this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025

4 points (100.0% liked)

Urban Planning

242 readers

1 users here now

Urban Planning, Community Planning, City Planning, New Urbanism, Smart Growth, Zoning, Transportation and all that makes the built environments that we work and recreate in. Urban planning aims to improve the built, natural, social and economic aspects of towns and cities.

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

spiritedpause@lemmy.ml

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 1 week ago by Mica_Twist@slrpnk.net to c/urbanplanning@lemmy.ml

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

top 9 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (2 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!

[–] Mica_Twist@slrpnk.net 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm new and all but a techie, so I don't know how to reply directly on comments. I don't know of it worked.(It seems that some functions aren't working properly, as I can't see them but click on some of them :S)

@Cowbee: MLs and Anarchists have the same goal, especially Solarpunks, we just take different approaches.

Identifying as Solarpunk might have been to restrictive. I wanted to provide examples that are Solarpunk and initiated BY Solarpunks. As I can't find enough projects which meet this requirement, I will probably have to select projects, that meet the requirements without the project and its members identifying as Solarpunk. But still only few projects do so. So I'd still need help with my research.
As one of the core principles of the Solarpunk Manifesto is inclusion, every social group has to be heard, be included and participate in planning processes. Of course children have to have a saying in the shaping of their future community. Let me give you an exaggerated example. A group is planning a playground because everyone agrees that it is needed. The group considers what children need and builds a seesaw, a swing, and a slide. The children come to the newly built playground and notice that, first of all, there is no sandbox, which they had wanted so much, then the playground is right next to a nursery and they are not allowed to be loud, and in addition, pretty bushes have been planted around the playground, but now wasps like to build their nests there, making the playground too dangerous. All this could have been prevented if specific groups, including children were involved in the planning process.
The fundamental question that should be asked first is whether large-scale production is really always necessary. If so, there are certainly non-hierarchical solutions. Anarchist unions and cooperatives, for example. An organization can even have temporary leadership based on anarchist principles, for example due to a hierarchy of knowledge or skills. In this case, leadership would be more accurately described as guidance, and the position of power could be limited by a rotation principle.

Thank you for your thought-provoking comment. I hope I was able to provide some clarity.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for answering! Fair enough.

One thing I do want to say, is that MLs and anarchists have similar opposition to capitalism, but difference in analysis leads to different end goals. For Marxists, the end goal is full collectivization, equal ownership across all of society, in one global system, ie full centralization. For anarchists, the end goal is horizontalist and decentralized. As a former anarchist, I often saw confusion among anarchists due to many anarchists believing Marxists simply wanted the same society with a different approach, but diving into Marx makes it evident that that isn't the case.

Thanks for sharing!

[–] Mica_Twist@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Even according to the Communist Manifesto, the goal of the communist revolution is to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat, thereby abolishing the propertied class and creating a classless society. Once this has been achieved, the Manifesto states, state authority is no longer necessary, as the means of production are in the hands of those who produce. Anarchist decentralization does not mean that production does not have to be jointly controlled. It means that no single body rules over everyone, but rather that the respective producers have free access to the means of production and their products and manage them without hierarchy. The misunderstanding may be due to the sometimes significantly varying currents of anarchism. There are individual anarchists, but we are not talking about them; there are collectivists, syndicalists, communalists, and anarcho-communists. They all have different views on how communities should be organized in detail, but they all agree that no one should be ruled over. This also applies to Marxism. If we abolish the propertied class but place power in a state apparatus that has decision-making power over those who cannot or do not want to be an active part of that apparatus, we once again have a propertied class. Marx also points this out. The abolition of the state as an instrument of domination is therefore inherently Marxist. The creation of an organizational structure that regulates the administration of communities without exercising domination can be called a state (I wouldn't do so, but it's possible) and would not contradict mutualist anarchist principles. Examples of such organizations are the councils that exist in Germany, Russia, or today in northern Syria or among the Zapatistas. Yes, there is criticism there too, but ultimately what I am getting at is that Marxism also strives for the abolition of domination. There are differences in the design of the revolutionary process and, depending on the anarchist current, in the organization of production in the post-revolutionary community. I must admit, however, that I have not dealt with Leninism enough so far and my view of it is rather prejudiced.

