My presentation in the #Urban thinker Campus held in #Dubai on the 2nd of October 2017.
The Presentation focuses on the small towns and the way they can be integrated within the urban matrix.
Magarpatta Nova Elegance Mundhwa Pune E-Brochure.pdf
The Silence(d) Minority
1.
2. The Silence(d) Minority
THE FUTURE OF SMALL TOWNS AND RURAL COMMUNITIES and HOW
TO INTEGRATE THEM INTO THE SDGs
ask@richartkhalil.com 00961 70 122 888
Richart KHALIL – Urban Planner; Architect
3. IT IS STATED THAT IN A COUPLE OF DECADES, AROUND ¾ OF THE WORLD WILL BE IN
CITIES.
THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS WILL BE HOW THE REMAINING 25% WILL LIVE?
4. HOW CAN WE HELP COMMUNITIES COPE WITH AND MANAGE CHANGE TO
PRESERVE WHAT THEY VALUE THE MOST, WHILE PROMOTING ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT AND IMPROVING QUALITY OF LIFE?
5. DIMENSIONS & INDEXES
(Thorbeck, 2012)
Human capital (labor)
Natural capital (land)
Financial capital
(economy)
Social capital (networks)
Geography as an ecosystem
Fauna and flora
Human structures
Arts, culture and diversity
7. FINDINGS
Define boundaries
Adapt the skills and methods
Design with/for people
Preserve/create the character
Design for community vitality
Design for ecosystem health
Design for climate change
Follow up with policies
10. CASE STUDIES #1
GATEKEEPERS OF THE VALLEY - HADCHIT
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/07My563ksI0/maxresdefault.jpg accessed 9/22/2017
11. CASE STUDIES #1
GATEKEEPERS OF THE VALLEY - HADCHIT
https://www.lebanoninapicture.com/Prv/Images/Pages/Page_103973/wadi-kanoubine-livelovecedars-
livelovebcharre-l-4-8-2017-3-36-06-pm-l.jpg accessed 9/22/2017
23. FINDINGS
(Thorbeck, 2012)
Define boundaries
Adapt the skills and methods
Design with/for people
Preserve/create the character
Design for community vitality
Design for ecosystem health
Design for climate change
Follow up with policies
Editor's Notes
I am humbled and feeling privileged to be a speaker in this conference and I hope that our round table will be bringing ideas, methods, experiences and maybe recommendations the whole conference theme.
More than that I am really really thrilled to be in Dubai. It’s my first visit and the past days have been quite astonishing to experiment, discover and analyze these kinds of mixes between urbanity and modernity.
I have to confess, coming from a country – Lebanon – which is 80% already urbanized it become refreshing to see a more successful side of urbanity.
See it’s been several years now that I was asking myself about the leftovers of urbanity, these 25% that will be on the side of cities and maybe civilization if I dare to say.
Once the circle is completed, my fears are, what will they become?
Could be possible to thrive, enough to survive is the new urban world?
What kind of lifestyle would it be possible? Which quality of life will be realistic?
How a shrinking and aging population become an economic opportunity?
What sort of quality of life and sense of place can we promote to encourage young people to stay and tourist to visit small towns and communities?
What kind of incentives can we offer to promote collaboration, integration and sustainable living?
How can renewable energy be an opportunity or a catalyst for rural development?
How could we measure a community vitality?
In a nutshell
HOW CAN WE HELP COMMUNITIES COPE WITH AND MANAGE CHANGE TO PRESERVE WHAT THEY VALUE THE MOST, WHILE PROMOTING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND IMPROVING QUALITY OF LIFE?
So in order to answer these questions, we returned to the basics, the 4 domains, categories, parameters – you name it- that would indicate human production and indicates its dynamics.
Then we tried to manage these dynamics to assist rural communities and small towns in determining long-term sustainability – economic, social and environmental.
This would lead to study the geography as an ecosystem: landforms, geological history, systems of land divison, etc…
The vegetation and plants, the whole system and how it could integrate with soils, water and climate.
The human structures such as domestic dwellings, industrial building, villages, towns, cities…
The diversity (through history, arts, local culture) that bring extraordinary vitality to rural quality of life and economic development
And from here we could go to a lot of details and examples and goals such as economic stability, social progress, health care services, etc…
Once done and in order not to stay into a theoretical framework we decided that in our work we would go into a 3 steps process:
No solution would be acceptable if it doesn’t improve the life of the stakeholders immediately.
No solution would be acceptable if it doesn’t build lasting results that future generations would use
No solution would be acceptable if it doesn’t go into the legal forms of accountability, transparency and democratic participation.
Going from this let’s explore the practical side
As a final word, pushing limits between theory and practice, we were able to draft some observation that are a possible roadmap for the survival of small towns and rural communities.
Define boundaries: traditional political boundaries for cities, towns are no longer respected as we seek solutions that might cross borders. Defining boundaries would go more into the influence of character, culture and geography.
