[02]
THE ANTIFRAGILE CITY
Antifragility is a concept coined by Nassim Taleb in his bestseller "Antifragile," which was applied to urban thinking in Caio Esteves' book "Antifragile City." For Taleb, antifragility refers to something that benefits from uncertainty – in other words, something that "thrives" on uncertainty. Antifragility represents an evolution of the resilience concept. In our consulting work, we operate with 12 dimensions of the Antifragile City.
The starting point, traditionally associated with place branding. Identity forms the foundation not only for building the place-brand but also for exploring its future potential. Identity provides the main arguments for leveraging local assets toward different strategic objectives.
If identity is the starting point, then a place's calling – or set of callings – is how that identity manifests in the competitive marketplace. A detailed analysis of existing tangible and intangible assets in the place, along with a well-founded projection of possibilities for new development vectors based on local identity, are essential for strengthening and evolving the place.
Another Talebian concept (Nassim Taleb) that, like the idea of antifragility itself, will help us promote place strengthening. Optionality is essentially an "anti-Detroitization" idea, analyzing local callings based on local identity to suggest diverse paths and vectors for economic development, avoiding the trap of "putting all eggs in one basket."
This criterion is perhaps one of the most important, since it serves as the foundation for several others. Community involvement is responsible, in various ways, for the process's success. By involving people from the project's outset, you not only gather highly qualified information but also begin spreading the importance of public participation, potentially creating a network of place-brand ambassadors.
A positive side effect of engagement processes is kickstarting a sense of belonging that connects people emotionally and symbolically to places and, of course, to the community that occupies those places. Creating a vibrant, active community has less to do with building or providing physical meeting spaces and much more to do with creating mechanisms – both physical and digital, in-person and virtual – that allow this vitality to flourish.
A clear, shared vision is an essential asset for an antifragile place, with emphasis on the word "shared." Once again, the place's vision relies on local engagement and collaboration. A future vision helps align expectations, establish strategies, objectives and, just as importantly, success metrics. Vision is also essential to the strategic exploration of futures process, where it will multiply into various possibilities, always aligned with identity and calling.
The idea of transparency directly relates to concepts of seriousness and honesty. Transparent countries are more honest, or at least perceived as more honest than less transparent countries. The same applies to other spheres of public management. Without transparency in process and management, we can never effectively engage community members.
This is one of the most complex topics due to the enormous scope of this concept. After all, urban quality includes urban design, housing, commerce, services, recreation, mobility, architecture and much more. Urban quality, simply put, means thinking (and acting) with the goal of creating the best possible experience for people in the built environment.
Communities with imagination are signs of hope in an insensitive, competitive, globalized world where identities seem lost. They're playful and appealing ways to connect people to places, creating identification and differentiation.
Each day it becomes more obvious that discourse alone, no matter how elaborate, isn't enough to change perceptions of cities and places. We need to anchor what we say in what we do, and vice versa. There's no longer room for empty speeches without real-world backing. Action-based narrative means aligning influence with experience – what's said, heard, and seen about a place must align with what's actually experienced there and in it.
Supraterritoriality directly connects to deterritorialization, certainly one of the actions accelerated by the pandemic, promoting disconnection between the idea of cities and countries from their physical territories. Being supraterritorial means going beyond your city's, region's, or country's physical limits – understanding that the idea of a place, or place-brand, doesn't need to (and shouldn't) be limited to its territory or to a physical, in-person experience.
We'll understand human scale here as going far beyond the obvious physical-spatial relationship, extending the discussion to the relational universe as well. Since it's practically impossible today to work with smaller scales in buildings or cities (though there are honorable exceptions), we need to understand and explore the scale of coexistence, personal experience – the scale of people rather than the scale of things (like the scale of cars, for example).
THE ANTIFRAGILE CITY
Antifragility is a concept coined by Nassim Taleb in his bestseller "Antifragile," which was applied to urban thinking in Caio Esteves' book "Antifragile City." For Taleb, antifragility refers to something that benefits from uncertainty – in other words, something that "thrives" on uncertainty. Antifragility represents an evolution of the resilience concept. In our consulting work, we operate with 12 dimensions of the Antifragile City.
01. IDENTITY
The starting point, traditionally associated with place branding. Identity forms the foundation not only for building the place-brand but also for exploring its future potential. Identity provides the main arguments for leveraging local assets toward different strategic objectives.
02. CALLING
If identity is the starting point, then a place's calling – or set of callings – is how that identity manifests in the competitive marketplace. A detailed analysis of existing tangible and intangible assets in the place, along with a well-founded projection of possibilities for new development vectors based on local identity, are essential for strengthening and evolving the place.
03. OPTIONALITY
Another Talebian concept (Nassim Taleb) that, like the idea of antifragility itself, will help us promote place strengthening. Optionality is essentially an "anti-Detroitization" idea, analyzing local callings based on local identity to suggest diverse paths and vectors for economic development, avoiding the trap of "putting all eggs in one basket."
01. COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
This criterion is perhaps one of the most important, since it serves as the foundation for several others. Community involvement is responsible, in various ways, for the process's success. By involving people from the project's outset, you not only gather highly qualified information but also begin spreading the importance of public participation, potentially creating a network of place-brand ambassadors.
01. COMMUNITY VITALITY
A positive side effect of engagement processes is kickstarting a sense of belonging that connects people emotionally and symbolically to places and, of course, to the community that occupies those places. Creating a vibrant, active community has less to do with building or providing physical meeting spaces and much more to do with creating mechanisms – both physical and digital, in-person and virtual – that allow this vitality to flourish.
02. VISION
A clear, shared vision is an essential asset for an antifragile place, with emphasis on the word "shared." Once again, the place's vision relies on local engagement and collaboration. A future vision helps align expectations, establish strategies, objectives and, just as importantly, success metrics. Vision is also essential to the strategic exploration of futures process, where it will multiply into various possibilities, always aligned with identity and calling.
02. TRANSPARENCY
The idea of transparency directly relates to concepts of seriousness and honesty. Transparent countries are more honest, or at least perceived as more honest than less transparent countries. The same applies to other spheres of public management. Without transparency in process and management, we can never effectively engage community members.
02. URBAN QUALITY
This is one of the most complex topics due to the enormous scope of this concept. After all, urban quality includes urban design, housing, commerce, services, recreation, mobility, architecture and much more. Urban quality, simply put, means thinking (and acting) with the goal of creating the best possible experience for people in the built environment.
03. HUMAN SCALE
We'll understand human scale here as going far beyond the obvious physical-spatial relationship, extending the discussion to the relational universe as well. Since it's practically impossible today to work with smaller scales in buildings or cities (though there are honorable exceptions), we need to understand and explore the scale of coexistence, personal experience – the scale of people rather than the scale of things (like the scale of cars, for example).
03. ACTION-BASED NARRATIVE
Each day it becomes more obvious that discourse alone, no matter how elaborate, isn't enough to change perceptions of cities and places. We need to anchor what we say in what we do, and vice versa. There's no longer room for empty speeches without real-world backing. Action-based narrative means aligning influence with experience – what's said, heard, and seen about a place must align with what's actually experienced there and in it.
03. SUPRATERRITORIALITY
Supraterritoriality directly connects to deterritorialization, certainly one of the actions accelerated by the pandemic, promoting disconnection between the idea of cities and countries from their physical territories. Being supraterritorial means going beyond your city's, region's, or country's physical limits – understanding that the idea of a place, or place-brand, doesn't need to (and shouldn't) be limited to its territory or to a physical, in-person experience.
03. IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY
Communities with imagination are signs of hope in an insensitive, competitive, globalized world where identities seem lost. They're playful and appealing ways to connect people to places, creating identification and differentiation.
THE ANTIFRAGILE CITY
Absolutely everything we do is about people.
Where we start from and where we want to go
Want to understand a place's dynamics? Talk to the people who live there – the community is the expert.
We strengthen places for them and with them to live well today and even better tomorrow.
It's a process that enhances identities, identifies callings, and strengthens places, always involving people in the process, with the goal of building a strategic plan that works with cultural identities and engages residents and stakeholders around a common, powerful, transformative idea.
This way we attract investments, boost tourism (business/leisure), attract and retain talent, create differentiation, strengthen the place, and increase sense of belonging.
Foresight means thinking about futures to influence today's decision-making.
In our consulting work, we apply this thinking to places and call it Place Strategic Foresight.
One of the major differences in Place Strategic Foresight, or strategic foresight for places, lies in the starting point.
Having the agreed-upon uniqueness at the beginning of this circuit, since it results from identity, helps guide foresight as we'll have, as a starting point, the feeling this place desires and is capable of offering in whatever future scenarios may come.
After building the strategy, positioning, and mapping future scenarios, we need to propose actions, initiatives, policies, and projects that put the developed strategy into practice.
These projects will bring the positioning to life by promoting an experience aligned with the place's perception. The initiatives, projects, or policies are designed to address the various mapped scenarios, ensuring the place's constant adaptability in the face of future uncertainties.
It's an urban transformation process, a tool, and a philosophy.
This process seeks to make public spaces more attractive, improving them so they become vibrant, alive, and more heavily used. Engaging people before, during, and after the process.
Vibrant places =
people +
meaning +
activities
THE ANTIFRAGILE CITY
Project
The vertical that develops strategies for creating future-proof places, collaboratively, involving community, clients, stakeholders, and our own multidisciplinary consulting team. Through traditional place branding and placemaking tools, combined with strategic foresight applied to places.
Management
The management core guides public managers, through implementation of the brand and futures committee, toward efficient, dynamic, and adaptive policies, ensuring successful implementation of local and regional development strategies suggested in the developed project.
Education
We develop training programs (masterclasses and courses) that enable leaders and managers to anticipate and adapt to global changes.
Our courses and training on place branding, placemaking, and strategic foresight for places prepare decision-makers and professionals for a constantly evolving world, enabling them to implement innovative, dynamic, and future-proof solutions.