IV - European Urban Summer School
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Item Open Access Urban change : The prospect of transformation(AESOP, 2010) Mironowicz, Izabela; Ryser, Juditham pleased to be able to introduce to you a very welcome publication on the European Urban Summer School which took place in Wrocław in September of 2010 thanks to the hard work of the Wrocław University of Technology’s School of Architecture with the support of our UN-HABITAT office in Warsaw. I also want to thank the partner institutions in this project: our main partner Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) ISOCARP and EURA, as well as the Lower Silesia Marshall Office and the City of Wrocław local authorities for their cooperation and support. As a result, at a 10 day summer school over 20 lecturers and 50 students from all over Europe had a chance to meet and look at practical cases of how to create a balance between heritage and development.Item Open Access Quality of Space – Quality of Life Planning for Urban Needs of diverse timeframes(AESOP, 2011) Mironoviks, I.; Antunes, F.; Moutinho, M.The urban quality is a challenge and an actual issue for urbanists but also for researchers. One of urbanism aims is giving quality to the space and, with that or by it, the opportunity to people achieve quality of life. But work about quality is not a simple task because the sense of quality varies in time and space, by culture, by educational and economic backgrounds etc…. The advantage to could bring, in the same space, young professionals and researchers from different countries of Europe to debate the sense of urban quality meant we to take the challenge to coordinate the European Urban Summer Scholl of 2011. The preparation of EUSS’11 started late in time and the course only occur on last week of September, with all problems that it could bring because coincides with the beginning of master and PhD courses where young professionals were enrolled had begun. But beside a few inscriptions (about 20) we take the risk and organize the EUSS’11 with collaboration of two municipalities – Odivelas and Sintra – that provide us the “ground” and all needed information to work the discussed theories and give solutions to improve the space quality and with it the opportunity of life quality for users.Item Open Access Architecture & Planning in Times of Scarcity Reclaiming the Possibility of Making(AESOP, 2012) Iossifova, DeljanaUN-Habitat, represented by its Central European Office in cooperation AESOP in September 2010 organized the 1st European Urban Summer School (EUSS) for young planning professionals. The host was the Wrocław University of Technology, Poland. The topic of the EUSS was Heritage and Sustainability. Izabela Mironowicz was the head of the school while Krzysztof Mularczyk acted as UN Habitat Coordinator. The 2010 EUSS took as its starting point the fact that urbanisation is a global process, yet it has left a particular legacy in European cities. Students and tutors with diverse backgrounds congregated from all over Europe and beyond in a central European city to gain a better understanding of urban change. Reconciling heritage with development was the challenge to achieve a more sustainable urban future. ‘Sustainability’ was conceived here as a balance between historic legacy, regeneration and citywide urban transformation. Wroclaw, the host city generously provided the empirical setting to test these assumptions, to verify their validity through international comparisons, and to offer young professionals the opportunity to elaborate interventions towards a more sustainable urban future.Item Open Access The case of VALLEC/KAS, Madrid(AESOP, 2013) Benlliure, Jose; Janku, Eranda; Vlk, Tamara; Woutersen, Mischa; Zasina, Jakub; ; Lourenço, Júlia M.; Raventós, TeresaIn times when the economic crisis and different administrative problems are leaving behind ghost cities and abandoned extra-large urban projects, it is urgent to start reflecting to react. Provoking discussion among young urban planners and other related professionals is very important to open up more up-to-date and innovative solutions, by thinking about short and long term solutions for our cities and their future. The burst of the housing bubble in Spain has triggered a deep crisis for the city as a project. One of the most important casualties of the economic crisis, P.A.U de Vallecas - one among the main six large areas which were previously planned to accommodate overestimated urbanisation for the city of Madrid – was chosen as the focus of discussion and study during the 4th European Urban Summer School. By analysing and diagnosing the present situation, the main challenge of this project was to find urban design solutions for this area by assessing quality of life through physical parameters.Item Open Access Landscape oriented urban strategies(AESOP, 2013) del Pozo, CristinaThis presentation is set into the contemporary discourse of landscape which has shifted during the twentieth century from being considered as just a scene to a dynamic system undergoing processes. Landscape evolves from the pictorial to the instrumental, operational and strategic. This dynamic condition gives it the ability to create itself and can be introduced into the basis of landscape design. This shift emphasises the interactions between natural, cultural, economic and social processes, and landscape can be characterised both spatially and temporally. The transformation of these processes is an inspiration and a model for the new urban condition. Projects that reflect the