The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors CELEBRATIONSOF URBANITYEditorialby Alessandro Bus Cover Picture: Urban Landscape Nr. 11 by Alessandro Bus The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors CELEBRATIONS OFURBANITYEditorialby Alessandro Bus* 1. DECONSTRUCTING THE RHETORIC OF URBANITY In the last two decades urbanity has been an omnipresent subject in progressive urban planning debate, and an everlasting mantra in urban rhetoric.As far away as its actual implementation still seems to be from most of the self-centric signature-productions of the architectural stardom, the shift to an anti-modern urbanism seems now widely accepted, obvious and advantageous to forward-thinking urban planners and designers.That urbanity per se is a goal, though, has yet to be determined. In a new, after-modern era wherein the notion of urbanity is widely celebrated, bill boarded and squeezed into an often narrow iconic vision by realtors, private enterprises as well as by entrepreneurial administrations, our first aim must be to question, challenge and re-discuss urbanity. *Alessandro Bus is Chief Editor of The Urban Reinventors, as well as a licensed Architect (Berlins Chamber of Architects), a Ph.D. candidateinUrbanPlanningattheTechnischeUniversittBerlinandavisitingscholarattheGraduateSchoolofArchitecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University in New York.His writing and research interests explore entrepreneurial shifts in urban policies and recent strategies of reinvention of the urban environment in western cities. His main research areas are architecture, historic preservation, urban planning, urban design, urban and suburban regional development, urban redevelopment strategies, creative strategies, urban renaissance, urban regeneration.Bus has been awarded the Erwin Stephan Preis of the Technische Universitt Berlin in 2004, and has worked in 2005 on Traccia di Memoria, winning project in the architectural competition for a monument to the Italian Resistance in Florence. He has lectured in Italy, Poland and Germany. Urban writer and photographer, he recently directed a documentary film on the gentrification of former East Berlin (Ein Berliner Haus), which was awarded a special mention by the FestivalderNationen (Vienna) in 2006. Bus has heretofore published several articles and book chapters in Germany and Italy and cooperated in research projects in both countries.The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors So, what is urbanity? And who has the right and power to define what urbanity is, or ought to be? And isnt urbanity per se an ambiguous concept? In my ongoing researches I have reviewed different models of urbanity (or, of what is considered to be urbanity), and identified a wide array of qualities that are supposed to make places urban. These are mostly vague notions much used in urban planning discourse: diversity, liveliness, density. Focusing on the analysis of selected case studies, I moved beyond these notions and explored other distinctive features of places we call urban - these are described in chapters 4, 5 and 6. We have the archetypal J ane J acobs urban model of Manhattans West Village, with its narrow lively streets, its short blocks, its mix of old and new architectural styles, its density of small-scale retail and its pedestrian friendliness. We have the dirty urban model of places such as J ackson Heights in New Yorks borough of Queens, where urbanity results from the crowding of people of all races mingling together in a multicultural, chaotic, untidy and extremely lively environment. We have the selective urbanity of the gentrified city, home to Floridas creative class, such as the new downtowns in Berlin Mitte, in Paris Le Marais or in Londons East End, with their array of Starbucks cafs, lounge bars and trendy commercial streets. We have the urban renaissance model, such as the new Covent Garden in London, where a brand new urbanity made of polished architectures, fine stores and coffee tables in the streets are mostly catering to gentrifiers and tourists, and where a strong surveillance through cameras and police guards is constantly needed. We have the festival marketplace model of a nostalgic, inauthentic urbanity, invented or reinvented as a commodity for mass tourism. We finally have the New Urbanist model, with its brand new, if often historicist, architectures, its pedestrian-oriented environments, its dense urban fabric, its promises of an urban quality of life unknown to most US dwellers. Moreover, the term urbanity has a variety of meanings in urban literature. Among architects it may mostly reflect a mix of building types, of commercial offerings, and of architectural styles, whereas among urban planners and urban designers, urbanity may result from a mix of efficient public transportation, pedestrian-friendly streets, and good social policies; for sociologist, anthropologists and geographers, tolerance and acceptance of the other, as well as mixed uses, and class or racial-ethnic heterogeneity, may represent the core meaning of urbanity. What is important here is to investigate whether urbanity may be the answer to our concerns of social inclusion, tolerance, quality of life, individual and collective fulfillment. And if so, what kind of urbanity do we stand for? 2. MODERNISM IS DEAD! LONG LIVE URBANITY! BUT We can start by defining urbanity