Today, the 4th Helsinki Literature and the City Network symposium. Keywords: post-apocalyptic city; urban wilderness and postmodern spatial poetics; city as public space; epiphany; literature and the peripheral city; literary second cities. More here; programme below.

10.15   Welcome Address

10.30-11.30     Petter Skult (Åbo Akademi): ”Periphery versus Centre in the Post-Apocalyptic City”

Sarianna Kankkunen (University of Helsinki): “Urban Wilderness, the City and the Self: Postmodern Spatial Poetics in Maarit Verronen’s Prose Fiction”

11.30 -12.30    Theory Reading

Turmel, Patrick: “The City as Public Space”

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: “Production of Presence” (chapters 6-9)

Turmel, Patrick: ‘city as public space’

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: ‘Epiphany Presentification Deixis’

12.30-13.45     Lunch Break

14.00-15.30   Literary Second Cities –conference (Åbo Akademi 2015) meeting

Literature and the Peripheral City editorial board meeting

Today teaching a guest lecture at Aalto University on narratives in Urban Studies and Planning. Quotes of the day:

“… not only do narratives matter in planning, but their centrality is not sufficiently examined or taught, and their premises and implicit causal links are not adequately subjected to scrutiny.” (Isserman & Markusen, 2013)

“Finally, we should extract from other fields of study what is useful about the concept of narrative and the use of storytelling as a presentation and teaching device. We were shocked to find so little concerted planning literature acknowledging the power of narratives and their ubiquitous (but implicit) presence in planning discourse and practice. … Will planning finally pay attention to its own rhetoric? Will regional science move beyond tools to imagine and conscientiously construct narratives?” (Isserman & Markusen, 2013)

Isserman, Noah, & Markusen, Ann. (2013). “Shaping the Future through Narrative The Third Sector, Arts and Culture.” International Regional Science Review, 36(1), 115-136.

Today, I presented a paper at the BIC Urban Fragmentation(s) conference in Berlin. I spoke on the subject of “Narrative Planning in Helsinki’s Waterfront Regeneration: New Directions in Planning Practices and Theory”, which is part of my broader research project (see more here.)

Thanks for everyone commenting and contributing to the lively discussion, and to the organizers of the BIC 2015 conference for bringing together an inspiring, multidisciplinary crowd! The full programme of the conference can be found here (pdf).

Today at Berlin’s BIC 2015 conference: Timothy Moss on revisiting “Splintering Urbanism” (concept coined by geographers Steven Graham and Simon Marvin) – is there a continuous “modern infrastructure ideal” and/or its breakdown? And what are the consequences? Important talk on infrastructures within cities and their fragmentation, and illlustrating the extent to which infrastructures are society-shaping and socially shaped.

Full programme here > http://bic2015.de/workspace/downloads/conference-program-bic_-150312-5501ca5417a4c.pdf

The Finnish daily HS recently published an article on the difference between conceptual images of urban planning, and the “real thing”. A similar exercise had been done earlier, in a similar, critical vein by YLE. In his recent blog post, prof. Kimmo Lapintie dissects the reasoning in these articles. One important insight from his post: concept images in town planning differ fundamentally from concept images used for the planning of specific buildings – the first category gives general information about such things as the height of buildings and their location, but not, for example, about facades or balconies and the like. While I agree with the blog that concept images are indeed not to be taken at their face value, and are not intended to be so, I disagree with the implication that most citizens do possess the necessary “reading skills” with which to approach conceptual images. In this sense, adding disclaimers (such as “this building is not going to be really constructed, but simply shows the approximate height, location and size”) could in fact act as a genuinely useful act of public education, rather than as a joke.

source: HS.fi 11.1.2015

Stumbled across this book via Stadt 2.0:

Transforming Cities. Urban Interventions in Public Space by Kristin Feireiss and Oliver G. Hamm.

One particularly interesting-looking article is “Pretty Vacant. Embracing Impermanence
in Architecture and Urban Planning” by Lukas Feireiss, which takes its clue from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and the city of Sophronia. Haven’t been able yet to read it in full, but it promises an evocation of a kind of “temporary
architecture that contests the preoccupation of architecture
as being permanent”. Sample pages can be found here.

Impressive portal city for the local memories and narratives of different areas in Amsterdam:

“Geheugen van West” and “Geheugen van Oost“, literally, the memory of respectively West and East (administrative areas in Amsterdam)

With stories, pictures, archive data, and an easy, interactive platform.

Many stories present perspectives on the city with immeasurable value, and with an enormous richness of detail – from a tram accident in 1957 to more recent reports (from 2013) on engaging locals in planning.

Begs the question to what extent, and how, such rich information and the user base of the website are used in the planning of Amsterdam.

Ed Taverne’s review of Friedrich Lenger’s Metropolen der Moderne. Eine Europäische Stadtgeschichte seit 1850 (2013) here at the blog Ruimtevolk (in Dutch) pays tribute to the way in which Lenger is not only using traditional historical sources to write his history of the modern city, but also literary fiction. Not, as Taverne points out, to merely illustrate the facts, but as sources in their own rights. Examples are Brigitte Reimann’s Franziska Linkerhand (1974) and Marc Bernard’s Sarcellopolis (1964).

[Franziska Linkerhand, Brigitte Reimann (source: Aufbau Verlag); Sarcellopolis, Marc Bernard (source: Decitre) (source: Ruimtevolk.nl)]

Friedrich Lenger’s book has been published in English as European Cities in the Modern Age

(source: Brill.com)

The increasing interdisciplinary attitudes to the city, city history and urban studies is also evident – amongst many other examples – in the recent volume Tussen beleving en verbeelding. De stad in de 19e-eeuwse literatuur (“Between Experience and Imagination. The City in 19th century literature”), published by Leuven UP.