THEMATIC GROUPS
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
The report following this symposium is available here.
The fifth event of the two-year period 2022-2024 on the working theme ‘Public Spaces, Urban Cultures, and Constructing Peace’ will take place in Nicosia, Cyprus on 30 and 31 May 2024. It will be an in-presence symposium entitled ‘Constructing Peace through Public Space: What publics? Whose commons?’ The symposium will be organized at the Goethe Institute and Home for Cooperation in the Buffer Zone of Nicosia, Cyprus.
Aim of the Symposium
The symposium aims to examine the relationships between the publics and peace-building processes in contested cities, with the intention to answer the following questions:
- How do we create spaces for conciliation to transform conflicts constructively?
- How does the active agency of the urban environment support or cancel out conciliation processes?
- Should public space be taken for granted, or should it be part of creating common ground in deeply divided societies?
- What is the role of civil societies and bottom-up initiatives?
- How do commoning practices support the diversity of publics in peacebuilding and related planning processes?
- Can urban challenges of common concern regarding social-ecological transformations (climate and other crises) trigger such commoning practices, and how?
Why Cyprus?
The location of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean offers a unique venue at the confluence of three continents and a multitude of cultures that face such unique challenges. Many of these challenges are the result of not only long-standing local issues but also of issues that have emanated from recent conflicts in the surrounding region. The island in general and Nicosia, a divided European capital with a prolonged history of conflict, internal refugees' displacements, migration and tourist flows, economic fluctuations, and rapid, often abrupt urban transformations, serve as an ideal laboratory to explore, unravel, and question public space development in unstable and contested contexts. The local urban context provides a valuable case study and can unveil the complexity of all the factors that condition the various forms of public space in contemporary contested, continuously transformed contexts.
The Symposium Format
The Cyprus symposium comprises two-day activities that bring together scholars, activists, and spatial practitioners who deal with peacebuilding and conflict transformation through spatial measures. It is organized in roundtable workshops that will summon diverse participants who will share their work based on the above-mentioned questions. The layout of the roundtable workshops aims to foster constructive discussion and exchange among the participants. Some workshops will be ambulant, exposing the participants to the Nicosia contested context. Thus, the participation format will be open to encourage a diversity of means and ends to populate the roundtable debates.
Who can Participate?
Scholars, activists, and spatial practitioners who deal with peacebuilding and conflict transformation through public space and material practices are invited to participate.
Format of Participation
Short interventions in the form of oral presentations or videos (10-15 minutes).
Submissions
A submission including the title, authors' names, authors' affiliation and email address, 3-5 keywords, an abstract of max 200 words, and max 4 images (JPEG 300 dpi as separate files) and captions should be sent to the following e-mail address:
Important Dates
- 2 February 2024 Open call for participation
- 1 March 2024 Deadline for participation interests
- 8 March 2024 Participation approvals
- 1 May 2024 Program announcement Symposium
- 30-31 May 2024 Symposium
- 1 July 2024 Submission of full papers
- September 2024 Publication
Publications
The symposium findings, including all presentations and discussions during the symposium, will be published online following the event. The book of abstracts will also be published pre-symposium. Both publications will have ISBNs.
Scientific Committee
Evangelia Athanassiou, Nadia Charalambous, Sabine Knierbein, Sebnem Hoskara, Socrates Stratis
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
Urban space and everyday life are permeated with asymmetrical, complex and contested relationships, which are indicative of and are intertwined with challenges of political representation, ecological and economic crises, social and cultural exclusion, as well as struggles in accessing healthcare, education and social services. Simultaneously they also channel hopes, needs and desires for collectively negotiated social orders.
According to Fraser (2022), the hierarchical division between the production as an expression of neoliberal, post-fordist and patriarchal society and the reproduction that is traditionally associated with care activities requires profound rethinking in terms of value extraction and value generation in the contemporary city. She highlights that the regime of neo-liberal capitalism extracts value from everyday life in a process of reconfiguration and commodification of social reproduction and its spatialization. To overcome this, a collaborative mindset is needed. Urban commons, in their multiple configurations, embrace projects and practices that inspire novel forms of spatial justice and inclusive society. They express the entanglements among spaces, communities, and governing models. The unceasing process of reconfiguration of the geography of people, activities and rules of self-organization, typical of the commoning process, is based on mutual recognition, shared values, openness, mutualism and care. The three items (commoning, community, space) are equally necessary to the creation of commons, moving towards enabling policies and enabling spaces.