emerging trend of orienting urban form through the landscape will be reviewed. We will also look at urban expansion and renewal projects that incorporate this approach and become instigators of a set of interrelated dynamics between the social, the economic, the ecological and the cultural. This specificity enables the landscape to articulate with the urban, and through its dynamic to understand how cities are formed, are revitalised and evolve over time.Item Open Access From dream to nightmare: Madrid Eastern Strategy "mending or pushing through"(AESOP, 2013) Ynzenga Acha, BernardoThe present paper deals with the rise, fall and possible futures of the Madrid Eastern Strategy, arguably the largest urban operation undertaken in Spain in the last decades; probably the largest in Europe. The Eastern Strategy is the name given to a development proposal extending over close to 60 km2. (5.865 Has. 14.492 acres) on the southeastern fringe of Madrid. It was part of the 1997 General Master Plan of Madrid (Plan General de Ordenación Urbana de Madrid -PGOUM). It was designated for 158,000 dwellings and an expected population of about 450,000 people. The Plan also included other, smaller but not minor operations elsewhere which were supposed to attract their share of future population and push additional potential growth significantly. However and in dire contrast, when those decisions were made the total population of Madrid was less than three million people, and declining2. These numbers depict a panorama of unbounded development optimism, remote from demographic and urban realities.Item Open Access The non-Olympic Madrid(AESOP, 2013) Arana, JuanThe day before the kick off of the EUSS, all the local media were broadcasting the election of the city that would host the Olympic games of 2020. The mediatic display of the Madrid bid had gathered thousands of people on the streets, and the mayor of the city stressed the quality of public spaces and the leisure offer in Madrid. It did not occur to me at the time that there was a relationship with the EUSS course. The reality the participants found was very remote from that ‘would-have-been’ Olympic Madrid. The work did not focus on a beautified Madrid central area or the urban and architectural landmarks of the last ten years, although there was some of that too. For ten days we walked and researched unresolved urban and suburban environments in Madrid. The participants explored the speculative desert of the Southeast Developments, the lame design of the new neighbourhood of Vallecas and the vacant left over areas of Delicias. Throughout the course the team of participants remained very critical about how things are supposed to be done or the way they have been done until now. And the debate was always active.Item Open Access Après nous le déluge? Climate adaptation and urban development in Antwerp, Hamburg and Rotterdam(AESOP, 2013) Kustermans, ClennFear of water is embedded in our human minds. This natural reaction (based on the indisputable knowledge that we cannot survive in water) has been portrayed in many forms of classic and modern culture. Although Biblical examples and Hushpuppy lived as nomads in an ever-changing world, the majority of the world consists of permanent urban structures. Cities are normally perceived as strongholds of culture and prosperity, and must therefore be protected against external threats such as water. Despite a growing consciousness of shortening production chains and reducing energy consumption, port cities are still the turning wheels in national and international economies. While their economic importance remains unscathed and local populations are growing, port cities are increasingly challenged by major climate changes. Port cities have always intertwined with water, and they therefore encounter the advantages and the disadvantages of water. Of all climate implications, water level rise is perceived as the most important one for port cities. Besides the rise of the general sea level, the unpredictable occurrence and implications of storms have increased too. Longer and more intense periods of drought and heavy rainfall inland lead to flooding of the main rivers on their way to the sea. These climate changes necessitate new water protection measures.Item Open Access Madrid urban panorama: big projects for an expansive era(AESOP, 2013) Cueva, Covadonga LorenzoCaused by the economic expansion that put Spain among the European leading countries, Madrid could overcome its historic deficiencies, and was able to renew its potentiality during the last decade until the economic crash by turning itself into an economic and cultural capital of international stature. While urban development has been appropriating peripheral territories, defining a new structural organisation, the city took advantage of economic buoyancy to improve its infrastructure. Flagship projects were the treatment of the M-30 highway to recover the banks of the Manzanares River as civil space, and new urban services, such as the Terminal 4 of Barajas airport. Besides, big companies built new headquarters, economic fortresses in the form of autonomous cities on the urban fringe, or spectacular skyscrapers along the Castellana axis in the centre of Madrid. The current economic crisis in Spain is an opportunity to analyse all those projects and try to understand the present situation to rethink new ways of improving the urban panorama of Madrid. In 2007, the structure of the city broke up to be reconfigured through multiple interventions. The growth of the Spanish economy surpassed that of Germany