Freelance team member Francesca Miazzo of CITIES launched their book ‘We Own the City’ on the 27th of May 2014 in Pakhuis de Zwijger.
‘We Own the City’ is an investigation of 16 different examples of community practice in urban developments, located in five cities in the global north: Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Moscow, New York and Taipei. The cities selected are environments where traditional top-down urbanism has heavily affected development in the past. In these cities one can find networks of traditional top-down organizations and agents that are transitioning towards more bottom-up approaches – each in different ways and with different levels of involvement.
‘We Own The City’ analyses the implementation process of what are generally called “bottom-up” initiatives: urban redevelopment projects where the local community represents the implementing actor, the decision maker, or the target of the project. The final scope of this research is to define the innovative strategies undertaken by top-down actors in order to offer insight and advice further enabling future bottom-up approaches.
