The new Rapid Urbanism Explorer is online. RUE 05 empowers users drawing the site of any envisaged urbanization project anywhere on Earth, to then prototype integrated urbanization scenarios, rapidly.

Users define the site (green), main road (red) and distributor roads (orange), as well as additional parameters (e.g., development control). Based on the defined site and defined parameters (e.g., road width), RUE will generate a 3D model for a climate-smart and inclusive human settlement on the site; all quantities are sent to a financial model where costs and revenues are priced, and the profitability, fiscal feasibility, and affordability are assessed. Also environmental parameters, such as land use efficiency, are analyzed.

Finally, iterative exploration of user inputs and parametrically generated scenarios allows assessing legal (e.g., development control), spatial (e.g., site and housing development), financial (e.g., profitability), social (e.g., affordability to various target groups), and environmental (e.g., land consumption) impact, and to optimize scenarios accordingly.

Disclaimer: the software development of this version was commissioned and financed by Matthias Nohn alias Rapid Urbanism. The prototype is free to use; a future premium version is envisaged to permit downloads of the spatial and quantitative (financial/social/environmental) models against fair pricing, considering project location (e.g., developing vs developed country) and size (e.g., 10ha vs 100ha).

IAUAI is thrilled to share Mariana Morais’ publication From protests to policies: citizen participation towards democratic cities, investigating how citizen participation influences urban policies in Berlin and São Paulo. Her research includes: 

• Framework for assessment for participatory procedures based on the criteria of formalization, openness, inclusiveness, and influence.
• Assessment of four procedures in Berlin and São Paulo 
  • Direct voting: Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co (DW Enteignen), referendum initiative demanding the formulation of a new housing policy; 
  • Representation: Neighborhood Councils (Quartiersräte), local councils to support the implementation of a national program for social cohesion (Quartiersmanagent);
  • Deliberation: participatory formulation of the São Paulo Strategic Master Plan;  
  • Digital: GestãoUrbanaSP platform for participatory planning.
• Summarization of twenty lessons for democratic decision-making at the local level, including the proactive use of legislation and combination of institutionalized and citizen-based methods, for example.

The study is a result of research conducted by urbanist Mariana Morais at IAUAI, in cooperation with the WZB – Berlin Social Science Center, and with support of the German Chancellor Fellowship for Prospective Leaders funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

We thank all the participants and interviewees for their contributions. Special thanks to Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for generous support. 

Morais’ research is available in multiple formats:

• IAUAI version with quality graphics
  Morais, Mariana (2022). Citizen Participation in Urban Policy: From protests to policies: citizen participation towards democratic cities. IAUAI, Berlin.
• WZB discussion paper
  Morais, Mariana (2022). Citizen Participation in Urban Policy: Lessons Based on Berlin and São Paulo Experiences. Discussion Paper SP V 2022-101. Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Berlin
• Newcastle University conference presentation
  Morais, Mariana (2022). From protests to policies: Navigating between streets and institutions towards democratic cities. In Participatory Design Conference 2022: Vol 2, Newcastle University, UK.

Further information by email: Mariana Morais – moraismml  [at] gmail [dot] com.

Networking event: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Implementing the New Urban Agenda
Large-scale slum upgrading and prevention through planned city extensions and infills, life-affirming livelihood opportunities, local economic development, resource mobilization and partnerships for the goals.
Venue: 9:00-11:00 AM on Friday February 9, 2018
Room 408, Forum, Kuala Lumpur Convention Center
Action Framework for the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda (AFINUA)
9th UN World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur

With the joint efforts of our partners, we are launching the Institute for Advanced Urbanization and Artificial Intelligence at the 9th UN World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur. The launch will take place during the Networking Event ‘Leveraging artificial intelligence for implementing the New Urban Agenda’s goals on slum upgrading and prevention, planned city extensions and infills, life-affirming livelihood opportunities, local economic development, resource mobilization and partnerships’ on Friday 9 February from 9:00-11:00 AM in room 408 at the venue of the Forum, Kuala Lumpur Convention Center.

IAUAI will act as a non-profit host for a broad initiative for market-based and inclusive slum prevention and upgrading. To make the initiative a success, we invite your collaboration and partnership. One of IAUAI’s key tasks will be the creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) application to support the planning of inclusive urbanization projects, the design of respective city and national policies as well as private sector business plans for labor-intensive land, infrastructure and shelter developers and respective financial institutions.

We are certain that this will make a major difference in managing inclusive, sustainable, resilient and safe urbanization through mobilization of domestic resources (e.g. land-based financing and inclusive financial services), local economic development (e.g. profitable business plans with a labour-intensive approach) and participation of the urban poor. As part of its commitment, Matthias Nohn alias Rapid Urbanism will incubate IAUAI with base equity plus invest significant time and effort to kick off the initiative. IAUAI will initially be lead by Founder CEO Matt Nohn, also the Principal of Rapid Urbanism.

Given the speed of both technological innovation and rapid urbanization, now is the right time to leverage partnerships for building AI for developing more inclusive, more resilient, safer and more sustainable cities — with and through the participation of the urban poor, the domestic private sector, governments and the international community. The event is supported by Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, SIGUS at MIT, UN-Habitat’s Slum Upgrading and Housing Branch, and Rapid Urbanism – and we invite further collaboration.

This event is open to anyone interested in using artificial intelligence for better managing rapid urbanization challenges and the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, focusing in the urbanization and housing value chain. We look forward to mobilizing new collaborations and partnerships with interested actors from civil society, private sector, governments and bilateral/international agencies, foundations, academia and beyond. To succeed it will be critical to mobilize stakeholders that contribute to, inter alia, the spatial, socioeconomic and financial development of the model, the programming of the AI, case studies for enriching the library of parametric prototypes, on the ground development and testing in real world projects (e.g. in collaboration with developing countries’ government), partnerships for development funding the former activities.

