Meeting on the Edge: Urban Spaces and the Diffusion of the Novel (original) (raw)

The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces

The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces. An International Dialogue., 2018

In Between Public and Private: Emerging Spaces in Cities

Is it still possible to talk about public space in an age when the shopping mall and the public square are increasingly hard to differentiate? Urban scholars have frequently argued that we are experiencing an "end" of public space. In this paper, I argue that public spaces are not necessarily disappearing, but that we need to re-think how we define space. Moving away from strict political-economic criteria such as ownership or economic function, I advocate for a new definition of public space based on notions of legitimacy and perceptions of collective ownership. In order to develop these ideas, I discuss three very different sites in Toronto that fall somewhere between public and private: a small downtown park, a suburban strip mall, and a sugar factory. In each case it is evident that the perceptions and actions of people do not necessarily reflect the political-economy of the spaces.

Publics and their spaces. Renewing urbanity in city and suburb

New Urban Configurations, 2014

In Europe, the beautiful old city, with its compact morphological structure, seems to have no relation to the suburban environment sprawling outside the perimeter of recognizable urban values. For many, the inner city still serves as the dominant centre where the whole suburban area converges, a stage for community life and cultural identity. However, the liveability of old cities has been transformed during recent decades. To preserve the historical values of buildings and public spaces, municipalities have conserved, sometimes obsessively, their physical elements, freezing their function for daily life. This has turned many old cities into open-air museums, with decreasing opportunities for public and social interactions. Pedestrianised zones attract shoppers and profits, bringing chains of luxury shops that replace everyday needs with boutiques for clothing, jewellery and gifts. Museums and palaces become cultural anchors in historic centres, resembling theme parks for tourists. This process is most visible in Italian cities such as Venice, Florence and Rome. To preserve a physically coherent environment, cities expel to the periphery any function or architectural style that doesn’t fit their model of coherence. As a result, the historical European city appears to be disconnected from the development of contemporary society, leading to a decline in the social significance of its public spaces. Meanwhile, the vast land of suburbia has become a complex and multifunctional environment. Its sprawling morphology accommodates new functions and typologies in new spaces and territories, often independent of the historic centre. During a single century, fast growing suburbs in Europe have produced forms, building types, and urban patterns completely different from historic morphologies. Exurban development produces phenomena as different as gated communities, ethno burbs, lifestyle centres, shopping malls and entertainment complexes, and restructured rural towns. Far from the centre, they are singular episodes in an “in between” zone, neither city nor country. Every development constitutes a new piece of a broader puzzle, still to be completed.

The Production of Alternative Urban SpacesAn International Dialogue

Routledge, 2019

Alternative urban spaces across civic, private, and public spheres emerge in response to the great challenges that urban actors are currently confronted with. Labour markets are changing rapidly, the availability of affordable housing is under intensifying pressure, and public spaces have become battlegrounds of urban politics. This edited collection brings together contributors in order to spark an international dialogue about the production of alternative urban spaces through a threefold exploration of alternative spaces of work, dwelling, and public life. Seeking out and examining existing alternative urban spaces, the authors identify the elements that provide opportunities to create radically different futures for the world's urban spaces. This volume is the culmination of an international search for alternative practices to dominant modes of capitalist urbanisation, bringing together interdisciplinary, empirically grounded chapters from hot spots in disparate cities around the world. Offering a multidisciplinary perspective, The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces will be of great interest to academics working across the fields of urban sociology, human geography, anthropology, political science, and urban planning. It will also be indispensable to any postgraduate students engaged in urban and regional studies.

Urban Spaces of Creation, Convergence and Collaboration

This presentation explores two different case studies which, from different angles, investigate This presentation explores two different case studies which, from different angles, investigate the importance of created space in cities. It suggests giving more consideration to space within the context of adult learning and calls for approaches in contemporary urban environments that seek out all actors involved in the complex process of place and space in the city. Comparing two wildly different case studies, this paper discusses a needed emphasis on place, through context and processes of collaboration, creation and convergence, and some emerging lessons that still need to be learnt. the importance of created space in cities. It suggests giving more consideration to space within the context of adult learning and calls for approaches in contemporary urban environments that seek out all actors involved in the complex process of place and space in the city. Comparing two wildly different case studies, this paper discusses a needed emphasis on place, through context and processes of collaboration, creation and convergence, and some emerging lessons that still need to be learnt.

Revitalizing Undefined Urban Spaces by Temporary Urban Strategies

Caumme 2018 - Borders in Architecture International Symposium Proceedings, 2018

Undefined urban open spaces, forming the heterogeneous structure of urban tissue, are perceived differently by users. These areas, which are thought to impair the relation between people and public life, are generally seen as empty, vacant, disorganized, uncertain areas in spatial terms. Because of their perception of being empty, abandoned, having no function, being in a forbidden zone or leftover, these areas are often referred to as negative associations by citizens and designers since the beginning of urbanization discourses. However, within the framework of urban developments, approaches to these areas in cities are increasingly changing in a positive and constructive way. This paper attempts to focus on examining undefined urban open spaces and tries to justify temporary interventions as positive inputs because of their contribution to new publicness and progressive planning design approach of the city. In this study, a selection of latest examples of temporary uses in world literature are compiled and classified according to the qualities that distinguishes undefined areas from each other. Thus, specific interventions for different type of spaces are put forth. The motive of this study is, beyond the problems of undefined urban open spaces, to discuss and highlight the opportunities that they provide and to create a perception and an input that offers alternative approaches for future studies.