Call for Papers
This call is edited by Chiara Belingardi (LaPEI - University of Florence), Gabriella Esposito De Vita, Stefania Ragozino (Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development - National Research Council of Italy), Tihomir Viderman (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg), and is one of the outputs of the AESOP TG PSUC Conference Naples 2023 "Urban Conflicts and Peace: Everyday Politics of Commons" (https://aesop-planning.eu/tg-news/public-spaces-and-urban-cultures/aesop-tg-psuc-conference-naples-urban-conflicts-and-peace-everyday-politics-of-commons). It aims to collect theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that deal with the concepts of urban commons and care, with the focus on (but not restricted to) the following topics:
1. Production of commons - production of values;
2. Care as a social activity and public responsibility;
3. Everyday politics of urban commons;
4. Enabling spaces, enabling policies;
5. Conflict and resistance to urban extractivism;
6. Commons and (agro)ecologies for territorial regeneration;
7. Urban Commoning by care strategies;
8. Women and queer women for urban resistance.
Contributions have to be submitted by March, 31 2024 at the following link:
https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/contesti/about/submissions
Contesti. Città, Territori, Progetti is the Journal of Regional and Urban Planning, studies and design of the Architecture Department of Florence University. It represents since many years a credited voice in the field of the urban and regional studies and of the related policies and practices of planning and design. Through its sections, Contesti accounts for a plurality of topics and studies, research/action, policies, planning and design experiences with the aim to render in reflexive and critical terms the multifaceted complexity of the transformative processes that affects built environment and human settlements.
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Urban Transformation in Europe and China
Organized by Xin Yi, Uwe Altrock, Xinru Xie and Wenyue Li, in collaboration with further TG members During 2023, the group was coordinated by Xin Yi
Introduction
The thematic group, China’s urban transformation, focuses the knowledge exchange between Chinese and European urban expertise on urban transformation processes, especially comparing urban regeneration practice in Europe and China. It was established in April 2019 with the initiative of Xin Yi (Associate Professor, Southeast University, China), Uwe Altrock (Professor, University of Kassel, Germany) and Klaus R. Kunzmann (Professor emeritus, TU Dortmund, Germany)
The aim of the thematic group is to learn from European and Chinese experience, both successes. It will confront European participants with the challenges of urban regeneration in Chinese cities, and it will give Chinese practitioners and academic planners an insight into regeneration practices in the different European countries, such as UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Austria, etc. Since the beginning of the 21st century China and Europe are getting closer and closer. European enterprises are making more and more business in China, and more and more Chinese enterprises are investing in Europe. Tourists from Europe and China like to explore the respective other region. The one-road-one belt Initiative, driven by the Chinese government is reducing geographic distance and transport time.
Since the foundation in 2019, the Group started to organize different events in relations to urban transformation in Europe and China with cooperation of practitioners, academics, governmental and non-governmental professionals, and further interest groups into the TG’s activities.
Internal organization of the group
A collective made up of group members organizes the activities of the Thematic Group. Some of the tasks of the core group are: to establish the Group’s agenda (working topics, meetings); to prepare meetings and annual reports; to disseminate scientific results; to promote a strong involvement into research and publication affairs; as well as towards a broader audience and the AESOP Secretary General.
The list of members who managed the Group’s activities in 2023 (in alphabetic order):
Qi Huang (Germany), Xinru Xie (China), Ao Sun (China), Jin Duan (China), Yang Wang (China), Davide Ponzini (Italy), Xin Yi (China), Uwe Altrock (Germany) Klaus R. Kunzmann (Germany), Yige Li (China) , Xiaohong Tan (China), Zhiqing Zhao (China), Zhiming Li (China), Hao Lin (China), Zijing Wu (China) and Xinyi Chen (China),
The list of members who (co-)organized meetings in 2023:
Event 1
5th International conference on people-oriented urban design.
– Online & offline conference, 4th - 5th November, Nanjing, China.
