The open city

The open city. Publicado en diversas fuentes Radbourd University (2017), AA, Harvard y GSD. Traducción de Alberto Peñín. Introducción al artículo en pàg. 20 http://hdl.handle.net/2117/335880Las ciudades en las que todo el mundo quiere vivir deberían ser limpias y seguras, poseer servicios públicos eficientes, estar soportadas por una economía dinámica, proveer estímulo cultural y también hacer lo posible por remediar las divisiones por raza, clase y etnia. Estas, no son las ciudades en las que vivimos.Las ciudades fracasan en todos estos aspectos debido a las políticas gubernamentales, a problemas sociales irreparables, y a fuerzas económicas fuera del control local. La ciudad no es dueña de sí misma. Aun así, algo ha ido radicalmente mal, en nuestra concepción de lo que una ciudad debe ser. Tal vez las bienintencionadas palabras, “limpio, seguro, eficiente, dinámico”, no sean suficientes para confrontar críticamente nuestro trabajo de planificadores. Me gustaría proponer aquí una mirada a la ciudad más inclusiva.The cities everyone wants to live in should be clean and safe, possess efficient public services, be supported by a dynamic economy, provide cultural stimulation, andalso do their best to heal society’s divisions of race, class, and ethnicity. These are not the cities we live in.Cities fail on all these counts due to government policies, irreparable social ills, and economic forces beyond local control. The city is not its own master. Still, something has gone wrong, radically wrong, in our conception of what a city itself should be. Perhaps those nice words -- clean, safe, efficient, dynamic – are not enough in themselves to confront critically our masters.In this talk, I’d like to propose we look at the city in a more embracing way. Currently, we make cities into closed systems. To make them better, we should make them into open systems. We need to applying ideas about open systems currently animating the sciences to animate our understanding of the city. More, in an open city, whatever virtues of efficiency, safety, or sociability people achieve, they achieve by virtue of their own agency. But just because a city brings together people who differ by class, ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference, in an open system, the city is to a degree incoherent. Dissonance marks the open way of life more than coherence, yet it is adissonance for which people take ownershipPeer Reviewe