Cities in Flux: from Bureaucratic control to Participatory Ecosystems – with Joni Baboci

Podcast Notes

Joni Baboci is an architect, planner, and urban enthusiast. He is the founder of Layer, a spatial orchestration platform that empowers teams to govern through tactics and patterns while leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence. He has previously served as the General Director of Planning and Urban Development for the City of Tirana and the director of Atelier Albania, a structure of the Albanian government dealing with national and regional strategic planning. Joni has executed planning, design & development projects at different scales at the national, regional and local levels.

Joni shares his insights on how technological advancements such as AI and blockchain are enabling bottom-up processes in planning and thinking about cities. We also delve into the challenges of making these ideas practical and building a process of making them a reality. Joni highlights the importance of reinventing physical production through local value loops, and incentivizing the interconnection between urban and rural scapes.

We also discuss how DAOs and blockchain technology can improve local governance and participation, and how cities can invest in citizen-based entrepreneurship that let them decide how to perform a job or access a service rather than relying on a top-down approach.

Join us as we explore the potential of a more decentralized and organic approach to city planning with Joni Baboci.

Key highlights:

• The static, modernist way of thinking and planning cities is changing
• Looking at cities through a “pattern language”: from communities to subcultures to regions.
• Bureaucracy can help to make sure things do not move too fast.
• The physical city won’t be replaced by a virtual city or a network state any time soon
• New technologies make it possible to scale governance both on a technical and geographical level
• Communities should be able to make small bets on things that matter to them

Topics (chapters):

(00:00) Joni Baboci quote
(00:47) Joni Baboci introduction
(02:13) A Paradigm Shift Towards Humility in Organizing Cities and Space
(05:56) The Shift Towards Decentralized and Organic City Planning
(10:57) The Role of Cities in the Modern World: Cities as Labor Markets and More
(18:15) Exploring the Pros and Cons of Network Cities: Coexisting with Physical Cities
(23:13) The Future of Cities and the Interconnection between Urban and Rural Landscapes
(30:55) Using DAOs and Blockchain to Improve Local Governance and Participation.
(40:41) City and Citizen Entrepreneurship for Bottom-up Development
(47:15) Joni Baboci’s breadcrumbs

Recorded on 17 February 2023.

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Music

Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music