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ORIS X4 discussion panels

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Panel diskusije Oris X4:

GRADOVI I MJESTA URBANOG ŽIVOTA NAKON VIRUSA COVID-19 ***

Moderatori panela su Maroje Mrduljaš, Tigran Haas i Srećko Horvat, a sudionici su Saskia Sassen, Edward Glaeser, Luka Korlaet, Janez Koželj, Renata Ávila, Boris Buden, Franco Berardi “Bifo”, Valentina Gulin Zrnić, Ognjen Brborović i Julian Agyeman.

ORGANIZED BY THE FUTURE OF PLACES CENTRE AT KTH AND ORIS HOUSE OF ARCHITECTURE, ZAGREB PART OF THE FESTIVAL DAYS OF ORIS 21

Slovenian-born political philosopher and cultural critic and one of the leading philosophers of his generation, Slavoj Zizek, said in 2012 that: We are faced today with a grave threat, not one solely based on the fact that we don’t have answers to burning problems in society, but even more to the point that we don’t poses a clear apprehension of what the main problems are or the clear understanding of their real dimensions. How little did he know that those words would resonate so hard and sound in the times of the COVID-19 crisis, effortless and endless unwillingness to act and adapt to climate change, the injustice and lack of global equity and equality in the black lives matter movement and beyond, the massive rift between rich and poor and the endless expansion of cities and metropolitan regions (hyper urbanization) beyond our wildest dreams, and last but not the least, the post-pandemic world we are entering in terms of major micro, meso and macro changes we are about to engage in and undergo. Now that the COVID-19 moved in, the issue of micro changes in our households and working spaces through the meso transformations of retail, leisure and everyday public life in city’s district and neighbourhoods down to the macro metro, regional and global transformations, will have to be taken into account. All of this has to be questioned and valorised under the new life of newest normality or renewal of the old re-normal after the pandemic leaves us for good. As Bjarke Ingels said once: the city is never completed. It has a beginning but it has no end. It is a work in progress, always waiting for new scenes to be added and new characters to move in. Now that the COVID19 moved in, the issue of micro changes in our households and working spaces through the meso transformations of retail, leisure and everyday public life in city’s district and neighbourhoods down to the macro metro, regional and global transformations, will have to be taken into account; nothing will ever be the same in the new brave world of digital media and networked society. These amazing four panels on the themes of Cities and Spaces of Urban Life beyond COVID-19 will crack open these issues from micro, meso and macro perspectives through looking at how automation, digitalization and other technological advancements has changed us, how just or unjust our societies are, how the changes of working environments and patterns of everyday life might change forever; if cities can be transformed into an expression of the deeper egalitarian dream of our time, or they will end up in a dystopian unjust nightmare of smart(er) cities as another leading philosopher of our time, Srecko Horvat, warns us of; what can (specific) cities do to meet these challenges and can we really reach the level of resilience, adaptation and transformation in the midst of the looming darkness of the climate change crisis about which Greta Thunberg constantly warns us or are we incapable of any changes and we have learned absolutely nothing from COVID-19 crisis? Let’s talk!

PANEL #1 ZAGREB and LJUBLJANA – The New Normal (Moderator: Maroje Mrduljaš)

With:

  • sc. Valentina Gulin Zrnić, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb
  • sc. Luka Korlaet, Vice Mayor of Zagreb, Faculty of Architecture, Zagreb
  • Janez Koželj, Vice Mayor of Ljubljana, Faculty of Architecture, Ljubljana
  • sc. Ognjen Brborović, Faculty of Medicine, Zagreb
  • Moderator:
  • sc. Maroje Mrduljaš, Faculty of Architecture, Zagreb

After a year and a half of the Coronavirus pandemic, our cities are no longer the same. There are almost no physical changes, but urban dynamics, control regimes and space management have changed radically. We are witnessing how the relationship between space and events is open and changeable: homes have become offices and classrooms, young people fought and conquered the new spaces for mass collective gatherings, large-scale conditioned interiors of shopping malls have temporarily taken on an unexpected role of a relatively safe environment for social encounters, parks and sports fields have increased in popularity… The discussions about new spatial regulations (and respective bio politics) also take on an ideological character: the left advocates more control and emphasizes collective solidarity while from the right we hear demands for more individual freedoms. What are the lessons of a global experiment of different levels of lock-down? Do often traumatic experiences of redistribution and reorganization of everyday life offer some positive lessons? Will some of the safety measures remain permanent? How much has the share of digital/virtual domain increased in everyday life? How much has Zagreb and Ljubljana changed during the pandemic? Did they prove resilient to crises, and if yes, why? How much can this resilience be planned and projected for the future?

