Adams, the Director of City Design for Melbourne, showed how a one-page planning document is all that’s needed — that, and a clear vision for green, flexible Transit Oriented Development (TOD) — which works in this tram-linked, largely flat city.

He explains exactly how it is possible to increase the density of the city using just over 7% of the land area.

Here’s Adams’ talk at TEDx Sydney:

Adams quotes the dramatic, oft-cited projections — 75% of the world’s population are expected to live in cities in the next 50 years — and explains that requires that we double urban capacity.

Rob’s home of Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is projected to grow by 1 million (to 5 million) by 2022. He explains that expanding sprawl is a poor social and economic decision: quoting a study that finds that people living on the periphery suffer from financial and social isolation, while adding significantly to infrastructure costs: building on the fringe costs $300 million more, over 50 years, than consolidating on the inner city.

Melbourne’s Federation Square represents an investment in public space and cultural institutions including the NGV and ACMI | Photo by Jess Scully

In searching for solutions, Adams points to the examples offered by those cities around the world which have launched dedicated strategies for revitalizing their urban centres, including Glasgow, Bordeaux, Malmo, Bogota, Seoul, Curitiba. Some of their strategies will be familiar to readers of this site, including:

• • • Focusing on building a high-quality public realm, as in Bordeaux
    • Investing in educational institutions and zero-carbon urbanism, as in Malmo
    • Ending the dominance of the automobile in urban areas, and investing instead in bikeways and bus routes, as in Bogota

Adams also describes the rebirth of inner-city Melbourne over the past 25 years, which sought to re-use buildings by transforming office into residential and encouraging mixed-use and a more active street life.

In order to take this strategy to the next stage, Adams outlines his plan for the “7.5% city”: a plan to double the population of the city, and to improve quality of life, using only a small percentage of the land around Melbourne.

The plan is for transport-centered development, encouraging the creation of well-connected areas of activity around existing rail, bus and tram (light rail) networks.

The figure of 7.5% comes from the process of subtraction following a land capacity analysis: the planners identified places with good access to these transport corridors, subtracted important public space, parks, and heritage buildings, and then focused on those places which offered rear-lane access for development, with the aim of creating good life at street level — as Adams notes, “streets are 80% of public realm” and so, crucial for building a sense of connection to a community.

With these constraints in mind, Adams says it is possible to increase the population by 2.4 million, by lifting building heights to 5 or 6 stories closest to the transport lines, but maintaining low heights and existing suburban building profiles just beyond those corridors.

Remarkably, the city has developed a one-page planning scheme for these corridors:

The plan actually leaves the majority of existing suburbia — 90% of it — as it is, making it the “green lung” of the city, encouraging a new kind of suburban life that is self-sufficient, recycling and collecting water, storing solar power (a hugely under-utilised resource in sunny Australia) and providing these suburban communities “with urbanism at the end of the street”, offering the services and connectedness of the inner city.

The city has become famous for vibrant street art in the laneways of the CBD | Photo by Jess Scully

This is not just a residential strategy: the plan provides for recycling some areas into mixed-use and light industrial, for small businesses to grow and to provide workplaces closer to home. The Victorian state government is implementing strategies to increase public transport use, such as making travel to city free before 7am, allowing Melbourne to save $85million through re-timetabling peak services. The plan also accommodates the fasting growing segment of population, people over 50, who benefit from walkable communities and access to services.

While the plans sound dramatic, perhaps the most heartening element of Adams’ presentation comes at the conclusion, as he points out that the future is, in fact, very familiar: rather than the fantastical “paper architecture” we expect from visions of our urban future (and as presented by Australian architects at the Venice Biennale), these projections are for streets and cities which retain the character of our communities today.

Have you encountered an inspiring vision for our urban future? Share your discoveries below, join the conversation.

“We’re big advocates of play — of the power of play to bring together strangers,” YesYesNo’s Zachary Lieberman says. The collective decided on Auckland as the destination for their large-scale public art projections due to their association with creative studio The Church, and an interest in the creative undercurrents of New Zealand.

Night Lights was an interactive public art experience for the people of Auckland.

“There’s something fundamentally powerful in seeing your body at an exaggerated scale…”

Zach answered a few questions for Creative Cities East Asia:

What inspired the Night Lights project?

We were interested in this idea of combining physical interaction with building projection.  We had seen tons of projections on buildings that were more special effects and 3d, and we really wanted to make something that would bring a more human and live element into it.

