Welcome to the Urban Revolution:
How Cities are Changing the World
By Jeb Brugmann, University of Queensland Press, 342pp.
Reviewed: 22 August 2009
Canberrans live in one of the most self-conscious cities in the world. Canberra’s history as a compromise child of Federation, rather than as an heroic colony of the Empire, divides us from the States. We are the only city-state on this continent of vast expanses. Our local economy reflects a national project, rather than any spontaneous factor.
Jeb Brugmann’s work on the global challenges of urban development ignores our category of national project capitals (of which there is long and growing list). Brugmann is a Canadian who has worked most of his life on urban development issues in United Nations and NGO development agencies and projects. Ottawa, too, is ignored.
The thesis is that the potentially devastating resource issues confronting humanity can be addressed most effectively through a community of practice that he calls “urbanism”, expressed through the implementation of deep local consultation and collaboration systems that he calls “urban regimes”.
Most of the time, top-down government urban planning fails, because it is either fatally compromised by corruption and commercial opportunism, or based on too shallow and too short-term consideration of consequences. Even genuinely democratic governments become hooked on the short-term revenues and positive economic indicators that can be extracted from building projects and schemes whose performance is measured in quick financial returns rather than long-term economic benefit.
Brugmann uses the term “Urban Revolution” loosely to describe the mass global transformation of humanity from rural to urban economies, rather than in any neo-Marxian sense of confrontational regime change. Urbanist principles deprecate the modernist master-planning approach in favour of something much more akin to organic agriculture. Start with the soil, foster the natural ecosystem.
The “urbanist regime” that he advocates involves a great deal of economic empowerment at grass-roots neighbourhood level, minimising disruption of local informal economies, high valuation of public asset and amenity over private gain, and political power exercised for the long term rather than for the budget or electoral cycle.
Brugmann’s idealistic “urban regimes” have much appeal when set up against the apparent capture of constitutional government decisions by the more powerful, or better organised, vested interests.
Jeb Brugmann’s book is a valuably holistic perspective on urban futures extending beyond the physical and infrastructure planning dimension to integrated, local socio-economics.
As to the Urban Revolution: a reader may choose to adopt this as a handbook, but would be advised also to keep handy a copy of Animal Farm, just to cross-check on any Civil Society urban regime that might emerge.
Richard Thwaites has worked extensively in both government and non-government organisations.
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