Shaping Cities

The Open City

presented by Jean-Louis Missika, Richard Sennett

In my view, what an open city means is that peo­ple are exposed to one anoth­er. That’s my idea of the open city, that it’s a place where phys­i­cal pres­ence with the oth­er, and com­fort with the phys­i­cal pres­ence of the oth­er, does the work of allow­ing peo­ple to live togeth­er even if they are not engaged in the process of negat­ing their differences.

Feral Urbanism

presented by AbdouMaliq Simone

There seems to be a rush to exceed time, to pro­duce urban envi­ron­ment and social­i­ty for which we have no lan­guage, some­thing that goes beyond spec­u­la­tion, some­thing cut loose from hav­ing to make sense now. The city cut loose from what it had embod­ied or promised.

Global Capital and Urban Land

presented by Saskia Sassen

For me a city…is a com­plex but incom­plete sys­tem. And in that mix­i­ty of com­plex­i­ty and incom­plete­ness lies the capac­i­ty of cities to have very long lives. Much longer lives than very pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions, which often are very closed systems.