through the anti-modernist paradigm. J an Scheurer, whose paper Compact City Policy: How Europe Rediscovered its History and Met Resistanceis featured in this issue of The Urban Reinventors, argues: recent compact city paradigms can be seen as results of a strong backlash against post-war urban development - both of the dispersed kind envisioned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 'Broadacre City' (1945) and the urban surgery approach of Le Corbusier's 'Ville Radieuse' (1933). The practice of modernist urban reconstruction following such models had fallen from grace with the general public and left a generation of planners substantially disillusioned, not only because their economic, social and The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors environmental damage had become obvious, but equally because the very essence of urbanity and its role in the history of civilisation appeared under threat. In fact, according to Scheurer, modernist planning has produced nothing but an overly simplified, paternalistic urbanism, which has in time proved unable to mirror the complexity of urban life: Thus the urban district becomes mono-functional, either accommodating residential or commercial or industrial or recreational uses, but seldom a mix of more than one. The streetscape is determined by the function of movement, while its historic role as a place for socialization is pushed aside. The building, formerly designed with versatility in mind to facilitate changes in usage over time, is now perfected to fit its original purpose, but often poorly equipped to accommodate another should future necessities demand this. The ongoing deconstruction of urban complexity has, over the course of the past century, fundamentally altered the image of the city as an incubator of civilization, as a medium of human values which have been a remarkably persistent feature of European urban history over the past 2000 years. The urban nightmare envisioned by Le Corbusier, and made into practice in over 50 years of modernist bureaucracy, has ultimately produced, according to Simon Richards essay (presented in this issue, The Antisocial Urbanism of Le Corbusier ), an antisocial environment, against which progressive urban planning seems to be now finally reacting: In proposing the elimination of side alleys and shops, in granting limited space for cafs, community centers, and theaters, in dispersing them over great distances, and constructing them of uninviting concrete, glass, and steel, Le Corbusier expressed his contempt for the teeming hubbub that urbanists now esteem [] Cities are now valued, without question, as being sites of social activity par excellence. Therefore an urban planner proposing to make antisocial cities is an idea so alien to contemporary habits of thought that we must dismiss someone like Le Corbusier as either negligent or mad. But however odd it seems, antisocial thinking about cities has been the dominant strain of urban discourse throughout most of its two and a half millennia history. Though, if modernism is dead, the physical signs of its long-lasting influence are still permeating our daily lives, in the US as well as in Europe. The most visible signs of an antisocial urbanism that relies on car-dependency and individual atomism are still to be seen in the U.S. suburbs, and in the characteristic way of life they helped produce. According to Michael Thompsons article The Suburban Assault on Democracy , featured in this issue, suburbs provide a spatial pattern of social life that [] actively erodes the interactive social foundations of everyday life [thus leading] to an erosion of democratic sensibilities and democratic forms of life. It is the missing city that, in Thompsons words, makes people anti-social: Whereas urban environments are characterized by diversity, a density of social interaction, and a constant exposure to difference and newness capable of spawning a sense of openness and constant sense of newness, and ways of innovating and exploring what Georg Simmel referred to as the technique of life, suburban life is characterized by an isolation from those very activities and external forces [] it is the spatial manifestation of the liberal political and cultural utopia: to be able to separate public and private at ones own whim and be able to live unencumbered by the various obligations of public and social life. But Thompsons argument goes even further, correlating the geography of suburbia with specific political behaviors: One way of looking at the relation between space and political values and ideology is through the spatial pattern of voting behavior [] The more acute political analysts of the past two American presidential elections could see - when they broke the electoral map down by counties instead of merely by states - that liberal-democratic votes The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors were cast almost exclusively in urban or heavily metropolitan counties; all else was a sea of republican and varying degrees of conservative sentiment. AcomparableconclusionwasfirstdevelopedbypoliticalscientistRobertPutnam,whenin BowlingAloneTheCollapseandRevivalofAmericanCommunity(2000),heassociated sprawl and suburban settings with a reinforced atomistic individualism and a lessening of social capital. It is ironic that the latest investigations by Putnam (2007, E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century ) have surprisingly come to quite an opposite conclusion, a conclusion that puzzled Putnam himself. In the 41 case studies Putnam analyzed in the U.S., his research suggests that the greater the diversity in a community, the less the community is engaged in social or political activities. According to Putnam, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to hunker down - that is, to pull in like a turtle. In sum, the study illustrates real threats to social cohesion posed by a high degree of diversity, which is typical of dense urban settings. And, with no wonder, it has been widely capitalized on by conservatives and right wing intellectuals as a proof of the harm large-scale immigration allegedly causes to the social fabric of a country. For example, journalist Michael J onas (2007, The Downside of Diversity , Boston Globe) argues in his critique: It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam [] has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.[] Putnam's work adds to a growing body of research indicating that more diverse populations seem to extend themselves less on behalf of collective needs and goals.. It is important to acknowledge the real challenges and threats posed by diversity in dense multicultural urban settings, unlike racially- and class-homogeneous suburbs. But what conservative critiques may have forgotten, and Michael J onas doesnt thoroughly consider in his review, is what kind of measures of civic health have been used in this investigation. They may have forgotten that many of the socially mixed or ethnic neighborhoods pointed out in this study are often immigration districts, where the presence of still uprooted foreign dwellers and newcomers, many of whom have no permanent residency in the US, many of whom missing a regular visa and many of whom even likely to be deported in few years when their job-contract is over, is paramount. These are neighborhoods where social relationships and forms of mutual help are often informal - that is, not institutionalized, and therefore difficult to investigate through quantitative analysis or even through interviews. Moreover, if we consider the particular case of immigration districts, we should recognize that it is not easy to settle down and build significant social and human relationship when ones very permanence in the new country is at stake, let alone to vote, to give to charity and to work on community projects when you are an illegal or temporary immigrant. The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors 3. WHAT KIND OF URBANITY DO WE STAND FOR? An exhibition in New York at the Municipal Art Society is currently celebrating J ane J acobs ( Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York ), whose seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) has represented the most powerful critique of modernist policies of urban renewal in the United States, and has been credited with reaching far beyond planning issues to strongly influence the spirit and the sensitivity of an era. We needed a woman - and what a woman: an anti-planner, an activist, a mother, and an intellectual warrior (Robert Fulford) - to finally unmask the intellectual dishonesty of the modernist dogma, and to take care of the mess modernist planning produced in over 50 years of unquestioned automatism. The fact is, J acobs just loved cities. And unlike the political elites of the time, she had the sensitivity to just look at them for what they were, and not for what they ought to be in the eyes of self-appointed demiurgical elites. In her essay Cities and Diversity: Should we want it? Can we plan for it?(2005, linked in this issue), Susan Fainstein contextualizes the core message of J acobs: J acobs urges planners to look at cities that people love, and which are characterized by congestion, multiple interactions among strangers, short streets, and mixed uses. In later works she contends that diversity not only makes cities more appealing but is the source of economic productivity. Her reasoning anticipates the recent, widely publicized argument of Richard Florida (2002), who asserts that places have replaced companies as the key organizing units in our economy. They do so, as both he and J acobs argue, because their diversity stimulates creativity. Through her writings, J ane J acobs has codified a new sense of urban life. A way of life which people living in dense urban settings experience and enjoy daily: an urban way of life made of cultural openness, personal enrichment, self fulfillment and tolerance. But as fascinating as it is, her interpretation couldnt eschew instrumentalizations. Thomas Wsts semiotic work on urbanity (Urbanitt: Ein Mythos und sein Potential), whose excerpts are featured in this issue, ( The Urbanity Myth ) reviews literary contributions on the topic of urbanity, coming to the harsh conclusion that urbanity is, after all, nothing but a myth, and therefore likely to be instrumentalized by symbolic politics. That is, by politics making use of symbols, ideal visions and rhetoric, rather than concrete commitments, in order to achieve consent. Wst argues: It doesnt matter here that the word urbanity brings images to mind; what matters is mainly what kind of images this word recalls: images of a good and beautiful way of life in the city in any case, images created according to the perception