"What is In Situ Urbanisation -or should we say what could it be"?

Speech at the CORP Graz: "URBAN INNOVATION: TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO CITIES HAVE GONE BEFORE" * Medium sized cities and towns as a major arena of global urbanisation * FH JOANNEUM, GRAZ, AUSTRIA 14-16 APRIL 2025 https://www.corp.at/ ˧

die deutsche Version wird die Sendung 60 ausfüllen! ˧

Personal Introduction

Good afternoon! ˧

I am very honored having been invited to give another plenary address at this wonderful and remarkeable conference, in fact Manfred and I were looking for this opportunity to revitalize old threads for quite a long time. ˧

32 years ago, I initiated something that could be seen as the “older twin” of CORP: an event held at the Technical University of Vienna titled Global Village. Perhaps it helped a little bit prepare the ground for what CORP would become (smiley). Later we directly worked together on another venture, called "Cultural Heritage in the Global Village", 23 years ago in 2002. This was the second edition of a one week Austrian European Presidency event in 1998 dealing with digitisation of cultural artefacts. ˧

While Manfred and his team focused on how spatial planning could incorporate digital tools, we explored another dimension: how digital communication itself might change the spatial patterns we live in — just as the automobile once did. Would telecommunications reorganize the way we inhabit space? What new forms of living and working might emerge? You may find traces of that exploration in the older CORP proceedings. ˧

So from the very beginning the Global Village Process was centered around the question - or even more boldly, the assumption - that we would see new forms of human habitat, new ways of production and work, new ways of education and access to knowledge and, above all, maybe even a new way of humans relating to their natural environment and their superficial mobility. At the same time break the cultural monopoly of large cities by allowing us to access Cultural Heritage with new tools. ˧

In the heydays of the nine years of Global Village and CultH we even could relate to the widow and the son of Marshall McLuhan - who as most people know coined the famous and fourfold ambiguous oxymoron "Global Village". Eric spoke about the first Global Renaissance in 1998. And it was Corinne McLuhan who sent me a quote from her late husband that since then has become my mantra. It goes somehow like this: ˧

“The media of global communication, when pushed to their extreme, will lead to a reversal — an unprecedented renaissance of the local.” ˧

The filmmaker Godfrey Reggio offered a similar sentiment in more popular terms when he suggested the following words: ˧

"The Global Village will hopefully lead us to a Globe of Villages." ˧

And so I must confess: I do not stand before you today as a university professor, nor as a representative of an institution of great power. ˧

Rather, I speak as someone who, through a long and winding odyssey, has devoted his life to the search for this “Globe of Villages.” ˧

It is a path that perhaps began in my youth, growing up in a part of Vienna that, in those days, still felt more rural than urban. Full of meadows which meant to be construction sites, small gardens, wine villages. And in this place, just opposite our family hotel, the socialist government in Vienna had placed a demonstration project in 1925 for the "International Housing and Town Planning Congress". So in the midst of corn fields grew a housing superblock in the shape of an imperial palace with exedra and representation balcony, provocatively named "Garden City". It was meant to contain not only all the ameties needed for a communal life, but even a theatre, gym hall, dancing school and so on - showing that the working class would take over the best of cultural heritage. This of course was a built attack on the concept of Ebenezer Howards rather simplistic garden city concept that was the "state of the Art" solution for the "Social Question" at the time, combining small densified row houses with subsistence gardening, you will see it everywhere in England and elsewhere. The superblock antithesis was forging an alliance led by Otto Wagners best students with the Social Democrats and red Vienna, effectivly killing the settlers movement that has spread since 1918, but to me fourty to eighty veas later it seemed more like an unfulfilled dream than something fulfillig its potential. In general, I had my issues with this urban dream, people stuffed together randomly without truly common spirit. In this particular situation, since the appartments size and design were unchanged since the 1920ies, it gradually became a hub of poverty and single houshold lifestyle. Into our restaurant people came for the taste of some community feeling and - as I sensed - to find some solace in their loneliness. I listened to the home stories of so many grownups and eventually I felt the need to mediate between all those lonely people but I did not know how. ˧

So I started to write notes about methods of mutual need recognition, and after reading some optimistic scientific utopias like Skinners Walden Two decided to become a sociologist - just to find out that at least the Viennese sociology had no tools to offer to really improve peoples abilities to recognize and activate their common social potential. ˧

Triggered by this deficiency, I spent 10 years in fruitless academic criticism, while I personally was drawn to spend more and more time in Greece, a country I had not seen in my youth. First in Rhodes and then in Samos, with a rented moped, I explored the villages and discovered a culture so much more alive, more connected, than the one I knew from home or many other places. It touched me deeply. ˧

I also stayed a full month on the island of Symi — a place with almost no cars, where time itself seemed to slow down. Yet it wasn’t dull. It was rich. Quiet. Alive. In Samos town I had a chance encounter with a family that took me in as one of their own. That was the beginning of a lifelong connection: I returned to there nearly forty times. But over the years, I saw something painful unfold. The young people — once so present in the villages—moved away, drawn into the machinery of tourism. The elders were left behind. The villages grew quiet. The energy of the place — its social texture — began to fade. It broke my heart. Sick old people behind crumbling walls. ˧

