All Things Urban — WHAT DO YOU WANNA BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

All Things Urban
Pop-Up City
CANactions
WHAT DO YOU
WANNA BE WHEN
YOU GROW UP?
_
A series of interviews about the
most progressive trends shaping
the future of urban professions
MAY 2019

FROM THE
EDITOR
—
This series of interviews is an attempt to speculate what urban
professions will be crucial in the cities of tomorrow. We spoke to
experts from different fields, discussed their cutting-edge projects
and collected incredible ideas about the future of careers in
urbanism.
The series is prepared by All Things Urban, a network of urban
professionals working on city challenges worldwide. There, we
share handpicked career and educational opportunities in cityrelated
fields and connect thousands of passionate urbanists to
real-world projects. Today, All Things Urban is a fast-growing
community of diverse people and organisations contributing to
making cities better.
The series was originally published on Pop-Up City, a blog and
label for forward-thinking urbanism founded by Golfstromen, an
an Amsterdam-based urban communications agency. Since 2008,
Pop-Up City has been reporting the ideas and strategies that
make a change in urbanism, design and marketing.
The print version is designed for CANactions International
Architecture Festival 2019 – the largest architectural event
in Ukraine that runs annually since 2008. This year, the Festival
is focused on an exploration of the notion of "Hromada"
– a Ukrainian name for "community" – which is embedded
in the country's historic and cultural codes and reflected in
contemporary social movements and architectural forms.
Valeria Danin,
All Things Urban
| 2

CONTENTS
Urs Thomann, CANactions School 4
Carla Cammilla Hjort, SPACE10 8
Ori Succary, Colu 14
Damiano Cerrone, SPIN Unit 18
Itai Palti, Conscious Cities Movement 22
3 |

GET READY
TO BECOME
AN URBAN
CHANGE
MANAGER
—

URS THOMANN, CO-FOUNDER
OF CANACTIONS SCHOOL
—
What is CANactions and what was the story
behind this idea?
Urs Thomann is a Swiss urban planner and a
co-founder of CANactions School in Kyiv and
Amsterdam – a unique educational platform
where different actors of urban change meet.
Bringing together planners, economists,
politicians and activists, the school promotes a
collaborative approach to urban development
and supports multiple initiatives throughout
Ukraine. In this interview, Urs shares his vision
on urbanism education and the challenges of
urban professions.
CANactions School was founded in 2015 in the
most dramatic moment of Ukraine’s modern
history: the war in Donbass, the discredited
political system and the deep economic crisis
have led to increasing scepticism towards
the possibility of real change. At the same
time, these factors have triggered a growing
social demand for a fundamentally new type
of relationships between citizens, businesses
and authorities in different aspects of everyday
life – from cultural to spatial. But who are these
people that could become active changemakers
and facilitate the process of building
new types of connections in Ukrainian cities?
What tools and approaches would they need to
successfully deal with the complexity of current
challenges? CANactions was established as an
attempt to find answers to these questions.
How is it different from traditional planning
schools?
Interdisciplinarity, the “learning-by-doing”
approach and the practical orientation have
become the School’s key principles. We believe
that the impetus for city development must
come from local groups, and that’s we aim
5 |

| 6
CANactions School is an educational platform with offices in Kyiv and
Amsterdam that runs interdisciplinary research-and-design programs in
the fields of Urban Studies, Integrated Urban Development and Strategic
Spatial Planning since 2015. The School investigates and reflects on the
western and eastern urban planning and architecture practice. Its mission
is to enhance the creation of places where people love to live and work.

