Monthly Archives: February 2017

European Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in European Urban Image Construction

As part of 7th Euroacademia International Conference: Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers
Porto, Portugal, 28 – 29 April 2017
Deadline for paper proposals: 15th of March 2017
Urban Transformations, Transition and Change in European Urban Image Construction.

Panel Description

Urban image construction is a reflection, expression and constitutive factor of local identity formation and dynamics. Cities simultaneously localize identities and connect them with wider global signs of utility, function and symbolic order. Elasticity of the label identity accommodates everything that surrounds us as presence or absence, persistence or change. As a theatrical scenery, cities change after each act, sometimes with discrete adaptations, sometimes with radical interventions. If the scenery is composed of streets, parks, roads, museums, monuments, shopping malls and buildings connected through the intricate network of the perpetual and cumulative actions of its inhabitants, every adaptation and intervention affects its multi-dimensional identities. Changes in urban visual identities unfold as a form of public art feeding from the immense potential of social imaginary significations accommodated by a time’s perception of stability, structure and continuity. Urban change is itself a production of meaning, interpretation and identity making practices.

As the chaotic canvases of cities are being stretched over a framework of identity, its further exploration seems more than appropriate. Amidst the incredibly rapid urban growth crowding more than half of the world population in towns and cities, the questions are only going to keep multiplying. How are city identities made and re-made, used and abused, imagined and narrated, politicised and communicated, expressed and projected, imposed and marketed? And above all, how do they thrive within the dynamic interpolation of the nexus of local-global, centre-periphery, urban – suburban, old and new. As out-dated as these dichotomies may sound, in many places their daily life is far from over. As old cities became new capitals and new capitals struggle for more capital, the challenges of maintaining public-driven collective identities in the face of cultural fragmentation and diversification, coupled with consumer-attractiveness is turning them into urban palimpsests. Urban environments reflect the human needs and values. In an increasingly globalized world, the human beings are becoming more citizens of the world than citizens of the cities. The increasing mobility of the new pilgrims of globalization creates more of the same in the logic of universalized urban functionality. Within this logic, the cities are now in the position to re-evaluate their impact on the world and shape their future in a manner that assumes a wider responsibility that evades a localized mentality. Urban local identities are becoming increasingly thin and rely strongly on negotiating a local specificity with universalized functionality and global responsibility. An increasing need for uniqueness and distinctiveness foster site-specificity aimed at placing a particular urban identity within a global economic hierarchy. Public art became essential for affirming distinctive local urban identities in a universe of serialization and commodification.

As the research on cultural identities of the city is becoming more abundant, this panel aims at adopting a wide-lens inter-disciplinary approach, while focusing on various processes affecting identities in the urban context in its global-regional-national-local interplay.

If interested in participating, please see full details of the event on the conference website and apply on-line or send a maximum 300 words abstract together with the details of your affiliation until 15th of March 2017 at application@euroacademia.eu

For full details of the conference and on-line application please see the conference website:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/7th-eio-conference/
Applications are reviewed regularly by the Selection Committee and in order to facilitate best funding and travel arrangements, an answer to each application is provided in maximum 4 working days.

Studies of Architecture, Urbanism and Enironmental Sciences Journal

Studies of Architecture, Urbanism and Enironmental Sciences Journal invites researchers and academics in related disciplines to submit their manuscripts for publication in the first issue of the journal after peer-review. A list of topics of interest can be found on the website under the Aims and Scope section.

Note: Submissions to the journal should be made only electronically through the journal management system after registration. Manuscripts submitted through other means will not be considered for possible publication. Please do NOT submit your manuscripts via e-mail.

Submission Deadline: April, 2017

CAPITALizing on Heritage

Call for Abstracts

Ottawa, an historic capital city and the Confederation’s 150th anniversary offer the perfect opportunity to explore how people, policy, and preservation practice intersect to renew landmarks, protect what matters, and create vibrant places.

The Association for Preservation Technology International and the National Trust for Canada have joined forces to create CAPITALizing on HERITAGE, expected to be the largest gathering of conservation practitioners and advocates ever mounted in Canada. Industry professionals and strong community voices will come together to share the best in technology, policy, means and methods for preserving and renewing heritage buildings, sculptures, districts and engineering works.

The conference will capitalize on this rich blend of history, place, ritual and expertise for a truly memorable and inspiring event. Reflecting this diversity, CAPITALizing on HERITAGE will provide an extraordinary opportunity with seven conference tracks organized into three technical tracks, three cultural/community tracks and one track exploring the intersection of policy and technical issues. The papers within each thematic track will range from macro to micro in scale, with subject matter as diverse as cultural landscapes, non-destructive testing, heritage advocacy, engineering, sustainability, and project financing.

Conference Tracks:
SAVOIR-FAIRE: TECHNIQUES & TECHNOLOGY
Track 1: Documentation and Diagnostics – Understanding Historic Places
Track 2: Design – Planning the Conservation if Historic Places
Track 3: Delivery – Intervening  In Historic Places
INTERSECTION 
Track 4: Policy and Practice
COMMUNITY 
Track 5: CANADA 150 – Indigenous Heritage, Diversity, and New Directions
Track 6: Integrating Old and New – Buildings, Districts, and Landscapes
Track 7: Regeneration – Community, Economics, and Equitable Places

Decolonising placemaking knowledges: considering global placemaking

Paper/panel session at Royal Geographical Society 2017 Annual International Conference, London, Tuesday 29 August to Friday 1 September 2017.

Placemaking as a practice and philosophy has been written about extensively since the 1970s, in the main by US, UK and European scholars and practitioners. This session aims to open the consideration of placemaking from a global perspective, through papers from global practitioners and projects from the non-Western, non-Northern hemisphere.

Attempts to humanise the process of spatial planning and design (Healey, 2011, 2010) has evolved with the re-emergence of the importance of place (Casey, 1998) and post-colonial discourse. The potential to engage creative, collaborative and ecological practices within placemaking’s processes (Schneekloth and Shibley, 1995; Silberberg, 2013; Wright, 2005) become necessities if we are to combat the negative impacts of planetary urbanisation, anthropocentric climate change and social justice and cohesion.

Broader philosophical definitions such as ‘retrospective world-building’ (Basso, 1996:5) the creation of a meaningful humanly authored world (Tuan, 1976), ‘daily acts of renovating, maintaining, and representing the places that sustain us” (Schneekloth and Shibley, 1995:274) and ‘to create a sense of belonging through place’ (Silberberg, 2013) further complicate the relationship between professionals, residents and the practice of placemaking.

From this perspective what placemaking knowledges have yet to be integrated into current practices and thinking? How might global placemaking, in particular practices and processes of placemaking from non-Western/non-Northern hemisphere countries, Indigenous practices, feminist practices and more expand the current discourse?

The session forms a panel/paper session from a broad range of fields and perspectives presenting short provocations that explore and share the concerns of such practices and how these practices can lead thinking on issues in placemaking faced in US/UK/Europe today. The panel/papers will be followed by world café breakout sessions to discuss the issues raised by the panellists with the sessions attendees.

If you are interested in joining the panel/submitting a paper, please submit an abstract for consideration, of no more than 250 words, with a short biog, by Friday, 10th February, to cara@caracourage.net and anita@smartlab-ie.com.

Successful applicants will be informed by 13th February, to confirm attendance by 16th February. Regretfully, particularly in light of the topic, no funding is available to support national or international travel so those interested should only submit an abstract if they are able to self/institution/organisation fund.