fourfold according an article published in the Financial Times. A study of rating agencies placed Madrid among the five first economic countries of the world according to a criterion that considers political, social and demographic factors, including development potential. The nine Spanish companies placed among the world’s 500 largest have their headquarters in Madrid, putting it into the sixth position in one of the rankings of global cities.Item Open Access Introduction. Concept and issues of the EUSS 2013(AESOP, 2013) Franchini, Teresa; Arana, JuanAt a time of abrupt changes, when the old urban models are quickly becoming obsolete and inefficient, there is an opportunity to look into the future to envisage new strategies. We intend to work on the wounds inflicted on the city by speculative urbanism: there is a need to bring into question the existing model of urban growth, working from the present situation towards new visions to recycle our cities. This is the opportunity to put forward proposals to challenge uncontrolled urban growth; to review the situation of the new suburban territories, and to regenerate the consolidated fabric of the inner city. Conversely to speculative planning, new strategies may consider how to enhance citizen participation in the making of the city. Would a bottom-up urbanism be possible that deals in a more responsible manner with people’s needs? Instead of simplistic speculative solutions we need a multiple and diverse urbanism, capable of adapting to complex situations. New strategies may include reusing the city, rethinking the territory, generating activity, diversity, complexity and density. The 4th European Urban Summer School (EUSS), hosted by the Polytechnic School at the CEU San Pablo University in September 2013, has been an invitation to develop new ways of thinking of, and tools to respond to emerging issues about the future of post speculative cities. It aims to bring together postgraduate students, emerging and experienced academics and young and established design and planning professionals from all over Europe (and further away) to develop a better understanding of some of the most pressing contemporary issues related to the built environment and to amplify and strengthen the links between planning, design-relevant research and professional practice.Item Open Access EUSS 2013 Outlook : What has been done and what is needed for future times(AESOP, 2013) Franchini, TeresaOn September 20, 2013, exactly after 10 days of intense coexistence in Madrid centred on planning strategies for the post-speculative city, the participants of the EUSS presented the results of their respective workshops. Their proposals for the selected areas - Delicias, Vallecas and Southeast Developments - were the result of the visions and the methodologies that the different working groups had generated in order to articulate coherent planning outcomes in a very short time. And they did it, producing outstanding propositions followed by a fruitful final discussion. And once again I enjoyed the plasticity of those young planners to cope with a given problem all together, no matter the difference of languages, their academic profiles and backgrounds, and even the way of understanding reality. But at the very end of the session one of the students raised a question which was unanimously supported: the need to understand their professional role in the uncertain context of today’s cities, exposed to multidimensional processes in constant change. Two aspects were added that increase the lack of perception of their own role: the difficulty of apprehending these dynamics in a holistic way due to the partial vision derived from their academic degrees, as well as the lack of knowledge of the planning tools needed to address the current urban complexity.Item Open Access State of the art in strategic physical planning(AESOP, 2013) Leboreiro Amaro, AlbertoThe urban reality of Europe is metropolitan, and good governance of Europe’s metropolitan regions is crucial for the future wellbeing and prosperity of Europe. The total population of the European Union is estimated at about 533 millions inhabitants, with 73% living in urban areas. The Urban Audit of Eurostat identifies 127 Larger Urban Zones with populations of over half a million. These are Europe’s metropolitan regions and areas. A Metropolitan Region is defined by at least 50,000 inhabitants in its core city and 500,000 inhabitants in the entire region (BBR, 2005; DATAR, 2004). From an economic point of view, deregulation policies are applied to the liberalised markets of metropolitan areas. In the global context, competition is emerging between all the cities and globalising cities require internal restructuring based on the information revolution. In the new information society there is a need to modify the spatial network which is concentrating people and activities in cities and financial centres, but dispersing activities in their peripheries. The Metropolitan areas are the engine of European development, the centres of economic, political and cultural life. They are also the centres of political and economic management, expressed in a highly developed infrastructure of specialised services. Acting as external challenge the globalised economy is characterised by the flow of people, goods, capital, services, ideas and information, as well as relationships between organisation and interaction. Metropolitan regions face serious structural transformations, economically, politically and territorially. (Blotevogel 2005a, OECD 2001, Sassen 1991). It is necessary to