Kelvin Campbell is a collaborative urbanist and writer. He is the
chair of Smart Urbanism and the Massive Small Collective, an
international network of collaborators facilitated by his son
Andrew Campbell, a sustainability expert.
After founding and leading Urban Initiatives, a successful urban
design practice, for over two decades, he decided to step aside and
take a different perspective on urbanism—something he is passionate
about.
Former visiting professor in urban design at the University of
Westminster and chairman of the Urban Design Group, Campbell is now
honorary professor at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at
the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and
lecturing in the Masters in Sustainable Urban Development program
at Oxford University. In 2013, he received the Urban Design Group’s
Lifetime Achievement Award and was later awarded the Built
Environment Fellowship by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition
of 1851.
He was lead author with Rob Cowan on By Design, the UK government’s
policy guidance on design in the planning system. Together they
have collaborated on and published numerous books and polemics.
He lives in London and the Chilterns with his wife.
‘An extremely valuable new handbook of urbanism—it’s the beauty of
simplicity and small actions that can provoke a positive start.
Wise urban acupuncture and co-responsibility for incremental
change.’—Jaime Lerner, architect and urbanist; author of Urban
Acupuncture
‘Bigness has grown out of control—in our cities and in our
life-critical systems—but here’s the good news: small actions are
the best way to cut bigness down to size, and this compendium
contains a thousand different ways to start.’—John Thackara,
founder of Doors of Perception; author of How to Thrive in the Next
Economy
‘Kelvin Campbell has done it again. Starting with a broad
understanding of how urban change happens and needs to happen—less
through top-down command-and-control methods, more through massive
small interventions—he guides us through a rich compendium of tools
and strategies. His section on process tools (what he calls
“activators”) is particularly helpful—covering asset-based
community development, participatory budgeting, and other crucial
modifications of the malfunctioning “operating system for growth”.
The compendium is richly illustrated with case studies and simple
takeaways, like his “Ten Things to Do” and “Ten Things Not to Do”.
They are eminently sensible, raising the question, Why are they
still done and not done? The answer might be that Campbell’s book
has not yet come along to give such a clear picture! Campbell says
the book is only a beginning, and we look forward to more of his
insightful work in the future. Meanwhile, this delightful book
deserves a spot on the bookshelf next to The Death and Life of
Great American Cities, A Pattern Language, and other icons of
fine-grained, process-based development.’—Michael Mehaffy, PhD,
executive director of Sustasis Foundation; coauthor of Design for a
Living Planet
‘What a beautiful bastard this book is: a hybridised glossary,
dictionary, manual, playbook, catalogue, manifesto, polemic and so
much more. It is a stunningly curated Kama Sutra for
city-making—inventive and seductive. If you have any connection
with urban transformation, in any capacity, scale or setting, spend
quality time with this book and engage with its many
provocations.’—Edgar Pieterse, director of the African Centre for
Cities; author of New Urban Worlds
‘Making Massive Small Change is an extremely valuable new handbook
for urbanism that brings together the most pertinent, current,
tested ideas and strategies for a better future.’—Kristien Ring,
founding director of the German Centre for Architecture; author of
Self-Made City
‘Making Massive Small Change is a passionate, heartfelt plea for a
new approach to urban development, but it is also much more.
Campbell presents evidenced arguments and highly innovative
solutions from leading-edge, organised complexity research
concepts, from his own four decades of practice, and from tactics
of change-makers across the world. The Massive Small project is the
culmination of a decade-long search for better, alternative ways to
meet our city challenges from dialogues reaching out to
practitioners, academics, and community activists across a wide
network. Campbell’s call is for a renewed social movement—using an
innovative framework of ideas, tools and tactics—to leverage the
small-scale ideas and efforts of citizens, professionals and
progressive governments into a collaborative urbanism that could
have a massive positive impact on our current broken systems of
urban development. These are important ideas—and an urgent call to
action. Jane Jacobs would be overjoyed to see a designer
finally turning her recommendations about organised complexity—made
over fifty years ago—into a practical framework and toolbox for
transformative action. It is a timely and major
achievement.’—NezHapi Dellé Odeleye, PhD, course leader, department
of Engineering and the Built Environment, Anglia Ruskin
University
‘Finally a book that offers abundant evidence that a built
environment is an organism composed of living cells. Kelvin
Campbell demonstrates that professionals can learn from such
evidence and find ways to contribute to the organism’s
health.’—John Habraken, author of Supports and The Structure of the
Ordinary
‘Making Massive Small Change is everything its author declares.
