| Responsible Department | Forest & Landscape | ||||||||||||||
| Research School | Forest, Landscape and Planning (REFOLANA) | ||||||||||||||
| Course Dates | 24-26 November 2010 | ||||||||||||||
| Course Abstract | Suburban is Urban: Exploring the agency of landscape architecture in territorial design strategies is an interdisciplinary REFOLANA PhD-course at KU-LIFE. The seminar explores how landscape architecture can deliver vectors for understanding and intervening in regional metropolitan development. The key note speakers are professionals out of the disciplines of landscape architecture and urban planning from Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. more info in PDF link below. | ||||||||||||||
| Course Home Page | http://www.life.ku.dk/English/Maalgruppe/Employees... | ||||||||||||||
| Course Registration | Venue: Rolighedsvej 23; 1958 Frederiksberg Registration: send an email to madsfars@life.ku.dk, giving the following information: 1) name 2) affiliation/institution 3) headline of PhD project 4) 200 word abstract of research topic. Maximum number of participants: 15 PhD students. Fee: none | ||||||||||||||
| Deadline for Registration | Registration deadline: 24. october | ||||||||||||||
| Credits | 5 (ECTS) | ||||||||||||||
| Level of Course | PhD course | ||||||||||||||
| Language of Instruction | English | ||||||||||||||
| Restrictions | 15 | ||||||||||||||
| Course Content | |||||||||||||||
| Europe occupies a special position in the world of cities. Here, cities grow slowly, sometimes shrink, recycle their old neighbourhoods, develop internally, strive for quality. Here, laboratories of thinkers and designers emerge, ideas become strategies, strategies become experiments and experiments turn into development models. Here, the urbanizing areas in between the historic city centres produce a multitude of new urban centralities.The Italian city planner Bernardo Secchi wrote that Europe is the continent of medium-sized cities with regional expansion, and the Swiss city economist Alain Thierstein speaks of 'mega-city regions' or 'polycentric cities'. 'Mega' in Europe does not refer to the size but to the diversity, the super- presence of the territorial city. Independent urban units have merged into a geographically contiguous and socio-economically interacting region, across administrative and even national borders, without a central governing entity. The suburban realm is our new urban challenge. The European city is suburban, and the suburban is urban where new urban centralities arise and call for new urban forms. The classic tools of planning fail in these territorial city formations, unless the power of conviction is able to gather many people behind an idea that gives meaning to urban development. Analyses by planning scientists show, according to the researchers Alain Thierstein and Agnes Förster, that new forms of urban politics, urban planning and management for extensive polycentric city formations are not developed as long as city territories remain invisible to politicians, citizens and civil servants. 'Mega-city regions (.) are rarely mapped, lack a name, image and attendant concept, and hardly offer any direct sensual perception in everyday life.' From this observation, the researchers deduce the hypothesis that visibility is of key importance for one's understanding of the territorial city, one's identification with it, for the release of vigour and the commitment to it - all together the basic requirements for understanding and engaging in a urban development. Basically, there is little consensus about what the city is besides the definition of the historic city portrayed as 'good' or the definition of the surrounding periphery labelled 'inbetween cities' or more negatively 'cities without cities' (cf translation of Thomas Sieverts' book 'Zwischenstadt' into English). Indeed, today's cities look like something in between the images of what we have learnt at school to be a proper city anda proper landscape. In a reaction, some professionals have called to address this new city with landscape urbanistic methods. However, what if we acknowledge this suburban landscape as urban? What if we understand the suburban as our new citiy, our urban centre(s)? Could we get closer to these sprawling megacity areas by taking into account what Michel de Certeau labels the ordinary man's practice of everyday life, the everyday consumption cultures as those that drive most of the cities on the European continent? We want to design in order to control, said Venturi. But do we understand what the new megacity is about? | |||||||||||||||
| Teaching and learning Methods | |||||||||||||||
