Macrosessione 7. Interazioni tra adattabilità e precarietà

Macrosession 7. Interaction between adaptiveness and uncertainity

Committee: Claudia Cassatella (Politecnico di Torino – DIST), Teresa Colletta (Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”), Anat Falbel (EAHN Urban Representation Working Group, University of Rio de Janeiro), David Graham Shane (Columbia University GSAAP, USA), Mauro Volpiano (Politecnico di Torino – DAD).

Reporting: Francesca Governa (Politecnico di Torino – DIST).

Adapting to change seems to have become a necessity that affects everyone. However, this necessity has always pervaded the unfolding of urban life, especially in situations of marginality, precariousness and uncertainty. Beyond the effects of specific global events and macro-scale structures, precarity and uncertainty always inhabit urban life both in the Global North and in the Global South. Being precarious is a continuous search of normality, unfolding the adaptation of people to urban life and, at the same time, the adaptation of the city to people's life through the continuous infrastructural making and remaking and the continuous redefinition and re-meaning of urban spaces.

Demographic fluctuations also produce uncertainty. They have shaped the history of cities and regions and fostered some crisis. Both urbanisation and decrease of population create a sense of precarity. Nowadays, along with the growth of population at global scale, an increasing number of OECD Countries is facing population decline. Shrinkage is expected to affect not only marginal areas, but even city regions.

The macrosession will deal with both these issues and will include, but it will not be limited to:

Unfolding urban uncertainty

Overcoming the tendencies that bind precarity and uncertainty in particular time periods and regions of the world, and asking for a specific attention to the issue of positionality (both theoretical and political), this session aims to discuss an expansive and open view of precarity and uncertainty dealing in theoretical and empirical terms the conceptual relationships between precarity/ uncertainty and adaptiveness

The adaptiveness of slums.

Moving to/from cities.

This topic deals with the spontaneous decentralization, in the last few years, of larger cities towards neighbouring small centers, all over the Mediterranean region, which became extremely evident during the pandemic period, and was to a large extent related to the search for a “better quality of life” (green areas, large open spaces, larger houses, natural and rural environment, old festive traditions, etc.). Thus follows the need for renewal and enhancement of small cities, villages and “borghi” with their rich cultural heritage, both material and immaterial; for the safeguard of rural environment and landscapes; for the active involvement of the resident community; for a suitable tourism promotion.

Demographic decline and aging population: shrinking cities and regions.

Demographic decline and urban shrinkage have impacts on urbanization processes, on the upkeep of existing urban areas (including heritage assets) and welfare systems, on the emergence of design issues (such as regeneration, rural-urban linkages). What can we learn from the past in terms of adaptation to demographic shrinkage? Which explanations, trajectories, strategies would suffice? How did cities and territories cope with demographic decline by re-organizing their processes and spaces? If urban planning was born to manage growth, which theories, concepts and models may be mobilized for an era of de-growth?

Accelerating metacity.

Informational revolutions expand urbanization into new territories, new scale and scope. Macro and micro. Satellite and handheld. Pushes automation, AI, robots and electrification. In parallel, information acceleration expands territory of global supply chains and logistics systems that are not prepared for black swan events, have no redundancy in system (containers ships and bar codes, etc.), Covid feedback rehoming industry for local redundancy, new warehouses industry expansion in periurban territory. New opportunities for bottom-up associations and organizations, local initiatives, ecological commercial systems informational dimension, consumer choice, localisms food chains new forms of cities, agrourban hybrids, etc.

Issues on urbanisation and its representation.

If today the unprecedented pace of population growth in cities raises issues of sustainability, the crisis of large numbers and the need for basic services, infrastructures and housing is part of our cities’ histories. This topic calls for contributions on how this issue and its development has been represented in different media throughout history since the industrial revolution.