Adapt the skills and method:
Design for/with people: designers have the responsibility to go step by step with indigenous community in the design so the collectivity sharpen the methods, goals and allow them to appropriate the results – sort of participatory design
Preserve/create the character: if it goes from the people this will allow to preserve the town character and even innovate it without losing the fundamentals.
Design for community vitality and ecosystem health: where all parts would be integrated and interactive together.
Design for climate change: this interaction would not be as effective as it should without considering the new changes in global climate state and the way it affects the local.
Follow up with policies: last but not least, all of our efforts would not last if they were not promulgated into laws and decree, and that’s where the fight should be focused.
You can do astonishing studies, effective fieldwork but none would make the needed impact if the whole project is not transformed into a law.
That the 99% of our work, the fight is here but the process is long, takes a lot of time.
Time, a luxury that unfortunately we don’t have anymore.
The future demand quick actions.
Thank you.
The 1st example is a small village of around 5000 people, 2 hours and half from Beirut (125 km) and an annual budget of 300 US$ per year!!!
Hadchit is extraordinary in a way that it overlooks that astonishing Qannoubine valley with all historical baggage that it has.
Most of the valley lands are within the village municipal boundaries, yet the existing entrances for the valley are not at all defined.
When we were approached, the whole briefing was about highlighting the valley entrances but after some visits, analysis and asking the former questions that we already exposed here, we came out with another approach
The village has an important heritage of old houses and mansions; it is rich in spoken history, traditional food, music and local legends that we cannot sense or appreciate if we only dive into the valley so our main focus became to explain to the locals how their rural architecture and culture would be connected to the place and the climate.
Because we know that the more rural people understand the architectural and landscape heritage of rural region, the more likely they are to want a contemporary interpretation if it demonstrates a conceptual linkage to the geological and cultural of place.
Which leads, in practical terms to shift the valley entrance at the beginning of the village, creating thus a pathway of interactions between the tourists, pilgrims and inhabitant that would allow them to sell local handmade food and crafts made in small industries that our master plan defined.
By this we would indirectly complete the economic cycle and shift the touristic dimension from the center to a component, a sure way to free the village from uncontrollable circumstances.
The second case study would be Jounieh, 20 km north of Beirut, 20000 electors and more than 200,000 inhabitants.
Even considered as an important city by scale and income on Lebanon scale, globally it would remain by the numbers a small town.
With great geography and huge dreams the people of the city fears being placed on the benchmark in national political and economical dimensions as in a couple of decades – if not already – it will be considered as Beirut suburbs.
So the city is creating enormous and overweening initiatives: huge festivals, huge port, etc… to mark and highlight the city place
Initiatives that are not bringing the life to the city by any parameter, plus a lot of studies have been made without any concrete results.
So we’ve been approached by the mayor with no particular guidelines. Give us ideas, as he said.
So we started to analyze past studies and trying to answer our main exposed questions, we understood that all studies were focusing on the Jounieh’s waterfront, a place that is partially disconnected from the collective memory, that is hard to restore and therefore difficult to make the city competitive on an national scale.
So we established a strategy focus on resolving the city infrastructural problem, the main one was transportation. Being an old city, a lot of traffic was on.
Long story short, we revived the old traces of the train railroad.
For those unfamiliar with Lebanon train history the last time we saw a train was about 4 decades, more or less.
So it was a topic that people could recall and feel nostalgic about. And more if we could bring it to life it would become a functional object of memory, so a potential for boosting the city pride, plus a touristic attraction.
This old line would on a later stage connect with a transportation network and landmarks giving the city an original and new identity.
Really quickly, we are in phase where the mayor is not really open to new ideas, so we shifted to another strategy we are forming neighborhood communities that we hope could lobby the idea to execution.
As a final word, pushing limits between theory and practice, we were able to draft some observation that are a possible roadmap for the survival of small towns and rural communities.
Define boundaries: traditional political boundaries for cities, towns are no longer respected as we seek solutions that might cross borders. Defining boundaries would go more into the influence of character, culture and geography.
Adapt the skills and method:
Design for/with people: designers have the responsibility to go step by step with indigenous community in the design so the collectivity sharpen the methods, goals and allow them to appropriate the results – sort of participatory design
Preserve/create the character: if it goes from the people this will allow to preserve the town character and even innovate it without losing the fundamentals.
Design for community vitality and ecosystem health: where all parts would be integrated and interactive together.
Design for climate change: this interaction would not be as effective as it should without considering the new changes in global climate state and the way it affects the local.
Follow up with policies: last but not least, all of our efforts would not last if they were not promulgated into laws and decree, and that’s where the fight should be focused.
You can do astonishing studies, effective fieldwork but none would make the needed impact if the whole project is not transformed into a law.
That the 99% of our work, the fight is here but the process is long, takes a lot of time.
Time, a luxury that unfortunately we don’t have anymore.
The future demand quick actions.
Thank you.
