Planetary Cities: Future Hacking the Urban

Human wellbeing and survival in the 21st century depend on the ability of our cities to transform. With the share of urban population projected by the United Nations (UN) to grow to two thirds by 2050, cities are a primary strategic pillar of development. Cities are disproportionately entangled in the critical challenges that we collectively face. Cities consume disproportionate amounts of energy and produce disproportionate amounts of waste while contributing significantly to inequality. We need to transform cities from problems to solutions.

And business as usual or incremental change will not be enough. As the former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, “Our Struggle for Global Sustainability Will Be Won or Lost in Cities”. The UN has instituted Sustainable Development Goal 11 that aims to engender global action “to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. The New Urban Agenda, adopted by the UN Member States at the Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016, affirms “sustainable urban development as a critical step for realizing sustainable development in an integrated and coordinated manner at the global, regional, national, subnational and local levels”.

There is simply no way we can effectively address our collective social and ecological crises without fundamentally rethinking and reimagining our cities and our emergent urban lives. Cities are intricately bound into our “global commons” — that which we mutually depend on for our mutual survival and wellbeing. As our cities go, so will we all. With this in mind, Prof. Bharat Dahiya and I have initiated and recently signed a book contract through Springer, to bring together research and visions on urban transformation in a planetary context. The book project has been accepted into the SCOPUS-indexed Springer Series Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements (A21CHS).

Planetary Contexts

Planetary Cities aims to look at how cities are transforming in the context of this scale shift in human experience, the context of a planetary era. Urbanization, in and of itself, brings with it significant transformations. Yet the transition to a planetary era, discussed by many, has specific implications for cities. In the 21st Century, urbanization and planetization will combine to reshape cities. Haase, Güneralp, Dahiya, Bai and Elmqvist have underlined the various perspectives of Global Urbanization, including demographic, ageing, spatial and re(new)ed (e.g. the idea of “urbanity” by Boone et al) perspectives.

The last 40 years has seen a phase shift in the human experience. While the nation state has, for the last 150 years, been a safe house for identity and ethnicity, the functions of governance and arbiter of social progress, today we experience something new. No longer the sole protector of future security, issues like climate change and the impact of humans on global ecological systems and local environments are driving a new level of planetary cooperation. Capitalism is global and its externalities (and uneven benefits) are experienced everywhere. And whether as reactionaries or progressives, we experience ourselves as part of a global conversation, as the media connects us empathically or just pathologically. Today we deal with shared ecological planetary boundaries, cultural transformations as migration and diaspora transform demographics, far flung collaborations across global civil society, the emergence of a global design commons that potentiates local production capabilities, and the enmeshment into new transnational data and algorithmic regimes.

Planetary Cities will explore the broad urban transformations underway as we move into a planetary era. In this new context cities must drive low carbon economies, budget within planetary ecological boundaries using new accounting frameworks, develop auto-productive capabilities in the context of the open source movement, and collaborate city-to-city to mutualise knowledge, resources and strategy.

There are also cultural and demographic transformations underway whereby cities become locales of planetary values. Transformations in governance challenge the nation state as the sole arbiter of decision making, with new modalities linking urban collaborative governance with global governance. Cities are being reframed as arenas for experimentation and transformative social innovation in the context of long term regional and global sustainability challenges. We witness a relational transformation as cities become defined by contexts rather than boundaries.

We are moving into an era of “planetary stigmergy” (asynchronous and distributed planetary cooperation). As we develop a planetary social ecosystem of collaboration and contribution, the solutions developed to serve one city will potentiate problem solving for many cities. Each city will define how it plays a part in this global ecosystem, but we imagine there will be an imperative to participate in this ecosystem no matter what, as the benefits of participation will far out-weigh the costs of isolation and non-participation.

Planetary Cities aims to look at new futures of the planetary urban arena both in the Global North and South, and bring fresh insights on these emerging processes, their potentials, and the strategies needed to empower them.

Methodology

Professor Marcus Bussey of the University of Sunshine Coast coined the term “future-hacking”, which he has used as a way to describe how we intervene in the imagination, image and fabric of the future. UNESCO Professor of Futures Studies, Sohail Inayatullah developed the idea of the “used future”, a future image that still holds sway in our minds but which is no longer serving us, as the context has changed. Our challenge in this book is thus to challenge the used futures of cities, and future-hack new visions and pathways for transformed cities that express the highest of the human potential.