Eventually, I couldn’t bear to see the decline. I looked for another place, a winter refuge from the cold and smoky Vienna air that made me sick, and found it through a twist of fate— in 1987 in California. In California, the air was different. So was the energy. I had already discovered the power of computers— first in Vienna, through Apple and the Macintosh. I was captivated not just by the machine, but by the vision behind it, by the gradual transformation of the computer from a tool of calculations into a tool of communication. Apples famous “Knowledge Navigator” video struck me like lightning: a glimpse into a future of intelligent, dialogic technology. I didn’t know it yet, but I was being prepared for my next turning point. ˧

One day in Stanford, wandering the campus, I walked into a building called Sweet Hall. Third floor. A name on a door caught my eye: Douglas Engelbart. ˧

I knocked. I told his secretary I came all the way from Vienna to meet the pioneer of Hypertext. ˧

Two days later, I sat in his office—and in that single hour, my life shifted. ˧

Engelbart, the man who invented the mouse, the hyperlink, the window interface—he told me something I never forgot: That the real barrier to augmenting human intelligence was not technology. It was society. ˧

He wasn’t interested in my technical skills. He saw me as a sociologist although I tried hard toplay it down. And he showed me how real innovation grows not from technical invention alone, but from small collaborative circles—mini-laboratories of human perspective, like the ones he helped nurture at the Institute for the Research on Learning, that are able to even influence the inventions at the earliest stages. ˧

He called them "bootstrap communities". It is not the same as "Reallabor", but somehow similar. People would come from very different angles, like a circle of all possible perspectives. And you never knew who would come up with the decisive answer to a problem - maybe it was a child. Or a teacher. Or a psychologist. or a computer expert. Or the parents. Engelbart argued that only by creating such creative "future workshops" we could find meaningful solutions to pressing problems. Bring people with opposing views and diverse backgrounds together, complementing each other like the polarities in the native American medicine Wheel. ˧

"And you as a sociologist have the responsibility to make this work, translate their languages into each other, care that no perspective is devaluated and so forth". ˧

And then he asked me a question. A simple one. But the most important one. ˧

“But is there an innovation that you want to see? Something you are burning for?” I didn’t have to think long. ˧

I told him: I want to help bring forth a world where people don’t have to choose between the richness of their local lives and the vast possibilities of global knowledge. ˧

I want to see a renewal of community — not nostalgic, not stuck in the past, but deeply aware of the best solutions the present world offers. Connected, creative and alive. I want to help build a Globe of Villages by creating a prototype of a Globally Integrated Village Environment. ˧

A place where technology doesn’t alienate — but amplifies belonging.
Where culture is not consumed — but cultivated.
Where young people don’t have to leave their villages to find a future — because the future and the mind has returned home. ˧

He smiled. He understood. ˧

And that’s when I knew: My path wouldn’t be inside a corporation. Not in a lab. But in the in-between — weaving together people, places, technologies… and dreams. ˧

To find a new habitat for the human spirit. ˧

And that brings us to... ˧

In Situ Urbanisation

What is in Situ urbanisation? In short it is a concept that has gained worldwide attention since May 2021, when the United Nations Department of Economic and social affairs issued a Policy Brief that in my view reversed the whole Habitat Discourse since 1996. While there is still a mainstream assumption that 55% of the world’s population living in urban areas today, this proportion is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Much of that growth caused by migration from rural areas to cities. In Situ Urbanisation wants to counter that trend: a kind of urbanization without urban migration — and without formal recognition in many cases.. People continue to live in their villages, but somehow the economic activities, physical layout, and social dynamics start to resemble urban environments. ˧

Traditionally, urban growth is driven by migration to cities, formal employment, and top-down planning. In contrast, in-situ urbanization is decentralized, often informal, and evolves from within existing rural settlements. It’s more organic, less visible to planning systems, and much harder to control — but maybe by no means less important." ˧

I was prepared to argue that planners might feel uncomfortable with this situation, but since I listened to yesterdays afternoon keynotes I see that at least our community here iseems to be willing willing and able to embrace a new paradigm, very similar to Engelbarts Bootstrap Communities, where planners are not working things out at the green table but they falitate a process of dialogue and sustainability negociation, adding foresight, insight and hindsight to the various perspectives. Maybe a future CORP conference would look closer into these tools of sustainability negociation, from gamified tools like Richard Levine from Kentucky envisioned them at our very first Global Village Symposium to the old and modern forms of circle culture. ˧

But lets return to In Situ urbanisation. The concept of in-situ urbanization has theoretical roots in the work of T.G. McGee?, particularly his 'DesaKota?' model. The term comes from Indonesian desa "village" and kota "city". In Southeast Asia, McGee? observed zones where dense populations engaged in both agricultural and industrial activities. These areas defied traditional urban-rural distinctions and instead showed hybrid patterns. This model laid the groundwork for understanding urbanization as a spectrum rather than a binary. And of course I agreed with Manfred, that the idea of this years conference Motto "Cities boldly go where they never went before" fits nicely with the question how far and HOW they can go to the rural areas. ˧

