IN-PERSON Lisbon Livable Cities. Section A

Abstract

In recent years, urban studies have increasingly highlighted the idea of urban imagination as part of the ongoing exploration of placemaking transformations and redesign of urban spaces, which seek to establish new perspectives and models of collective thinking about the future of urban life and its implications. However, does our urban imagination rely on predefined socio-spatial schemes, when striving to envision new places, acting as preconditions to the spatial practices we aim to rethink and design in an era of growing uncertainty ? This was the theme of the Colloquium Series in The Graduate Program in Urban Design at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, where various guest researchers were invited to take part in an interdisciplinary forum focused on investigating urban form and fabric. Established for critical and thought-provoking discussions, we sought to decipher the foundations of our spatial imaginaries, as a cultural, social, economic, political and governmental concept. Through different perspectives. In my presentation I will outline the key concepts we focused on, including: simple vs. complex systems: mapping thinking patterns; phenomenological imagination through movement in space; artificial imagination and virtual spaces; apocalyptic imagination and the configuration of the nuclear city; territorial imagination and land ownership; deterministic imagination vs. information-based models; and dissolving city borders. By rethinking urban imaginaries we aimed to reveal our spatial conceptions and explore how they are manifested in the tangible urban structure and its fabric, in order to bring for a deeper understanding of the nature of urban systems while exploring our complex realities.