The Moveable Nexus, Transforming Thinking on Cities

Thinking about the future city the way food-energy-water generation, distribution and supply is organised may well make a difference for urban dwellers’ quality of life. The urban context is unprecedented and cannot be predicted very well. When uncertainties increase the demand for simple responses seems to be the preferred way of treatment. This is however an implicit flaw because when the complexity of the problems is getting higher the responses can no longer be simple. Responding as if the city is stable while it is increasingly dynamic would only bring fake solutions that last for a short time. The opposite is the way forward: when problems are wicked, self-organising processes and responses that do not bring definite solutions are preferable as they can adjust themselves should the problem change along the way. For FEW-nexuses this implies that a moveable approach, in which the solutions are flexible, and benefit from all other components in the system, will decrease uncertainty, in particular on the longer term. In this context a design-led approach is extremely useful, as it is able to create something out of nothing that was before, presenting opportunities to be continuously adaptive. As a city, as a landscape and as a society.