to create a collaboration between different stakeholders and teach them to speak a common
language, listen to each other and be flexible. Our programs let people with diverse backgrounds
and interests – local activists, politicians, civil servants, urban professionals – work together on realworld
projects as a group.
Over the years, CANactions School has been testing and sharpening its methodology — integral
and interdisciplinary in its nature — to present design and planning processes as “continuous
oscillation” towards a consensual vision of the place. The School’s ambition to connect often
opposite and conflicting actors by means of design and planning is, in fact, the way to overcome
both the totalistic and naive logic of modernism and the cynical/ironic postmodernist position.
Are there any examples of the projects realised by the CANactions’ students?
Our students often keep working together on their independent projects even after the program
ends, and CANactions supports these initiatives. One such project is a new cultural center in a
former water tower in Zhytomyr, run by a group of our students – architects, urban planners, project
managers and economists from different Ukrainian cities. Using our methodology, they brought
together the city administration, an urban development agency and an NGO to create a mixture of
viewpoints about the tower’s role in the city and work out its development strategy.
The team has not only focused on adaptive reuse but also introduced the principles of strategic
design in their work. Such an approach allowed the participants to elaborate on an interdisciplinary
and comprehensive concept. Last but not least, the working group was able to bind and strengthen
the current development strategy of the whole city, offering new scenarios for the tower’s
renovation. This approach helped the project win the public competition, and now it is being
implemented in collaboration with the Zhytomyr City Council and international NGOs.
In your opinion, what new urban professions will emerge in the future? What skills will be
crucial for these professions?
The core philosophy of our school is not to strive for new professions, but to enhance cooperation
between people with different backgrounds. Citizens, politicians, architects, engineers, philosophers
– they all have a major impact on how cities develop, and that’s why it’s so important to move
towards a more collaborative and comprehensive approach. To improve our cities, we need people
– from politicians to activists – who can embrace complexity and synthesize rather than polarize.
Having different mixtures of skills and core competencies, these people should become “stabilizers”
for the urban system. This ability to create better understanding and smooth interaction between
various professions and stakeholders is the core competence we teach in our educational programs.
In opposite to the predominant approach where different specialists are being separated from each
other, we prepare our student to become Urban Change Managers, who can successfully navigate
urban transformation.
7 |

CARLA CAMMILLA HJORT,
CO-FOUNDER OF SPACE10
—
Carla Cammilla Hjort is the Co-
Founder and Vision Director
at SPACE10, a research and
design lab in Copenhagen
on a mission to create better
and more sustainable ways of
living. In this interview, Carla
tells about her journey to
founding SPACE10 and shares
insights on tackling future
challenges through mindful
technology adoption.
At SPACE10, you work to enable more meaningful and sustainable urban future. What are the
main aspects of it you are focused on?
SPACE10 is a research and design lab. We explore the major societal changes – the kind that
is already affecting us and is likely to deeply change the lives of most in the future. From rapid
urbanisation to resource scarcity, climate change to lack of affordable housing, the world we live in
is not short of challenges.
And at the same time, we have access to unprecedented opportunities to address a lot of pressing
issues. Technology, for example, is a fantastic tool to empower people in completely new ways.
So we ask questions, engage experts in different fields, learn, share and invite people in. We then
look for ways to make things better together. We explore possible solutions, prototype, test, and
hopefully end up turning good ideas into meaningful products or services.
| 8

IT'S TIME TO STRIVE
FOR A MINDFUL
URBAN FUTURE
—

SPACE10 Research explores
the bigger changes
expected to affect people
in the coming decades
and tries to identify
opportunities for a better
everyday life. SPACE10
Design acts upon these
opportunities and aims to
design solutions for people
and the planet. And finally,
SPACE10 Culture connects
with people from around the
world to exchange ideas,
spark discussions
and empower people to
drive positive change.
How do you explore future
urban scenarios at SPACE10?
We have SPACE10 Research,
where we explore the bigger
changes expected to affect
people in the coming decades
and where we try to identify
opportunities for a better
everyday life. We have
SPACE10 Design, that acts
upon identified opportunities
to create better and more
sustainable ways of living.
Embracing a holistic mindset,
we aim to design solutions
for people and the planet.
And finally, we have SPACE10
Culture, which connects with
people from around the world
to exchange ideas, spark
discussions and to empower
people to drive positive
change.
These are the three main pillars
of SPACE10, but we’re a fairly
small team, so our approach
is to surround ourselves with
people who are smarter than
us, so we constantly collaborate
with other companies, studios,
and brilliant experts out there.
We strongly believe that
collaboration beats competition
so we share all our research and
ideas with the public – both on
our website and through talks,
exhibitions and events, but we
also invite people from all over
the world to SPACE10 to work
with us.
| 10