of the dominating classes. Ideal images, from which the quality of daily life is not precisely molded. Wsts concerns find their reason for being in contemporary urban practice. Notably the urban renaissance agenda has appropriated J acobs idea of urbanity and reduced it into a model which leaves us bewildered.I argue that the urbanity J acobs described in her writings (and she was well aware of that) was nothing but the coincidence of a moment, a fragment of time, in a particular place. It was the moment in which a neighborhood (in her case, New York Citys Greenwich Village in the Sixties) was able to show a perfect balance of strong social capital, economic liveliness, and atmospheric charm. Our experience suggests us: it is the magic moment which generally precedes gentrification. A moment that we should value and treasure for as long as it lasts. The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors But the urban renaissance agenda has attempted to artificially recreate this elusive, magic moment, and to freeze it in time, de facto reinventing urban environments through the hyper gentrification of districts whose aesthetics, through policies of embellishment and image makeovers, unsuccessfully try to mimic an authentic urban feeling, and whose social fabric is rigidly determined by the higher values of the land where such strategies have been implemented, actually preventing any authentic social mixture, and banning altogether diversity and informality. Because urban renaissance policies imperative is to reposition the inner city in the geography of consumption, in practice their main effort is aimed at reinventing the city as an entertainment- and consumption-based venue. By pushing the poorest and undesirables out of the repackaged downtown through forms of police control and monitoring policies of so-called anti-social behaviors, the urban renaissance agenda has been thus able to divide cities further. In the UK, the New Labour urban agenda has shown so many flaws, only a decade and a half after its first implementations, that a wide array of papers and studies are now available for us to see, showing the vacuity, inconsistency, dreariness and the dysfunctional outcomes of the urbanity-package it delivered.In conclusion, the politics of the urban renaissance are failing as measures to foster social integration and an authentic sense of urbanity, just because they were never really meant to achieve such goals. In her abovementioned essay, Fainstein also argues, Planned communities designed with the goal of diversity, whether within inner cities or in new-urbanist or neotraditional greenfields developments, seem inevitably to attract accusations of inauthenticity, of being a simulacrum, rather than the real thing. Thus, planners appear caught in an insoluble dilemmaeither leave the market to take its course or impose an oxymoronic diverse order. New Urbanism hasnt escaped this harsh critique, either. New Urbanism as well has been sentenced guilty of inauthenticity. For New Urbanism theorists as well as practitioners, it is hard to understand the scale of criticism directed against their work. Partly, this judgmental attitude especially on the part of the academia may come from the fact that the tones used by the N.U. faction are often excessively celebratory, and therefore subject to very easy attack when it goes to analyzing the more complex reality of new urbanist practices and new urbanist urban developments. Partly, a big part of criticism, addressing mainly aesthetic criteria, comes by side of contemporary architects, who simply cant accept the fact that new urbanism turns to historicist repertoires and nostalgic visions of a time gone by (which, as a matter of fact, is not always the case). Yet, with its first large-scale revolutionary break with modernistic urban concepts of zoning and functionalandsocialdivision,NewUrbanismcanbeseenasapotentialantidotetothe antisocial urbanism Simon Richards described in his abovementioned essay, where he argues The New Urbanism []seeks to shape new cities and retrofit existing ones so that their spacesmakesocializingnotsimplyavailablebutunavoidable.TheNewUrbanismhasa charterthatadvocatescompact,walkableneighborhoodsandextensive,efficientpublic transportationtominimizedependenceonone-personorone-familycars.Thecharterfavors dense integration in neighborhoods of housing, commerce, light industry, and civic institutions likeschoolsandhospitals.[]Underpinningallthesepreferencesisacommitmenttothe The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors reinvigorationofcivicvaluesandprideincitizenshipthroughwideanddeepparticipationin collective affairs. It has always been clear to down-to-earth planners that a genuine urbanity cant be built from scratch. Moreover, urbanity doesnt necessarily originate from architecture. Countless intriguing and attractive places show a strong sense of urbanity, and yet are completely lacking good or even decent architecture. Butagoodandcaringarchitecturecanprovideaphysicalenvironmentwhereurbanitycan flourish.Inthissense,whatmaybeinterestingtonoticehereistheunderlyingpragmatism behindtheNewUrbanistvisionsandpractice.Bysimplyre-usingthearchitecturesandthe urban models that have proven in history to be the ones that people value and where people feel at ease rather than engaging in self-referential virtuosities - New Urbanist architects seem to have