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Migration, Displacement and Identity (p7)
The cultural attaché of the European Commission Representation in the UK, Jeremy O’Sullivan has initiated a timely series on “Migration, Displacement and Identity”. The series comprised music, poetry and writing about foreign lands. It included the readings and views on languages of a Finnish writer, Selja Ahava, who had lived in London for a long […]
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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 Cities 23 Public Realm – Civic Behaviour
A lot has been written about how to design the public realm to contribute to city openness with more or less environmental determinism in mind. CABE’s work belongs to this knowledge base. It ranges from the very physical “Adapting Public Places to Climate Change” to “Open Spaces Strategies” with focus on green spaces for deprived […]
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Open Cities 16 Openness and Age
‘Open Cities’ evoke many implicit assumptions. The tend to imply some idea of ‘goodness’. In the most general terms open cities are assumed to be sustainable, to provide a harmonious setting for physical, social, environmental and to some extent economic wellbeing to prosper, also for future generations. In physical terms open cities imply access to […]
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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 13 Winter Break Reading
Fiction vs Reality Sometimes fiction may reveal more than statistics. In a footloose world, bookstalls in airports and railway stations prepare travellers for their journey. On display are travelogues on cities they intend to visit, reassuringly from the perspective of their point of departure. For those with an appetite for greater displacement there are authors […]
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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 […]