I think there’s something fundamentally powerful in seeing your body at an exaggerated scale — three stories high.  It invites funny and strange play. In addition, we’re quite interested in creating these situations where the public can become performers.  Being able to do both in one project was an interesting challenge, and we were very lucky to be able to work at something at this scale.

Can you tell us about some of the reactions to the project?

What’s lovely to see is that 5 year olds and 50 years old alike all got into this, and had a lovely time.  It’s really nice to see that your project appeals to all ages and backgrounds.  It was a lot nice to see how the different behaviors (using your body, using your hands, waving cellphones) got different groups of people to engage.

Auckland is gaining a reputation as a city with a focus on creativity. Do you think that matches the reality?

The energy and spirit in Auckland is super high, and the fact that we were even able to do this and close down a major street for 5 days is a testament to their interest experimenting with public art.  We’ve long been big fans of the scene in Auckland — things like Semi-Permanent and The Church — and having worked out there, we’re super impressed with what’s going on there — a real strong wave of creativity and ingenuity.

night lights from thesystemis on Vimeo.

YesYesNo aims to stimulate “creativity and awe” through interactive public works.

“The energy and spirit in Auckland is super high, and the fact that we were even able to do this and close down a major street for 5 days is a testament to their interest experimenting with public art.”

The talk, presented at Ignite Sydney, presents the work of architects and community organisers, helping people develop their own solutions to critical housing and urban design problems.

Kapit-Bahayan is a new model for community-led housing development | Images courtesy Informalism.net

Moline speaks of how many of us are “living out our lives in someone else’s city”, and explains how some architects are fighting “spatial injustice”, helping communities develop skills and decision making systems to become their own architects.

He describes clever ways of engaging attention and gaining official recognition for their projects, from Thai architects working with people living under highway overpasses, to others forming partnerships between businesses and workers to use on-site technology and resources to solve problems.

Moline also introduces us to Sydney’s Kapit-bahayan Filipino housing co-operative in Canley Vale, which he has designed in collaboration with the coop members, an innovative approach needed in a city suffering from a serious housing affordability crisis.

Curing Sydney’s architectural “obesity”: six family homes fit into the space usually occupied by two. | Images courtesy Informalism.net

Kapit-bahayan, which means “attached houses” or neighbourbood, offers residents access to a communial deck, library and vegetable garden, taking best advantage of the site to house six families where two would otherwise split two standard blocks. These strategies of sharing and mixed use are complimented by a commitment to building for passive heating, lighting, water collection and waste management.

Shelter NSW outlines how the co-operative extends the concept of community housing to all aspects of shared social life:

The members are also organised to provide neighbourhood social welfare services such as child caring for neighbourhood kids, sharing information and referrals for job-seeking, assisting in organising big gatherings, providing support to those having domestic or financial difficulties, to those who are suffering a grave illness or in bereavement.

We call this local community support ‘Saranay’ or giving succor – which entails the collection and giving of financial and material aid for those who are in need of emergency or immediate help. This help is extended not only to coop members and residents, but also to close friends and relatives including those living in our country of origin.

Sharing space provides “socially-rich, medium-density housing” in Western Sydney | Images courtesy Informalism.net

This approach provides a potential cure for what Moline describes as “housing obesity”: unnecessarily large single-family houses, gobbling up whole suburban quarter-acre blocks, offering too much empty interior space. The Kapit-bahayan model offers a way to shift towards medium-density housing, adding a socially-rich layer to neighbourhoods and more opportunities for interaction and shared resources and experiences. As Moline describes it, “housing which literally builds better with less.”

The issue is particularly timely in Sydney at the moment: both metropolitan dailies have recently reported on the intensifying tension between housing and agriculture around the city, critical in a country with less than 7% arable land.

The Sydney Morning Herald describes the region’s role as the state’s food bowl:

The Sydney region grows about 15 per cent of the state’s vegetables, according to NSW Primary Industries research. It produces at least 80 per cent of ”perishable” vegetables — defined as those that are fresh, have not been processed and have a short shelf life — for NSW. These include Asian vegetables, capsicums and chillis, celery, parsley, basil, coriander, mushrooms and silverbeet.

It is also the state’s most important area for producing chickens, ducks, turkeys and eggs. Planned development in the south and north-west growth areas will lead to a possible 29 per cent drop in vegetables grown and a 35 per cent drop in poultry meat produced.

