Human Scale, Open Space and Green Urbanism

We would like to bring together different traditions of planning and discuss distinct approaches. The focus is to foster human scale approaches which are in line with SDG 11, the New Urban Agenda, and the Leipzig Charta. In the last century, architecture and spatial planning has been strongly oriented towards the requirements of the Athens Charter. To put it simply, this has led to a “car-friendly” city of "long ways" and sprawl. In architecture schools and universities, the complex “social spatial networks” have been neglected. The focus was, and still is, mostly on the exclusive design of solitary, spectacular objects or as Jan Gehl narrates: “Designing Skyscrapers in the shape of perfume bottles”. A 60 year long discussion started by Jane Jacobs, lead to the UN Habitat New Urban Agenda and the Leipzig Charta. Today in the year 2020, a soft countertrend could be noticed. However, influential senior architects with well-established offices and long-term professors at our universities are yet to take to this gradually changing awareness. As they are educated in the 60s to 90s they still have the ‘Athens Charter thinking’ in their DNA. This Network Event is to promote the alternative solutions to a ‘Dubaiisation’ of Africa with inhuman city structures, glossy skyscrapers and car-centric structures. In order to prepare future generations of architects for human-friendly planning, it would be essential to teach them the values of the New Urban Agenda.