this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025

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Urban Planning

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Anarchist Urban Planning or Sustainability in transformative urban planning between aspiration and implementation - A system critical comparison between New European Bauhaus and Solarpunk (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 days ago by Mica_Twist@slrpnk.net to c/urbanplanning@lemmy.ml

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Hi, hello you beautiful creatures!

I'm currently working on my Bachelor's thesis. The title of the thesis is in the post's title.

For all of you who don't know New European Bauhaus NEB (Not important for my request here, but very interesting and I highly recommend to look it up): It's a new initiative of urban planning started 2020 by the EU. As we all know, the EU is not famous for beeing Solarpunk at all, but NEB is as Solarpunk as a supranational initiative of a group of capitalist an partially fascist nations can be. In fact, if you ignore the beaurocracy and hierarchies, it is surprisingly close to the political and social ideas of Solarpunk. In my thesis I analyzed the "Creating NEBourhoods Together"-Project in Munich-Neuperlach, one of 5 pilot projects. It was finished March 2025 and the results were interesting but not overwhelmingly revolutionary or game changing. But it showed the potential and hurdles of bottom-up, participatory urban planning.

Now I want to compare the results of this pilot project with projects from Solarpunks. I want to see if and how Solarpunk can walk around those beaurocratic hurdles and how best practices from the Solarpunk movement can contribute to a transformation of european urban planning strategies and processes.

I am completely aware that every Solarpunk has a little different interpretation of the Solarpunk ideology and I am no exception, so this is how I interpret (the political and social aspect of) Solarpunk:

Solarpunk is eco-anarchafeminist

No hierarchies

No exploitation of non-human species

Real inclusion of every minority

Participatory

Independent and decentral

Anti- & postcapitalism

Technology as much as necessary and as little as possible

Practical and feasible

Creative and approachable

Nature inspired

If you would recommend adding something, you are welcome to do so, but please let's focus on my request and postpone (very welcome) discussions until I finished writing my thesis.

Finally my acutal request. As I want to compare those two topics as directly as possible, I search for real projects (or well planned concepts) following all (or at least the very most) principles above. They have to identify themselves as Solarpunk so feel free to share your own project if it matches the requirements. Scope doesn't matter but it has to have a community aspect. So it can't be your insect hotel in your private backyard. Legality is not needed; gimme your guerilla projects! I need at least one example for each of the following action points, as they are the action points of the "Creating NEBourhoods Together" project:

Animal Aided Design: How can urban wildlife be integrated in urban design projects?

Redesigning House Structures: How can existing buildings be upgraded to fit sustainable ecological and social aspirations?

Living together as part of nature: How can we integrate nature in urban areas to enhance biodiversity, health, feel more connected with non-human species and strengthen the community?

Private Spaces for Public Use: How can we reclaim privately owned public spaces like store passages, mall plazas, housing block paths or backyards for the community?

Mobility: How can we provide access to community driven mobility solutions apart from public transport provided by the municipalities?

Youngsters design the city: How can children contribute to urban planning?

Public Power: How can we combine solutions for local climate challenges (like heat or floods etc) with other solution for other challenges expressed by the community?

Energy communities: How can we provide and organize community or cooperatively generated electricity?

Circular Cities: How to transform large single-use buildings like office buildings to sustainable, circular and community-oriented centers?

Food Production: How can we produce food locally and provide education and strengthen the community?

Digital Meets Analog: How can participatory, co-creational urban planning processes be supplemented with digital solutions? (AR, Social Media, Polls, Maps etc)

If you made it this far, thanks a lot for reading this waaaall of text. And if you have a project to share, I'll be even more thankful!

Of course I will share my work when it's done altough it will be in German. (Maybe I can find time to translate it for y'all)

Love you all Sarah

Here are the links to the NEB stuff:

NEB-Compass, the "Manifest" of NEB Principles: https://new-european-bauhaus.europa.eu/system/files/2023-01/NEB_Compass_V_4.pdf

EU-Website for NEB:

https://new-european-bauhaus.europa.eu/index_en

Website of the Creating NEBourhoods Together Project:

https://www.nebourhoods.de/en

Research results of the Creating NEBourhoods Together Project:

https://www.nebourhoods.de/results?section=NEBourhoods+for+Tomorrow

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Maybe this isn't the place for me to ask, as I'm a Marxist-Leninist and this is explicitly anarchist-focused, but I'm confused at the purpose of some of these.

Why is identifying as Solarpunk important? If sound economic and civil planning is done, period, then shouldn't it be acceptable to learn from?
Why is it important for children to participate in something as complicated as planning? Shouldn't that be reserved for those who have trained and practiced for it?
How do you scale industrial production of, say, solar panels, with horizontalist, decentralized systems? Is management and administration deemed an acceptable hierarchy, or is the idea to produce complicated electronics at a small-scale? I understand that not every anarchist has the same opinions on scaling, both in extent and strategy, but some of these measures appear contradictory.

Not trying to critique, I just felt that if I had those questions, others may as well, so if you feel these worthy of answering you have this as an opportunity to do so. Good luck on your thesis!

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As a fellow ML, I have some thoughts on your questions:

I think it's the values alignment more than the identity that's important. And the values alignment is important when one's ideology elevates "prefiguration" as anarchism tends to do.
It's important for children to participate in planning because children are affected by planning and their perspective matters. Consider that European society is founded on a structural oppression of children including their psychological abuse and repeated traumatization. If you haven't yet, read about Spartan child separation and then compare that with English boarding schools.
Generally anarchists do not allow for "power hierarchies" which they claim is somehow distinct from other types of hierarchies that might be used in planning and coordination, but anarchists also have a strong position that the professional manager and bureaucrat constitute an entire class and their existence therefore means society is class-based and hierarchial. Ultimately, anarchic decentralizational and horizontalism requires the local or at least regional duplication of supply chains which does result in a form of resiliency against natural disaster, monopolization, and scarcity.

I have my critiques of these things as well, but figured I would do what I could to begin constructing a steel-person argument as part of good faith discourse.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Fair enough! Makes sense. I can see the reason why one would want these, it's more the implementation I was questioning. I have my own critiques as well, but wanted to hold those in case OP wishes to respond.