It is funny that the UN Departments acronym DESA means "Village" at the same time in Indonesia. The main purpose of In Situ Urbanisation is to counter poverty and bring urban standards of life to areas heavily underserviced. On one side this is the "oath of revelation" that the promise that people can bootstrap themselves out of poverty in the favelas and slums around the metropolises of the Global South has mostly and utterly failed. On the other hand it raises the question what "urbanisation" in its very core truly means. ˧

We could identify a core of key goals that at the heart of urbanisation. What would come to my mind first is health care. I have seen people suffering and dying in Greek villages also because of the lack of diagnostic facilities. Health Care is foundational, but there are also aspects in health care that are rooted in rural realities - fresh air, clean water, healing herbs, our contact with authentic nature. So maybe the goal of in Situ Urbanisation is not to simply replace this with a pharmaceutical health culture, but apply an open mindset to all these possibilities and preserve them. My dear late Friend Tony Sutherland Gwilliam gave me another mantra that I always will keep in my heart: ˧

"The Ultimate Purpose of the Global Villages is health." ˧

This choice holds true for all areas of In Situ Urbanisation. Does it mean Gigafactories or, in the opposite, extremely decentralized production? What can networking between various crafts with the help of digital media and decentralized small scale automation achieve, like Christine Ax has demonstrated 30 years ago in the area of custom shoemaking ? ˧

Yes, we do need infrastructure. We do need provision of clean water, sanitation, and reliable energy systems to support urban-level living standards. But things can be done in different ways. There is a whole cosmos between the two concepts of "similar" (or as we use to say in German "gleichartig") and "equivalent" (what would be "gleichwertig" in German). ˧

The village of Stanz in Styrian Mürz Valley is a good example. It is the pilot village and lighthouse project of the Austrian Smart City movement, it has a vibrant village center with amazing shops and amenities for the locals and appartments for those who are not in agriculture, all kept in a small size that does not interfere with the overall village feeling. Now Stanz not only a has a focus on renewable energy communities and energy autonomy that reduces reliance on centralized grids and provides local sources, a critical factor during extreme weather events - but they also built a digital twin of all the surrounding landscape, covering the whole basin and all the rurrounding slopes, roughly 100 sqkm. In the case of floods, foresight is everything and the model has the capacity to predict the presumeable peak - spots 12 hours before it happens. As a result, moveable bridges can be removed and many other measures can be taken on time. So, in a way the preparedness matches the legendary flood control system of Vienna, . ˧

So yes, as I said I could talk hours and hours talking about the rural patterns that bear the potential to bring urban standards to rural areas without compromising the beauty and authenticity of the villages, where they still exist should I say. But I would rather try to enter in Dialogue with you. ˧

Just one last example, the creation of DorfUni or the Village University that I have conceptualized for many years and finally realized with friends , building "Video Bridges" between villages that really seemed to be thirsty for knowledge . The COVID years were fruitful but also devastating for us - fruitful because it seemed everybody started to install Zoom on their computers and we even saw a big temporary wave of migration away from cities, devastaing becasue we could not relize our hybrid concept. We wanted people to listen to televised speeches together in a physical space where they had a big screen, a kind of public viewing situation and immediately entered dialogue with the speakers, sometimes from a dozens of places. I must do justice to Graz University, because they started to develop that format since 2005, the same year we started our multipurpose Village center in the village of Kirchbach. The "Monday Acadamy" was after all an academic endavour, delivering showcases of academic diligence to the public. We had participated in this just to add our invention of a local champion, not only moderating but also translating the academic jargon into something that people could really understand, but also representing the presence of advanced knowledge if not in the village, then at least in the small region. ˧

We touched some of the core areas of in situ urbanisation and there are many more to add: social infrastructure, care for the sick and elderly, just local governance ensuring equitable distribution of resources, a mosaic of subcultures embedded in a common framework of co-operation and so on. ˧

There is a big difference between urban and rural: everyone is needed, sometimes in more than one way. Fewer people have more tasks. This has incredible consequences, not only in terms of education, but also in terms of human behaviour. What is sometimes felt as density and stuffiness of the village is in fact the need to rely on each other and build community together. You cannot scold at the supermarket manager without the next day the whole small town of Bad Radkersburg knowing. It took me seven hard years to not only start to understand this truth, but also to live it. ˧

But now I want to drop the last word on you. I do not think we should say good bye to large cities, they are needed as powerful knowledge bases. What we should say good bye though is the idea that cities must grow. When I wrote an article in the "perspectives" magazine of the Vienna city planning titled "Cities should not grow, they should network", I immediately fell from grace and the planning director started to ridicule me. Still I think the apt role of the city in the future is not the one of a vacuum cleaner, sucking people and resources out of rural areas, but rather that of a "Mother City". Our friends from South Africa know the name, it is the innofficial name of Kapstadt. Large cities should become Mothercities and nurture rural development with the clear concept of not creating a replica of the city, but helping the villages become stronger and thus full of abundance. Its a win - win game and its other name is peace. Thank you all very much for listening, I have spoken. ˧