PANEL #2 Towards Post-Pandemic Spaces (Moderator: Srećko Horvat)

With:

  • Francesca Bria, Italian Innovation Fund, president, previously Chief Digital Technology and Innovation Officer for the City of Barcelona
  • Franco Berardi “Bifo”, philosopher, most recently published book The Third Unconscious (Verso, 2021)
  • Renata Ávila, CEO of Open Knowledge Foundation, digital rights advocate
  • Moderator:
  • Srećko Horvat, philosopher, most recently published book After the Apocalypse (Polity Press, 2021, in cooperation with the KTH Centre for the Future of Places)

After two years of the pandemic, we have witnessed an accelerated shift towards automation, digitalization and other technological advancements in places we live in (whether it is in our cities or in our own apartments), in the nature of work and at the very core of our private vs. public life. At the same time, supply chains and global transport are facing serious difficulties making urban life – with ever growing prices for electricity, transport, food – even more difficult. With the acceleration and multiplication of catastrophic events, from climate crisis (wildfires, floods, drought, heatwaves, sea levels rising) to natural disasters (earthquakes, volcano eruptions), urban environments are at even more risk and going through profound changes. How to envisage an approach to spatial thinking – or imagining a future of places – that would take into account not only the technological challenges but also the multiplicity of catastrophes that are not coming in some undefined future, but are already here and now? Can cities be transformed into an expression of the deep – utopian or heterotopian – dreams of our time, or will they end up in a dystopian nightmare of “smart cities” fostering further surveillance and data extractivism, refeudalized and gated communities excluding the poor, migrants and refugees?

PANEL #3 Post-COVID19 Cities & Beyond (Moderator: Tigran Haas)

With:

  • Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, and the Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate at Tufts University, Boston, the originator of the concept of ‘Just Sustainabilities’.
  • Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and the Chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard University, where he teaches microeconomic theory, and urban and public economics.
  • Tigran Haas, Associate Professor of Urban Planning + Urban Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Former Director of the International Centre for the Future of Places at KTH.

How life in our cities and metropolitan regions might look like after the Corona virus pandemic has been a constant theme in academic and professional conversations and recent writings amongst scholars, practitioners, professionals and public policy officials. This panel takes a look and examines some of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic, cultural, social, historical and political fallout on cities and metropolitan regions. Discussion will dwell into issues of the pandemic influencing life and work at the different urban social geographic scales in the context of various forces: the social changes incurred by the pandemic; the lockdown as a forced experiment; resilience of the urban built environment against such future risks; and changes in the urban form and system of cities and dwelling patterns. In which way the cities will survive the coronavirus and what lessons have been learned. Has the pandemic exposed deficiencies in the quality of governance and scale of inequalities in our global cities, and if so, what remedies are there? What of urban housing, public transportation & public spaces and their management, how all of this might change after the pandemic? The changes of working environments and patterns of everyday life might change forever; what can cities do to meet these challenges? Can the post-covid19 cities be driven by a new model of growth that emphasizes inclusivity, sustainability, and economic opportunity, restored trust in public health policy, or will they continue as they are? These are some of the topical issues the panel will touch upon.

1/1 CONVERSATION WITH PROF. DR SASKIA SASSEN (Dr. TIGRAN HAAS, Host) *
“GLOBAL CITIES AND BEYOND” – TRANSFORMATIONS AND TRANSITIONS

FORMAT: Discussion-Dialogue

With:

  • Tigran Haas, Associate Professor of Urban Planning + Urban Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Former Director of the International Centre for the Future of Places at KTH.
  • Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, New York, Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration and the originator of the term ‘Global City’.

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Member of its Committee on Global Thought, which she chaired from 2009 till 2015. She is a student of cities, immigration, and states in the world economy, with inequality, gendering and digitization three key variables running though her work. She is the author of eight books and the editor or co-editor of three books.

Dr. Saskia Sassen’s work has defined debates about the role of cities in a globalized world for thirty years. On the 30th anniversary of the publication of her groundbreaking book The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, in this Zoom with Dr. Tigran Haas, Dr. Sassen will reflect on how global cities have developed over the 30 years and what the post-COVID future might look like for cities and people.

*This Conversation is also part of the ATHENA FEMALE SCHOLARS TALKS SERIES in Sweden.

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