Can you give an example of a project run at SPACE10? How was it tested in real life and what
was the result?
As an example, I would take The Growroom – a spherical garden that we made with architects
Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrik Husum. The project started as an architecture competition aimed to
explore how cities can feed themselves through food-producing architecture.
The winning proposal ended up sparking excitement and interest from around the world – people
reached out and wanted to buy or exhibit The Growroom in their home countries. But we didn’t feel
it was right to promote local food production and at the same time start a centralised production
and distribution of The Growroom. So, we tapped into the potential of digital fabrication, went back
to the drawing board and designed an open source version, so we could send the digital design
files instead of the physical product and let people build it themselves locally, using local materials.
It took quite a lot of development stages because we wanted it to be as accessible as possible
for as many as possible. As a result, all you need to assemble your own Growroom is two rubber
hammers, 17 sheets of plywood and a visit to your local maker space, that can be found in almost
any major city in the world, to have the pieces cut. The Growroom is designed for cities – it has a
small spatial footprint and can stand freely in any context in our neighbourhoods. It offers a piece
of ‘pause’-architecture in our high-paced scenery and supports our everyday sense of well-being by
creating a small oasis, where we can relax, socialise and re-connect with nature.
Because the design is open source and anyone can download it for free, The Growroom was
downloaded 30.000 times in the first months of the release and local versions of the Growroom
have since been built as far afield as Helsinki, Moscow, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Seoul
and Sydney. Ultimately, of course, we’d like to see the Growroom built in as many cities as possible
and the design is still free and publicly available for anyone.
11 |

Your professional (and personal) path is very unique. How did you start
your career and then decide to focus on exploring the future of urban
spaces?
I was a DJ, music producer and event-maker when in 2006 I started a
company, Art Rebels, that still exists today. We stared as a fairly small inhouse
team, and then elevated our competence with a network of specialists
from around the world, facilitating and connecting creative talent with
potential collaborators. There, I specialised myself in conceptualising and
trying to understand how we can use art, culture and design to create social
change in different aspects.
In one of our project, we designed a collection for IKEA which allowed us
really connect with the company’s CEO. A year later, he contacted me again
– he wanted us to help him define an IKEA that better fits for the future. We
decided to expand IKEA’s truly inspiring vision of creating a better everyday
life for the many people and explore what the company would potentially do
in the future to create solutions for more sustainable and meaningful living,
from housing and energy to food. That’s how we came up with the idea of
SPACE10 and moved to an urban development field.
What new urban professions and skills you believe will be essential in
the future?
I’m sure we’ll see a lot of new fancy job titles in the future, but one thing you
can be sure of is that for many years to come, creative and technology skills
will be in high demand. At the same time, there’s this irony that on one hand,
we’re fostering innovation, and on the other hand, our society is not actually
ready to embrace it: from education to politics, we can’t adapt to these
changes fast enough.
With the accelerated development of virtual and augmented reality, IoT,
etc., very soon we’ll urgently need people who are well-equipped to analyse
possible implications and solve newly emerging problems. Such Technology
Adoption Facilitators will play an important role in helping people adjust to
the world of tomorrow in a mindful and ethical way and making our cities
more livable and sustainable.
| 12

13 |

HOW LOCAL CITY
CURRENCY CAN
STRENGTHEN
COMMUNITY
—

ORI SUCCARY,
VP OF DESIGN AT COLU
—
You are a designer, working on a digital wallet app
for cities. What brought you to be interested in this
subject?
Ori Succary is the VP of Design
at Colu, an Israeli startup that
issues local currencies for cities
and encourages spending locally.
In this piece, Ori explains how
the app helps cities achieve
economic sustainability and
shares his vision on the role of
design in shaping the future of
the places we live in.
I’m a designer, even though I’ve never actually studied
design. I got kicked out of school when I was 15 and
ended up in the democratic school – the kind of school
where kids are in charge. I was always very interested
in the subjects that weren’t taught in traditional schools
– culture, philosophy, psychology and so on. At my
new school, nobody taught them either – but the
teachers would always point you in the right direction
and encourage you to pursue it: so at 16, I was already
teaching cinema to the younger children myself. These
fourth-graders would watch crazy movies by Kubrick
or Tarkovsky and have truly incredible and deep
discussions – it was amazing! But the most important
lesson I learned there was that if you’re curious, open
and ready to take risks, you could do anything.
I was always interested in design, so after I finished
school I went on to become a graphic designer. And
even though I was quite successful in this profession, I
felt like there was something missing. In my daily work,
I did a lot of flashy, commercial stuff, when personally,
I was much more interested in culture and everything
that has something to do with people. I was involved
in politics and humanitarian aid, and felt like there’s
a deep gap between my professional and personal
interests, with no overlap of meaning or value between
what I do and what I'm passionate about.
15 |

