Looking forward to participate in the symposium with the contribution: Whatever happened to landscapeurbanism?
Crossing disciplinary boundaries, New fields of work in urban design and urban research
About: Some even speak of a new „Gründerzeit“. Caused by current migration flows, numerous cities and communities are facing an unforeseen and unexpected growth. At the same time, shrinking processes and the (urban) transformation of rural areas continue to challenge professionals in urban design and research, while an even more emancipated society claims an increasing participation in designing its environment. Complex and plural processes like these make it almost impossible to understand and plan cities as holistic systems. From which perspective(s) will cities be developed and designed in the future? By whom and how?
Traditional planning tools and methods are reaching their limits. Informal processes and approaches are trying to formulate more appropriate and nuanced process-oriented urban strategies. Therefore a language of diverse forces, specific constellations of actors, ephemeral opportunities and interdependencies emerges. New types of projects stimulate urban innovations – they are expressions of new cultures of participation, appropriation and agreement. But how do these evolving fields of work and co-production function in practice? Who acts and who should act? Which new tasks are ahead? Which disciplinary knowledge is required?
For a long time, researchers and practitioners in urban development have been struggling to conceptualize new understandings of planning. We have observed, however, that practice and theory still cooperate too little; disciplinary divisions of labour, routines, representatives and fee structures are still not open up to changes.
For one or two decades, it has been a younger generation of urban professionals that responded to the indicated challenges and invented new fields of work. Practice and theory of those “citymakers“ are in focus of this symposium.
What can we learn from this practice(s)? How do these affect disciplinary self-conceptions? What does this mean for curricula? How can emerging practice(s) find its ways into formal fee structures?
paradoXcity 