June 9, 2009
by Jacqueline Pezzillo Assoc. AIA LEED AP

Event: Strategic Cities: Why some cities can build their visions, why most don’t
Location: Center for Architecture, 06.01.09
Speakers: Jeb Brugmann — Author, Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World (Bloomsbury Press, 2009)
Organizer: Center for Architecture

Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World (Bloomsbury Press, 2009), the latest book by urbanist Jeb Brugmann, explores the development of global urban strategies from local patterns of development. Brugmann counters traditional theories of globalization by arguing that the key to provoking change is linked to the growth of cities and their revolutionary processes. Globalization, as defined by the author, is the process by which people take economics of one city and implement similar strategies in cities around the world. The entrepreneurial premise of this idea is supported by the empowerment of the urban migrant and the anticipated two million people expected to move to urban areas over the next 25 years. As the phenomenon of urban migration progresses and the world’s population propagates, Welcome to the Urban Revolution challenges: how does that affect the way we plan and manage urban centers?

Touching upon key concepts of his book, Brugmann discussed the success of “strategic” global cities such as Barcelona, Curitiba, and Chicago in terms of their development and subsequent management. These cities represent unique and specific responses to the urban climate in which they were planned with the ultimate evaluation residing in the user communities. Curitiba, Brazil, has created an “ecology of solutions,” according to Brugmann, through density strategies and a diversification of bus transport availability in response to the city’s growth crisis.

These systematically generated responses to globalization — Brugmann’s “urban strategy”– are dependent upon strategic institutions, political patronage, and an agenda-driven user community. By transforming our cities into effective solutions, the array of global crises, including poverty, epidemic, recession, and global warming, are addressed by stable political, economical, and ecological mechanisms.

Jacqueline Pezzillo, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, is the communications manager at Davis Brody Bond Aedas and a regular contributor to e-Oculus.