That means it is an up-to-date sourcebook and vocabulary as well.
My reading and re-reading list has been substantially updated.
Kelvin’s comprehensive compendium is an ideal reference for all
seeking patterns of sustainable and therefore bottom-up placemaking
and management. The emerging paradigm, so clearly illustrated in
this book, highlights the fact that only peoples’ local capacities
can provide the vital variety of requirements for human and natural
life.’—John F.C. Turner, architect; author of Freedom to Build and
Housing By People
‘The urban neighbourhoods we know and love have evolved over
generations with successive contributions from countless people.
They have shaped buildings, streets and spaces as well as
activities and processes. Today the way we build places is simpler,
quicker and courser with fewer people involved. The principles and
approaches in Making Massive Small Change reflect how we can
empower people to once again participate in shaping our communities
whilst creating more successful places.’—Ben Derbyshire, president
of the Royal Institute of British Architects
‘This powerful and highly engaging book is an inspiring call for
all of us to start making a difference tomorrow. I have always
believed that more than hope driving action, it is action that
drives hope. Read this book, be inspired by its stories of change
from modest beginnings, and get working for a better
world.’—Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for
the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
‘One quote from E. F. Schumacher that immediately comes to mind
when reading Making Massive Small Change is: “Any intelligent fool
can make things bigger and more complex . . . it takes a touch of
genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction”.
This book does have more than a touch of genius and is massively
courageous. This is an essential book for anyone involved in
systems thinking, complexity and design. Aimed primarily at urban
development it also applies to all aspects of human endeavours—all
our institutions, governance, economics and trade emerge from the
world we build around us and we need this message of small
beginnings for massive system change.’—Ian Roderick, director of
the Schumacher Institute
‘Making Massive Small Change is part of a growing movement that
recognises the value of small, incremental development for our
cities, our economies and our citizens. The systems that shape our
communities have been distorted to privilege bigness—big companies,
big projects, big budgets and big plans—while small actors face
disproportionate burdens or outright exclusion from building their
homes, businesses and communities. Just as urbanists reclaimed the
lost knowledge of traditional design, we must now rediscover the
value of incrementalism, of many small projects done by many hands,
of enabling local residents and businesses to participate in
community development. As a leading urban theorist, Kelvin Campbell
recognized this early on, and with Making Massive Small Change has
created this thorough compendium to address it. The thinking builds
on good design to consider how the systems should be
restructured—from closed to open, from centralized to local, from
top-down to bottom-up—to enable small. And it provides new and
collected tactics and tools to make it happen. Making Massive Small
Change is a valuable contribution to the movement.’—Brian Falk,
director of the Project for Lean Urbanism
‘Transforming cities is highly complex, and the challenge can often
feel overwhelming. Large, sexy, iconic projects can be big targets
and quite polarizing, which means they often don’t get delivered,
creating layers of mistrust and frustration. Making Massive Small
Change by urban maestro Kelvin Campbell shows us another way: that
change doesn’t have to take decades to realise or even to be
gold-plated. It shows us that small done well can actually be the
most powerful change agent on the planet because it can mobilise a
whole city or community, allowing the goodness to creep up. With
cities, small can be mighty. Read this and make that change.’—Ludo
Campbell-Reid, urbanist; Design Champion for Auckland, New Zealand
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