Solarpunk Urbanism

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A community to discuss solarpunk and other new and alternative urbanisms that seek to break away from our currently ecologically destructive urbanisms.

Henri Lefebvre, The Right to the City — In brief, the right to the city is the right to the production of a city. The labor of a worker is the source of most of the value of a commodity that is expropriated by the owner. The worker, therefore, has a right to benefit from that value denied to them. In the same way, the urban citizen produces and reproduces the city through their own daily actions. However, the the city is expropriated from the urbanite by the rich and the state. The right to the city is therefore the right to appropriate the city by and for those who make and remake it.

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Urban planning YouTube has a (lack of) solutions problem | The Nth Review (www.youtube.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net to c/urbanism@slrpnk.net

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I changed the title to be a little less clickbaity.

I debated posting this, since, while it says guerilla urbanizing is useful, there are expensive solutions to making cities more friendly to public transit and bicycles that simply require the city itself getting onboard with to fix, and the solution he proposes is to become more involved in your local city council, which on the face of it doesn't sound super Anarchist.

I believe Murray Bookchin advocated for something along these lines, and that got him a lot of flak from the Anarchist community at in the 80's, Though I'm struggling to find where he said that now (please post it if you happen to know!),

I'd like to know your thoughts on the proposal in the video. It does seem like since so few people participate in these areas, it would be possible to overwhelm the NIMBY's if you got enough people involved in your local city council, or ran in local elections for positions that could influence your city's urbanization.

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[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 6 points 9 months ago

@ProdigalFrog I think YouTube urban planning is great for onboarding people, and getting them aware of the issues. But yea, involvement is left at the whim of the viewer. You are the one that needs to inform yourself regarding this.

OTOH, these channels have an international audience, and local administrations work differently from country to country. They couldn't have such great success if they focused on how to involve yourselves in local decision-making in the US, for example. Car-centric infrastructure exists and is being developed in lots of places around the world and takes different forms.

I'd recommend you this latest episode of The Urbanist Agenda podcast, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chxbljx1k4Q

[–] wildcherry@slrpnk.net 6 points 9 months ago

I'm with non-violent civil disobedience and sabotage. At the end, it isn't a battle of opinion. It is a conflict of interest. You will not convince people to go against their own convenience. You can make the status quo to costy to keep operating.

[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

A while back I thought about creating a kind of planned community. Get land somewhere, or "take over" an existing village / county somewhere and change the local ordinances / zoning. So people would buy in and invest money or resources or just time and labour (crowdfunding). Then build it from scratch.

Have enough agricultural land, have your own water collection, power generation for the village and transportation to the nearest city. Basically becoming a kind of real estate developer. Or something like a kibbutz.

This seems the only realistic option because cities have such incredibly forces / money interests at work.

[–] hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It depends on the city. I'd argue that cities and towns are the best places to push good urban planning, the problem is that it's a lot of work. It always feels like less work to start something from scratch and in a lot of cases it may be but I don't think "throw everything away and start again" really aligns well with the world we're trying to create.

[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

“throw everything away and start again” really aligns well

Haha no. But you would have free reign to create something new and experiment with and then demonstrate - without having to content with certain forces. It can't be the only solution, but it could be a way to demonstrate to people a 5 min village. Like $20.000 for a sustainable luxury apartment with an amazing view (probably way too optimistic). That might lead to more people wanting change in housing policies and real estate ownership.