(Re)Imagining and planning cities

Presenting author: Fiona Robertson

Architecture and the built environment has long grappled with controlling nature, to cultivate human-made order and systems. Every single act of construction is a generator of new geological layers, significantly impacting the surface of our planet in the comparatively short time humans have existed in comparison to the geological age of Earth. This has been realised in the term 'fourth nature' (Greater Perfections, Hunt, 2000), expanding upon the complexity and scale of combined natural and artificial environments. This paper will examine key architectural, landscape and urban strategies historically utilised to cultivate and construct terrain through a 21st century lens of post-humanism. In doing so, acknowledging that these historical approaches need to be reconfigured to apply post-colonial and post-humanist theory in order to accomodate the earth as a stakeholder in each new project undertaken. By exploring these now-hybridised strategies, we can commence in understanding: the value of architects in the context of the Anthropocene as urban archaeologists, placemakers and ecologists; how to utilise spatial practices to emulate experiences of scales of time (geological, scientific and objective) and being (from micro to territorial) within a city context; and how to create new tools to experience and engage with the Anthropocene in a way that realises the earth's terrain as made, not given.

Presenting author: Wenjing Zhang (The University of Melbourne)

Other author: Michael Webber (The University of Melbourne), Mark Wang (The University of Melbourne)

Xiong'an State planning in China has imposed numerous effects on environmental and institutional systems during its implementation. Water reallocation through water infrastructure (inter-basin water transfers) has been the solution to the uneven distribution of water in space and time. This paper interprets the use of an existing water regime to fulfil the needs of urban development through an analysis of a Chinese future eco-liveable model city - Xiong'an. The new city typifies standard practice: an urban dream (a state-level new area) made concrete by centralized urban planning that influences the water system through an engineering-heavy governance regime, creating novel hydro-social configurations. This planning practice poses challenges to local, regional and national water sources. The analysis concludes that Xiong'an is yet to reflect the transition of China's current urbanisation model to comply with sustainable principles. Its implementation has also influenced core-periphery relations as powerful cities export water scarcity and pollution to their stakeholders.

Presenting author: Laura Roberts (Flinders University)

This paper will set out the theoretical aspects of a larger research project on feminist subjectivities and feminist cities. The larger project explores the ways in which a feminist city such as Barcelona contributes to grounding and nurturing feminist political subjectivities. This project will interview members of the progressive new municipalist government currently running the city of Barcelona and bring these experiences into conversation with feminist theorisations of subjectivity. The goal is to document and theorise the importance of what is taking place in Barcelona and to argue that these transformations are not to be understood in terms of a liberal feminist understanding of gender mainstreaming. I argue instead that there is a much more radical critique of neo-liberalism and a reimagining of democracy (and political subjectivity) in the policies and practices that this city government is implementing, and we can indeed learn much from what is happening there.

Presenting author: Reazul Ahsan (University of Utah)

Other authors: Department of City and Metropolitan Planning

Changes in the global urban planning practice induced by COVID 19 will shape a new norm and pay due attention to re-think current and upcoming urban planning. For example, this pandemic is likely to contribute to significant changes in urban living, especially from conventional urban planning to a healthier eco-city planning, much known as 'inclusive planning.' The post-pandemic situation demands a change in future cities, which need to be an inclusive city. Since cities strive to live and move in harmony with nature, they use eco-friendly development practices and an ecology-based economy. Seoul has done well in coping with many disasters in the past, not so much anticipation for future ones. Therefore, analyzing the recent trend in urban planning practice with COVID-19, this research would like to foresee the path of future urban planning and the re-adjustment of current practice to counter any future pandemics and sustainability for countries like South Korea. Songdo is one of South Korea's newest, well-designed, and rapidly growing cities. In this study, Songdo is considered as a better case for the post-pandemic township for analyzing the problems of urban communities, the equilibrium between stable and eco-city. This study adopts secondary examples of other new planned eco-cities to evaluate Songdo city planning to assess the gap of being an inclusive city to meet the future challenges induced by the pandemic. Diseases shape cities, what if better and inclusive urban planning are able to shape cities to better fight diseases and this study focuses on inclusive city planning practice in a post-pandemic city to meet future needs. Today's cities are more concerned with eco-city concepts to adapt to climate change. COVID-19 gives us contemporary thought on eco-city planning, where environment and climate change should not be the key focus; instead, public health also needs to be a concern to lead us in a new direction to urban planning post-pandemic society.