As reported in the Daily Telegraph in April, this land is under threat: 27,000ha of housing estates are planned to accommodate an extra one million people by 2036.

More than 13 western Sydney councils have united to oppose the State Government’s Metro Strategy, which they say threatens 62 per cent of market gardens, more than 6000 jobs, and the future of Flemington Markets.

“Sydney is losing its ability to feed itself,” Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils president Alison McLaren said.

Work-Life: two days of discussion and performance in Singapore, March 5–6

16 leading artists and an audience of educators, artists, community workers and representat­ives from government organisations talked about how art can be used to better understand the role of community in an intercultural world. Singapore is the perfect setting for such a discussion: the city’s rich history of migration and the layers of culture and social connection, within a dense, active urban environment, offers a unique insight into the future of our rapidly urbanising region.

Describing the city, forum moderator Sasi (T.Sasitharan) poses the questions many city dwellers ask, living in cities that offer us new opportunities for daily interactions:

It is one of the most densely populated pieces of real estate on earth. Bereft of almost all natural resources of value, without agriculture or even water. But it is materially well-endowed, perhaps embarrassingly so. The plurality of the population in Singapore, our particular colonial trajectory and the more recent “opening up” to “foreign talent” has resulted in unique situations for cultural interactions within the city.

All around us opportunities to mix and mingle, for interaction and congress are aplenty. Weddings, funerals, consecrations, community events, festivals and social spectacles hold out the potential for unusual human contact and cultural interaction. They are catalysts for a new cultural becoming that draw on the different and divergent strands of our communities.

So how is Singapore home and why? Is it because we have no other choice, do we belong or are we prisoners? Who are our neighbors; how well do we know them? What makes us Singaporean?

Work-Life: The Making of This Community from WORK-LIFE on Vimeo.

What role can art play in giving communities a voice? Image courtesy Work-Life

The Work-Life website documents the discussions that leapt off from this point. While exploring the nature of community, the participants imagined the role that art can play in bringing communities together, empowering the diverse voices that shape our city, giving them tools to make their voices heard. Artists and experts from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the UK shared ideas, with presentations from performance artist Mem Morrison, UK filmmaker Joe Lawlor, food-inspired visual arts Clare Patey and local filmmaker Tan Pin Pin.

Ali Campbell, an observer at the event, offers a succinct distillation of the themes explored by each of the participants and performers, asking how art has been made in Singapore, the crucial questions of  “who gets seen and heard; where this happens and how”. These are conversations that will be carried into the new project, New Work New Audiences.

Forum moderator Sasi | Image courtesy Work-Life

Event organiser Sasi ends his reflection on Work-Life with this quote, again touching on the interplay of identities that makes Singapore a crucible for cultural relations, as he imagines the possibilities that exist for personal identity through interaction with the multiplicity of communities and ideas we encounter in our urban world.

‘My culture and the other culture are not separated as the known, the familiar and the unknown and the unfamiliar, but rather by degrees of familiarity, foreignness, strangeness. Sometimes, I understand myself only through the other, at other times the reverse happens. The boundaries are shifting.ʼ
— J.N. Mohanty in The Self and Its Other.

Video Mapping Jakarta — British Council Creative Cities launch from BritishCouncil on Vimeo.

Video mapping Jakarta: this one-of-a-kind event brought out over 25,000 | Image from British Council Indonesia on Flickr

London-based media art collective, D-Fuse, collaborated with Indonesian filmmaker Sakti Parantean, designer Adi Panuntun and photographer Feri Latief to produce an incredible 3D video mapping film that was projected onto the building of the Jakarta History Museum. Crowds of thousands flooded Fatahillah Square to watch the event, which marked the launch of the British Council’s Creative Cities initiative in Jakarta.

The 14 minute film tells the history of Jakarta, from swamp settlement to metropolis, as a digital clock counts down the city’s history: first, the sound of birds, creaking trees, animals in the long grass as a luminous forest slowly takes form, branches lifting skyward. Archive images tell the story of colonisation and construction in the 1600s and the anguish and destruction of war in the 1940s. Scaffolds and bulldozers represent the development of the high rise city, followed by street lamps, satellites and traffic lights, signifying the coming of the digtal age. The pulsing energy of the metropolis combines graffiti and street culture with traditional patterns and music, a visual representation of the message that opens the film: “Transforming old town as a creative playground”.