chosen a more concealed and modest role than their counterparts in the architectural stardom. New Urbanism may prove, yes, unable to immediately create from scratch an authentic sense of urbanity; but the passage of time could change this: years from now, many of these newly developed districts could evolve to new fascinating forms. Whereas, without refurbishment, retrofitting, or their plain demolition, very few relics of the modernist legacy have ever become at least permeable to urbanity.Looking back at the bad urbanism of the modernist era, New Urbanism can be considered an outstanding step forward. New Urbanists however should renounce the architects dream, that is, a self-centric idea of what good architecture, and good life ought to be, and rather concentrate on the pursuit of a New Pragmatism, carrying on with their undoubtedly passionate attempt to produce a good physical framework - a framework that, provided time, will let urbanity flourish. Nevertheless, a good physical framework wont be enough. Only policies favoring justice and inclusiveness can achieve what many architects dream to achieve merely through design. Fainstein (ibidem) argues: The new urbanist approach of intermixing a variety of building types and levels of affordability, along with its support for transport oriented development, is not the panacea that some of its supporters assume. If, however, it becomes the template for in-fill development (rather than the formula to justify destruction of public housing), it can provide a physical framework for a city that offers a higher quality of life to residents and visitors. Developing an appropriate physical setting for a heterogeneous urbanity, however, can go only so far in the generation of a just city. Most crucial is a political consciousness that supports progressive moves at national and local levels toward respectfulness of others and greater equality. 4. SPICING UP URBANITY: ATMOSPHERE, PLAYFULNESS, SENSUALITY In his paper Modes and Manifestations of Improvisation in Urban Planning, Design, Theory , featured in this issue, Dean C. Rowan shows how urban development may be considered in terms of musical categories, and associates spontaneous and informal urban actions with their analog in musical discourse: improvisation. The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors The concept of improvisation helps us challenge the common rhetoric of urbanity. Improvisation is the practice of acting and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act. By giving rise to informal ways of life and allowing for creative thoughts, innovative ideas, radical opinions, cultural movements, and underground niches, as well as new entrepreneurial models to flourish and grow, improvisation is an all-present part of the daily experience of world-citizens in complex multicultural metropolises. A dose of improvisation makes people aware of the unpredictability of urban life, but also of its sensuality and playfulness. Improvisation ultimately makes cities atmospheric environments. Alltheabovementionedqualitiesaresurelyvague,neverthelesstheyaresomehowstrongly rooted in our common feelings about urbanity. Playfulness could be explained as a feeling of freedomallowingfortheexperimentationofnewwaysoflife,aswellasnewculturaland intellectual manifestations. Sensuality could be defined as the magic ability of the urban setting toseducethehumanbeing,muchas19thCenturyParisbewitchedBenjaminsflneur. Atmospheremightbedescribedasthequalitythatismoredeeplyrootedinthesoulofthe human being, and makes him miss a city he left, or long for a new haven; it is the state of mind(therecallingofflavors,images,memories)thatthehumanbeingassociateswitha specific urban setting. According to Rowan, rational planners have been obsessed with controlling how and when and which people use public as well as private space. Meanwhile, ordinary people continue to find creative ways of appropriating spaces and creating places, in spite of planning, to fulfill their desires as well as their needs, to tend the spirit as well as take care of the rent [] Improvisation thus becomes a figure for liberation, expression, risk, spontaneity, and excitement; at another register, for noise and cacophony; and also for flexibility, cooperation, and even an idealized conception of democracy. Indeed, democracy is often figured in terms of multitudes of voices, and certain kinds of music whose performance is deliberately intended to require relatively little preparation at all are referred to as free music, free jazz, or as guitarist Derek Bailey puts it, freely improvised music. A dose of improvisation, or anarchy, is what makes metropolises those cauldrons of creativity and cultural production that they are, and what makes people living in dense urban settings more tolerant and socially and politically mature than their suburban counterpart. Again Rowan, mentioning sociologist Richard Sennet, explains: Sennett has proposed no less than a new anarchy as a necessary solution to urban settings: The great promise of city life is a new kind of confusion possible within its borders, an anarchy that will not destroy men [sic], but make them richer and more mature (107-08). Sennetts anarchy is thus an objective correlative of the adults acceptance of chance in life (123-24). An adult accepts chance only after having survived risks, not by having avoided them, and cities where people are forced to confront each other present such risks. Drawing from Webers ethics of responsibility, he calls for a willingness to get involved in the kind of messy, disorganized social experiences that are immune to some transcendent end or justification. 