Soft Urbanism stands for an interdisciplinary field of work that examines the ‘soft’ aspects, the communication aspects, of the city and deals with the dynamic interplay of urban development and the space of mass media and communication networks.
Soft urbanism pursues ‘softer’ planning approaches.
Soft Urbanism, as a holistic view of urbanity, is important for the city in transition both in a context of shrinkage and in growth regions.
Publication Soft Urbanism @ Deutsche Bauzeitung, Germany , 1 April 2006

Rooting
Routes
In the Dutch Randstad, the global player airport is growing without reference to, or even in conflict with, its immediate suburban surroundings. The localities around Schiphol Airport bear the burden, but do not benefit from the ‘global condition’ of their neighbour.
The project ‘Rooting Routes: weaving Schiphol-airport within its local fabric by the means of transit tourism’ utilises the potential of transit tourism to interlock the airport with its surroundings. For transit passengers and business travellers arriving briefly at the airport for a few meetings, a series of short routes in the surrounding area is proposed. These thematic routes, which range from historical-didactic to nature routes to shopping safaris and also include sporting activities, can also be done by minibus, water taxi or bicycle. These itinerary programmes can be communicated, guided and directed using mobile phones and other portable devices.
The ‘non-place’ airport would thus gain identity through the local qualities of its surroundings. The surrounding neighbourhoods and green spaces would benefit from the economic appeal of the airport. This interlocking of the transit space, which is part of a global network of urbanity, with its local environment strengthens the airport’s function as an interface between the global and local space.
Neighbours Network City or NNC as the inversion of CNN
The ‘Neighbours Network City (NNC)’ project was proposed for the Ruhr Network City as European Capital of Culture 2010. The NNC project activates both the urban and the medial public space. It develops scenarios for the interplay of urban space and mass media in order to strengthen the public space of the urban landscape of the Ruhr region, which is increasingly undergoing a process of segregation. The NNC project (as an inversion of CNN) is intended to unfold the urban network as an ‘open Gesamtkunstwerk’ from the plurality of local forces.
NNC as an open project is to develop in the course of (sub-)projects that build on each other and are interwoven. The (sub-)project ‘We eat for the Ruhr’ takes up the logo of the Capital of Culture (‘Essen for the Ruhr’) and proposes a Ruhr-wide meal for the Ruhr.
We eat for the RUHRGEBIET
On the longest day of the year, dinners are to be organised decentrally in the city districts by the residents and for the residents. Every stranger, whether walker, tourist, vagrant, commuter or business traveller, is also welcome to join in and eat.
The tables are set in unused areas and wasteland. These boundaries of the urban systems are thus reinterpreted as communicative fringes. On this evening, the region’s music and theatre ensembles will parade along the temporary food culture route and provide small interludes at the festive tables. At the same time, the toast echoes throughout the region, spoken in different accents: ‘we eat for the RUHRGEBIET’!
The project intervenes at the level of perception and the communication processes of urbanity; it aims to change and intensify these. Spaces are to be re-evaluated; new contacts, new relationships are to be developed and new positive signs are to be set.
The second meal for the RUHRGEBIET will take place at a long table on the A40 motorway!
Idensity®
The projects described above intervene at the level of communication. They strengthen the identities of the urban landscape and intensify the communication processes of urbanity, densifying urban networks.
‘Idensity®’, a conceptual instrument for the development of the urban landscape, merges these concepts of identity and density of connections. It integrates the concept of ‘density’ (density of physical and media communication networks and infrastructure, density of connections, density of communication spaces) with the concept of identity (‘city image’ campaigns, branding, etc.). Idensity® can be used as an operational tool to manage urban development processes.
This new concept is introduced to understand and manage the overlapping and interaction of media and ‘real’ urban space. ‘Idensity®’ does not distinguish between information/communication networks and the urban built environment and offers an integrated model for dealing with the “hybrid” (media and “real”) space in the information/communication age.
‘Idensity®’ is a conceptual tool for the research and development of space in the information/communication age.