This reflection on the growth and history of Jakarta is more relvant today than ever: the city has lost more than 70 percent of its green or public creative spaces in the last 40 years. Today, the proportion of green open space in Jakarta is only 9.3 percent, far lower than the global standard which is approximately 30 percent, making a green, creative transformation of the city a priority.

The evening’s projections concluded four days of seminars and showcase activities, which aim to provide the impetus to revitalise Jakarta’s Old Town as the capital’s new creative playground. Meetings between the Indonesian government, local businesses, and community stakeholders had been held to explore ideas for creative programmes with UK experts in urban regeneration from South West Screen and Bristol Watershed.

The aim? Harmonising the twin messages of transforming public spaces with the role of the creative industry in regenerating cities, and inspiring thousands with the tale of Jakarta’s dramatic development through digital storytelling.

What do you think of the projections? Were you there? Watch the video on Vimeo, view the British Council Indonesia’s photo set on Flickr, or read the full post on British Council Arts.

Video mapping Jakarta | Image from British Council Indonesia on Flickr

One TPR home can save 18 tonnes of waste material that would have previously gone to landfill | Image courtesy of Affresol Ltd

The recently developed material, Thermo Poly Rock (TPR) allows the construction of low-carbon housing from the recycled plastic and minerals. Affresol reports a patented cold process transforms the plastics into a robust structural product: one TPR home can save 18 tonnes of waste material that would have previously gone to landfill. TPR also offers high levels of insulation and can be coated to further increase insulation.

Each modular home is made up of a panels bolted together to form the exterior structure | Photos courtesy of Affresol Ltd

According to the Daily Mail, a complete TPR modular home — including kitchen and plumbing — costs £42,000 and uses approx 9000 recycled televisions or 7200 computers.

The structures are designed ready for cladding and come in two forms: the modular home and four-tonne modular portable building. Standard building materials, such as brick and stone, can be used to cover the exterior of the building. The roof is then tiled using recyclable materials.

While the lifespan of the house is relatively brief, estimated 80 years, the company reports the TPR materials are recyclable, so the cycle can continue on.

Little Fox on the Underground by Yiying Lu | Images courtesy Yiying Lu

There are images and symbols that recur constantly in our urban environments: we see them everywhere, but in the eyes of some, they are transformed.

Standing on a tube platform, commuter Paul Middlewick started to see shapes and patterns emerging in London’s Underground rail map: here, a pair of eyes, there, a trunk. After spotting that first elephant, he started to see more animals in the intersecting lines, a rhino, ox, polar bear, and more. Middlewick presents twenty years of fanciful imaginings in his book and website, Animals On The Underground.

Mouse on the Under­ground by Yiy­ing Lu | Images cour­tesy Yiy­ing Lu

Sydney designer Yiying Lu picks up on this thread (in the play section of her website) seeking out her own little creatures in the train lines. Yiying is known for a recurring animal motif in her work, most famously as the creator of Twitter’s Fail Whale (the only error message in history popular enough to have a fan club) and she doesn’t fail to find them, in her own inimitable style.

Seoul designers zeroperzero have a thing for train lines too. They’re about to open a show at Kemistry Gallery in London, presenting their City Railway System.

Their City Rail­way Sys­tem Maps (which have won awards from D&AD, IF and NY ADC) are extraordin­ary: through some­thing as simple as a rail­way map zeroperzero con­vey some of the char­ac­ter of the city. zeroperzero use these maps as “sym­bols of the vari­able city”, com­bin­ing fac­tual inform­a­tion with city icons (like Milton Glaser’s NYC logo, or Osaka’s fam­ous love of all things octopi) to give a sense of place. zerop­ersero even help you estab­lish your own city icons with their cus­tom­is­able port­able map and colour-coded stickers.

You can read more about zeroperzero in our Creative Asia series, or check out the exhibition if you’re in Shoreditch from 30 April to 19 June.

Drawing from Osaka’s love of the octopus, zeroperzero’s Osaka subway map.

Amber Parkin maps a personal journey through Auckland as she shows us her city.

The entry is mul­ti­fa­ceted web­site created specifically for the Show Us Your City competition explor­ing words, design, pho­to­graphy and inter­act­ive map­ping. The format was motiv­ated by Amber’s desire to depict the many-sided nature of her bay city.

Amber says:

“Wow, I am really surprised to be chosen to go to London — all the other entries were stunning! Thanks to them, I’ve got a lot new cities on the list of places I want to visit (especially Sydney, Seoul and Manila).”

