“Considering the rapid growth of the world's cities, which is nearly overwhelming, people may not want us to talk about an urban age but about an urban revolution. At really matching speeds both wealth and poverty are increasing in the world's large metropolitan areas and the challenges connected with this development are obvious. Today, one of six residents in big cities lives in a slum. There has already been a talk of a planet of slums we will face in the near future. The big cities are everything, the First World, the Second World and the Third World together in one city.”
“A gift that America has made to contemporary civilization is the sub-prime mortgage and we are today living in cities with the consequence of this gift, which means that growth will be much slower, that access to resources will be much more difficult.”
“So, that is the challenge of the metropolitan area and the metropolitan regions: How do we foster cooperation amongst these different jurisdictions and different entities? How do you produce quality and quantity of services and efficiently deliver them, but also distribute cost in an equitable way among the beneficiaries? This is to provide the citizens with access and accountability of decision-making. The cities are facing serious problems that they have right now functionally fragmented metropolitan structures and lacking a lot of institutional arrangement to coordinate action. They do not have shared long-term visions or ambitions of where to go.”
“The premise for Urban Age is cities becoming more important players in the global economy where the nation state maybe losing some of the power, but here we're also seeing even these mega globalising cities are very, very vulnerable to the attack of the global economy. Just recently we have seen the news coming out of China, there are millions of the migrant workers in Shanghai and places like Shenzhen who have been forced to return home. The estimated figures are 20-30 million of these migrants who work on construction sites and on the factory floors, so if you're thinking about a city like Shanghai, it's not so much the buildings that we see, it's actually the mass of millions of people who are making up this rapid growth of the cities. But what has happened is that the impact of globalisation doesn't stop at the city, the impact lengthens beyond the global city back to the countryside as these migrants going back home have found they're entering a very unfamiliar, hostile environment.”
“I think we need to start thinking about metropolitan government in another way, and the other way is to think about the city's own power to control its own destiny and actually cities are much weaker about their own population and their own destiny than people realise. For example if you talk about crime and health, two issues that are talked about in Ben Page's presentation, one should recognise that it's the state, not the city, that runs the police, here in São Paulo the state is the powerful actor of the health services. So here's a method of thinking about metropolitisation, this is the deal, we will give cities more power if they work together. We will give cities more power if they cooperate with each other and that offer needs to be made by the state and federal governments.”
“I would put forward a notion, we should look forward to the resilient city, a city which can adapt, which is robust, which can adapt to an unstable environment. So, on the one hand we see that we come from a global hierarchy to a more global polycentrality with chances. We have to come from standardization, homogenization, to specification. We have to come from quantity to quality, from efficiency to adaptability and at one point I would like add, that we should try to re-integrate production into the cities and city regions.”
“Specifically, the urban economic structure is changing, production and credit will affect investment, consumption and urban employment. Demand will go down, urban economies are likely to contract as we've seen for example in Argentina. We saw a shift in the consumption, in the composition of activity, away from manufacturing, where we've seen the car question. But we also see it in the repair industry, in marketing, in advertising. I would suggest, as a question, will we see more informality, or not?”
“I would argue that we're in an urban age. It's an age of possibility, but it's an increasingly an age of urban risk.”
“It is really fundamental that everything police do is with the public's approval, that the police are not an entity in themselves that can do whatever they want to at any time. In fact, police are the total embodiment of the legal system of the country and if a police officer is not a moral authority of goodness, of creativity, of involvement and an agent of change and a willing leader then that individual is underutilised and not doing what the country requires him or her to do.”
“I think fundamentally what we're talking about in part of this session is that we're moving towards the urban age group. That group that I'm most interested in here is demographically dominant in the city, it's economically important, it's socially vital and it's culturally vibrant, and that group is young people. They are the kind of great unheard group in São Paulo or in any other city in my view. It's certainly difficult to imagine many ways and many instances where young people take a very serious and central role in issues such as planning and design and even governance.”
“We are not limited to discussing ideas and theories but to put together interests and perspectives. Of course, sometimes, conflicting interests are the urban processes and those that create the policies. The result that we have is a new challenge, intellectual challenge, political challenge and practical challenge for the public.”
“The choices that we make about how we travel on our streets, how we design our streets, what we do with the space between buildings, whether we allocate that space for plazas and sidewalks, or whether we allocate that space for travel lanes for cars can profoundly affect the economy, the quality of life, the environmental health and the sustainability of our cities and in New York City, sustainability is absolutely the watchword for our town.”
