IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

As a consequence of the climate change challenges (UN Habitat’s strategic plan 2022-2023) and, thereby, the green transition, several daily routines are altered. New sustainable actions require new facilities, which create new urban and potential social spaces: Charging electric cars replaces refueling with fossil fuel, thereby changing the gas station stops. Requirements of sorting waste in multiple fractions establish altered (and several) visits to waste stations. The paper discusses how architecture can support the social dimensions of these new daily routines and what potential they provide regarding new forms of urban life: How can you spend your time while your car is recharging? Can we encourage socializing between people from the neighborhood around a recycling station so they become new urban meeting places? And how do such new daily routines supplement or substitute the known urban life in the city square or at the market? The paper is based upon cases and findings from a workshop and a semester course with Jan Gehl for candidate students at the Aarhus School of Architecture, spring 2023. The course maps these actions, which promote a design of a space or object that can facilitate a new social aspect based on the act of the routine. The paper will discuss the findings from the studies, their potential in a broader urban context, and how the requirements for new sustainable daily routines can be used strategically in establishing neighborhoods and urban life (using fx. Haijer & Reijndorp, Koolhaas, Whyte ao.).