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OC 59: “Planning Times”
this post is about the CORP conference 2013. It took place in Rome, in alternance with conferences in Vienna and its surroundings from CORP had been initiated in the 1990s. About CORP CORP (Competence Center of Urban and Regional Planning http://www.corp.at/index.php?id=18) has both staying power and innovative drive. Started at the Technical University of Vienna […]
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OC 57: Munich observed afresh
Imperial traces No matter how long ago and for how long a city has been a seat of domination, no matter how often its power has waxed and waned, a presence of its historic glory remains unmistaken. Munich is one such historic seat of power, wealth and might. The biased eyes of an urbanist will […]
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Money and Music
Festivals, ‘a must’ for cities Festivals have become almost ‘a must’ for cities in their competition for attention and position on global city rank orders. The ‘City of London Festival’ has completed its first half century of existence last year and has established itself firmly as a prominent city festival. (City of London Festival 2013m […]
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OC 53: Stag Place Revisited
Urban transformation: for better or for worse: – then? In the early nineteen seventies, I asked my post graduate students to explore two areas of central London of equal size, and observe their fabrics and how they were used to identify what interventions they could propose as aspiring urbanists to improve them. One area was […]
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OC 51: Localism Explained
Bottom up aspirations Demand for local control over local affairs is not new, so the recent Localism Act (2011) should be welcome by those who care for their neighbourhoods. Land and its use is one of the key areas which matters to local people who live, work and play there. It may surprise that a […]
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OC 47: City Open to Olympics
The Games have arrived It is not possible to live in London and ignore the Olympic Games 2012. Even less not to have an opinion about them and what they do to London as a place to live, work and play. As usual, officialdom claims that it is either too early or too late and […]
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Open Cities 35 Open Cities – Open Minds
Diversity: driver of openness Have a look at the EU map. It is almost entirely ‘blue’ and the remainders, e.g. Spain and Portugal, are bound to follow in that direction after elections. This has never happened before even when the EU was a small community with only a handful of member states. The emergence of […]
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Spirit of ’68
This is a new spontaneous experiment. The working group “Spirit of ’68” emerged spontaneously from a discussion at the third TINAG -This Is Not A Gateway Festival in autumn 2010 on the events in and around 1968, in Paris and elsewhere. The question was why this promising social movement did not have lasting effects, and […]
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Open Cities 26 Who Is The Other?
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 the UK, the political coalition is trying to reconcile a perceived immigration surplus […]
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Open Cities14 Minaret Controversy
Changing city skylines The people have decided: no more minarets in Swiss cityscapes. The question is how and why. The controversy over minarets has to be put into the context of who is shaping city skylines, with what artifacts, for what purpose, with whose legitimacy. Ever since cities have been built they express the power […]
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Open Cities 5 About intercultural coexistence
Open Cities 5 About intercultural coexistence OpenCities Spot Check Among the OpenCities partners Dublin is holding a festival of world cultures and Bukarest is providing more equal opportunities for its Roma population. Madrid has celebrated World Day for Cultural Diversity and Dialogue and Development, supports its multicultural character and is fostering its social and intercultural […]
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Open Cities 4 Openness and Closure
Open Cities 4 Openness and Closure Welcome to open cities Bright sunshine, holiday time. Many of us plan to take off somewhere to the beach, the mountains, the countryside. Yet, many city dwellers choose to visit other cities. They enjoy to displace themselves for a short while, physically and mentally, to experience another place, immerse […]
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Open Cities 3 The Case of London
Open Cities 3 The Case of London Openness or diversity? London is by far the largest city of the European Union and arguably the most diverse in terms of its population, economy and cultural characteristics. How does London fare with openness though? A diverse city does not necessarily mean an open city The Open Cities […]