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

Yes, Marxists seek to abolish the state, but that doesn't include administration, management, accounting, social planning, etc. For all intents and purposes, it would include a government. The state, from the Marxist point of view, is a tool of class oppression, so the way to abolish the state is to abolish class. The way Marxists believe we can abolish class is gradually sublimating all property until it is fully collectivized, globally, along a common plan.

The difference with most strains of anarchism is in decentralization and horizontalism. If said anarchist is in favor of communes, where each "cell" has direct ownership of that which they interact with equally among the commune, this doesn't actually allow for equal ownership of all among all globally. The difference between Marxism and anarchism is, put perhaps oversimplified, as between large, centralized production and small, decentralized production.

This isn't anything from Lenin. In fact, The State and Revolution is about half Marx and Engels quotations, by which Lenin railed against the second international and defended Marx and Engels from vulgarization. Engels in particular calls the "government" of a "stateless" society as the "administration of things." With fully collectivized ownership, there's no class, with no class, there's no need for the oppressive tool of the state to hold down other classes, but since we can't snap our fingers into a society where fully socialized production is possible, it's best for the proletariat to oppress the bourgeoisie rather than the other way around.

Even after there is no more proletariat and no more bourgeoisie, there will still be large industry and complex supply chains that need to be organized and planned, management and administration to be dealt with. The purpose of centralizing all of production and uniting the productive forces of humanity isn't to scatter them, but to wield these immense forces to satisfy everyone's needs. The state is purely an instrument of class oppression, so when there is no class, there is no "state" as such.

Does that make sense? Lenin's contributions to Marxism were more along his analysis of imperialism as well as organizational advancements. Marxism-Leninism has the same view of the state Marx had. I'm not trying to derail your post or anything, I just wanted to clear up a misconception.

[–] Mica_Twist@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Don't worry, I am enjoying what I find to be a very enriching discussion. I believe there is a general misconception here about horizontal and decentralized organization. Mutualist anarchists are (mostly) well aware that complex processes cannot be organized in small “cells.” Rather, it is about distributing power equally among everyone. A central control mechanism is not necessary for this. Some processes definitely need to be negotiated at higher levels (e.g., climate catastrophe), but with the premise that decisions must be confirmed down to the lowest level. However, this is only necessary in exceptional cases, as an existing, generally applicable ethical framework should be sufficient to carry out processes in the interests of society as a whole. Hence my example with the council systems such as those of the Zapatistas, or even the “administration of things”. The goal of both Marxists and anarchists is the equal distribution of power and ressources. The difference between Marxists and anarchists, and even among us anarchists, lies in the form of organization and which organization distributes power most equally. When it comes to Lenin, what comes to mind is the leadership of the vanguard party, the avant-garde of the educated elite. As an anarchist, I can only reject this outright and consider it very classist. But as I said, I may have misinterpreted this due to ignorance.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Marxists don't really want equality in resource distribution, but recognizing distinct needs and addressing them as they need to be. Marx railed against "equalitarians." Marxism is firmly based on historical materialism and the abolition of class, but class is not hierarchy. Class is a social relation to production related to ownership. As such, even power equalization isn't really important, what's important is that all of production is collectivized and run along a common social plan as decided in democratic fashion, be it through representatives, administrators, or direct democracy, depending on the issue.

An anarchist society may, as an example, try to do its best to limit hierarchy as much as possible. Marxists, on the other hand, recognize hierarchy as a tool that isn't inherently good or bad, and thus limit it to its useful extent and keep it to its useful extent. This is seen in practice through democratic centralism. The soviet model of democracy, for instance, has laddering councils where the decisions of the upper rungs are binding on the lower, but the lower rungs discuss issues local to them and elect representatives for the higher rungs.

As for the vanguard, all it is is formalizing the most advanced of the revolutionary classes into an accountable and democratic, unified body. The advanced will exist with or without formalizing it, and if you don't formalize it, then it becomes unaccountable. I recommend reading The Tyranny of Structurelessness for more on this subject. The vanguard is not a class, but a subsection of a class, and only has legitimacy as far as that class recognizes it as a legitimate leader in that class's interests.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 week 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 1 week 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.