Cities undergoing violence before transformation It is impossible to ignore that the current events in the Arab world are played out in cities. Cities are the stage of continuous change, of gain and loss and stalemate. Struggles take place openly throughout ...Read More
Cities are changing all the time but who is benefiting from such change and how does it relate to city openness? Regeneration is a widespread means to transforming specific parts of cities where places tend to lose value. For our ...Read More
It is timely to think about barriers when so many human beings are risking their lives to tear them down. Is it a primal urge of mankind to be unbound, free to move and think, free to assemble and undertake ...Read More
A lot has been written about cities and their ties with people. Lineu Castello’s ‘Rethinking the Meaning of Place’ (Ashgate 2010) is one of the most comprehensive literature reviews of how human beings interact with their built environment I have ...Read More
A note in Private Eye no 1281 (4-17 February 2011, p13) leads to this follow up of the Open Cities post 28. Hackney Council in London's East End voted a nil policy on sex establishments which will get rid of ...Read More
Culture of fear Is it not ironic that a city which broadcasts its openness worldwide is the first to surround itself with a ring of steel? Already one of the most ‘surveilled’ city in the world, the City of London is ...Read More
The premise of Open Cities is that openness is offering a better quality of life, ideally to all those who live, work and play in the city. In the light of so many closures, so much existing spatial segregation in ...Read More
Does Urban change mean displacement? Cities are constantly changing and this is understood as a sign of their dynamic, their ability to generate wealth and wellbeing. Arguably, open cities are those where the highest benefits of change are reaching the largest ...Read More
What one tends to understand intuitively by ‘Open City’ is tolerating one’s neighbours from hell and their outlandish lifestyles, mobilising equal opportunities at work, improving equality in schools, or sharing the public realm with a multicultural society in a deprived ...Read More
When openness issues are unravelling themselves in other countries they can concentrate the mind about openness at ‘home’. A snap shot across media debates during a journey through Europe may illustrate this mirror function. Snapshots of ‘the other’ in Europe While in ...Read More
