Kings of a rock or peers in a thriving land

Ryan Darmanie
Ryan Darmanie

Those who sit on the throne and prefer to see their surroundings crumble, rather than supplement their knowledge with advice from and surround themselves with critical-thinking and passionate peers, are a threat to our nation and our democracy. This is true at the level of organisations, or municipal and the national government.

Thankfully, every now and then, I am reminded that there are people out there in positions of authority who are not threatened by, and in fact embrace new lessons, innovation, and the passion of uncontaminated youth. I am also all too aware of the relics clinging to their thrones, who, as a wise friend said, will ostracise and smear those who dare to dig below the surface, ask deeper questions, and challenge the norms that are taking us down a dangerous path.

Does it make sense for these chosen few to cling to the reins of power, focus only on their ascendancy, and remain kings of an increasingly unstable rock, instead of living as peers in a thriving land?

As far as many of them are concerned, they played by the rules. Whether pursuing the alphabet of qualifications appended to their names to get that promotion, spending years conveniently looking the other way, or finding ways to form unsavoury alliances, they now feel that they are entitled to the fruits of this sacrifice. How likely are they to support challenges to the system?

The only way for our society to move forward is to empower those innovators, genuine collaborators, and true patriots who live among us. They do exist. I have met them. These encounters though, seem few and far between.

Urban planning and urban design are at the core of creating the physical spaces that we dwell in, and these spaces, to a large extent, dictate our reality and social, economic, and political dynamics.

What if there was a way for us to design spaces so that those critical-thinking people were able to connect more easily, and form the links needed to challenge a status quo? These bonds can be formed through formal arrangements and groups, but they can also be built through our informal everyday interactions with each other.

Think about it in the context of innovation. Imagine if you were a genius and on the verge of figuring out a new construction technique that could dramatically reduce the cost of building housing. Suppose you did not have a platform to write in the newspaper, you came from a family with little influential connections, and you lived in a remote or socially isolated place. Would your idea get enough traction to transform an industry?

Suppose what you were missing was access to an engineer who could help you fine-tune your concept, and a contractor who would be willing to test it out in practice.

Now imagine you lived in a densely-populated urban neighbourhood and one of your neighbours – whom you met while walking to and from work every morning – was an engineer, and your friend – with whom you struck up random conversation at a park one day – had similarly befriended a real estate developer through a chance encounter at the local library.

These serendipitous happenstances are often the sparks that ignite the meeting of minds and the beginnings of beneficial disruption. They are nourished, and have been throughout history, by densely populated urban areas designed at a human scale. Anyone can be an individual innovator, thinker, or disruptor, but it is the networks, which largely grow organically out of the daily informal interactions in our everyday lives that synergistically create the conditions necessary for change to manifest.

At the heart of the way that we think about and regulate the planning and design of our physical public spaces must be the desire to maximise interactions between many diverse types of people who otherwise may not ever get the chance to meet. This simple change in approach can lead to the flourishing of our invaluable local human capital.

There is no other planning and design ideology that is more democratic, supportive of innovation and adaptability, and more vital to a thriving nation.

The more we build exclusion and the shunning of public spaces into our everyday reality, the more we dampen beneficial serendipity, the more our society will stagnate, and the more the reins of power will remain with those who will maintain the systems threatening our continued survival.

Ryan Darmanie is an urban planning and design consultant with a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Rutgers University, New Jersey, and a keen interest in urban revitalisation. You can connect with him at darmanieplanningdesign.com or e-mail him at ryan@darmanieplanningdesign.com

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"Kings of a rock or peers in a thriving land"

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