How we save the city
Strategy
Faced with these converging triple emergencies, how should we go about saving the city? This is an important question. If we are going to influence and change our cities positively, there needs to be some real time put aside to strategic thinking about how and why change happens.
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How to save the city is based around a strategic approach to change called:
Learn-Act-Build.
The first step focuses on learning and unlearning. To effectively create change, we need to learn new ideas and ways of thinking, as well as attempting to unlearn ways of seeing and acting that hold us back. Key aspects include recognising the challenges ahead, telling the truth about them, developing solidarity with those most affected, and importantly starting to see change from the perspective of a city.
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The second step relates to action and resisting - empowering ourselves and others, taking action and pushing back against what is harming us, especially in our emergency context. This step includes understanding pinch points for actions, how we link our immediate activities to broader issues upstream, and create a new approach new city wealth.
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The final step is building and making, creating new ways of being and living in the present that can support a viable and prosperous future for us all. Aspects include building alternative institutions, infrastructure and projects that make the world we want to see, and building a new story for what cities are for, and also a coalition of actors who will make it happen.