5. THE DOWNSIDE OF URBANITYThe Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Urbanity is a magnet for people, market, and capital. The struggle for space (Saskia Sassen) in successful cities or in advantaged districts pushes up prices for land, making access for lower income households, as well as niche-markets and small enterprises, much harder, and ultimately pricing out of its boundaries the same informal creative forces the entrepreneurial city was trying to attract in the first instance - as the case of Bloombergs New York is now clearly demonstrating. Coming back to J ane J acobs Greenwich Village of the Sixties, I previously argued that this extraordinary model of urbanity has been nothing but the coincidence of a particular moment in time and a particular space or setting. I also argued that that is the moment that generally preceeds gentrification. In fact, todays West Village is an extraordinary lively, overly gentrified neighborhood, with an exquisite quality of life, which new affluent urban classes are willing to pay good money for. Todays (and not J acobs) West Village is the main model referred to by the urban renaissance rhetoric. As much as we long for urbanity, we have to face the fact that this new urbanity that the entrepreneurial city is delivering, is nothing else but the systematizedproduction of gentrified urban settings. Thus, gentrification is the downside of urbanity. In his renowned paper New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as New Global Strategy , whose excerpts are featured in this issue, Neil Smith makes his theory clear: A seemingly serendipitous, unplanned process that popped up in the postwar housing market is now, at one extreme, ambitiously and scrupulously planned. That which was utterly haphazard is increasingly systematized [] Retaking the city for the middle classes involves a lot more than simply providing gentrified housing. Third-wave gentrification has evolved into a vehicle for transforming whole areas into new landscape complexes that pioneer a comprehensive class-inflected urban remake. These new landscape complexes now integrate housing with shopping, restaurants, cultural facilities, open space, employment opportunitieswhole new complexes of recreation, consumption, production, and pleasure, as well as residence. Moreover, gentrification as a political goal is hidden under the more appealing disguise of urban regeneration and urban renaissance: Whether in its quaint form, represented by Glasss mews, or in its socially organized form in the twenty-first century, gentrification portends a displacement of working-class residents from urban centers. Indeed, the class nature of the process, transparent in Glasss version of gentrification, is assiduously hidden in the verbiage of the British Labour government. That symptomatic silence says as much about the citys changing social and cultural geography, twinned with a changing economic geography, as do its more visible and voluble signs (ibidem). The latest shift in economic geography theorized by Smith is what makes urbanity so appealing to politics. In her paper The Ambivalence of Diversity and the Politics of urban Renaissance , featured in the first issue of this magazine, Loretta Less argues that "urban revitalization strategies are aimed not just at attracting middle class gentrifiers as resident taxpayers, but also at bringing them back to urban areas as consuming visitors. The gentrified city is thus built as an entertainment venue for the consuming middle classes". That urbanity has been repackaged and delivered as a commodity to city consumers (urban mass-tourists as well as affluent gentrifiers) is commented by Fainstein in her paper Tourism The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors and the Commodification of Urban Culture , featured in this issue: The urban culture has become in itself a commodity, a commodity which has in fact a kind of mythological aspect. Walter Benjamins picture of the arcades, of sitting in the cafe, of strolling, of the flneur, these are all cultural images which are familiar to the educated, and even not so educated, population of the world. Quoting, among other examples, Disneys makeover of New Yorks once seedy and sinister Times Square, Fainstein explains: we can assume that the main spatial effect of urban tourism is to create areas that look appealing and that do not feature people in manual labour. Famously in the Disney parks, there are underground corridors, where the so-called cast members - that is, the employees - get from place to place so that people only see them as their imaginary selves. They only see them as Mickey Mouse or in hoop skirts rather than as their real selves. At any rate, tourist spaces exclude visible evidence of poverty and give people opportunities for entertainment and for officially sanctioned fun. In sum, the side effects of urban regeneration policies undertaken by private actors and public-private partnerships, such as displacement of classes of lesser means due to gentrification in districts where urban reinvention strategies are implemented, control and privatization