Folder of Places

 

Basically, there is a rising urban planning trend of ‘placemaking’ – with a tendency towards a more ‘participatory’ form of urban planning and depending on city to city, something else is attached to it –values or aspirations. But we can say that ‘placemaking’ strategies have a look and feel to them. While we can criticize placemaking trends for being ‘more of the same’ urban means of (softer) control, I was interested to see how else we can think of urban planning’s placemaking.

 

So, I ended up looking at geography’s notion of place/space. (so if you have time, do read Robert Sack A Sketch of a Geographical Theory of Morality – it is my main point of reference to this set of ideas.) Helpful to understand how geography thinks of place and the difference between space and place. Geographically speaking, placemaking is a human activity that is necessary to create projects (make worlds) and something humans engage in on different geographic scales.  

 

The geographical notion of placemaking opens the urban planning placemaking up so that we can understand them both as geographical placemaking regardless of their scales. This is where Robert Sack’s focus on the moral qualities of place becomes helpful for us to see place in relation to other projects and ask if these places are good for the ‘world’. With it, we are not trapped by this thinking or sceptical outlook of top-down placemaking bad and bottom-up placemaking good. Instead, it is possible to think and judge the moral qualities in all places and discover allies within the ‘other side’.  

Thinking of people: Yvonne Doderer

Dear friends and colleagues,

hereby I would like to inform you about my new publication with my kindest regards:

Yvonne P. Doderer (2016) Shining Cities. Gender Relations and Other Issues in Urban Development of the Twenty-First Century.
Translated by Dawn d’Atri, 321 pages, 196 images, ISBN 978-3-00-055018-8, www.shiningcities.net.
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To offer this analysis for a wider public, you can download a PDF under the terms and conditions of the Digital Peer 
Publishing Licence (DPPL) at: www.shiningcities.net 
Please feel free to distribute this possibility widely to whom you think might be interested! Thank you!
(But you can order a printed version as well:)
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Description
In the twenty-first century, the majority of people are living in cities—at least this is the credo communicated frequently. This statement has been strengthened by the “urban renaissance” that dawned at the beginning of the twenty-first century and by globally evident increase in capital investment in urban-development projects. Such planning endeavors are conveyed to the public, the political sphere, and the media with the help of Internet platforms. The visualizations and descriptions found on such project websites are associated with promises of modernization, appeal, and economic growth—in short, with a better life.
In this publication, images and texts from 12 projects planned for Europe, Africa, and Asia are surveyed critically: What do they “tell” about future life in these new urban districts? Who will live and work in these cities? Which forms of living and lifestyles are propagated? And most importantly: How do these designs relate to actual urban reality, including that of the inhabitants to whom the projects are addressed?

Written in a comprehensible way, supplemented by illustrations and photographs, this in-depth analysis sensitizes the reader to the interconnections between urban-space production and societal (gender) relations.
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There is also a German version available: Yvonne P. Doderer (2016) Glänzende Städte. Geschlechter- und andere Verhältnisse in Stadtentwürfen für das 21. Jahrhundert. München: edition Metzel / Verlag Silke Schreiber. ISBN 978-3-88960-161-2. http://editionmetzel.de/




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Prof. Dr. Yvonne P. Doderer
Office for transdisciplinary Research & Cultural Production
ypdoderer@transdisciplinary.net
www.transdisciplinary.net