Remy Sietchiping (UN Habitat), Klaus Kunzmann (Germany), Jonathan Barnett (USA), Bernhard Müller (Germany), Paulina Schiappacasse (Germany), Corinne Jaquand (French), Christopher Knabe (Germany), Michael Krieger (Germany), Duan Jin (China), Wang Yin (China), Zhan Erpeng (China), Jiang Hong (China), Liu Bomin (China), Zhang Chunyang (China), Wang Chenghui (China), Wang Tianqing (China), Wei Haoyan (China), Yuan Yuan (China), Chang Jiang (China), Zhao Hongyu (China), Fan Li (China), Liu Yiwei (China), Huang He (China), Chen Xiaodong (China), Hou Xin (China), Tao Tao (China), Zhang Ning (China), Yi Xin (China), Shi Yi (China), Long Yan (China), Song Gang (China)
On 4th - 5th November, 2023, the 5rd International Conference on People-Oriented Urban Design was held in Nanjing. The conference was hosted and organized by Southeast University and co-organized by Urban Transformation in Europe and China Thematic Group (AESOP). The conference was held in mixed way of online and offline meeting, with internationally renowned scholars from the UN Habitat, Germany, United States, France and other countries, as well as Experts from China. The institutions are as following: UN Habitat, Technical University of Dortmund (Germany), The École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville (France), Technical University of Dresden (Germany), OBERMEYER group (Germany), Pesch Partner Architektur Stadtplanung GmbH (Germany), Dialoge für die Energiewende (Germany) and Chinese universities and institutions, such as Southeast University, Beijing Urban Planning and Design Institute, Qingdao Sino-German Exchange Association, South China University of Technology, Qingdao Urban Planning and Design Institute, Chongqing University, Sun Yat-sen University, China University of Mining and Technology, Jilin Jianzhu University, Tongxin Urban Renewal Education Foundation , Tsinghua University, Tianjin University, Shenzhen Leo Planning and Design Consulting Co., Ltd., Urban Design Center of Hangzhou Planning and Design Institute and other major urban planning authorities and research institutes across the country, Experts, scholars and students from domestic and foreign planning and design units attended the meeting.
In this conference, experts and scholars from various countries shared the latest information and technical research results in the field of international urban design, discussed technology docking and cooperation, and summarized the international experience in the field of urban design success and failure. Multidisciplinary integration is the characteristic of people-oriented urban design. With the development of digital technology, people-oriented urban design is developing in the direction of full-scale, full-element, and full-chain in the historical environment. Therefore, we look forward to the deep integration of digital technology and people-oriented urban design.
Event 2
Digital Protection of Historical Heritage—Five Schools Joint Workshop
17th - 24th July, 2023, Shenyang, China
This workshop was hosted and organized by Shenyang Jianzhu University and co-organized by Urban Transformation in Europe and China Thematic Group (AESOP) in a combination of online and offline methods.
More than 90 teachers and students from Shenyang Jianzhu University, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Lanzhou University of Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Southwest University for Nationalities participated in this event. During the workshop, teachers and students who participated in the activity went to the national historical and cultural village of Shifosi in Shenyang to conduct on-site research. They used drone 3D scanning technology to conduct on-site teaching of real-life modeling methods of historical heritage, and carried out on-site teaching on the village situation of Shifosi Village. Maung conducted on-site visits and held 6 special academic reports on the digital protection of historical heritage within the campus, and carried out the conceptual design of the Stone Buddha Temple in groups. During the joint learning process, students from the five schools deeply appreciated the technological charm of digital technology and deeply thought about the relationship between digitalization and professional practice.
Event 3
Annual conference of digital technology research center for historical cities of Chinese Society for Urban Studies (CSUS)
18th - 19th December, 2023, Nanjing, China
Cao Changzhi, Dong Wei, Dang Anrong, Huang Xianfeng, He Jie, Chunqing, Li Yang, Zhang Lihai, Ma Xiaosu, Lu Xu, Yi Xin, Zhai Fei
On 18th - 19th November, 2023, the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Digital Cities Department of the Historical and Cultural Cities Committee of the Chinese Society for Urban Science was held in Shenyang. This conference was hosted and organized by Shenyang Jianzhu University and co-organized by Urban Transformation in Europe and China Thematic Group (AESOP) in a combination of online and offline methods. Experts and scholars gathered at Shenyang Jianzhu University to discuss the protection, renewal, utilization and inheritance of historical cities supported by digital technology in the new era. On November 19, the Digital Protection of Historical Heritage - Five-University Joint Workshop Results Exchange Meeting was held in the lecture hall on the second floor of the Architecture Museum of Shenyang Jianzhu University. Participants came from Shenyang Jianzhu University, Southwest University for Nationalities, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Lanzhou University of Science and Technology. Teachers and students from the university participated in this workshop.
Future Action Plan in 2024
1. Annual conference of digital technology research center for historical cities of Chinese Society for Urban Studies (CSUS). July 2024, Lanzhou, China.
2. 6th international conference on people-oriented Urban Design. November 2024, Nanjing, China.
