“We have a very simple idea: to make the city work for people with imagination and initiative, and not just capital.” - Marcus Westbury, Renew Newcastle, TEDxNewy video
Highly recommended. I haven’t found too many people, if any, that think the way I do about cities and engaging the passion of the ordinary people living in them like Westbury does.
150 empty buildings lined two main streets in Newcastle. Sort of a deadlock as the leasing process was onerous and who wants to be the first tenant in an empty row of stores?
“Yet as of a few months ago more than sixty new creative projects, initiatives, galleries, studios, and creative businesses – all experiments of various kinds – had started up in the old downtown. The city – far from being a failed post industrial basket case – was being hailed by the world’s biggest travel publishers Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 cities in the world to visit in 2011 on account, in large part, of a vibrant creative resurgence that had taken place in the long dead downtown.”
I am tempted to cut-and-paste the entirety of the article, “Cities as Software,” but what to leave out? Recently uploaded video (less than a week old) is awesome too.
I don’t give out praise this lightly. Much of my frustration with cities has to do with the mindset of big-planning, big-capital, and exclusionary attitude towards citizens who have passion and ideas yet are dismissed if they aren’t the Investor, the Planner, the Developer. So reading and watching about the transformation of Newcastle, Australia is a breath of fresh air! See also variety and vibrancy of the Renew Newcastle projects site, a few featured above in the photos.
p.s. Plus I like the analogy since I’ve designed both hardware and software in the past.
Thanks so much to LandscapeAndTechnology.tumblr.com for discovering this!
2 months ago • 4 notes
