[p2p-research] Fwd: [P2P-URBANISM WA] Global Villages

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at>
Date: Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 3:24 PM
Subject: [P2P-URBANISM WA] Global Villages
To: p2p-urbanism-world-atlas at googlegroups.com


 Dear all,

thanks to Stefano for the Biourbanism link! Thats really the right direction
to take and I am happy about this positive explosion in mind, although
reality seems to lag behind a lot.

I do not know if I already introduced myself on this list, I am basically
lurking here - because there is too much to be followed and active
contribution can only be very focused. My Name is Franz Nahrada, I am
neither architect nor city planner, but have been convinced as a sociologist
that "the ultimate expression of the social is in space". (S.Kracauer).

I missed my academic career basically because I felt in the presence of the
wrong people there. So I am making my life as a hotel manager and waiting
for a good opportunity to go back fully into research. But not the type of
research that produces mere paper.

My topic since more than 20 years has been the interconnection of new
information and communication technologies with human habitat - especially
the way they give new freedom to design smaller. leaner, greener community
spaces. I went to the extremity of things and went for the best ideas to
have those who want and desire it find a viable alternative in new and
regenerated village life, whilst connecting those villages to urban centers
that me and my friends chose to call the Mothercities. (the name says it
all: becone a bub rather than a vacuum cleaner). I find much confirmation in
Alexanders introductory notes about the distribution of settlements in the
pattern language, although Alexander totally focussed on urban developments
and neither cared much about the very center nor the very periphery.

The hypothesis is: with the advent of new communication technologies,
specialised knowledge can be permanently present, active and effective
within a small scale human settlement without a drastical surge of the
population. We can live in a distributed manner, yet cluster in urban ways
in small human settlements. There possibilities in an age of global
communication have not been explored - neither have they even been realized!

So I am working to fill that gap, and as you can guess not in a descriptive
manner, but in a constructive. Villages as we know them today are autdated
and threatened by totalitarian urbanisation, so one conclusion - and thats
the one I follow - is that they have to be radically reinvented and
exploration and realisation go hand-in-hand. The village of the futuire is
deeply influenced by the urban experience and its explosion in human
possibilities and it "brings the mind home", as my friend Tony S. Gwilliam
(member of Archigram and now also fellow hospitality manager in Bloo Lagoon
Village in Bali) used to title his groundbreaking essay on Global Villages.

In fact, there is a certain optimism built in that new media allow us to
retrieve what is forgotten and combine it with new and exciting
possibilities. The new patterns that emerge are clearly visible, like local
education centers, theme based co-working, village as an intentional
cooperative endavour and so on.

I would very much like to point your attention to those possibilities.
Recently I started to work with a foundation based in London based on
similar principles, the Clear Village Foundation. They focus on village
rejuvenation by participatory planning - and invited me to participate in
their first "Lab" in the center for advanced architecture in Barcelona,
Spain, last November. For the first time I see the real possibility of a
global community of researcher-activists who are collectively determined to
bring a wave of change to the world and shatter the "2050 75% will live in
cities" assumption.

I started an attempt to build such a community back in 1997, the Global
Villages Network, but it is still stagnant and needs to be brought to life,
There is enormous demand for such a network, but without some funding and
permanent staff things will not move.

I definitely consider myself uf P2P Urbanism and Nikos has friendly welcomed
this strange and determined strain, I am glad we could meet several times in
person. So I would like to tie in the Global Villages network activities,
although the should unfold and be visible in a stand-alone manner, also as a
working group within p2p urbanism and thus within/with ties to the p2p
foundation.  (As the P2P Foundation ties to the larger Commons Movement ....
that just has met in Berlin).

There are some descriptive pages here:

http://p2pfoundation.net/Global_Villages

http://p2pfoundation.net/GIVE

Who would be interested in a working group on Global Villages?

all the best

Franz


Franz Nahrada
Globally Integrated Village Environment
Jedleseer Strasse 75
1210 Vienna
Tel +431 2787801-77
www.globalvillages.org


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