Given the growing pace of urbanisation and the need for developing cohesive, and resilient communities, it is crucial to discuss how we can better design the space of our future cities. Inspired by the movement of open spaces in cities across the world, resilience theory and the concept of smart cities, I demonstrate that city and human resilience are tightly interlinked and it is possible to positively influence both through utilising the transformative power of open spaces and smart technologies in novel ways. Moreover, drawing on my main line of research on resilience of complex adaptive systems (e.g., people, places and natural systems), I present synthetic ways to rethink urban design and harness the transformative function of flexible structures such as open spaces and pervasive technologies such as Internet of Things to help people and communities explore new sociocultural possibilities that open them up to explore new possibilities, and eventually shifting our shared social realities toward new horizons.

1. Future Urban Design !
for the Emergence of a Fluid Sense of Self
Shima Beigi, PhD. !
Environmental Engineer and Urban Resilience Scientist !
Research on Resilience and Sustainability of Complex Adaptive Systems !
University of Oxford and Global Brian Institute !
Based in Brussels, Belgium !
globalbraininstitute.org
shima.beigi@gmail.com

2. Challenges of Our World
• Urbanisations
• Resilience
• Resilient Cities
• Harnessing Distributed Intelligence
• Future Urban Design

3. United Nations 2014
“By 2050, the urban population is expected to rise to 62% in
Africa, to 65% in Asia, and to 90% in Latin America.”

5. “Resilience and Urbanisation Interplay”

6. Resilience is a System Level Property
of Complex Adaptive Systems.
S. Beigi 2014

7. Resilience is only one way of responding to change.
S. Beigi 2014

8. How to Move from Resilience to Thriving?

9. The Resilient Agent Model and Systemic Resilience. Beigi 2014

10. “Transforming Agents’ Control Mechanisms.”

11. Hacken 2006
“A system is self-organising if it acquires a spatial, temporal, or
functional structure without specific interference from the
outside. By ‘specific’ we mean that the structure or functioning is
not impressed on the system but that the system is acted upon
from the outside in a nonspecific fashion. For instance, the
fluid which forms hexagons is heated from below in an entirely
uniform fashion and it acquires its specific structure by self-
organisation.”

12. Guided Self Organisation (GSO)

13. Dirk Helbing 2014
Distributed control means that, if we wish to “guide” the system
towards a certain desirable mode of behaviour, we must do so
by applying the guiding influences in many "local" parts of the
system, rather than trying to impose a single global behaviour on
all the individual components at once.”

14. Francis Heylighen 2014
“Guided Self-Organisation is developing strategies, programs,
and institutions that will facilitate and to some degree steer the
self organisation of the global brain in what appear to be the
most fruitful directions.”

15. Bottom Up and Grassroots
Aggregating the Wisdom of Decentralisation

16. Emily Y. Y. Chan Nature Geoscience 2013
“…A bottom-up approach [to disaster resilience] that focuses on
the opportunities for individual people and communities to take
more responsibility could also be effective and may help to save
even more lives.”

17. Nudge Theory and Choice Architecture

18. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein 2008
“A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice
architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way
without forbidding any options or significantly changing their
economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention
must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates.
Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food
does not…”

19. Jane Jacobs
“We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of
ourselves.”

20. Dérive
• Initiated by the situationist Guy
Debord in Technique of rapid
passage through varied
ambiences.
• Dérive means to Drift
• It involve playful-constructive
behaviour and awareness of
psychogeographical effects,
and are thus quite different
from the classic notions of
journey or stroll.

21. “Harnessing the Intelligence of Crowd.”

22. Urbanised and Connected Agents
• Pervasiveness of smar t
phones.
• Increased level of user ability
to tune into different realities.
• S h i f t f ro m p a s s i v i t y t o
dynamism and co-creation of
experience at different levels.

23. Dérive APP
• The app enables users to
explore the urban atmosphere in
a totally new way through the
use of randomly drawn task
cards that tell you what to do.
• Derive creates a sense of
urgency in the exploration for
new objects, things, colours and
people to follow, find and
experience.
• The city and its environment is
getting explored in an playfully
but also critically way.

24. Shaun in the City of Bristol
Citizen Engagement and Fund Raising

25. William Shakespeare
“What is the city but the people?”

26. Urban Oriented Self Organisation and Self Actualisation?
• V i e w i n g c i t i e s a s a n
intersubjective spaces that
shape our experiences.
• Organic communities
• Internet of things, people, and
cultures
• Reclaiming our natural drive for
resilience

27. Urban Oriented Self Organisation and Self Actualisation?
• Collective problem solving
• Serendipity
• Sense of wonder
• C o n t r o l l e d e x p o s u r e t o
uncertainty
• Reclaiming our spontaneity
• Activating resilience the
ordinary magic (Masten 2001)

28. Co-existence of Personal Realities and Urban Realities

29. Multiple Realisability of Information in Open Spaces

30. The Intersubjective and Collective Space of Urban Systems

31. Emergence of Fluid Sense of Self in Urban Systems