First International Conference of Young Urban Researchers (FICYUrb)
Held at ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal
June 11 - 12, 2007
https://conferencias.iscte.pt/index.php?cf=3
Kaupunkitutkimuksen päivät 2007 - Talous, kasvu, kulutus
Aika: 3.-4.5.2007
Paikka: Tieteiden talo (Kirkkokatu 6, Helsinki)
Järjestäjät: Yhdyskuntasuunnittelun Seura, Alue- ja
Ympäristötutkimuksen Seura sekä Suomen Kaupunkitutkimuksen Seura
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Teele Pehk
Department of Regional Studies
University of Tampere
teele.pehk@uta.fi
phone: +358 (0)33551 7807
mobile: +358 4565 18948
WANING SPACE: I __ NY
By Rem Koolhaas
What happened after New York lost its Deliriousness? Rem Koolhaas has written a short article a few years ago that complements his work Delirious New York.Fired by the success and support for Slow Food the Italians set about initiating the Slow Cities movement. Slow cities are characterised by a way of life that supports people to live slow. Traditions and traditional ways of doing things are valued. These cities stand up against the fast-lane, homogenised world so often seen in other cities throughout the world. Slow cities have less traffic, less noise, fewer crowds.
Towns in Italy have banded together to form an organization and call themselves the Slow Cities movement. In their zeal to help the world they have formed what amounts to a global organization that sets out to control which cities in the world can call themselves Slow Cities and which cannot. This is not a movement. Social movements are movements from the bottom from the community. The seachange movement, the organic movement, the vegetarian movement, the homeschooling movement, are examples of movements. No-one controls them. No-one assesses you to see if you are allowed to call yourself a seachanger or if you can say you are a vegetarian.
Yet, the Slow Cities movement – Citta Slow – holds the power to assess a city that wants to be called a slow city. Citta Slow have developed a:
No town or city with more than 50,000 residents may apply to be called a Slow City. The Slow City manifesto contains 55 pledges or criteria, grouped into six categories upon which cities are assessed; environmental policy, infrastructure, quality of urban fabric, encouragement of local produce and products, hospitality and community and Citta Slow awareness. To qualify to be called a Slow City and to use the snail logo, a city must be vetted and regularly checked by inspectors to make sure it is living up to the Slow City standard of conduct.
The principles of the Slow City movement are one we would like all cities no matter how big or small to live by. Hopefully the movement will continue and another grassroots slow city movement will operate in parallel whereby cities that cannot meet the strict criteria for one reason or another can still call themselves slow cities and continue to work towards sustainable living and the ethos of the slow movement.
Perhaps this new movement is already here. Check out slowlondon. As the site says: "Firstly, it is nothing new. There are people in cities all over the world who have found all sorts of ways to bring a sense of relaxation to places where it can often be stressful to live. slowlondon provides a place for these people to meet and share their ideas. On the other hand, there are many of us who are interested in finding out how to make commuting a pleasure rather than a chore....how to avoid fallling into bad habits at work just because everyone ele does it like that... how to reclaim time as the friend it really is.
"slowlondon hopes to provide inspiration and also support, because sometimes it requires a certain bravery to stand up and say no, there are other ways than this.
"The principles that underpin slowlondon apply to whichever city you live in. Some of the details may be different but on the whole, people all around the world face the same challenges."
As the postindustrial city model is repeating all around the world,
these "urban aggressions" are found everywhere. But that´s only the bad
part of the story... The good part of it (and that´s why we started
KRAX...) is that also everywhere the neighbours are standing and
fighting for their rights to the city. People´s mentality is changing,
and now they want to be active participants of the decisions made over
their street, square, neighbourhood or city... So, KRAX is not a
research on the urban problems that cities are facing around the world;
it is more a "catalogue", a database of creative and powerful tools and
experiences coming from the neighbours themselves. We are in contact
with movements/collectives/organizations from Tokyo, Caracas, Madrid,
Santiago de Chile, Chicago, Mostar, Harlem, Buenos Aires, Sevilla,
London, ...
One of the ideas behind KRAX is to build a Documentation Center. This
space is intended to be a learning place, where you can know about other
initiatives around the world, and we want to make it available
physically as well as virtually. This Doc Center is growing thanks to
the contribution of the different groups: we are getting in touch with
each one of them to gather material that can be interesting for the
whole network...
We are also, and this is another idea behind KRAX, organizing the KRAX
Conference at the end of April (24-28th). This Conference is a gathering
of several initiatives from different neighbourhoods from Barcelona with
groups from different cities. We are starting to develop the program for
the Conference along with neighbours (tomorrow we have a big meeting
with some of them), and we will begin arising the same questions to the
KRAX mailing-list participants (krax@moviments.net).
If you can tell us something about what´s going on in Tallinn or
Estonia, it would be great! Also, if you want to write something about
the situation around there (or write something about cities, in
general...), you can send it to us and we will publish it on the KRAX
blog (http://krax.citymined.org).
Ok, that´s all... A long email already....
Let´s keep in touch!!!
Mariano.
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When council cleaners spotted graffiti 24 hours before the official opening of a new London square, they enthusiasically removed every trace of the offending drawings.
Unfortunately, the two stencils they wiped out were drawn by Banksy, the subversive artist. One of his works fetched more than £100,000 in auction at Sotheby’s this week.
To make matters worse, the street cleaners did not deem the graffiti worthy of being photographed before destruction, as is their usual policy. Nor did they seek permission from the building’s owners.
The council has now admitted its blunder and apologised.
The street cleaners, armed with jetwashers, had been ordered to touch up the area before the official opening of Gillett Square in Hackney last November.
Two days before the ceremony, Hackney Cooperative Developments (HCD) decided to uncover a 4ft Banksy stencil of a girl wearing a frilly dress and a gas mask. It had been covered by plywood for several months.
It was scrubbed off the day after, along with another Banksy picture on their building of a man’s face.
Adam Hart, executive director of HCD, wrote to Hackney Council complaining that the murals had been removed, saying: “These were famous artworks by Banksy and of considerable value and there is likely to be something of an outcry.” He said later: “Perhaps the nature of the whole thing is that graffiti is ephemeral, so maybe Banksy would approve.”
The council is now drawing up a list of graffiti artwork in the borough that should not be removed. Mr Hart said: “It’s something they need to be aware of so they don’t eradicate everything that gives character to the area.”
Part of the Urban Athmospheres research program, Urban Probes is a project from Intel Research Berkley described as:
4 different plans of tram road development in Tallinn
