On 2 and 3 October 2013, the GTP hosted a series of seminars and scenario planning workshops to capture ideas. In attendance at the "Imagine the Future" Seminar was a cross-sector mix of people including councillors, City and Provincial government officials, planners and urban designers, researchers, NGOS, built environment professionals, and members of the media.
This presentation by the the managing director of Future Cape Town, a public benefit think tank, the nature of placemaking, community building and city structure is discussed in a visual style. It considers international case studies in the art of placemaking that recognises the central participation and co-creation of communities. It also unpacks the large driving forces in the world, and how that plays into the process of placemaking.
Songdo International Business District (SIBD) is a new Smart City or Ubiquitous City built from scratch on 1,500 acres (610 ha) of reclaimed land along Incheon's waterfront,[1] 40 miles (65 km) southwest of Seoul, South Korea and connected to Incheon International Airport by a 7.4 mile (12.3 km) reinforced concrete highway bridge, called Incheon Bridge. Along with Yeongjong and Cheongna, it is part of the Incheon Free Economic Zone.The Songdo International Business District will feature the Northeast Asia Trade Tower and the Incheon Tower. Schools, hospitals, apartments, office buildings and cultural amenities are to be built in the district. Replicas of architectural hallmarks, including New York City's Central Park and Venice's waterways, will also be incorporated. This 10-year development project is estimated to cost in excess of $40 billion, making it one of the most expensive development projects ever undertaken.A small number of Japanese residents have sought to live in Songdo IBD after the Tohoku earthquake
There is an undeniable and urgent new reality concerning the relationship between human beings and our planet. We have become aware that the ways we live are seriously affecting the rest of life. With increasing environmental catastrophes such as worldwide pollution, global warming, extinction of species, over-population, and destruction of natural habitat, it is necessary to actively undertake ecological sustainability in order for our own species and other life forms to survive. At the same time, cities are increasingly becoming the most populous sites where people live, and will become even more numerous and crowded in the future.The vision of making cities ecologically sustainable should have a foundation in ecology itself. To accomplish this, "greening" must mean much more than just having parks with grass and trees, picking up trash in the streets, or other measures that simply make city life more pleasant. Cities must be seen as intersecting with natural systems in all of the basic functions and activities of urban life. Urban areas must be reconceived so that they can assume a responsible and harmonious position in the actual web of life that is Earth’s biosphere.BioregionsThe most useful starting place for this transformed view of a city is to recognize the particular bioregion in which it is located. A bioregion is defined by the unique natural characteristics that occur throughout a particular geographic area, such as climate, landforms, watersheds, soils, native plants and animals, and other features. Every bioregion also includes human activities that should be carried out to join with these features in sustainable ways. Human inhabitation should be an interactive part of the ongoing life in a place. Bioregions differ greatly from each other, such as the contrasts between a coast on the ocean, a rain forest, an interior desert, or the Arctic Circle. Because of these vast differences bioregions require different ways for societies and individuals to relate to them in order for life to be sustainable. The way people live in New York, Beijing, Tokyo, or Berlin should reflect the wide bioregional variations that exist between the places where these cities are located.In order to plan, design, build, or direct human communities in ways that will achieve bioregional sustainability, we must consider the preservation of natural systems that are native to the place to be the basis for successful human inhabitation in it as well. People are ultimately dependent on the life of the place where they live. This isn’t an incidental aspect of human life but instead must be adopted as a central and primary social fact.The Bioregional ApproachThe basic goals of a bioregional approach are as follows: restore and maintain natural systems, develop sustainable means for satisfying basic human needs such as food, water, energy, shelter, resource materials, waste handling, and cultural information, create and support a broad range of activities which make it possible to fit better into the life-place.These goals need to be attained in all human communities, but cities are especially important because of their large human populations and significantly high consumption level of resources. Restoring and maintaining natural systems in a city’s bioregion is an urgent problem in both industrialized and developing countries and should get a high priority. An example would be rehabilitation of Tokyo Bay by restoring native ecosystems of aquatic plants and animals. Developing sustainable means for supplying human needs will require becoming as bioregionally self-reliant as possible rather than importing necessities of life, and recycling all wastes rather than creating refuse dumps and pollution. Creating and supporting ways to fit into the life-place needs to be done in a great number of ways ranging from encouraging small local businesses that recycle materials to reviving seasonal festivals.