For further information please find the WUF presentation on IAUAI and the envisaged AI.

The Rapid Urbanism Pattern Language promotes synergies between and balances spatial planning, social organizing, economic development and regulatory approaches towards better urbanization. Learning from informality, the Language devises truly inclusive interfaces between formal and informal systems, rather than forcing the latter to formalize. Thereby, the Language aims to develop simple, affordable and sound mechanisms that are capable of addressing rapid urbanization at speed and at scale.

Rapid Urbanism Balance: navigating and managing the complex urban development nexus.

Rapid Urbanism Balance: coordinating amongst urban disciplines for synergies.

Rapid Urbanism Balance: balancing intervention for achieving the super goal – inclusive, resilient, safe and sustainable urbanization.

Group working on a comprehensive policy analysis and program design exercise.
(Picture courtesy of Jaime Royo-Olid)

In October 2014, Rapid Urbanism delivered a UN-Habitat capacity building workshop on inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urban development with a focus on affordable housing. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, government officials from national institutions in disaster management, housing and construction, representatives of finance institutions, donors and development practitioners participated in a two day workshop entitled ‘Designing & Financing Incremental Housing’ held in Colombo. Organized by UN-Habitat at the request of the European Union Delegation in Sri Lanka, the forum discussed the principles and advantages of incremental housing within a broader framework of public policy and a private sector business model generator for affordable housing. Read more here.

The workshop, based on the Rapid Urbanism Framework, expanded on an earlier workshops conceptualized in collaboration with Reinhard Goethert (SIGUS/MIT) and Deidre Schmidt (One Roof Global) for the 2014 UN-Habitat World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia. Download the training documentation here: https://app.box.com/s/fpandstfksenej49cmgk3snm0seedpqh.

The Rapid Urbanism Pattern Language offers a flexible toolkit for designing comprehensive urban policies, laws and regulations that, carefully chosen and properly combined, enable a society to tackle its rapid urbanization challenges and to empower national and local governments as well as private and citizen sectors groups to flourish and fruitfully complement each other in order to harness the benefits of urbanization. With the right policies in place, the benefit of urbanization will not only be significantly larger and more sustainable but also more inclusive—even and especially in the poorest countries—and the costs and risks of urbanization can be much better controlled.

With this objective in mind, during his Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Matt Nohn identified, analyzed and described such patterns and illustrated how they relate to and depend upon each other, how they could be combined in various economic, social, political and cultural environments (e.g. depending on prevailing capacities, governance systems and income levels), and how they may be used to generate a sustainable and inclusive way towards urban and economic growth. Working as an international consultant, Matt now employs and refines the pattern language based on practical work experiences. He currently focuses in the economy of land and strategies of land taxation, land assembly and land servicing with arterial infrastructure. The following is a tentative list of strategies/tools/patterns/policies:

(i) Examples for Physical planning and design

• An arterial grid of dirt roads (see Angel, Lincoln Institute)
• Bus rapid transit (Institute for Transportation and Development Policy)
• Other public transit and intermediary modes
• Sites and services (Urbanization Primer, Goethert & Caminos)
• Least-cost housing strategies (such as Kuda Ki Basti in Pakistan or Slum Dwellers International world-wide)
• Industrial housing approaches
• Cadasters, maps and plans
• Environmental protection
• Distribution and phasing of infrastructure and services
• Kevin Lynch’s elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks (Image of the City) e.g. for designing policy districts
• Jane Jacobs’s conditions for city diversity (The Death and Life of Great American Cities)
• Other patterns identified by collaborators

(ii) Examples for economic and financial tools

• Inclusion (versus retrofitting versus regularization) of the informal economy (see WIEGO or De Soto)
• Land-based financing of infrastructure (Town Planning Schemes in Gujarat, India and Partial Plans in Colombia; Value Capture in Latin America, Martim Smolka, Lincoln Institute)
• Self-declaration of land and property taxes (see Mexico City)
• Industrialization and Special Economic Zones
• Charter Cities (Paul Romer)
• Municipal bonds (Dakar, Senegal is launching the first Sub-Saharan municipal bond outside of South Africa)
• Other patterns identified by collaborators

(iii) Examples of social organization and administrative strategies

• Social clusters and hierarchies: the household, the plot, the street, the block, the neighborhood, the district/township, the city, the province/state, the nation
• A continuum of centralization over decentralization to local participation across various social clusters
• Various levels of participation and consultation across project phases/time (see Community Action Planning)
• Community-led development
• Public-private partnerships
• Co-development of communities and governments (see Slum Dwellers International)
• Hybrid value chains of the private and citizen sector (see Ashoka)
• Community action planning (see Goethert & Hamdi)
• Multi-stakeholder alliances
• Other patterns identified by collaborators

(iv) Examples of legal and regulatory patterns.

• Laws, bylaws and regulations that enable the above—such as…
  • Zoning regulations including Home-Based Workers
  • Building codes promoting/allowing incremental housing
  • Graded development standards for various population and income segments, etc
• The continuum of land rights (UN-Habitat (2012). Handling Land, Innovative Tools for Land Governance and Secure Tenure) including i.a.:
  • Customary rights, adverse possession, collective versus individual freehold tenure
  • Communal land trusts and inclusion of traditional/vernacular forms of governance
  • Rental, lease and rent/lease-to-own agreements
  • Shared equity cooperatives for housing
• Cooperatives for inclusion of informal settlers and/or labourers, etc (such as street vendor or waste picker cooperatives; such as housing cooperative societies)
• Other patterns identified by collaborators