“With 6,000 miles of streets, I am basically the largest real estate developer in New York City. Forget about Donald Trump, it is the Commissioner of New York City Department of Transportation. So, we have to use those streets more effectively and we work very closely with the transit authority for a new Select Bus Service [BRT] which will more efficiently move people in the Bronx and on 34th Street. It is an easy down payment on better mobility, particularly in areas that are underserved by the subway.”
“Los Angeles has for years been the paradigm of sprawl and the car city. Nevertheless, a large and ongoing plan is in action. A huge amount of resources are being invested in the creation of new rail-based infrastructures, both urban and metropolitan. Much remains to be done but the new deal is under way. Lesson from Los Angeles: Never say never, even the car cities are capable of designing a better life.”
“All cities must offer their citizens and city users a substantial enhancement of the public transport services and an intelligent location of the primary urban functions, near to nodes which are better served by public transport systems. These will make cities more accessible to all and therefore fairer.”
“I'd like to introduce two issues, one is the idea of the genetically modified infrastructure, the idea that by modifying the way we consider infrastructure, we can bring a broader agenda to include agents of public space, density, new modalities, and, you know, it's a way of getting beyond problem-solving. The other and I'm stealing Saskia's term, which is the intensive periphery, we change the way we understand the periphery, we change the protocols so architects and designers can get a better leverage with politicians and decision-makers.”
“Brazilian society cannot follow the urbanisation pattern of American cities which generates many environmental social and economic expenses. We have to start discussing the privilege that automobile receives in our society. Often we talk about subsidies, about public transportation and we could have been using that fund for other purposes, but actually automobiles receive a lot of subsidies in terms of space and public funds even though there are negative impacts, congestion, etc.”
“Coming back to the city, firstly we know from all kinds of data, that when cities are in crises, London was bankrupt in the 70s, New York was officially bankrupt in the 70s, and Tokyo was also bankrupt in the 70s, that's right before the new era begins. That was the time when they had the least inequality.”
“Second point, we know that with the modest profit-making firms, the modest income households, if you have vast numbers of them in the city that means that all that money re-circulates in the city. That is critical and I thought when Michael Cohen, Director of the International Affairs Program, New School University, New Yorkwas talking, that informality under these conditions begins to be a systemic replacement for those modest middle income households and firms to support, maintain, and reproduce the city. We can stay there but it is a critical period and a systemic replacement.”
“We have removed street banners and signposts and have regulated visual communication. Citizens have then discovered their own city. They have recovered their self esteem and the fact that they are proud living here. The Cidade Limpia (Clean City) program has also shown that the state and local governments will spare no effort to improve regulations to provide the well-being of everyone and organise the urban space.”
“Cities come to the forefront within and outside country borders. The 21st century will be the century of cities. I am convinced that Urban Age and this conference, having discussed issues of eight major cities with experts, we can advance in finding solutions to our cities.”
“The rich centre region compared to the poor outskirt region corresponds to an urban development pattern established in the 40s that have been prevalent all the way up to the 90s.”
“Fear and talking about crime will organise the urban landscape, generating new forms of spatial segregation and social discrimination. Its most symbolic example is this fortified enclave including private condos and in every private space, everything is monitored by security. They rely on security guards and high technology security equipment to ensure exclusion practices. They deal with what is closed as a form of distinction. As this logic becomes prevalent, it's scattered throughout the city.”
“Graffiti is everywhere. Actually graffiti is one of the most common signs all over the city. All diverse spaces have become uniform, if I may. These public descriptions are violence that expresses itself in a city divided by walls. Graffiti identifies walls, cities and areas as a space for protest rather than separation. Most graffiti artists are young, outskirt inhabitants. They complain, they disregard limitations, and use that space to establish that discrimination, despite the fact that graffiti has a different background ... Illegal graffiti is something out of the ordinary, it's a way to write in public spaces; it's regarded as an anarchic intervention ... Walls, fences, graffiti, the writing on the wall make up the public space indicating social tension.”
“Sergio Fajardo became Mayor of Medellin in 2004 through a civic movement that was looking for more reliability and transparency in our political life and in our city. The major focus in this challenge was education, so here, Medellin is the most educated city in terms of civic programmes and urban status. We defined our urban policy as social urbanism, urbanism as a means to achieve definitive changes, although we always seek the highest design quality for the poorest regions in the city.”
“I am going to approach the role of the favelas as a prominent part of urban city, they are not a part any more they're an integral part of the city and they can also be a tool to fighting inequality, social inequality.”
“Throughout the years, real estate interest has really advanced aggressively in the city and one real estate actor bought a lot of land with favelas. As they started to build this building they put huge pictures and posters covering the favela to display what the building's going to look like. What our kids said was something very interesting: they said how about when they take away also all the air from us, will they block our air?”
