Imminent Urban Commons

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Discipline, Energy and sustainability, Essay, High Density, Imminent Urban Commons, Politics and economics, Territory and mobility, Urban Paradigms

Air quality, Anthropocene, Architectural theory, Architecture&climate, Architecture&environment, Architecture&nature, Artificial nature, Asia, Biosphere politics, Built environment, Climate change, Contamination, Cosmology, Discipline, Ecological researches, Ecology, Energy, Energy consciousness, Energy consumption, Environmental degradation, Essay, Future cities, Future generations, Future projections, Global Awareness, Imminent Commons, Nature vs. Artificial, New Statements on Nature, Planetary urbanizations, Political ecology, Political implications, Politics, Polution, Posthuman, Rethinking Urban Environments, Second nature, Seoul, Seoul Biennale 2017, South Korea, Sustainability, Technology, Technology costs, Territory, Urban decay, Urban democracy, Urban environment, Urban Health, Urban Paradigms, Urban planning, Urban political ecology, Urban research, Water

Since the eighteenth century when the Western world became human-centered, humankind has not ceased to evolve, and so too has the very concept of the human. In 1933, Le Corbusier and a few other members of the CIAM issued The Athens Charter, a document aimed at orchestrating the emerging technologies of the built environment into a proposal for the future of cities. A classification of human activities became the vertebral spine of this proposal, structured around four urban functions: work, residence, leisure, and transport. This functional classification has structured urban planning policies ever since, but its human-centered approach appears now to be unable to address the problems of our age.