Imminent Commons Urban Questions For The Near Future

Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future

The cities of the world stand at a crossroads. Amidst radical social, economic, and technological transformations, will the city become a driving force of creativity, diversity, and sustainability, or will it be a mechanism of inequality, despair, and environmental decay? At this critical moment, where do the stakes lie and what are the agents of change? From the time of its birth, the city has been held together by the commons. The book includes essays by Alejandro Zaera, Hyungmin Pai, Maider Llaguno, Nerea Calvillo, Hyewon Lee, Lindsay Bremner, Alex Ivancic, Iñaki Abalos, Charles Waldheim, David Gissen, Carlo Ratti, Daniele Belleri, Antoine Pico, Saskia Saseen, Adam Greenfield, Jesse LeCavalier, Philip Rode, Duncan McLaren, Julian Agyeman, Gunter Pauli, Gramazio and Kohler, Mario Carpo, Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska, Felix Heisel, Mitchell Joachim, and Christian Hubert. The first publication of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, proposes a framework that sets basic commons ? an evolving network of agencies, resources and technologies ? as the critical issue in the move towards a sustainable and just urbanism. It shows an exploration not of distant utopias, but of the very near future, because the emerging commons is changing the way we connect, make, move, recycle, sense, and share, and the way we manage air, water, energy and the earth. Whether met with fear or hope, they will very soon change the way we live in the city.

Imminent Commons: Urban questions for the near future

The City on Display

The City on Display: Architecture Festivals and the Urban Commons reflects on the biennials, triennials, and other festivals of architecture and design that have been held over the last two decades, as they expand and transform in response to the exigencies of ‘planetary urbanisation’. Joel Robinson examines the development of these large-scale, international, and perennial exhibitions as they address such challenges as urban regeneration, heritage preservation, climate change, and the migration crisis. Homing in on examples of festivals in Venice, Rotterdam, Oslo, Tallinn, Sharjah, Seoul, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, the author describes how they alter the public spaces that host them, either through civic boosterism and gentrification, on the one hand, or through a reassertion of the urban commons and the right to the city, on the other hand. He attempts to thematise the architecture festival's relationship with the city and interrogate its potential as a forum for global debate about the emergencies of the urban condition. This book will be beneficial for students and academics of architecture and urbanism, and especially those who have an interest in how the city gets exhibited at such festivals and even reimagined as something other than it currently is.