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
TRIA ISSUE N. 32 (June 2024)
http://www.serena.unina.it/index.php/tria
CALL FOR PAPERS
Embracing Public Space and Urban Cultures:
Understanding and Acting on Complexity of Contemporary Cities
Guest co-editors: Gabriella Esposito (CNR-IRISS, Italy), Christine Mady (Aalto University, Finland), Stefania Ragozino (CNR-IRISS, Italy)
The contemporary city undergoes continuous anthropic pressures and multiple crises that make it an organism in continuous transformation, which is complex to understand. The public realm and the socio-spatial dynamics at the urban scale can be an expression of this complexity when observed from the different perspectives that are integrated in urban studies and with multiple methods that deepen and foster the relational dynamics between the physical environment and those who inhabit and manage it.
The understanding of urban cultures, in their multiple expressions, is realised through the interpretation of the cultural practices recorded in urban spaces, which allows for the updating of concepts in the field of social theory. Moreover, urban cultures provide an understanding of the relationships between cultural phenomena and urban transformations, to implement knowledge in the analytical phase of territorial governance processes.
This issue proposes to focus on the binomial public space – urban culture to both contextualise phenomena related to distributed inequalities, conflicts, and forms of socio-spatial segregation, and to reflect and integrate forms of social innovation and processes of self-determination, the constitution of talents, tendencies, and competences, which contribute to the complex transformation of the city.
We invite empirical, theoretical and methodological papers from young or established academics interested in contributing to this discussion on ‘public space – urban cultures’.
Submission instructions:
Authors must send their full papers to
AUTHOR GUIDELINES
To enable the implementation of the peer review process and the subsequent layout of articles that will pass the review, the authors have to send to
1. FILE OF THE PAPER, prepared according to the Microsoft Word format, containing:
- Title in text language (one of the following languages: English / Italian / Spanish)
- Title in English
- Author: name, surname, affiliation of the authors (Department, University, etc..). If there are more authors the affiliations and references must be specified.
- Keywords in English: maximum five.
- Abstract in English: the abstract must contain maximum 1.500 characters (white spaces included).
- Abstract in Italian: the abstract must contain maximum 1.500 characters (white spaces included).
- Paper text: the text may consist of 20.000-30.000 characters (white spaces included). The text must contain all the pictures, tables and graphs in low resolution.
- Citations in the text: all references must be included in quotation marks without italics and caps.
- Quotes: quotes must be included within the text and their references have to be placed at the bottom of the text
- References in the text: bibliographic citations within the text, must always be reported with the author's name and year of publication, all in parentheses. For example (Rossi, 2010). All references will be given in the bibliography in the appendix to the article.
- Reference images: for each image included in the article is necessary to indicate the source and any authorizations received to their use
- Authors Profile: a short curriculum in English in Microsoft Word format of 500 characters (white space included).
- References: all the references in the text, in footnotes and in annex to the text, must be formatted as indicated below:
BOOKS: Rossi M. (2008), Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, "The Wise", V, Italian Scientific Publishing, Naples
ARTICLES in JOURNAL: Rossi M. (2008), "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet," Tria, 1, 06/2008, Italian Scientific Publishing, Naples, pp 15-22
CHAPTERS IN BOOKS, PROCEEDINGS, PAPERS IN COLLECTIVE WORKS: Rossi M. (2008), "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet," in AAVV Public Works and Landscape, edited by Nicholas Green, vol. 3, Italian Scientific Publishing, Naples
2. IMAGES FOLDER
Pictures, tables, graphs: tables and graphs are displayed as images. Each image, table or chart must be provided in jpg or tif, at 300 dpi (high resolution). For pictures, graphs and tables must be provided a folder (FolderName: images_surnameauthors) containing the files of each one of them.
For information about guidelines visit
http://www.tria.unina.it/index.php/tria/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
The third event of the two-year period 2023-2024 on the working theme 'Public Spaces, Urban Cultures, and Constructing Peace' was successfully concluded.
This AESOP TG PSUC online workshop was organized together with the TG PSUC and the UnCommon Public Space Group (UPSG) at the University of California, Los Angeles. This half-day online workshop was attended by 14 participants representing 8 countries, each of whom were engaging with events in their own community-based research or practice related to public space. Participants had the opportunity to apply interdisciplinary methodologies and discuss diverse experiences and ideas on public spaces.
Thanks to Claire Nelischer, Andres Ramirez, Gus Wendel, Stefania Ragozino and Christine Mady for organizing this active and engaging online event!
The report is available here.