Colu is empowering local communities, using a unique city currency that
creates a meaningful social and economic impact and gives cities and
residents a tool for making a positive difference.
And then 2 things happened,
both of which still influence
me a lot. First, I was invited
to teach design. Like I said
previously, I’ve never been
to university myself, so it was
a totally new experience for
me. Second, I read the book
“A Pattern Language” by
architect Christopher Alexander,
which gives a very humane
and empathetic perspective
on design. This book has
completely transformed the
way I think and helped me
realize the element that my
graphic design work was
missing – a dialog with people.
That’s how I encountered the
idea of interaction design, that
allows you to influence people
and see immediate feedback.
Later, I became the head of
Interaction Design Studies at
Bezalel Academy of Arts and
Design in Jerusalem, which
was an amazing opportunity to
share this vision with students.
In parallel, I worked with tech
companies and startups, and
in all my projects I was always
thinking about Christopher
Alexander’s perspective, trying
to make them more ethical
and empathetic. When I met
Colu, a Tel Aviv-based startup
that creates a decentralized
payment system for local
communities, I was so blown
away with their philosophy and
focus on people that I realized
there and then I wanted to be
part of it.
| 16

What is so special about Colu?
Colu has this beautiful, almost ancient idea of transforming cities through the local currencies. In its
current implementation, a local currency can’t be cashed out or exchanged by consumers, so it is
spent on local independent businesses in the network – we target local independent businesses and
avoid multinational chains. Since it always stays in the community and circulates in the city, people
are encouraged to buy more in local shops and from local suppliers, and this has a strong effect on
economic sustainability.
At the same time, we’re not trying to undermine the national currencies – Colu is a complementary
tool that cities can use to solve their problems. For example, right now we’re working in partnership
with 100 Resilient Cities (pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation) to adopt digital currencies in 2
global cities and help them achieve their sustainability and resilience goals. Ultimately, the idea is
to allow people in these cities to get at least part of their salaries and pay some of their taxes with
local money. This, in turn, lets the municipalities incentivize the residents to make healthier choices,
like using public transportation or cycling.
What is special about Colu is the courage to change and do things in order to bring more value not
only to the stakeholders, but to the entire ecosystem including people, the actual users. In my team,
we go out to the street and interview people on a weekly basis – without any questionnaires, we just
show them the app and ask what they see. And people actually say incredible, beautiful things! You
wouldn't believe it – everything we know, or think we know about people, turns out to be wrong.
We expect them to be focused on their own interests and personal gain; instead, they are very
empathetic and caring for each other and for the communal value. And that’s what Colu is all about
– reclaiming this value.
What new urban professions and skills will be essential in the future?
It’s hard to say, of course, as modern culture changes so fast – but there are some things that will be
crucial for the future Urban Experience Designers.
First, the ability to look and listen deeply. To be alert, attentive and empathetic towards the citizens,
and playful towards the practice. Second, the ability to make a stand. I believe (or hope) that in the
future, no designers will consider themselves mere service providers or stick to the plain aesthetic
aspects of the profession, without considering the behavioral implications of their works on society
over time.
And third, the ability to be poetic, artistic and soulful. This generation’s main technological effort is
to automate and templatize everything – including design. But it’s wrong to think we can templatize
art – the writing of Franz Kafka, the art of Andy Goldsworthy, or the music of Otis Redding can't be
automated. Culture will need designers and planners that can outgrow this trend.
17 |