“As for the London Festival of Architecture; I’m really looking forward to getting to know London through the various walking and cycling tours. The Anatomy of a Street and Nomadic Allotments projects look fantastic too (as do 60 other events) — I can’t wait to blog all about it!”

Amber wins a trip to the UK to attend the London Festival of Architecture 2010, documenting her experiences and discoveries for Creative Cities East Asia. This year’s theme is The Welcoming City, and looks towards the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, exploring the role planners, architects and local communities play in making a city inclusive and welcoming.

This year the British Council, in partnership with The Architecture Foundation, presents the International Architecture Showcase as part of the London Festival of Architecture. The showcase, hosted at various locations around the city, consists of instillations, exhibitions and events hosted by 30 embassies and cultural institutes from around the world. The event features the work of both local and international architects and their practices and focuses on showcasing the work of a new generation of architects.

For a full interview with Amber, check out our first post on her project. To view all 12 shortlisted entries, see our Show Us Your City round-up. Thank you to all our entrants!

To Keishkara, there is so much more to the Indone­sian cap­ital than traffic jams and urban sprawl | Image courtesy of Keishkara

For her Show Us Your City entry Keishkara created Keishka in Wonderland, an online destination that delves into Jakarta’s creative heart. The frequently updated blog profiles creative people, trends and creative destinations.

To Keishakara Jakarta is the sum of its creative parts | Image courtesy of Keishakara

Rather than simply exploring the things that she believes contribute to making Jakarta a creative centre Keishkara has taken the question out into the art studios, design workshops and fashion houses of Jakarta. Asking a range of bright, young creative individuals what it is about her urban home that makes it a creative centre.

Graphic Designer & Fashion Stylist, Handwita believes that Jakarta’s creativity can be measured by the growth in the creative communities, while Indonesian scriptwriter, Ahmad Baihaqi finds inspiration for his writing in the city itself.

Keishka intro­duces us to the cre­at­ive des­tin­a­tion of Tebet and takes us on an enter­tain­ing ride through the streets of Jakarta, telling stor­ies about how res­id­ents engage with pub­lic spaces to share exper­i­ences and cre­ate oppor­tun­it­ies for inter­ac­tion. The city’s creativity resides in it’s artistic residents, in their work and in the places they create, products of ingenuous urban fixes, and Keishka invites us to take the time to consider the beauty, humour and inventiveness of the city.

Australia

Photo by Louise Hawson, 52 Suburbs

Charlotte Fliegner embarks on a study of urban identity by focusing on one street in Melbourne: Carlisle Street, East St Kilda. Charlotte describes the microcosms and communities that make up the Australian Jewish Community, to examine: what is the Australian Jewish Identity, and what are the forces that shape it. Check back for a series of posts drawing from Charlotte’s submission.

Louise Hawson aims to visit one sub­urb of Sydney every week on her blog, 52 Suburbs, doc­u­ment­ing the unique char­ac­ter and diversity of the many com­munit­ies which form the city. As a writer and an aspir­ing pho­to­grapher, Louise shares her exper­i­ences through beau­ti­ful dip­tychs which (quite lit­er­ally) jux­ta­pose the vibrant cul­tures she encoun­ters on her journeys. More…

First-time filmmakers Loula and Jeremy become our tour guides in this video, Colouring Outside the Lines, which presents an insightful introduction to the creative communities that inhabit Newtown in Sydney’s urban fringe.

Colouring Outside the Lines from Loula + Jeremy on Vimeo.

Indonesia

Jakarta street tales from Keishka in Wondrland

Keishkara Hanandhita Putri’s Jakarta is full of energetic, cre­at­ive souls, each one con­trib­ut­ing to the artistic fab­ric of the city in unique ways. Through her blog, Keishka in Won­der­land, Keishka takes a ques­tion out into the art stu­dios, design work­shops and fash­ion houses of Jakarta, asking emerging creatives to consider: How do they see Jakarta as a creative city? And what do they do to contribute?

Keishka introduces us to the creative destination of Tebet and takes us on an entertaining ride through the streets of Jakarta, telling stories about how residents engage with public spaces to share experiences and create opportunities for interaction. More…

Korea

Nathan Stone­ham ven­tur­es into the cre­at­ive pock­ets of his adopted home-town in this video, A Walk in Seoul. More…

New Zealand

Amber Parkin’s This Is My Auck­land is a mul­ti­fa­ceted web­site explor­ing words, design, pho­to­graphy and inter­act­ive map­ping. The format was motiv­ated by Amber’s desire to depict the many-sided nature of her bay city. More…

Amber Parkin maps a personal journey through Auckland as she shows us her city.

