I am sharing here the document that I used yesterday at the congress debate tableEQUIciuDAD, as well as some notes on the discussion we had, which I think completed my initial introduction well. A brief account of some conditions of the current city -fragmentary, subjective but significant at the end of the day- and a definition of the functions of what we address in the workshop asadaptive urbanism along with a series of examples. The idea of ​​presenting these elements at the beginning was to provoke, above all, a debate around the thesis that in current conditions, with an urban agenda limited by the lack of economic resources on the part of public institutions and the end of large projects of intervention in the city, we are facing the best conditions to see how alternative strategies can be found. These strategies and actions are going to be more capable of adapting to the new conditions because they have proven -in times against the current- that they are viable and effective. From the transition cities to the infrastructure recovery< /a> for public use, passing through projects like Renew Newcastle, Meanwhile Project, Solar Footprint or 596 acres.

From the debate I rescue some complementary ideas for this incomplete drawing:

  • The answers are more micro because they are designed for specific problems or spaces with their own conditions and, therefore, we cannot hope that this catalog is capable of responding to everything that remains to be recovered.
  • The liabilities that remain after the crisis in the form of infrastructures, equipment, urbanizations, homes, etc. there are so many that we don’t even have an answer for everything. Not everything will be able to be reoccupied or activated with alternative uses or different strategies for its recovery for community uses.
  • The idea of ​​meanwhile is powerful and is part of the key to why certain actions have more and more room. A meanwhile that we do not know how long it will last, but that allows us to think of close solutions for situations in which it is not logical to wait for the crisis to end, for the institutions to clarify themselves, for financing to be obtained, for completely develop an urban plan, for the owner of a place to find an outlet on the market, for it to be built on an empty lot, etc.
  • The contradiction and friction is present because the administrative and institutional model is hierarchical in its daily operation and even more so in urban planning, while social reality is increasingly distributed. Adaptive urbanism rests to a large extent on a new form of organization and intervention in the city that does not fit with formalities. And in that contradiction is where you have to take advantage of the chinks and cracks.

I don’t know if it is a very accurate conclusion of what we discussed but, in any case, these are the ideas that I would highlight the most as a summary.
Further: