Project reacts to the radical changes in city landscape over the last twenty years. Architects, politicians, photographers and sociologists from seven European capitals – Berlin, Budapest, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Prague, Warsaw and Vienna – critically react to the globalisation of urban space as a form of the new European totality.
Urbanity project finds neuralgic points of the new global environment of cities and puts them into revision and reflection.
Urbanity calls attention to negative social impacts of specific development strategies and tactics.
Urbanity points out qualities that characterize Central Europe.
Urbanity proposes new visions of Central European capitals and defines their role in Europe
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During 20 years of European unification we have witnessed the removal of state, national and other borders. Cultural, social, political meanings change to the new – global concepts. Life without freedom under the dictate of political totalities has been replaced by freedom under the dictate of market totalities, materialized into the urban space.
Urbanity project sees and defines the Central European Region as a supra-region with its own distinctive historical past and with a potential common approach in solving problems. Cooperation once carried out by political agreements and ratifications affected by ideology is thus taking a new course and meaning.
The city is a mirror of social changes and their reasons. But what does the national capital mean in today’s Europe? What is the representation of power in cities today? How have Central European capitals changed under the power of the transforming structure of society?
These questions are being answered through interdisciplinary cooperation. The answers will provide a critical view of city transformation over the last 20 years. During 2009 and 2010 the project outcomes will be presented in large scale photographs exhibited in public spaces, by architecture research accompanied by workshops with lectures, forums and a publication capturing the project in time.
You can read more on the project website: http://www.urbanityproject.eu/