Introduction

"...This city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the coursers of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightening rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls..."

in. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

"...If we look at the contemporary form of urban landscapes, we can see how different cities – with their own history, with their own culture, with different population and extension and in different parts of the world – are experiencing similar transformations driving them into a kind of a common and standard landscape..."

in. Francesc Muñoz, Urbanalización


Globalization has been a process that has affected every aspects of human life (at least...) during the last century. As a consequence of that process, some already called our planet as a planet city, others, like Salman Rushdie, presented the idea of a Mac World.

Globalization is a reality that changed our way of living (forever?), making us to get used (and dependent?) of standards and brands (...by the way, this text was written on a iPad...).

So, we beleive that we became globalized citizens of a Mac World, where more than 80% of its population is now living in (big) cities. First, we became urbanized, now we became globalized. And so did our cities...

Therefore, can we still talk about the poetry of Calvino´s Invisible Cities? Can we still find (or miss) the city past on the streets where we walkabout? Can we still discover on each city we visit, its desires, its fears, its anxieties, its identity? Do all cities look like the same? Or... are we simply getting used to a standard way of living that makes us to look for the same things wherever we go, so we can feel comfortable and safe... like home?

How do architects and city planners deal with globalization? Are we changing the way we think our cities? Are we planning them differently? And, are they becoming different, although man try to make them to look like the same?

In this seminar we will discuss the urban fabric and the globalization effects on city identity.

(V.P. 2011)

INVITED SPEAKERS

João Santa-Rita (Santa Rita Architects); Mário Sua Kay; (Sua Kay Architects); Augustin Ioan (Ion Mincu University, Bucarest); ; Johannes Kalvelage (Dessau Institute of Architecture); Vaso Trova (University of Thessaly, Volos); Fátima Silva (Universidade Lusíada, Lisboa);

Contributors: Irene Curulli (Technical University of Eindhoven); Luca Fabris (Politecnico di Milano); Esin Boyacioglu (Gazy University, Ankara); Ado Franchini (Politecnico di Milano); Caroline Donnellan (Boston University)

The Global City
"...The experience of the global is partial. It is not an all-encompassing umbrella. The multiple processes that constitute it inhabit and shape specific, rather than universal, structurations of the economic, the political, the cultural, the subjective. In so doing, new spatialities and temporalities are produced, co-existing yet distinct from the master temporality and spatiality of the “national.” In the interplay of their difference, strategic openings have emerged.
Such strategic openings are especially evident in sites where these intersecting temporalities and spatialities assume thick and consequential forms. Among these sites are, from the perspective of my own research experience, global cities. The global city is a border zone where the old spatialities and temporalities of the national and the new ones of the global digital age engage. Out of their juxtaposition comes the possibility of a whole series of new economic and cultural projects. There are other sites, including microsites, where the juxtapositions of different spatialities and temporalities are likely to be thick, charged. One question that comes to mind is whether art in some of its instantiations can represent such a microsite of juxtapositions, one that captures a key dynamic of transitioning..."
Saskia Sassen 
full text here 
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