ools ne cess ary , w e nee d t o use unso phisticated methods but they ca n be
very p o werf ul. This is an an sw er as to how y ou can p lan the urban a s a pr oces s rather than ur -
ban a s a cat egor y or urb an as a produc t.
! Áin e: Could this be a recomme ndation for Habitat III : star t t o collec t data that i s intangible;
on things that you can’t see f r om satellit es . It is di ffi cult and time- consuming an d e xpen si ve t o
collec t this kind of da ta , and bec ause of this, they of t e n fall out of the con versations . Bec ause of
this, it almos t should be a ma ndat e to c ollec t cultural data.
! Pushpa: if you scale in an d out consta n tly , it should not be su ch a bur den some task . Urba n
de s ign and pla nning has forgotten its elas tici t y . We ha ve t o recov er this . W e shoul d not be pre-
occupied with the visualisation tools we ha ve. ( als o pr oblem with gloss y images of planeta ry
urba nisation theor y )
! Ab dou Mal iq: 35 # % of fr uits and vegetab les in Jakar ta come s fr om an d aut o- constr ucted night
market ( the next m orning there are almost no tra c es that it existed) with no authorit y that sa ys
how this complex system is going to w ork . Intricat e negotiations amon gst many actors . W or ks
extremely well and e ff e ctiv ely . M eanwhile, the o ffi cial municipal mar k ets are empt y . W h y n ot
take some of these m unicipal employees an d let t hem fi nd out how this aut o -constr ucted mar -
ke t ac tually w orks . What are the details ? Use this as a b asis t o thin k t hrough new elabo rat ions
of policy an d municipal gov erna nce. It is a t otally di ff er ent kind of plann ing.
Piet er : planning brings us to pow er
Gl oba l City h as not b een m enti one d
Isn’t it neces sar y t o reclaim the city as a so cial space and not as an e conomic space ?
Educate the planner s and politicians to administrate the city according t o this .
! Ca roli na: go al of Bogota ( an d all change s go acc ording t o this ) is for guara nt e eing the city ’ s
sustaina bili ty . That is why the focus is not on the global m ark ets b ut on the r egion al struc tur e of
market. Not only see n as an econo mic marke ts b ut also seen as e cosystem ser vic es . W e a r e a
global cit y but bey ond that we hav e to guara nt e e the conditions for our communities to sur viv e
= di ff erent form of planning. N ot global but regional !
! Pushpa: no D ubaisation of the cent er in Ch ennai, it shows alt ernatives of the multiple city , not
the usual template o f urban ism as Mumbai , Signapore, …., p olit icians will not use the term global
city ( rathe r w orld- class cit y ). W e n eed to pay equal attention to unex ceptionalism .
Soils
! Ca roli na: B ogota has strong regulations on q uality of soil and it s uses to pr ese rve cer tain soils
for agricultural us e. L egal res trictions to urban isation ( ver y di ffi cult beca use in the end the mar -
ke t rule s )
! Pushpa: you can d o a scientific classification of soil typ es but what doe s it lead to ? It has ver y
limit ed imagination . Y o u ha ve t o rethink in t erms of the larger e cology and nature que stion in
the urba n c onte xt . Re thinking urb an nature (pr ojec t ) brings is sues of soil, nature, ….. in , but
strips it from the scientific s traight jacket ing.

130 Appendix 3
4_Ra p po rt eur s _R epo rts_ Gl oba l S o i l W ee k 2 0 15
Dialogue Session
Fin al Rou nd
Pieter: to wha t extend do es it matter t o enga ge wit h policie s and planning a nd wit h thes e big
Habitat shows ? Creation of dualism, binar ies, …
One of the challe nges is how to pr ot ec t the kinds of commons such a s the aut ocons tructed
market in Jakar ta.
AbdouMaliq: How t o u se the extending of metr opolitan b oundarie s and sca les of go vernance
and pla nning and coordination as possible m echanisms to facilitate t he pos sibi lity of redistribu -
tion ( of economic reso ur ces an d oppor tunities ) in a world where other wise r edistrib ut ion is not
on the tab le.
Ca roli na: We ha ve t o think in comp ensation , about eq uat ion mec hanisms! The urb an/ non-
urba n dichot o m y is n o longer valid . Urban exist s bec ause there is a rural sup por t t o it . Y ou c an-
not ref er development only to the urba n, we ha ve t o switch the idea to compens at ion me cha-
nisms bet w een the ur ban and the n on-u rban in order to bring dev elopm ent c onditions to those
scenarios . The new policies o n dev e lopment should contemplate t he exchange of experien c es
regarding compens ation mechanisms . ( compe nsation t o those municip alit ies which prot ec t
wat er , preser ve the soils for agricultural produc tion, … . )
Pushpa: we should not be comp let ely dismis si ve o f what UN H abitat is trying to do. They are
not naive. They are r ecognising the urb an – rural continuum ( a nd not their dichot omy ). What
they are missing is a theoretical sophis ticat ion . Planetar y urbanis at ion is howe v er the other
extreme, whe r e ev er ything is se en as urba n, which ca nnot be absorb ed in the current political
process es. We need a lot of definitional clarit y at the moment. I n India, the ur ban is unde rstood
only in terms of urban ag glomerations an d ci ties , there is nothing else. How do we define the
other landsc ape s ?
Fol low- up
This se ssion was the firs t in a Series of Critica l Dialogue s, plea se follo w th e fur ther dev elopm ent
of the Serie s and its o ut comes he r e:
htt p:/ / gl obals oilweek .org / the matic-area s/ tran sfor ming -citie s/ criti cal -di alogu e- plat form
and in the n ear future here:
www .c r i t ic al ur ba na ge nd a.d e

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