Call for Submissions for MONU #38 - Inclusive Urbanism

The attempts in many cities over recent years to make public toilets gender-neutral and thus more inclusive - an approach that can theoretically only be appreciated - have made it obvious why they were created in a "segregated" way to begin with. On the one hand, standard toilets are used as urinals that raise issues of cleanliness making them rather unsuitable for seated use, and on the other hand, urinals are part of restrooms used by women, confronting them with men with their pants down. Paradoxically, the original endeavour to protect some people against harassment or even violence might eventually lead to cause the opposite effect in others.

Whatever the situation around public toilets will turn out to be remains to be seen, but it makes clear that the achievement of absolute inclusiveness in architecture and urbanism can be a complicated and challenging effort with unforeseen results. The perfect can become the enemy of the good, as Voltaire allegedly put it. That is why we would like to dedicate this new issue of MONU entirely to the topic of "Inclusive Urbanism" to discuss where the needs, possibilities, but also the limits of inclusiveness might lie in architecture and in our cities, and whether inclusiveness might sometimes become a problem rather than offer a solution. The example of the public toilets illuminates also that urban spaces are deeply coded and caught in the gravity of signifiers identifying how they are supposed to be used, and that certain people can quickly be exiled from these uses. Above all, homeless people discover such coding, yet they do not belong in any of these symbolically coded spaces. To what extent the very environment in its materiality functions to enforce this exile we pointed out in MONU #27 with the case of city benches that have bars in the middle of them, also referred to as "hostile architecture", coding them as places for sitting and not sleeping.

If we move away from the small scale of toilets and benches to the bigger one of the apartment in our discussion on "Inclusive Urbanism", we can also witness policies that started out with the best of intentions in relation to inclusiveness, but somehow fell short within the process, almost leading to discrimination. One such example could be found until recently in France, where the accessibility regulations demanded that all newly built apartments needed to be designed wheelchair accessible. This requirement that began with the genuine desire to integrate people with disabilities better into our cities, led eventually to the enlargement of the surface areas of apartments to such an extent that housing prices and rents increased, making apartments unaffordable and inaccessible for a great number of people. Unless spaces like living room areas were reduced in size, or were shared with the kitchen and the entrance to compensate for the enlargement of the rooms that had to be made wheelchair accessible, the surface area of an apartment would remain the same but the quality of the apartment would be degraded. Given such examples we wish with this new edition of MONU to investigate projects that failed to be inclusive despite their high ambitions to be exactly that whether on the scale of buildings, urban design, or of the city.

For a better understanding of "Inclusive Urbanism" on the larger urban scale it also seems to be useful to look into negative and non-inclusive examples. One of the most radical projects to mention here might be the infamous "Trump wall", an expansion of the Mexico-United States barrier to combat illegal immigration. But projects that in general create voluntary or forced spatial separation of different socio-cultural, ethnic, or racial groups within housing areas in the form of residential segregation have their place here too. They are typically a consequence of factors such as housing discrimination, exclusionary zoning practices, location of public housing, discriminatory homeownership practices, neighbourhood disinvestments, or gentrification. Projects like these are often associated with immigration, wealth inequality, or prejudice. One city that sticks out in that context is Detroit, which might belong to the most segregated urban areas in the world. Due to the widening gap between rich and poor also outside of the US, segregation is becoming more and more an issue in European and other cities too. Madrid has been described as one of Europe's city where segregation increased the most recently, apparently not due to an influx of property speculators, but rather to a lack of affordable housing. For that reason we want to critically analyse how the cities of our planet in general perform with regard to "Inclusive Urbanism".

The topic of inclusiveness in architecture and urbanism has been embraced enthusiastically over recent years. Therefore, we believe, it is time to thoroughly reflect on where we got and evaluate the existing ideas, guidelines, theories but also projects, in order to fully assess what a truly inclusive city might look like. In such a city everyone, independent of their economic circumstances, gender, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual identity, nationality or religion, can and should be allowed to feel included. How relevant participation is for an "Inclusive Urbanism" we emphasized in MONU #23 indicating how public participation in the processes of city creation can lead to scenarios in which both professionals and non-professionals alike are enabled to become active producers. Then projects can flourish that create a sense of social inclusion and authenticity that cannot be dismissed as little more than 'hipster economics'. In that sense we aim to feature positive and successful strategies too.

Such projects are increasingly important as many cities, especially the larger and global ones such as New York, Tokyo, Berlin, London, and Paris, remain predominantly elitist, as most of them have been over the course of history, instead of representing shared societal ideals. Thus, it appears to be ever more urgent to create places not merely as refuges for cosmopolitan elites, but as places of shared identity and belonging that can represent the distribution of the larger urban reality, as we argued in MONU #32. That we have already many of the tools and the infrastructures needed to challenge the still widely prevalent non-inclusive system in which we operate as architects and urban designers, we showed in MONU #36. But this edition made also clear that we do not have yet the collective will to fully utilise these resources. That is why we try to stimulate - with this new issue of MONU - a sense of solidarity and shared responsibility, an ethic that constitutes a necessary foundation for the creation of true inclusive cities.

Therefore, this issue of MONU aims to discuss how such a true "Inclusive Urbanism" that goes beyond platitudes and pseudo DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)-washing strategies and avoids the consequences of the "wrong" perfection", as showcased in the examples of the public toilets and the wheelchair-proof apartments, might be achieved and who the protagonists and forces of a truly "Inclusive Urbanism" alike might be. We invite you to submit critical reflections, sharp analysis, meticulous investigations, bold writing, provocative studies, visionary projects, imaginative strategies, eye-opening artwork, and game-changing photography. Abstracts of around 400 words, and images and illustrations in low resolution, should be sent, together with a short biography and a list of publications, as one single pdf-file that is not bigger than 1mb to [email protected] before March 31, 2025. MONU's issue #38 will be published in October 2025.

Bernd Upmeyer, December 2024
(Editor-in-chief, MONU - Magazine on Urbanism)

http://www.monu-magazine.com/submit.htm