reconsider the process of evolution of both core cities and the periphery, the urban environment and rural space.Item Open Access Digital society and smart territories(AESOP, 2013) Manuel, Jorge; García, MartínAt present, the massive use of information and communication technologies (often called ICTs) is changing everything faster than ever. We are living in a new revolution era that will bring us from the industrial society, characterised by the intensive consumption of energy to the digital society which uses information as a power to transform. These changes will affect every single aspect of our lives and, in the near future, no matter what our profession will be, we will need to understand, deeply, how to adopt and use these technologies. Our ability for adopting digital services will be crucial in the path to a successful professional career, even if our personal way of life is not very “digital” we will work, with and for digital citizens, and digital companies. It is not an option. We need to digitalise as much as we had to mechanise in the past, because it will help us to build a better world, and improve people’s living conditions. It is important, therefore, for everyone to understand what lies beyond this technology, and have a good understanding of what to do, and how to do it to incorporate these technologies in our field of expertise. As we will look forward, collaboration between professionals will be key for creating value in the future. For a better collaboration, a closer look at the ICTs and a better knowledge of the digital world could be useful.Item Open Access Urban design and quality of life. Lessons to be learnt from Madrid’s periphery(AESOP, 2013) Franchini, TeresaAcademics and practitioners have elaborated a number of planning and urban design tools to understand the built environment and to provide guidance for physical-spatial interventions. Both tools are aimed to contribute to the improvement of the quality of urban space and the quality of life of those who use it. After so many years of trying to get well designed and sustainable neighbourhoods, it is possible to assume that there exist tool kits ready to be applied to practice. However, the existence of wide avenues, large green spaces, collective housing to achieve compactness, and dynamic commercial areas, does not ensure by itself the creation of urban spaces which provide quality of life. Practice shows that, in fact, there is a wide gap between theory and practice. Facing this situation, planners and urban designers face several questions when trying to realise their potential professional powers. Which urban design and planning criteria may lead to better urban places? What are the relations between physical form, functional structure and social aspiration to improve quality of life? Which spaces are contributing to urban quality: public, private or the links between them?Item Open Access Methods of measuring and assessing the sustainability of urban developments(AESOP, 2013) Ryser, JudithSustainability, discussed in the sister paper in the context of regeneration and gentrification, is a very broad concept and goes way beyond the rescue of the planet. In its broadest sense it implies an equitably shared environment which becomes increasingly urbanised. There are tensions, exacerbated in cities, between the diverse needs and wants of those who use them, residents (citizens, voters), the working population, visitors, transient people, etc., compounded by subjective perceptions of such needs and wants. Sustainable development, management, maintenance and use of the city would require a system of government capable of upholding the principles of social and spatial justice to secure an equitable use of cities by all. It would require custodians of the collective good and the public interest, a method of holding decision makers to account, a public participation process which guarantees citizens a say, and third party vetted procedures to share out finite public assets equitably between all stakeholders while keeping the city open to all.Item Open Access Wastelands(AESOP, 2013) Arana, JuanThrough the production process of the contemporary city, the left over spaces become, in opposition to the spaces of the formal city, a key aspect to understand our urban space. In its various forms urban waste space is inscribed in the cities as defining a fuzzy inner border. Its shape or lack of it equals to the negative of the city. It often marks the middle ground between urbanisation and the countryside, between infrastructures or between uses. As such, it is an intermediate space, a space that mediates between different spatial situations or a transition in time. In continuous transformation, its form and character are by definition imprecise. It shares qualities with the urban and the rural realms together with a very definite character on its own. In the absence of a defined function, residual spaces are occupied by residues, playful, ephemeral or marginal uses. Its universal use is that of the informal gathering of waste, as if fulfilling a spatial necessity of the urban context to expel out of its limits waste materials and activities unsuited for the formal city. In this way, they follow the logic of the excremental defined by Slavoj Zyzeck for the Untouchables “Not only dealing with impure excrement, their own formal status within society is excremental” (Zyzek 2002). Gilles Clément designates as Third Landscape the space left over by man to be colonised by nature (Clément 2003) He makes a political comparison when he relates the Third Landscape to the Third State paraphrasing Abbé Siéyès’ famous question: What is the Third State? Everything. What has it been until now? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something.Item Open Access Strategies for the post-speculative city. Redressing the balance in favour of sustainable development(AESOP, 2013) Ryser, JudithEvery cloud has a silver lining. The ghost quarters1 on the fringes of Spanish cities - ruins before their time due to frenetic property speculation - are shied by people. They want to live in urban environments where they have access to jobs and urban life, which is more crucial than ever during the economic crisis. Alternative ‘shelter’ is unsavoury though, as evidenced in the slums of the southern outskirts of Madrid, or in overcrowded garages and sheds around Heathrow airport and in the East End of London. This raises the question of whether it is possible to revitalise the speculative quarters in the middle of nowhere into liveable environments and to harness unused spaces within the city by turning them into liveable places. They offer designers a great opportunity to rethink urban regeneration according to ‘nested’ sustainable principles encompassing the environment, the economy and social wellbeing.Item Open Access A different perspective on architectural design: bottom-up participative experiences(AESOP, 2013) Cimadomo, GuidoThe weight of the financial and real estate components in the present crisis, and their impact on millions of people give a renewed importance to the right to housing and the wider right to the city. The paper of architects in planning the city is also changing due to new social relations and the empowerment of citizens, and we have not to forget that scarcity is a great impulse for social and technical innovation, among them architecture. Henry Lefebvre’s “The right to the city” (Lefebvre 1968), can be considered the starting point for the understanding and reconnaissance of the right to urban life, transformed and renewed (Paquot 2012). At the present moment, the idea is growing that to change the life would be necessary to change the city, and the same concept of “right to the city” should be filled with new contents. The right to the city can be related with the right to freedom, to the individualization of sociability, the right to habitat and to live. The right to the work and to the appropriation, the right for inhabitants to meet, and also the right to reject be quitted from urban space by a social and economic organization moving to segregation and discrimination. It has been developing for almost 40 years, with a renewed interest at the beginning of this century, evolving to the more contemporary “right to configure the city”.Item Open Access Madrid, the Southeast Developments. The sun also rises(AESOP, 2013) Maia, Camila; Kovacsova, Veronika; Kustermans, Clenn; Poulizac, Morgan; Sartori, Eleonora; Arana, Juan; Perea, LuisThe workshop aims to look at the landscape of the vacant and deserted territories on the city limits and think through what the nature of the actual situation is and venture into what the next steps forward could be. Within the socio economic context and with the framework of the revision of the Madrid Master Plan, the south-eastern fringe of the city presents a huge question mark. It is a place where planning is paralysed and poses a number of questions. What are the real problems that need to be solved once the speculative forces have faded away? What would be the role of the planner and the designer in such a territory? Should anything be done at all? Objectives: Research and development of possible strategies for a large area located in the city limits. Devising ways to approach this territory from different viewpoints. The objective is not so much to come up with a design but to think through possible strategies after grasping the complexity of the problems.Item Open Access University implantations as factors of transformation. Towards excellence of urban environments and promoters of innovation for the post-speculative city(AESOP, 2013) Campos Calvo-Sotelo, PabloThe quality of the University is directly connected with the quality of its urban & architectural spaces. Any educational environment, especially the one involving elements of Architecture, ought to express a special engagement to its specific natural, social and urban context. Some principles are critical when planning a University precinct, to follow coherent guidelines before starting any campus design. As a first approach, the interference of foreign styles improperly understood should be avoided, in particular those whose origin, essence or formal display would not fit into local cultures (Chaabane, & Mouss, 1998). Universities have the essential mission of providing an integral formation for human beings. Analysed throughout history, this university mission has also included the raising of good citizens (Nussbaum, 1998). With all these convictions in mind, the key objectives of higher education have to be hosted in an adequate urban and architectural body. This requires special emphasis on the proper arrangement of the physical spaces in which the important enterprise of human formation has to take place. University architecture incarnates an interactive dialogue between buildings and individuals. Its planning process has therefore to exceed a mere provision of available spaces. The clear artistic intention of the design of the university complexes must be a mandatory requisite, which entails that open spaces are as taken in account as much as the built volumes (Gaines, 1991).