“We would like to talk about transformation. To think about infrastructure as something not only to meet specific and technical needs. Instead of having this concentrated network, we could build a diffused network directly involving change in the quality of these waters by promoting or providing biological treatment, providing a lot of development potential.”
“We can have these concentrated areas which can become centralised ... In slums in which there's dispute for space, you have scenes like this, the best area is used for a football pitch. And they use that and do not put houses there. Populations or these communities can do that and know how to do that very well. There are many examples all over the city. With creativity they re-arrange public spaces and they transform technical spaces into entertainment or sporting activities. A boxing academy, a cathedral inside a subway station, a chapel to protect workers. This is something that doesn't only address technical issues, but people's interest as well.”
“We are more interested in dealing with the friction between a systemic view that is necessarily formal than the capacity that the population has to build public areas, public domains. The Minhocão, the elevated highway in São Paulo, is an urban disaster. On weekends, it's used by pedestrians and formal squares are completely abandoned. So we have to review the notion of public spaces. And what amazes me when you redefine structures in São Paulo – and that's the public capacity to redefine that domain – these infrastructures are no longer borders, but they are pores, units of a porous city.”
“As the city of Mumbai is expanding, and undoubtedly, it's growing and expanding in many spheres, its public space is continuously shrinking ... we have about 0.25 acres per 1,000 people in contrast to London, which has 7.28 acres to 1,000 people. Mumbai is a city on the water, but the waterfronts of the city have never been considered as an integral part of the city's land mass.”
“We believe that democracy thrives in the open, public spaces where body and mind can be exercised. We can look at the physical plans and developments of our cities differently. We often look at cities from the point of view of real estate opportunities, of what could be the real estate turnover and potential real estate turnover in a city. Can we look at our cities and its development plans from the point of view of public spaces? For I believe that public dignity is reflected in the state of public spaces and vice versa.”
“As an architect, I believe that planning and design is effective democratic tool for mobilizing public action and for bringing about much needed social change. Can we consider public space as a metaphor for democracy?”
“In order for justice to be just it has to appear just, in order for environmentalism to perform it has to have a certain visibility and that's where politicians come in. But the other point of matter is that in the context of the liberal democracy how do we engage citizens in making the visibility of those projects performative.”
“The point is that we as architects and planners, when we get on to design work, I'm particularly very concerned about how do we effect our knowledge to public domain and how do we create a brigade of citizens or people or people who are getting affected through these projects to actually monitor these projects?”
“The message is simple, the quality of life for me is a turtle eternal because it is an example of labour, mobility, all together and at the same time the skin of the turtle resembles the map of a city, an urban area. What happens if we cut that skin, we would kill it, and that's exactly what we're doing in our cities, living here, working there, leisure is elsewhere, we are cutting, we are killing that turtle.”
“I don't want to look like an optimistic person. Let me just give you an example of a co-responsibility scenario. We had to clean our bay and we lacked financial resources. We did not have any financial scheme. The query was very simply solved. We had an agreement with fishermen. If they fished they owned the fish, if they fished garbage or trash we would purchase that. If the day was not good for fish they would fish for trash. The more trash they fished the cleaner the bay would be, the clearer the bay the more fish they would have.”
“Very often planners believe that they have a lifetime to plan things and those that are in charge of politics have just 3 or 4 year mandates and they don't often communicate with the population. The population doesn't know what is being decided. If you cannot communicate what your goals are and you cannot communicate to those that make the political decisions of course it is going to be very hard to change the reality.”
“The car is just like our mother-in-law. We have to have good relationships with our mother-in-laws but we cannot have them leading our lives, living our lives, so if the only woman in your life is your mother-in-law you have a problem.”
“In fact Dubai has already got its traffic problems and yet it's a brand new city, it's a scandal.”
“It's about changing perception and of course in the United States getting the New York Times to acknowledge that Washington's forgotten river existed, to start to change the psychology not only in your city but outside of the city and what the possibilities are.”
“So we have cities that are oases of the first world and we have a lack of visibility of all cities, I am talking about all metropolitan areas, and I challenge everyone to disagree when we talk about metropolitan areas, not cities per se, and the consequence of this city, the old and the modern area, they complement themselves, we cannot have inclusion if we do not change both.”
“The way in which capital is no longer available at the national, global level, will it be available locally, I think it's worth remembering that in many older cities it used to be available locally as Saskia said and what happened is that because upper levels of government wanted more tax for consumption, which is popular, they've left local governments struggling and unable to raise their own resources to invest in themselves. I think this is a big issue that the Urban Age might wish to come back to.”