New and evolving analytic strategies, social theory and theoretical approaches are also needed for building deeper understanding of Planetary Cities in the 21st Century. P2P (peer to peer) social theory of Michel Bauwens, social theory of the commons by Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom and work of David Bollier and Silke Helfrich will be critical elements. Cosmopolitan, relocalization, neo-Marxist, gender based, and other social theories and perspectives are also welcome sources of thinking. We accept and encourage emergent theoretical eclecticism, approaches that can enhance our ability to see planetary cities in a new light.

The book also puts an emphasis on imagination. We need visions of transformed cities. This can be visions in particular themes — health, food systems, transport, carbon budgets, sharing, data. But this can also include comprehensive visions, for how cities as a whole can be different in the 21st century. We need a new urban imaginary, and thus we welcome scenarios, but want to emphasise visions of preferred futures for cities — cities transformed in this emergent planetary context.

We also are asking for authors to explore emerging horizons — the trends, emerging issues and weak (but important) signals that promise to reshape cities. How might trends and emerging issues in data, security, food systems, transport and other areas impact and change cities? What technological developments must be understood? We need explorations of social change based on empirical data, and self critical / reflexive forecasting.

Finally, a critical component of the book aims to highlight urban experiments that point toward urban transformations. These can be prototypes in urban settings, social innovations, and new models for urban development. These are the “seeds of change” that can evolve, grow and scale for impact. These can be described in short cases.

Potential Topic Areas

Urban development and the planetary commons are arguably the primary context for planetary cities. How do our cities engage, indeed act as stewards and protectors of our global commons — our oceans, atmosphere, a safe climate, security? This includes issues around how cities engage with climate change, planetary ecological boundaries, security, migration and how the open source / peer-to-peer movement instantiates a mode of commonization whereby mutual value becomes shared across the human family.

Following the idea for “protocol cooperativism”, can cities be the vehicle by which a commons protocol for planetary mutualisation is articulated and operationalized? The peer-to-peer movement provides a framework for how emergent global contributory systems provide the basis for the mutualization of value across space and time. How can cities express this new logic of a global contributory system through the strategy of city-to-city collaboration?

Cities now exist in the context of planetary boundaries and ecological budgets. What is the emerging research on planetary ecological boundaries, and what are its implications for cities and “urban planetary boundaries”? New research has been able to identify the impact of humans on ecological systems and the carrying capacity of the planet Earth. How do we understand cities’ impact on the ecological and environmental systems and an ‘ecological budget’ that has implications for how cities respond?

Cities are increasingly arenas for experimentation in a transition to planetary sustainability. Researcher-advocate Darren Sharp has explored how are cities are being reframed as arenas for experimentation in a long term transition to sustainability. The vision of cities as static and functional units is being challenged, and a new vision is being put forward as adaptive and dynamic organic urban processes that draw from citizen innovation and cross sectoral creativity.

Many cities are also attempting to respond to the climate crisis and drive down carbon emissions, from energy production to retrofitting of buildings and infrastructure, to industry and household de-carbonization. What does it mean to create a “low carbon city” and what are the pathways and visions for this?

We live in a new era of a “global design commons” (the collective planetary pool of open source designs, from medicine to machines etc). This creates the possibility for auto-productive cities, how cities can leverage these potentials to localize open source innovations to produce based on the needs of citizens within planetary ecological boundaries. De-growth advocate Sharon Ede and P2P Lab action researchers Vasilis Kostakis, Vasilis Niaros as well as others are driving new research in the area of cosmo-localism. How can cosmo-local principles be applied to cities?

How are the values of city dwellers transforming and what are the implications for the politics of global policy and action? Decades ago, whilst James Ephraim Lovelock put forward the Gaia hypothesis, William Irwin Thompson proposed the idea of the Gaia Politik, an emergent political cohort that holds the planet as a primary unit. Futurist Andrew Curry argues new research points toward a shifting urban values orientation. What are cities’ roles in the transformation of values in a planetary era?

Cities are also being reimagined as a commons. The ground breaking work of Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione has articulated a new vision of the “urban commons”. They have explored new modes of governance such as “urban collaborative governance”. The urban commons reimagines citizens as primary contributors, innovators and managers of urban mutual sustainment. Urban commons exist in multifaceted forms as documented by Neal Gorenfo’s prolific compilation Shareable Cities. But what does urban collaborative governance mean in a planetary context?

