Cities live and flourish when they find their own way to combine density, mixed use, access, active citizenry and quality of life. And thus every square meter that today is not being used in the public interest is a waste, a failure of imagination and citizen engagement. Happily this idea of reclaiming the unoccupied, the abandoned, or the hijacked spaces of the city for the community as a whole is a movement that is now in full flower, and we intend to report on it in World Streets. We are calling this: The un/OCCUPIED movement.
Our first small first step to support this idea in the in-process Facebook site that went on line this morning at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-unOCCUPIED-Movement/605506182823582. Have a look. Help us to turn this into a useful tool.
We can also point you to the Urban Bricolage Tumblr page at http://urbanbricolage.tumblr.com/. A great way to get your feet wet if you wish to get further into this exciting (and at times very delicate and difficult) topic.
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Slogan 1: More important than it may look
Slogan 2: And Not as easy as it looks.
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Eric,
ReplyDeleteAs most of the sites you will be focusing on will not be unoccupied (vacant), but under-occupied, it will be useful to have a definition and metric to allow people to know what sites qualify. And there is also over-occupied sites that the owner tried to put too much enclosed space onto.
There is also a need to define the mixed-use nature of successful development, in the sense that uses in the same area (i.e., walkable neighbourhood) complement each other in terms of getting to most destinations with very short trips, and in creating the ties that complete communi-ties.
Chris Bradshaw, Ottawa