DAMIANO CERRONE,
CO-FOUNDER OF SPIN UNIT
—
Cities are constantly changing,
as well as the ways in which
we analyse them. Damiano
Cerrone, a co-founder of SPIN
Unit, a consulting and research
lab, tells about a new approach
to urban research, the role
of data in contemporary
policy making, and how
urban planning is turning into
interaction planning.
Why do you think urban research requires a new approach today?
When we talk about urban elements, we often think of their tangible features. If I close
my eyes and try to picture a building, I will most likely see a facade, windows, entrances,
etc. Nowadays, however, every element of the city, from buildings to people, has both a
physical and digital form.
Social media and user-tailored advertising platforms have created new kinds of social
relations and economic activities that don’t necessarily depend on physical space. Today,
a vibrant and attractive place, being a valuable commercial asset and a key resource for
urban development, is no longer exclusively determined by centrality and visibility. On
the contrary, it is defined by intangible digital bonds that challenge the power of physical
location.
This has shifted the mantra of “location, location, location” to “communication,
communication, communication”, presenting a new challenge for contemporary
architecture to attract users in physical space and guarantee their permanence there.
| 18

HOW URBAN
PLANNING IS
TURNING INTO
INTERACTION
PLANNING
—

SPIN Unit is a transnational urban research group combining
art and science to find new and creative approaches to urban
studies and advanced data analysis.
You developed your own research methodology, can you tell us about it?
To gain a deeper understanding of contemporary cities we use an approach
called “metaMorphology”. It is based on 3 pillars: Space, Activities and
Value.
For instance, if we are standing in front of a store, we see the building and
the public space around it (Space). We see employees and customers,
walking in and out, or people who simply pass by (Activities). At the same
time, this store can be present and active in the digital space. Producing
tweets, Instagram pictures and Foursquare check-ins, it changes the
landscape of real estate and the economy of its surroundings (Value).
In our work, we measure the spatial and configurational properties of
urban spaces, local human activity patterns and socio-cultural value. Using
information from different sources, including classical statistical and social
media data, we rank the popularity and attractivity of the place and map the
actual activities instead of formal functions of spaces and buildings. This gives
us an overview of evolving patterns and emerging trends.
| 20

How did you use this method in your
projects?
MetaMorphology effectively becomes a proxy to
measure the outputs of the interactions between
people and the city. During the last couple of
years, I have used this method in an extensive
collaboration with Strelka KB, a Moscowbased
urban planning consultancy. Applying
our approach, we’ve effectively explored
contemporary urban trends in 80 Russian cities
and got valuable insights about places with very
little statistical data available. These discoveries
helped us define knowledge-based guidelines to
boost the social and economic life of streets and
public spaces and improve the quality of life.
Another, more practical and direct use of
my method is Turku Open Platform (TOP),
developed for the City of Turku in Finland. The
interface allows city planners, officials and other
specialists to explore the relations between
Space, Activities and Values, test the potential
benefits of future urban scenarios, as well as to
plan and review urban policies.
You call yourself an "Interaction Planner".
How do you think a planning profession is
changing today?
I prefer the term “interaction planner” to “urban
planner” because de facto our profession is no
longer limited to urban space. More on, while
it is possible to make a distinction between
urban and rural space with demographic and
morphometrical indexes, urban life is now
diffused beyond the conceptual and political
borders of one city.
Today, we can’t untangle the intricate
relationships between places and the digital
footprint people create while interacting with
them. Having focused my study on the blend
of activities and temporal patterns intrinsic to
physical spaces, I came to the conclusion that
successful places are those capable to provide a
good interaction with the users. And that is what
the planning profession is all about today.
21 |

ARCHITECTURE AND
NEUROSCIENCE
COLLIDE TO DESIGN
CONSCIOUS CITIES
—

ITAI PALTI, FOUNDER OF THE
CONSCIOUS CITIES MOVEMENT
—
The Conscious Cities movement is a way to
rethink the conventional architecture and
design. How do you think it should respond
to challenges of our time?
Historically, architects and designers have used
their intuition to make design decisions, often
affected by trends, some of which are now being
proven to be counter-intuitive to what creates a
good user experience. For example, open-plan
offices aren’t always conducive to productivity;
stress brought on by noise and certain social
aspects of that environment has a cost to the
effectiveness of a workforce as well as to human
health.
As cognitive science and technology develop
rapidly, today we have a chance to reinvent
our approach to building cities. Itai Palti, a
London-based architect and founder of the
Conscious Cities movement, explains how to
use behavioural insights to make architecture
and cities more human-centred, and how
neuroscience will change the future of urban
development.
Even a very skilled designer won’t always be able
to image the experience of users, let alone have
a reliable measure of the effectiveness of their
designs. At the same time, we have a wealth
of knowledge from behavioural and cognitive
science about what affects our physical and
mental health. However, as the order of priorities
is missing a focus on human wellbeing, almost
none of it is being used to improve our built
environment.
23 |

