Th 05 Mar 09
Public Symposium
Open City: Designing Coexistence
Open City: Designing Coexistence is an international architecture and urban design symposium, hosted by Prof. Kees Christiaanse’s chair in collaboration with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and held at ETH Zurich’s Network City and Landscape (NSL).
International theorists, researchers, and practitioners will discuss how architecture and urban design can contribute to the development of socially sustainable cities. Furthermore, the symposium will present the main contributors to the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009 - Open City: Designing Coexistence - and give insight into their projects. The symposium is directed toward architects, urban designers, and all other disciplines involved in urban issues.
Today, most cities are experiencing increasing cultural diversity. Reasons for this trend are ongoing international and regional migration, as well as increasing spatial and social differentiation of milieus and lifestyles. For cities affected, these trends can be both risk and potential for urban development. In theory, cultural diversity is widely perceived as the basis for urbanity and for cultural and economic dynamism, as an indicator for cosmopolitan urban conditions, and as a key issue for global competition among cities. But in reality, increasing cultural diversity is often associated with contrary developments. Instead of benefiting from the potentials of diversity, many cities are witnessing trends of socio-segregation and spatial fragmentation. For this reason, it is said to be a key task for sustainable urban development to generate urban structures that can facilitate coexistence of different social and cultural groups and counteract tendencies of socio-spatial segregation.
