Organic cities
García Cataño, C. (in press) Organic cities. In J. Ramos & B. Dahiya (Eds.), Planetary Cities: Future-hacking the Urban. Springer
To my father who so often takes me for a walk in the future
Abstract
This text aims to contribute to the creation of a new imaginary of planetary cities, as well as
provides references to existing theories and experiences of how to develop the transition to this new imaginary.
The text begins describing the current cities and the cities to come by counter-posing the
idea of chaos, one as a result of top-down urban planing, another one as a living body with an
organic urban development. Once set up the imaginary of the planetary city, the second section
introduces the transition to it based on “Buen Vivir”, degrowth and free and open culture. Section
three rethinks territorial structure and scalability. While section four questions the taken for granted economic principles and opens new ways to think about economic solutions. Section five focuses on possible governance alternatives, not based on representative democracy.
As text also introduces a patchwork of imaginary visions, where we want to include perspectives
coming from the Global South. Cities in permanent movement, with different needs and wishes,
where perception of time and space differs, and sociability is diverse. Identifying the difference and learning from it will enable us to build a more accurate vision of future planetary cities and
guarantee better cooperation between all.
Keywords
Planetary cities, commons, diversity, buen vivir, self-gouvernance, decentralisation, network,
collaboration, cooperation, sharing, degrowth, chaos, free culture, FLOSS, citizenship