of the public space through forms of festivalization within entertainment-and-consumption-based urban redevelopments, and increasing social segregation and spatial division in downtowns of wealth and ghettos of misery, cast the darkest shadow over the whole rhetoric of urbanity of the entrepreneurial city. Neil Smith's claim that a new "revanchist" urbanism has replaced the liberal urban policy in the advanced capitalist world seems confirmed, since spatial unevenness and social inequity produced by market-led urban redevelopment within urban redevelopment policies masked under the urbanity flag, represent the most consistent findings by academic researchers worldwide. After all these considerations, the main question remains, and it becomes even more critical: in the end, do we really want urbanity? 6.CONCLUSIONS.TOLERANCEANDINCLUSIVENESS:URBANITYASARESOLVED TENSION Theanswerisyes,wedowanturbanity.Wewantourcitiestorecoverfromthewoundsof antisocial planning. We do want our cities to be vibrant, multicultural, busy, atmospheric, and lively. But most of all, we want our cities to be havens for enriching, fulfilling, just social lives. Asshowninthispaper,theurbanity-packagebackedbytheentrepreneurialagendahas obviously rather other goals, namely economic growth and concentration of capital and affluent taxpayerswithinthecityboundaries.Thesearelegitimateobjectivesintheentrepreneurial framework. Nonetheless, the pursuit of these goals is compatible with an aesthetic of urbanity, rather than with urbanity itself. The reality is, there cant be genuine urbanity without tension. There cant be urbanity without thatbitofanarchyRichardSennetidentifiesasameanforpersonalenrichmentandsocial education.Urbanityhasmanifesteditselfinpeculiarmomentsintime,whereabalanced, resolved tension between different instances, issues, dreams and goals has existed. That is, a tension between the known and the unknown, between the resident and the visitor, between the oldandthenew,betweenorganizationandimprovisation,betweenchaosandorder.There The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors have always been brief moments in history in certain places where these tensions have found a harmonious, yet fragile balance. These brief moments of resolved tension have been, and are, the way urbanity manifests itself. A balance of all these tensions can only come from tolerance (acceptance of the other), and inclusiveness - that is, social justice (I prefer using the notion of inclusiveness rather than that of diversity,sincethelatterhasshownbeingtooanambivalentconceptandtooeasily exploitable in the urbanity rhetoric). In sum, the situation is double-faced.Theactualtrendsinplanningpracticeseemtoshowthaturbanplanninghasfinallymadea critical shift towards urbanity. Yet, these outstanding steps in the planning practice have been leadbypoliticsintheframeworkofambivalentandoftendeceitfulinterpretationsofurbanity, thus further reinforcing gentrification, spatial segregation and social inequalities and scorning our assumption of urbanity as a means for enriching, fulfilling, and just social lives. There might be two main reasons for this: either the goal in itself is wrong, or wrong are the policies implemented in its pursuit. We examined how the goal in itself (the rhetoric of urbanity) is elusive, vague and ambivalent. And we also explained how the policies implemented in its pursuit are deceitful, in that they dont deliver what they promised. Yet, in a sort of vicious circle, we have also argued how these policies werent able to deliver what they promised, simply because they were not really meant to do so. The goals of the entrepreneurial city are in conflict with our assumption of urbanity as a tension of different instances. They are rather compatible with a merely aesthetic vision of urbanity, which is not what we want. Yet,wecanlookaroundallovertheworldatplaceswhereanonperfect,yetharmoniously resolved mix of good politics, good architecture, and good social customs have created unique urban settings apt for fulfilling social lives. None of them is perfect, to be sure, yet examples abound. As J ane J acobs suggested, I propose to look at the cities we love. Look at them and studyhowtheywork,andaskourselveswhatmakestheseplacesspecial.Beitastrong multiculturalbase,beitastrongculturalidentityoftheplace,beitanefficientpublic transportation system, be it good policies reinforcing social mix and affordability, and be it an eclecticmixofoldandnewarchitecture:thefactis,thereareparticularplacesinparticular momentsthataregenuinelyshowingabalanced,harmonicallyresolvedtensionbetweena number of issues, of instances, of desires. These places exist. These are the places that citizens value and care for, these are the places progressiveurbanplannersadmire,thesearetheplacesthatnewcomersembraceastheir haven for an enriching and fulfilling life. Contradicting Thomas Wsts assertion, urbanity, after all,isnotamythintheperception ofmillionsofpeopleworldwide,butarealityoftheirdaily lives. 