Studio Prof. Wiel Arets
A NEW MAP OF THE WORLD. Where are cities headed as new networks unfold in post global era? We opened the seminar looking at Lewis Mumford‘s early work on neighbourhoods, where we learned that neighbourhoods are networks, anchored to a specific part of a specific city. As we have watched social networks transcend spatial confines in the last decade, we found ourselves trying to understand what the meaning of these local, sometimes tenuous social matrices was in a globalised, electronically networked world. Throughout this seminar we were trying to define strategies and devices, which should lead us to a desription of „A new map of the world“. We discussed the influence on cities by the growing number of people living in them. What makes us living in cities? Which factors contribute to an economically, culturally and socially successful city? Which meaning have the suburbs for a city? Where do they start? How important is a well-functioning network, with regard to social as well as to infra structural aspects? Which role plays distances between us and our working places, between us and people from different interests, background or level of income? Is the „eye on the street“ still as important as Jane Jacobs mentioned in her book „The Death and Life of great American Cities“ in 1961? What have the described ghettos in Venice by Richard Sennett in common with Gated Communities nowadays? What defines a Gated Community? Could we define a skyscraper or a „Berliner Mietshaus“ as a Gated Community? How important is the recognisable identity of neighbourhoods within a city?