What is Conscious City and where did this idea come from?
I personally became interested in behavioural science during my master's thesis,
in which I proposed using curiosity as a design tool to support empathy between
users of an environment. I wasn’t satisfied with how I saw the architecture profession
answering this challenge, mostly by relying on intuition, and was puzzled as to why
so few had looked at the growing evidence base being produced by science.
In 2015, I founded the Conscious Cities movement, a new field of research and
practice for building people-centered urban environments that are aware and
responsive to the needs of inhabitants. This means designing with an understanding
of the human experience in mind, but also facilitating an ongoing exchange between
the environment and its users in order to continually improve the quality of design.
Unlike Smart Cities that generate solutions to logistical problems, the Conscious
Cities approach proposes that design must be human-centred, reordering priorities
by placing our physical and mental health above traditional (and often mechanic)
measures of efficiency.
Can you give an example of a project where this approach had been used?
One example of this approach in action is the Urban Thinkscape initiative, which aims
to integrate the benefits of playful learning into the urban fabric, where I take part as
an architectural consultant.
The project was run in Philadelphia, which saw a vacant lot turned into a space
for the community to benefit from. Presenting an opportunity as part of every-day
routine is much more effective than it being a destination in itself, and so the plot
adjacent to a bus stop, where families and kids often spend time waiting, was turned
into a playground.
The Thinkscape includes four science informed installation designs that support
child development. For example, puzzles that engage math and spatial skills, or
environmental cues for caregiver-child interactions that develop socio-emotional
skills and literacy. One installation, an iteration of a hopscotch is designed as a direct
translation of exercises in child psychology used to teach self-control.
Data gathering was carried out 6 months prior and 6 months after the installation of
the space. The results show a very significant impact related to indicators of healthy
child development. This makes Urban Thinkscape one of the first projects that
represents the whole through-line of what Conscious Cities proposes, from a concept
that begins with a human metric to a post-occupancy strategy that improves the
environment’s outputs.
| 24

Conscious Cities is a movement focusing on people-centric environments
that are aware and responsive using Tech, AI, and Science Informed Design.
Since its foundation in 2015, a number of events and publications have
contributed to the concept becoming an active field of research and practice.
How do you think this idea
will change the future of
urban development? What
new jobs will emerge?
In the past, both the industry
and its clients were largely
either unaware or unconvinced
by the opportunity presented
by human-centred design.
However, things are starting
to change as landlords, for
example, are understanding
that their property becomes
more competitive and valuable
if it is better designed for the
users and activities taking
place. Commercial property
owners are now taking note
that better-designed spaces
mean a healthier and more
productive workforce, leading
to more satisfied tenants. Local
governments are already seeing
the benefits of designing for a
healthier population.
All of this changes how an
industry produces its product.
We will see more jobs
being created that focus on
behavioural insight, both in
integrating it into design, but
also in producing more valuable
knowledge. We may see
Conscious Design consultants
work with architects and
clients to improve designs and
measure impact. In any case,
a greater demand for humancentred
design encourages the
creation of new roles and jobs
where architecture and design
intersect with the other fields
at play: science, technology,
policy and governance.
25 |

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Aridan Mecava, Jeroen Beekmans and Regina Schröter
from Pop-Up City for making this collaboration happen;
Olena Vozniak from CANactions for the invitation;
Anastasia Sukhoroslova and Karina Garnaga from
All Things Urban for great ideas and support.
PHOTO CREDITS:
Courtesy of CANactions (pp. 5-6); Kasper Kristoffersen
(p. 8); Hampus Berndtson (pp. 10-11); Alicia Sjöström
(p. 13); Courtesy of Colu (pp. 15-16); Courtesy of SPIN
Unit (p. 18, pp. 20-21); Courtesy of the Conscious Cities
Movement (p. 23); Sahar Coston-Hardy (p. 25).
PUBLISHED BY ALL THINGS URBAN, 2019
27 |

All
Things
Urban