Visionary Cities. Urgencies for the City of the Future

by Winy Maas

Recognizing that our civic responsibilities towards our environments have drastically increased, Visionary Cities ambitiously sets the agenda for the city of the future. Amid crippling bureaucracies and economic crises, present-day thinking on city design remains woefully inadequate, and this first publication in NAi's Future Cities Series announces 12 civic issues that are in need of transformation through the researches of The Why Factory, a global urban-studies thinktank operated in part by the Delft University of Technology. These issues “The Solitary (Our Dreams are Undermining the City)”; “The Iconic (Our Idols Have Been Compromised)”; “The Fun (We Are Having Too Much Fun)”; “The Cautious (Being Careful Is Killing Us)”; “The Poor (Slums Are Growing Bigger Than The Cities They Are Part Of”; and “The Future (Our Future Is Being Imagined Without Us).” A howl against civic impotence and the apathy of citizens in the face of incompetence and decay, Visionary Cities makes a manifesto of these and other topics to loudly demand large-scale change on a collective rather than individual level. In an afterword, Winy Maas, of the innovative Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, argues that architecture possesses a visionary dimension waiting to be applied to the cities of the future.

Genres: Architecture

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2010

Reviews

[Pandasurya]

The Why Factory (T?F) is a global think-tank and research institute, led by Winy Maas/ MVRDV at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The Why Factory explores the possibilities for the future development of our cities, focusing on the production of models and visualizations for cities of the future.

http://www.thewhyfactory.com/?page=th...

In Visionary Cities, The Why Factory asks 'What is an urban vision and why do we need one?' and invites you to join them as they explore potential solutions for 12 urgencies that are threatening our cities today.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Maybe instead of waiting for disasters to react to, we could accelerate problems and use them as a motive for forward movement. It's apocalyptic planning in a way. If there is a neighbourhood with a really bad traffic problem, let's make it worse. Let's dedicate that neighbourhood to be the biggest traffic jam on the planet for the next five years. I guarantee that you wil end up with a better solution and more money out of that than if you were to do it a conventional way" (Maas, pg. 219).