Can Cities Help Us Hack Formal Power Systems?

Essay, expanding design practices, Imminent Urban Commons, ka-au, Middle Density, Politics and economics, Saskia Sassen, Urban Paradigms

Architect’s role, Cities, Communicating, Democratic systems, Developing policies, Economic logic vs. Reason, Economics, Empowering society, Essay, Formal economy, Global Awareness, Global Cities, Global social network, Imminent Commons, Planetary urbanizations, Political implications, Politics, Rethinking Urban Environments, Seoul Biennale 2017, Social city, Social ecosystem, Social environment, Social strategies, Urban democracy, Urban ecology, Urban Paradigms

Cities are complex systems. But they are incomplete systems. These features take on urbanized formats that vary enormously across time and place. In this mix of complexity and incompleteness lies the capacity of cities to outlive far more powerful but formal and closed systems: many a city has outlived governments, kings, the leading corporation of an epoch. Herein also lies the possibility of making—making the urban, the political, the civic, a history. Thus, much of today’s dense built-up terrain, such as a vast stretch of high-rise housing or of office buildings, is not a city; it is simply dense built-up terrain. On the other hand, a working slum can have many of the features of a city, and indeed, some slums are a type of city—poor, but deeply urban.