Philippines

Anik Anik Love takes us into the creative spaces of Manila

Mark Salvatus presents Neo-Urban Plan­ner, a call for dis­cus­sion into the ways Manila can be reshaped, and an “online sug­ges­tion box” and start­ing point for engaged urb­an­ism. Mark sent a call out to fel­low city dwell­ers, while in res­id­ency at the Green Papaya Art Pro­jects, and the sug­ges­ted solu­tions been thought­ful and play­ful, respond­ing to local chal­lenges from sea­sonal flood­ing and trans­port issues to the spread­ing con­crete grey of a rap­idly grow­ing city. More…

Pho­to­grapher Mitch Maur­i­cio takes the pulse of the creative heart of Manila in Anik-Anik Love, images and inter­views that provide insight into the people driving the creative industries. Rather than focus­ing on the phys­ic­al­ity of this East Asian centre the blog por­trays the a rich tapestry of cre­at­ives that call the city home, delving into their work and inspiration . By explor­ing their worlds Mitch cre­ates a com­pre­hens­ive pic­ture of what makes Manila a cre­at­ive city. More…

Fung delivers a unique 360-degree view of the multi-faceted landscapes of Manila on Firefly, a site presenting the Philippines using virtual reality (VR) panoramic photography along with Fung’s impressions of key spaces in the city. Firefly has to be seen to be believed, offering a completely immersive experience to make visitors feel like they’re standing in one of Manila’s busy markets or getting a bird’s eye view of cultural spaces and festivals.

A snapshot from Fung’s incredible 360 views of Manila’s urban landscapes | Image from Firefly 360

Singapore

A study of solo dining in Singapore | Photo by Min­tio

If you’re dining alone in Singapore, Min­tio may be watching. Din­ing is an intrinsic part of local cul­ture, and the eclectic mix of eth­ni­cit­ies that call this urban centre home are rep­res­en­ted by the restaurants and cuisines that weave through­ the city: Chinese, Malay, Indian and Tamil gast­ro­nomy are all present, as are a selec­tion of broader inter­na­tional cuisines.

A sense of voyeur­ism is cre­ated by the pho­tos, shot from low angles across rooms and through screens. The pro­ject aims to high­light the per­sonal and dis­play the ways in which each indi­vidual is part of the greater fab­ric that makes up this cre­at­ive city. More…

Jonathan Lexing Tan shows us Singapore

Jonathan Lex­ing Tan’s photo series, Singa­pore, leads us a personal journey through the public spaces of the city. In a follow up interview, he tells us about the Transit Art ini­ti­at­ive he sees daily on the metro: “On one of the train lines, each sta­tion is a gal­lery in itself with unique works exhib­ited by dif­fer­ent artists, which is a great spot for com­muters to pause, think and reflect upon des­pite the hustle and bustle around.” Jonathan also introduces us to the Bugis, Haji Lane and Ann Siang Hill areas, “upmar­ket, forward-thinking pock­ets of inspiration” born from urban regneration of historical districts. More…

Maids’ reclaim mall space for picnics in Singapore | Photo courtesy Reclaim Land

Journ­al­ism gradu­ates, Justin Zhuang, Wong Shu Yun, Kang Li and Serene Cheong, the cre­at­ors of Reclaim Land, ask­ the ques­tion: ‘Whose city is it any­way?. Their web­site provides a forum for exam­in­a­tion and dis­cus­sion of the ways gov­ern­ments and com­munit­ies can bene­fit from provid­ing the indi­vidual with greater ownership of the places that make up their city.

Reclaim Land, which first began as a final-year uni­ver­sity pro­ject in 2008, tells the stories of ordin­ary people who have cre­ated their own spaces and presents opin­ions from aca­dem­ics will­ing to offer their per­spect­ives, suggesting solu­tions to the chal­lenges cre­ated by con­cen­trated devel­op­ment within a lim­ited city space — in Singapore’s case, 700km square. More…

The winner of this competition is Amber Parkin from Auckland — read all about her winning entry — Amber will blog about her experience of the London Festival of Architecture in July. We’d still love to see your city and share your viewpoint with the world. Join the discussion below!