assignment 2 good city sara alghamdi
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Assignment
Friedmann (2000) has produced three criteria for a 'good city.' Give two more criteria that you think are important criteria for a city to be good. Explain why they are important. You can use Friedmann's text as guide to how to present your opinion with arguments.
Friedmann imagined the Good City in his defence of Utopian thinking. He has identified a set of criteria which he sought essential to create it. These criteria were embedded in the provision of human equitable rights to flourish, multipli/city as a primary good, and a concrete system of good governance (Friedmann, 2000).
The multipli/city as Friedmsann discerned acknowledges the priority of autonomous civil society. It is where citizens enjoy adequate housing, services and facilities, affordable healthcare, well-paying job opportunities, and adequate social provision for all. The system suggested to govern the process of achieving Good city is assessed through six criteria to designate actions between the potential urban actors: the state, the corporate and civil society (Friedmann, 2000).
The coherent elaborations of Good City by Friedmann (2000) address nearly all essential aspects of the city that may spring to mind, challenging any further addition. Two references the author did not discuss due to domain-specific purposes. These are: the physical three dimensional image of the city and topics of Sustainability. Unfortunately, they are not my field of interest too. However, it seems unlikely possible for anyone to wholly grasp the divergent topic of Good City or (what makes a good city?). It is as Friedmann himself concluded "no one should have a final say about the good city" (Friedmann, 2000). Yet, this conveys the question "Why?" why Utopian Good city should remain an ongoing, time-binding discourse? several justifications can respond to this question starting from: the diverse understanding of the notion 'common good', the multiple actors involved in the process, the transformation of city form, and the advent of new variables such as technologies and political systems…etc. all these accounts can be collectively included under the constant need for change. Change is inevitable and it affects all aspects of our lives from needs to interests, from people to systems. Learning how to adapt with change instead of resisting it, will convey diversity, flexibility and progress to any collaborative Entity. Thus, a good city that promotes human prosperity should employ change to grow ingenious. For that reason I chose my first criteria for a Good city to have the ability to change…Grow.
The Good city IV: The Ability to change…Grow
Brand (1994) studied the evolution of buildings throughout a long period of time, He concluded that people are happiest in high adaptable buildings that can accommodate their constantly changing demands. This argument can logically expand to a larger context to include cities. An urban interpretation of Brand's (1994) work would approve that people are happiest in cities where change occurs at every scale from weeks to centuries, such cities are fractals in time. Such cities fulfil an important aspect of what I presumed a Good City must have, that is the ability to grow. Change is constant, however progress is not. What makes city Grows is the capability to employ change to reach progress.
Change in a city can be depicted in three levels:
People: people change on a daily bases. Interests, demands, ideologies…etc.
Systems: whether political, social, economic, any change in these systems will defiantly affect the city development.
Environment: comprising both natural and built environment. Alteration in natural environment can be as minimum as cutting a tree or as drastic as Hurricane Katrina. The built environment is more concerned with the physical human made features of the city. How sufficiently the city address these changes reflects its degree of accomplishment.
At all levels, a Good City is expected to embrace the change in order to flourish and keep on growing. It must be flexible enough to adapt with all emergent issues to maintain its vision for successive generations. Failing to cope adequately with change will cause the city an irremediable damage. Perhaps, Arab spring would be an ideal case to reveal what might happen when a city or part of its systems resist change and refuse anticipated transformation.
The Ability to change and grow can only be achieved through Friedmann's (2000) good governance system and Innovative solutions which will be discussed below as the fifth criteria of a Good City.
The Good city V: Promoting Innovation
Promoting Innovation is the generator key for human development. Overthinking means and methods to create a Good City could lead to inapt and limited solutions for some cases and societies. In other scenarios they could lead to outdated and unyielding procedures. Thus Promoting innovation as a concept for creating solutions would lead to better more flexible outcomes. Limiting the Good city with fixed systems or approaches to apply, even if they seem the best practice of their time, would be perilous. It is more substantial to expand the horizon when discussing a criteria of a city that would last for several generations. The importance of fostering innovative acts and practices is to guarantee the process of generating creative ideas which respond to changing demands of people, systems and environment. As discussed earlier the ability of a city to change is the key to vigorous growth.
Innovation is a wide interdisciplinary term, it can be as simple as Thompson's (1965) defined "Innovation is the generation, acceptance and implementation of new ideas, processes products or services" or multifaceted as Kimberly (1981) described "There are three stages of innovation: innovation as a process, innovation as a discrete item including, products, programs or services; and innovation as an attribute of organizations." Therefore it marks almost every issue related to Good city including ecology, sustainability, management and design. Moreover, it helps making use of new emergent aspects such as technologies, knowledge and media.
Disregarding the innovation factor in the making of a progressive entity would be critical. Pursuing innovation should be an objective when targeting a Good City.
References:
Baregheh A., Rowley J., Sambrook S. (2009) "Towards a multidisciplinary definition of innovation", Management Decision, Vol. 47 Iss: 8, pp.1323 - 1339
Brand, S. (1994). How Buildings Learn. New York: Viking.
Friedmann, J. (2000) "The Good City: In Defence of Utopian Thinking" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(2):460-472.
Kimberly, J.R. (1981), "Managerial innovation", in Nystrom, P.C. and Starbuck, W.H. (Eds), Hand Book of Organization Design, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
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sara a. Al-ghamdi
12/2/15
Assignment 2
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