[spectre] LIVE STREAMING - Urban Rescue: Creativity and Beyond

[Tania Goryucheva]

Cool Media Hot Talk Show on City Life
new series in the frame of the Happening project at the Netherlands  
Architecture Institute, Rotterdam

http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/nai.jsp

#1: Urban Rescue: Creativity and Beyond
  Sunday March 2, 2008 - 16.00 - 18.00 CET

LIVE VIDEO STREAMING and interface for online participation:
http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/livepage.jsp

THEME:
Urban regeneration is a high point of our cities politics. How to  
transform marginal neighbourhoods into safe and attractive places  
where to live? How to achieve social cohesion? And which are the  
tools to be used to transform our cities? These are the questions  
that policy makers and social activists are facing daily. Beyond  
making new streets, new buildings, new facilities, our cities are  
also transformed by policies that attract new inhabitants, that  
create diversity or homogeneity, that are shifting the perception of  
entire parts of our urban environment. The first Cool Media Hot Talk  
Show, as part of the Happening project at the Netherlands  
Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, will investigate these topics.  
The fil rouge of the three debates will be "city-life", as a  
manifestation of moods, uses and passions that people rely on the  
city. Beyond the simple perception of the buildings and structures,  
our cities are mostly moulded by different uses, interpretations and  
cultures of their inhabitants. Cool Media Hot Talk Show will reveal  
possible ways of imagining and modifying our urban realm, starting  
with understanding potential and problems on the issue of the  
"creative city".

SPEAKERS:

Olof van de Wal - director of KEI expert centre for urban  
regeneration http://www.kei-centrum.nl.
STATEMENT:
Urban regeneration is not about architecture and is certainly not  
about architects. If anything, it is geared towards creating vitality  
in urban neighbourhoods, creating the possibility of what has been  
called 'social ascent' for those living in these neighbourhoods. In  
this, the spatial context can provide the necessary means - and it  
often does. But economy - jobs, income levels - and education are but  
two of the decisive factors in regeneration, in the city as the so  
called emancipation machine. Architecture certainly is important, as  
a catalyst for quality, but architects themselves more often than not  
are left out (or have moved out) of the debate on urban regeneration,  
and at best play a supporting role.


Matthias Pauwels / BAVO - an independent research office focused on  
the political dimension of art, architecture and planning. BAVO is a  
co-operation between Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels. http:// 
www.bavo.biz
STATEMENT:
Creative Urban Regeneration: Nothing More Than a Substitute for Urban  
Politics?
Architects should take a more politically firm stance towards the  
creative regeneration schemes and pacts that are being launched today  
in the economically less successful parts of Dutch cities (the so- 
called problem neighbourhoods). Due to increased competition on a  
metropolitan, national and international scale, cities in the  
Netherlands are eager to tap the unrealized potential of these  
neighbourhoods. All too often creative initiatives of architects are  
being used as a substitute or surrogate for any real political  
commitment with these problem neighbourhoods. They have to create a  
good vibe around the neighbourhood, restore the pride of the  
inhabitants, give them the impression that they can really make a  
difference and that they can take advantage of limitless  
opportunities. Needless to say, all of this is mere foreplay, a  
necessary game of seduction that has to convince the big market  
players to start to redevelop these neighbourhoods as well as seduce  
middle-class consumers to buy into these new, exciting property  
markets. The challenge for architects is to develop ways to empower  
these disadvantaged urban areas without participating - directly or  
indirectly - in their colonization for dubious political and economic  
purposes. Only then can they become the driving forces of a new,  
genuinely emancipatory urban political movement.

ORGANISERS:
The Cool Media Hot Talk Shows on City Life are organised by the Cool  
Mediators Foundation, The Netherlands Architecture Institute
Rotterdam, and De Balie, Amsterdam.
Live streaming in collaboration with V2_ Rotterdam


Cool Media Hot Talk Show creates an open public platform that  
supports truly interactive forms of direct public engagement in the  
very creation of critical public discourse.
More info: http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/

About Happening:
For two months the NAI will organise happenings in and around an  
installation that the architect Wiel Arets has specially designed for  
the NAI: concerts, theatre performances, interactive video  
projections, debates, dinners and performances. In this architectural  
construction, compositions of light, sound and video projection  
enable you to experience the influence that buildings, squares and  
streets have on your emotions and on how you perceive. The happenings  
make you aware of the role that you yourself play in experiencing and  
imagining the city, as well as of the difference that you as a  
citizen can make.

Dates: 01 march 2008 - 04 may 2008

The full programme can be found at:
http://happening.nai.nl

Netherlands Architecture Institute Rotterdam
Museumpark 25
Rottedam
www.nai.nl