The City Should be Owned by the Citizens and Residents!

Experts, urbanists, activists and legislators from 8 Asian countries, representatives from 8 FES offices across the region, the Socdem Asia coordinator as well as the WISO Social City coordinator - together with grassroots activists and young urbanists from across Indonesia made this Economy of Tomorrow (EoT) conference a success.
The conference has been opened among others by the German Ambassador to Indonesia Michael von Ungern Sternberg and the Mayor of the city of Jember Dr. Hj. Faida.

The opening has been followed by four sessions; on the concept of a Social City, on affordable housing, on Mobility/Public Transport as well as on Civil Participation.

Space is a resource. Its quantity does not grow, but its usefulness and quality increase or simply change with our social, cultural and physical investment into it. Everything we do, every interaction we have, happens in space. It is a very basic need for our individual and social existence. It is also related to many subjects of human rights, for example housing. Therefore, it is a problem of justice in allocation—it is political—and appropriateness in design; it is a practice of every day participatory democracy (Marco Kusumawijaya)

Some conclusions of the two days exchange on Social city have been:

• The Social City is a participatory project that strives for affordable housing, affordable mobility, and collective participation, while it intends to avoid social and cultural segregation
• It promotes to bring citizens and residents back into the governance of city-making
• It acknowledges the importance that people have ownership for the ongoing urban transformation and are part of it
• It has been pointed out that the planning for housing, mobility, participation and social and cultural space are inseparable from each other
• It has been concluded that city planning also needs to consider the hinterland. Hence it would be desirable to have consensus on the narrative that urban and rural areas profit from each other
• The only way for applying such a holistic urban development concept is: collaboration!
• The Social City is not against economic progress or against technology. But as it has been pointed out... technology should be an enabler for participation not a starting point for development so that we become the slaves of our technology
• The Social city is the antithesis, or alternative to exclusive and individualistic urban development concepts like; the world class city, the competitive city or the Smart City
• The Social City is the promise for inclusion on city level. It's a project of justice allocation.

In modernizing countries, generally demand for housing and other properties is very high relative to available supply. In the fast-growing cities of South East Asia, the gap between demand and supply is even larger. Hence capital seeks quick and big accumulation in property business. The more successful the development in a country, the more the demand for infrastructures and others increase. Without a clear respect for human rights, conflicts that emerge therefrom will not benefit the vulnerable and disadvantaged (Marco Kusumawijaya)  

Together with the digital transformation - and the energy transformation - the urban transformation is probably the most important aspect of the ongoing great social transformation. The Economy of tomorrow network (EoT) together with its partners will therefore continue to support that social aspects in urban development planning gain more attention in city-making.