Speaker
Description
The concept of proximity can be a useful framework for interpreting and designing the urban environment. It aids in understanding spatial and social relationships while serving as a design tool to shape those interactions. This paper explores the resurgence of proximity in urban planning, offering insights for policymakers and designers.
The concept of proximity has gained international popularity recently with the '15-minute city' idea as a feasible and flexible solution for human well-being and effective climate action (Manzini, 2022). The recent COVID-19 crisis shed new light on the relevance of the concept which inspired numerous ideas of application. However, proximity is a fundamental concept in geography and urban studies and goes beyond easy access to various urban functions or the measure of distancing. The idea has old roots (Crawford, 2023) and evergreen Jacobs’s and Gehl’s seminal urban theories must be mentioned. Urban designers and planners may not explicitly use the term proximity-propinquity, but the concept is central to their work. In fact, it plays a role in shaping urban dynamics, influencing patterns of social interaction, organization, economic activity, and resource accessibility.
The growing recognition of proximity in urban planning as a key factor in creating livable and resilient cities is evident in some initiatives such as the Global Observatory of Sustainable Proximities, a capacity-building platform launched to support 'proximity' in urban planning supported by the UN (GOSP, 2025). The concept is, in fact, integral to the United Nations' strategies for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and is explicitly mentioned in SDG11 and SDG 9.
Despite its relevance and resurgence in practice, research on proximity planning has not kept pace with the increased recognition. The conceptual emphasis on proximity is rare. This contribution aims to foster a deeper understanding of the attention to proximity – more precisely to the group of concepts proximity, propinquity, intensity - in the planning discourse. In fact, the research hypothesis is that spatial proximity imposes itself prominently in new urbanization processes in developing countries and that proximity is back in the urban design-planning discourse in developed countries for the attention given to small dimensions, micro-mobility, polycentrism and compactness, intensification of uses (Cogato Lanza and Girot, 2014).
The study addresses proximity through three lenses: proximity as a social link; as shares spaces; as functional organization (Pellegrini, 2012). The study draws on key texts and different arguments, from Melvin Webber Order in Diversity: Community without Propinquity, 1963, to Barthes’ Seminar Comment vivre ensemble at the Collège de France (1976-’77), to Neil Brenner’s book New Urban Spaces. Urban theory and the scale question, 2019, which explores the relevance of socio-spatial interdependencies and inter-scalar framework. The paper discusses the concept and contributes to a deeper understanding of proximity's role in contemporary urban planning and its implications for sustainable development.
References
-EXPERIMENTING PROXIMITY. The Urban Landscape Observatory, Elena Cogato Lanza and Christoph Girot editors, Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne, 2014
-GOSP - Global Observatory of Sustainable Proximities, accessible on
https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/sustainableproximities?language=en_US
-Ezio Manzini, Livable Proximity. Ideas for the City that Cares, 2022 Bocconi University Press
-Paola Pellegrini, Prossimità. Declinazioni di una questione urbana, Mimesis 2012
-Margaret Crawford, New name for an old idea?, Contribution to the Symposium “Proximity planning: A local strategy for global problems, or a global strategy for local problems? Debating the experiences of Barcelona and Paris and their applicability elsewhere” at UC Berkeley, Institute of transportation studies, March 10, 2023. Accessible at https://its.berkeley.edu/news/proximity-planning-local-strategy-global-problems-or-global-strategy-local-problems
| Keywords | Proximity; Conceptual framework; Urban Planning; Socio-Spatial Dynamics; Sustainable urbanization |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