| The key note speakers are professionals out of the disciplines of landscape architecture and urban planning, involved in practice and research on territorial design, namely from Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. The seminar takes as a base Thomas Sieverts' book Zwischenstadt of 1997 and follows his ungoing research projects until his latest findings that attribute landscape architecture a particular role in the cultivation of the Zwischenstadt. Furthermore, newest readings on regional urbanism and territories are to be linked with the reports and positions of the invited keynote speakers. The keynote speakers will report on their specific fields of research and practice and discuss with course participants: Which role to assign to landscape architecture, if the suburban realm is the new urban challenge in territorial design? | |||||||||||||||
| Learning Outcome | |||||||||||||||
| This seminar explores how landscape architecture can deliver vectors for understanding and intervening in regional metropolitan development. Specific enough both to read and to create graspable images in the minds and abstract enough to leave sufficient margin to reality, which every territorial city with its many actors and decision makers needs. This seminar attempts to formulate a new understanding of the city. The seminar looks at the suburban city, possible landscape architectural strategies and projects capable of resolving the fuzziness of contemporary urban understandings and planning regimes in order to formulate a new way of perceiving the territorial city structure and matter. Thomas Sieverts, the autour of 'Zwischenstadt' claims that landscape architecture could provide concrete solutionsThe current practice and state of theory of European territorial design seems to be a field that is not yet well explored by researchers. However, its outstanding practice, both on the side of the designers but also of the planning authorities, has brought about a set of approaches and innovative instruments that merit a closer look and cross-disciplinary theorization, with a special concern for the role of landscape architecture. Could we understand the city as a new kind of landscape architecture? Would this understanding free us from the nostalgic straight-jackets of classical town planning in our urban design strategies? How can and do landscape architects face the challenges of the European megacities ? | |||||||||||||||
| Course Literature | |||||||||||||||
| Andersson, Stig L. "Landskabsarkitektens rolle - fra guldalderæstet til samfundsbevidst mægler", Landskab vol. 3, 2008, pp. 52-53. de Hoog, Maurits and Vermeulen, Rick (2009): Nieuwe Ritmes van de stad, metropoolvorming in Amsterdam. Thoth, Bussum. Kvorning, J., Skou, K. og Christensen, S.M. (2010): Det store Rum. Realdania. Marot S. 2003. Sub-urbanism and the Art of Memory. London: AA publications. -----. 2006. Sub-Urbanism/Super-Urbanism. From Central Park to La Villette. AA Files No. 53. (Spring 2006). Masboungi, Ariella and Barbet-Massin, Olivia 2009: Organiser la ville hypermoderne , François Ascher, Grand Prix de l'urbanisme. Masboungi, Ariella and Mangin, David (2009): Agir sur les grands territories. Le Moniteur Editions. Shannon, Kelly and Smet, Marcel (2010) The landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure. Nai Publishers. Sieverts T. 2005. Zwischenstadt. - Inzwischen Stadt? Entdecken, begreifen, verändern.: Müller Busmann. -----. 2007. From Impossible Order to Possibl | |||||||||||||||
| Course Coordinator | |||||||||||||||
| Thomas Alexander Sick Nielsen, sick@life.ku.dk, Forest & Landscape Denmark/Urban and landscape studies, Phone: 353-31830 | |||||||||||||||
| Other Lecturers | |||||||||||||||
| Gertrud Jørgensen Mads Farsø Lisa Diedrich Thomas Sieverts Maurits de Hoog Ariella Masboungi Stig L. Andersson Undine Giseke | |||||||||||||||
| Course Fee | |||||||||||||||
| None | |||||||||||||||
| Course Costs | |||||||||||||||
| Travel and accomodation costs must be covered by the PhD students. | |||||||||||||||
| Type of Evaluation | |||||||||||||||
| The credits are awarded based on fulfillment of 3 criteria: . Reading of course literature and participation in the course. . 'Conference presentation' in the course of the students own PhD project. . A 3000-4000 word paper or short article based on course literature and presentations, and elements of the students own PhD project. The PhD students are requested to hand ind a short abstract immediately after the course in Copenhagen (deadline November 30th) and the full paper December 22nd. | |||||||||||||||
| Work Load | |||||||||||||||
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