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Nan Ellin (Arizona State University, USA)
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Integral urbanism
Summary of the speech In this talk I will speak of the reduction of fear and anxiety through the adequate use of urban planning instruments. Fears are part of human experience although this is exacerbated in the USA because of the huge gap between poor. Differently form animals, as human beings we can be proactive, in other words, react to our fears by making choices. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. The city is enormous, with an enormous suburban area with shopping centres that you cannot walk to. You need a car to get anywhere. Many people have even decided to live within closed communities. In the USA, some people build a panic room in their houses to protect themselves when a thief comes into the house, and this only makes the fear worse. Reaction to fear can create descending spirals which increase the fear itself. For example many people buy firearms and do not allow their children to go out in order to protect them, and this means that children have few occasions to meet and spend a lot of time in front of the computer or television. And in the USA paediatric medicines too are abused. Fear can be dealt with using an approach to urban planning that we can define as integral, and this is what the book "Postmodern Urbanism" speaks about. The first step is to face fear looking it in the eye, and the second is to try and overcome it planning the future better, through meetings and dialogue. This means that cities must learn to become more interesting. In this sense integral town planning works to respond to the needs of citizens pursuing the objective of a fluid city, one where the people are not anxious. The primary feature of this city is that it is hybrid and connected, which calls for connecting the different parts of the city through adequate public spaces. Another important characteristic that our cities should have is "porosity", which means making permeable membranes that function as filters for incoming and outgoing flow. The separation between places should also be carried out in an intelligent fashion. Furthermore the uniqueness and authenticity of places should be maintained and vulnerability, understood as the ability to be flexible and open, should be considered a source of strength, not weakness, And finally we must learn to build nature together, in an environmentally compatible way. I have just summarized integral town planning: interdependence, transparency, permeability, flow and designing with nature. Everywhere we must protect what we love, what is important for us. If we need to make changes in places, we must do them with love, remembering what we feel is important. The tendency in the third millennium is to base ourselves on fear. Urban planning should also reconsider values and objectives in a proactive way, protecting our places and our origins through the use of original solutions.
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