Today, the majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas, most of which have outdated infrastructures and poor resources. As we continue to see a dramatic increase in urbanisation, sustainable cities have become a necessity.
Over the past few years, I have sensed a strong spirit of determination among government officials from various cities around the world, all aiming to achieve their vision of a sustainable city. Unfortunately, most will fail at achieving that vision as they rely on a top-down approach to urban planning.
The top-down approach has a minute role in encouraging community involvement or ownership of proposals. The community plays a vital role however the top-down approach fails to recognise this. Cities are built with the needs and demands of communities, and by not involving them any approach would be a waste of resources.
Imagine if we could flip this model, and empower people from the bottom-up. Decentralisation of urban planning could empower local people to collectively play an active role in transforming our cities into vibrant and healthy places. In my opinion, it is the most passive way of achieving sustainable cities.
If cities were to invest in grassroots, people and young businesses with a passion for improving their own communities, they will be nurturing entrepreneurial spirit from the bottom-up. This inward investment will create more green jobs and will result in a new way of thinking about cities.
A good example of this bottom-up entrepreneurship was the invention of the bicycle sharing programme in 1965. This experiment, by the Dutch social inventor Luud Schimmelpennink, involved him collecting several hundreds of bikes, painting them white and distributing them around the city for people to use freely. No one could have predicted that 50 years after an experiment by one individual, more than 700 cities worldwide would go onto providing a bike-sharing programme.
Imagine if cities were to become living laboratories, promoting a “Do-It-Yourself” testbed environment for grassroots, all with a common goal of improving the quality of life in the city. These short-term testbeds, such as the invention of the bicycle sharing programme, are sometimes the key to achieving long term global change.
Given that almost 70% of us will be living in cities by 2050, promoting an entrepreneurial culture in the built environment could be the key to creating the next generation of sustainable cities. A decentralisation moving away from macro-scale city planning, towards a collection of localised micro-scale systems, could also be the key to transforming our linear economies into circular economies. Thus the next generation of cities will be designed by locals for local needs; a decentralised collective innovation.
If neighbourhoods were designed by the same people who actually live in them, I believe we would see a significant shift in priority. For example, more affordable housing, more localisation of infrastructures and renewable resources to meet the demands of their areas. These shifts in priority have one thing in common; they all address the very basic needs to people’s livelihoods, which are critical to human development and social cohesion. These basic needs include a sustainable capacity to acquire continuous access to housing, water, electricity, food, medicine and clothing, all of which must be affordable.
Ultimately fostering a bottom-up collective, entrepreneurship is the most passive way of transforming our cities into more inclusive, liveable and resilient places. Thus empowering the next generation of cities requires a new form of thinking; a decentralised collective innovation.