The above photo was taken on a walk up to the Castillo de Gibralfaro in Malaga, Spain. It was built by the Moors during their occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. It is located on Mount Gibralfaro (~130m up) in the center of the city, overlooking the historic core, the waterfront, and its lower elevation sibling -- the Alcazaba (or citadel). In the Middle Ages, this is what it meant for a city to be defensible. High ground. Formidable double walls. And places to shoot from. Thankfully, today, I think one could easily argue that "urban defensibility" tends to instead rely on things like knowledge, innovation, and diversity. Here are a couple of photos from inside the fortress. It is always amazing to see what labor was able to build without the technologies that we have today.
Portions of it were built using a very elegant and elongated brick. Above is the bar area at the top. Presumably this was a later addition, though, supposedly the Moors did make and sell wine from the Andalucia region. If you ever find yourself in Malaga, this complex is a must visit.
This morning I woke up to an email from the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona. They are a public consortium dedicated to urban sustainability and made up of the City Council of Barcelona, the Municipal Council and Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, and the Barcelona Provincial Council. The email was about this upcoming “urban congress” taking place in Barcelona from May 22-24:
Sadly, I have no plans to be in Barcelona next month. But if any of you are based or traveling there, the conference is all about the future challenges that cities will face and about contributing to the new urban agenda. The main topics are: sustainability, city planning, social cohesion, and competitiveness.
Habitat III – which is in the title of the conference – was a United Nations conference on housing and sustainable urbanization. It took place in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. However, it forms part of a much larger framework around sustainable global development. More info here.
Barcelona is also one of my favorite cities, so I am happy to share this one with all of you. If you’d like to register for Post-Habitat III, head over here.
If you’re looking for more evidence that the way we live and work is changing, then check out a new startup called Roam. They describe themselves as an international network of communal spaces. So far, they have locations in Ubud (Bali), Miami, and Madrid. Buenos Aires and London are coming soon.
The way it works is that you start by signing a lease for either a week or a month. You get a private room and bathroom, but everything else, from the co-working spaces to the kitchens, are shared amongst the community. Like other co-working and co-living environments, the community they build is critical.
However, what really differentiates Roam is that you can sign one lease and then live all over the world, freely traveling across their properties. All of the locations are offered up at the same price and you can stay for as long as you’d like.
In my line of work, I don’t have the flexibility of living like a global nomad. But today, there are many people who can. And I also know that there are many people who would prefer to live like this. It’s liberating in so many ways.
My friend and I actually had a similar idea to this back in University and we spent some time working on it. At the time, and this was over a decade ago, we felt that there was a segment of people who increasingly wanted to live like global citizens. I still believe that to be true and, clearly, so do others.
To date, Roam has raised $3.4 million in funding.
Image: Ubud kitchen via Roam