Urban renewal revitalization CANADA

info@creativecity.ca creativecity.ca For more information and other Making the Case features, profiles and resources, visit: creativecity.ca C ulture-based initiatives have been essential to urban revitalization and urban renewal programs in Canada. The arts ensure a community's habitat reflects who residents are and how they live. Key arguments for renewal and revitalization through culture-based initiatives LOCAL INTERESTS AND OBJECTIVES Arts and culture can help regenerate a city's core. Main street revitalization programs that include arts and culture programming increase community vitality. (Alberta Main Street Program, AB) Regeneration initiatives such as street façade improvement contribute to economic regeneration for ailing commercial streets. (Chilliwack Business Association) The construction of new public squares creates new "spaces" for community activity and interaction. (Art City, Edmonton, AB) Greening initiatives and landscape art improves the sense of place of urban streets and blocks. Urban regeneration through the arts can spur local economic growth and development. (Custard Factory, UK) Arts and culture can re-identify negatively stereotyped communities. Cultural branding and community identity building, through commonly designed or characterized infrastructure, can create a new character in a typecast community. (Drummondsville, PQ) © 2005 Creative City Network of Canada |

Brave New Neighborhoods: The Privatization of Public Space

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2006

A central difficulty faced by the contemporary urban designer is that of giving shape to the formlessness of urban sprawl, creating collective spaces when human interactions are increasingly dispersed across electronic and vehicular communications networks. But until relatively recently it was difficult for the practitioner and student to readily locate literature on the phenomenon untinted by polemic and partisanship. Urban Mutations combines two sorts of essay, one hailing from academic analysis, the other from the architectural studio, which combine to produce a generally calm and considered appraisal of the dilemma faced by cities and their designers. The book originates in a small international symposium organized by the Aarhus School of Architecture in September of 2002, and the Danish editing of the volume retains a northern European and Scandinavian flavor in both its topical approaches (for instance, Poul Baek Pedersen's history of the Danish welfare city) and its somewhat uneven Englishlanguage editing (though credit is owing to the editors for making the selection available to English-language readers). Readers will find in here some statements of belief but no overall clarion call. The volume accepts that the management, through design, of the contemporary urban landscape is a challenge of such magnitude that it is best approached with a cool head: before we do anything, the title of the book tells us, let's step back and plot the mutation of the urban. When did it begin? (The book's short answer: with the relaxation of European and Scandinavian welfare state principles, and the adoption of neoliberal maxims.) What is its scale? (It is regional, national, international-'XL', to borrow architect Rem Koolhaas's shorthand, as several contributors do-but it equally affects small spaces and everyday life, and the welfare state bears a responsibility for increasing the political and physical scale of the urban footprint in the first place.) What is its nature? (Mobility-physical, social, economic-which apparently threatens traditional, fixed, concentrated cities.) Essays by political sociologist Bob Jessop and urban geographer Stephen Graham are notably helpful in getting the lay reader up to speed on these problems. An urban specialist might read the above abstract and contend that these phenomena have been known for a fair time now. Nonetheless, the serious literature on the politics and economics of the city is ever-more vast and dispersed, and there are few formats in which it is concisely connected, as it is here, tentatively, to the problems faced in the studio. When contemporary urban theory and practice are bridged it is usually as a supermodern eruption, headlines converted through CAD into mega-projects. Urban Mutations has dalliances with such projects, though their authors (like Jan Willem van Kuilenburg) will likely be unfamiliar to readers from American conference and publishing circuit, and more importantly, some chapters, like Morten Daugaard's, provide a commendably systematic account of pressing spatial issues (like 'after-sprawl'). Urban Mutations is actually of immediate interest to an architectural historian like the present reviewer. How long, one wonders, will the legacies of three successor waves of avant-garde architects who tackled urban mutations-Team X in the 1950s, Archigram in the 1960s, Rem Koolhaas and the 'Superdutch' school since-provide Views expressed in this section are independent and do not represent the opinion of the editors .

The Place and the City: Trends in the Construction of the Public Space

This paper analyses the evolution of the concept of public space in the European city in a diachronic framework, from its historical and foundational functions to the opportunity it provides to trigger regenerative strategies in socially and environmentally degraded urban contexts. The specificity of ‘potentially public’ spaces resides in their peripheral position inside metropolitan areas and in their episodic and fragmented character. This autonomy with respect to other typologies of free spaces appears to require the elaboration of specific analytical approaches and design models that move from the explicit recognition of the reticular structure of the territory. Examples of urban regeneration promoted in the last decade, in general supported by the European Union, open new perspectives on urban governance that are implicitly based upon the role of social inclusion in welfare and sustainability policies. Keywords Public Space, Urbanism, Participation, Urban Governance, Enclaves

Meeting on the Edge: Urban Spaces and the Diffusion of the Novel (original) (raw)

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