7.MORE, IN THIS ISSUE The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors The Urban Reinventors continues its interest in exploring how the aftermath of the catastrophe is unraveling in New Orleans, by signaling two interesting contributions.In After the Aftermath (on Metropolis Magazine, November 07), renowned author Philip Nobel gives an insight on the state of reconstructions in todays New Orleans: "Two years after the flood, not knowing the specific terrain before, I found it hard to tell that New Orleanss Lower Ninth Ward has not suffered from some slow-burning economic calamity or midnight social convulsion. Looking down Deslonde or Tennessee Streets, where they run parallel to the burst levee, you see only continuous green scrub, a few trees, one very stubborn house battered but still on its foundation, and another askew, awaiting demolition. There is a single white trailer nearby, its door swinging. In the clearings where the brush and vines have not yet converged, you can find pieces of driveway blacktop and tiled kitchen floors [] A satellite view on Google Maps taken last year still shows the fields of splintered and piled houses as they were before most of the wreckage was removed from the Lower Ninth and nature began to move back in to a place from which it probably never should have been evicted. Now it looks like a park. And since the city currently has no plans to redevelop the area, since commerce is either distant or nonexistent, since title to the land (often the only asset of the displaced) is in many cases documented more by custom than paperwork, it is likely to stay that way for some time.In his After Katrina, a Lonely Homecoming(on The Washington Post, August 2007), Peter Whoriskeynotes how most of New Orleans neighborhoods still remain abandoned two years after the catastrophe: "Today, nearly two years after the storm, 11 of 14 properties on the block stand vacant, and in interviews, all but one of those who left indicated they have no intention of returning. Far from rising from the devastation of Katrina, this slice of St. Bernard Parish remains a desolate and depressing place [] It is a scene repeated in flood-ravaged neighborhoods elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, especially parts of the Lower Ninth Ward, Gentilly and New Orleans East. In St. Bernard, most of the 67,000 residents have not returned. The massive desertions are evidence that Katrina's destructive effects are no longer acute but chronic and that, as evacuees set down roots elsewhere, many close-knit communities blasted apart by the storm may never return [] Exactly who is to blame for the persistent abandonment is a matter of argument here [] Some point to the FEMA-led rebuilding bureaucracy, which has proved unequal at times to the challenge of rapidly rebuilding the vast wreckage. Others cite paperwork delays plaguing the state-run 'Road Home' program, which -- eventually -- is supposed to distribute federal funds to homeowners." The Gallery section of this issue is consistently fully dedicated to the topic of urbanity, and it features a series of hand drawings from Polish urban designer Marcelina CH Kuberska, a gallery of photographs describing the urban feeling of Havana by photographer Atsushi Tsunoda, astounding images of Asianmetropolises by photographer Staffan Holgersson, a gallery of pixellated futuristic cityscapes designed by the Berlin-based team eBOY, a rich anthology of images of the most persuasive mixed-use urban-infill developments of the New Urbanism in the last decade, and a collection of urban artworks by Berlin- based artist Timotheus Paulus Roeloffs. The Video Gallery section features the trailer of the upcoming feature length documentary film Sprawling from Grace, Driven to Madness directed by David M. Edwards, which explores the ravages of American suburban sprawl, what America has lost as a result, and the perils we will face if we don't change the way we build our cities going forward. Emotion Pictures production is hoping for completion by the end of the year, and hopes to be in theaters by spring 2008. Also presented is the trailer of Gregory Greenes documentary film The end of Suburbia Oil depletion and the end of the American Dream. From the introduction: What does Oil Peak The Urban Reinventors Paper Series2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors Alessandro Bus EditorialThe Urban Reinventors Issue 2 December 07Celebrations of Urbanity2005-2007 The Urban Reinventors mean for North America? As energy prices skyrocket in the coming years, how will the populations of suburbia react to the collapse of their dream? Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of tomorrow? The Video Section also presents the trailer of A Broad Way (Saulgoode Entertainment), the first massive collaborative documentary film about New York City, shot in only one hour along Manhattans Broadway by hundreds of filmmaker strategically located on every block of Broadway from it's Northern tip at 220th Street to Battery Park.Being a platform for young film makers, the Video section also features the animation video Ulica!/Street! by the 24 years old english filmmaker Thomas Knowler, the short documentary film Tracing Urbanity of UAPD group, featuring a speech of Rem Koolhaas on the roles of architects and urban planners, and Taped, documentation of an odd urban action which took place in New York Citys Union Square (by UAPD). Finally, the Urban Stories Section presents three novelists and their visions of the big metropolis: renowned author Ricardo Cortez Cruz, in Up , depicts a raw insight of the urban ghetto; amateur urban writer J essica Phippen tells her story of New York City Blackout, while young writer Shawn Willick traces surreal nocturnal urban visions of a Forgotten City .