Microplanning

The term Microplanning has been defined in 2009/10 and has entitled a publication - Microplanning. Urban creative practices - that revealed a sample of case studies from São Paulo, Brazil. "...projects have been mapped and showcased, and they demonstrate new modes of urban intervention on a micro-scale. There are a variety of creative initiatives that indicate the different ways in which people forge partnerships to create a better urban environment and, as a result, a better life for themselves and their communities." (Wolfgang Nowak, Alfred Herrhausen Society, Berlin)

(...) "If we define architectural as a space open to intervention and if we understand the architect as everyone active in his or her environment, we point at the possibility of another investigation of the city and to another way of planning the urban. We accept the real city as a product of political decisions, projects, and personal and collective wishes and we believe there is, in this city, enormous potential for re-organization, re-articulation, re-codification. Here, we demonstrate the task of mapping fields where such ways of reorganization take place and of identifying possible fields open to the incorporation of new objects that stimulate exchange. Finally, we show the need to understand and propose mechanisms coherent to the identified fields and their potentials. We call this task microplanning." (Marcos L. Rosa, 2010: p. 23)

This Publication, to be launched in 2010, has been organized by Marcos L. Rosa, as a product of a partnership with the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft (The International Forum of the Deutsche Bank) and in cooperation with Sophie Wolfrum, Urban Land Scape research initiative, Technische Universitaet München.

Microplanning (the publication) combines the documentation of micro practices in São Paulo with a series of essays that offer a possible vision that we can refer to as microplanning. The book situates the action of the micro scale in terms of its social practices and collective appropriations, calling attention to the importance of ‘bottom up’ initiatives in the configuration of the urban landscape.

The first part of the book shows fields of action through photographic documentation. In the second part, each project is analyzed according to a common set of criteria that seeks a common denominator between the selected projects. The criteria divides the project information into three parts - field, tactic/articulation, and new opportunities - three ways of reading that establish the projects as urban creative practices. The third part of the book organizes a discussion about the theme of microplanning through essays by invited authors*. This book creates a platform for different projects that explore the urban micro scale. The inexistence of any significant documentation of projects of this nature in São Paulo explains its invisible character - the fact that these interventions remain unknown. We point to the enormous potential of these projects to describe the local scale and its urban tactics as another way to think about the city.

• Essays in Microplanning from: Ricky Burdett, City-thinking for city-building | Michaela Busenkell, Tokyo Fluxus | Fernando de Mello Franco, Contrary and complementary | Rainer Hehl, The convergence of micro- and macro-actors. Towards multi-scalar networks for urban interventions | Paola Berestein Jacques, Micro-resistance cities: planning for an incorporating urbanism | Bastian Lange, Temporary and open spaces in Berlin | Saskia Sassen, Designing the city in times of unrest | Urban Think Tank - Alfredo Brillembourg e Hubert Klumpner, SLUM lifting: informal toolbox for a new architecture | Sophie Wolfrum, Performative urbanism. The performative potential of architecture.

External links

• http://www.microplanning.net