Urban food systems are in transition. The detrimental effects of the industrial food production model are felt across ecological, health, social and economic systems. As documented by Nick Rose, recent experiments and movements aim to reinvent urban food systems within the logic of the urban commons. We ask, how are cities reinventing their food systems, and how does this fit into the broader questions of planetary sustainability and our planetary context?

Can cities be locales of affordable housing and land equity when global capital drives land speculation? Today’s neo-liberal “planetary city” is driven by the oft contradictory or perverse logic of global speculative capital. What are strategies to deliver affordable housing and equitable land prices within the context of global capital and real estate speculation? How can we reimagine urban property and ownership / “share-ship” in a planetary urban era?

An imperative is being put on how cities can develop circular economies that transform waste into resources, lower ecological footprints and impacts, save money and create new jobs. Yet cities are not islands, and the relationship between global and local circular economies and efforts needs exploration and is a harbinger of innovations. What do local circular economies mean in a planetary context? What kinds of standardization or mutualization efforts are needed or happening?

City based innovation processes sit within a wider planetary ecosystem of co-learning. The broader context of a global learning laboratory where many projects around the world practice co-learning is fundamental in questions of urban experimentation. What are emerging approaches and methodologies linking global and urban learning and innovation, such as urban living labs and other approaches?

We are open to many topic areas within the contours of the themes, so please tell us your chapter ideas.

Format of Book

• The length of each book chapter is anticipated between 4500–5000 words.
• Images and artwork are great to have.
• It is an academic format, with formal academic referencing according to Springer style and referencing guidelines.

Timeline

• Drafts due 30 April
• Papers reviewed internally by 15 June
• Papers revised by 15 July
• Papers reviewed externally by 31 Aug
• Papers revised by 30 Sep
• Expected publication Jan 2021

Co-editor Biographies

Dr. José Maria Ramos is Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. He has taught and lectured on futures studies, public policy and social innovation at a number of universities: the National University of Singapore (Lee Kuan Yee School of Public Policy), Swinburne University of Technology (Australia), Leuphana University (Germany), the University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia) and Victoria University (Australia). He holds a Doctorate from Queensland University of Technology in Critical Globalization Studies that won the university’s best doctoral thesis award, as well as a Masters degree in Strategic Foresight from Swinburne University and Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of California Irvine. He is Senior Consulting Editor for the Journal of Futures Studies, and writes broadly on a variety of topics spanning economic, cultural and political change, with over 50 publications in a variety of journals, magazines and books. José is a practicing futurist who runs the boutique foresight consultancy Action Foresight based in Melbourne. Originally from California of Mexican ancestry, he now lives in Malmsbury, Australia with his wife De Chantal, son Ethan and daughter Rafaela.

Prof. Bharat Dahiya is Director of the Research Center for Integrated Sustainable Development at the College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Thammasat University, based in Bangkok, Thailand. He is also Distinguished Professor at the Urban Youth Academy, Seoul. An urbanist and futurist, he combines research, policy analysis and development practice aimed at examining and tackling socio-economic, environmental and governance issues in the global urban context. Since early-1990s, his research and professional work has focused on sustainable urbanization, strategic urban planning and development, urban upgrading, urban environment and infrastructure, urban resilience, and community-driven development. During his work at the World Bank, UN-Habitat, Asian Development Bank and UNDP, he initiated, led and contributed to technical assistance and operational projects on sustainable urban development in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East. He conceptualized and coordinated the preparation of United Nations’ first-ever report on The State of Asian Cities 2010/11. He has held academic positions in Australia, Indonesia and Thailand. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the UN-Habitat’s World Cities Report. Bharat holds a PhD in Urban Governance, Planning and Environment from the University of Cambridge, UK. Reuters, Inter Press Service, SciDev.Net and China Daily have quoted his work. His latest co-edited volume is, New Urban Agenda in Asia Pacific: Governance for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities (Springer Nature, 2020).

Submit Your Proposal

We welcome your expressions of interest and proposals for book chapters. To do so please send through you ideas in the form of a summary / abstract of approximately 150–200 words. Email both: jose@actionforesight.net and bharatdahiya.tu@gmail.com