This month, world leaders met in the historic, snowy city of Davos at the World Economic Forum, to discuss the transformation of our city environments to counter climate change. This is crucial.
According to C40 cities report, cities account for 70 per cent of worldwide emissions, and buildings alone account for around 40 per cent. The report further notes that urbanisation is increasing at lightning speed, estimating it to be up to 68 per cent by 2050 versus 55 per cent today, which represents nearly a doubling of the existing building stock. These figures highlight the urgency in decarbonization in our cities and the potential of digitization, which shapes the future of our urban culture.
In the month of February, 9,000 global city actors from 159 countries will meet in Abu Dhabi, under the auspice of UN-HABITAT, World Urban Forum. This forum will include over 450 speakers to dialogue about the future of cities in the context of cultural diversities, culture and social innovations.
One topic that speakers must be sure to discuss is the critical role of our cultures in defining urban space and management of cities.
Culture has an opportunity to influence the welfare, image, and economy of specific areas using public spaces. Use of our cultural knowledge and practices will play a key role in decarbonising our cities and especially if harmonised with modern smart city technologies.
Historically, city space has been ordered with conditions that embrace urban cultures and foster social developments. This cultivates an enabling urban environment for increased production of goods and services, changing lifestyles, social innovations and growth of arts. These artefacts have evolved an urban form.
Urban planning sets the base for construction and management of cities by dictating the urban space in a rational utilisation. We have witnessed several epochs of urban development, from medieval acropolis in Athens, rational approaches to urban spaces strongly entangled with spiritualism like the ancient city of Xi’an in China, that embodied culture and region as the key aspects of urban form; renaissance period during the 16th centuries saw a growth on idealism, “ideal city” to the 17th century “utopian” 18th century experimental ‘New Concord Village’ to Ebenezer Howards 19th century ‘garden city’.
Today’s functionalism and the growing demand to addressing climate change and emissions will possibly set up a new narrative for green cities of the future.
In Kenya 2020 will mostly attract airwaves with the debate of Building Bridges Initiative (BBI). From the initial report released for national debate, the paper outlines salient social-cultural issues that must be addressed to move the country forward. Key among them is the issue of our urban culture.
With increased diversity in our growing cities, the paper outlines the need for respect of our cultures, heritages and social beliefs as a composite of our social form. The aspiration for making positive transformation lies in how we develop a future of aspirations that ties our culture to the growth path. President Uhuru Kenyatta has outlined the need for cultural pride as an ingredient of forging a competitive future and creation of an urban culture of tolerance, as a future civilization model for Kenya.
Whereas placemaking is a key ingredient for 21st-century cities, it’s not enough to build public social spaces- we must in this spirit of BBI endeavour to create experiences that allow community connections. We need to tailor urban guidelines that encourage diversity of cultural practices, rituals and arts in our urban spaces; these could include cultural gardens in our cities, public social archives and public murals and arts among others.
Naming of streets, parks and gardens to emulate cultural hero/heroines and practices would strengthen the sense of traditional knowledge and belonging. This is hoped to encourage new methods of cooperation and cosmopolitan practices as we move into the future. For example, Vancouver, which doesn’t have a single ethnic group that amounts to more than 25 per cent of the population, has translated basic important public documents into several languages and implemented multilingual phone lines.
The Diverse Communities and Multiculturalism strategy, which helps the newcomers to adapt, was developed in the city. In Siena embankment in Paris, the city limits the traffic during the summertime so that recreation areas can be organized, launched in 2002, it established a recreation area by the water canals that could be useful for citizens who don’t have an opportunity to leave the city for the summer. The project turned out to be quite popular, ‘Paris beaches’ have been set up at several spots since 2006.
As we dialogue about urban spaces and its potential to strengthen cultural diversity in cities, we need to agree that culture and innovation are the building blocks of cities. We also expect the World Urban Forum 10 will demonstrate at a global scale, the value of smart innovative urban planning and design, and its potential to transform cities and lives of people living in them.
Kamau Kuria, is an Aspen Fellow and Chair of Urban Planning and Infrastructure, Nakuru City Board.
