Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures - Softcover

"Recoded City: Co-Creating Urban Futures is a rich glossary that selects and discusses some of the most relevant and necessary practices, initiatives, and projects in terms of urban design, planning, and architecture. Recoded City is not just a book about architecture, urban design, or even economic strategies and solutions, but more importantly about questions on how the city as we live it every day is propelling us into an out-of-control future." – A10 Magazine

"Recoded City champions a broad, diversified, holistic approach to urban design which simultaneously commits to social responsibility and local engagement. The needs and ambitions of communities and stakeholder groups are the focal point of Ermacora and Bullivant’s vision and, stepping outside the studio and workshop, Recoded City also shares inventive ways in which urban realm projects have attracted and encouraged social activities and participation, or have collaborated with community activists." – Alan Gordon, The Architect's Journal

"This is a hopeful book, written prior to the Brexit vote and the current state of the U.S. presidential election. Let us hope that the values of transparency and a people’s participatory ethos can weather the storm of both. This book may well be a source for a level of activism that moves from necessary to imperative." – Annie Coggan, AIA New York and the Center for Architecture News (formerly known as eOculus)

Recoded City examines alternative urban design, planning and architecture for the other 90%: namely the practice of participatory placemaking, a burgeoning practice that co-author Thomas Ermacora terms ‘recoding’. In combining bottom-up and top-down means of regenerating and rebalancing neighbourhoods affected by declining welfare or struck by disaster, this growing movement brings greater resilience.

Recoded City sheds light on a new epoch in the relationship between cities and civil society by presenting an emerging range of collaborative solutions and distributed governance models. The authors draw on their own fresh research of global pioneers forging localist design strategies, public-realm interventions and new stakeholder dynamics. As the world becomes increasingly digital and virtual, a myriad of online tools and technological options is becoming available. These give unprecedented co-creation opportunities to communities and professionals alike, yielding the benefits of a more open – DIY – society.

Because of its close engagement with people, place and local identity, the field of participatory placemaking has huge untapped potential. Responding to the challenges of the Anthropocene era, Recoded City is for decision-makers, developers and practitioners working globally to make better and more liveable cities.