Yesterday I got to know about an upcoming project of Gary Hustwit. He’s the guy behind Helvetica, Objectified and, most recently, Urbanized. His next thing will be a photo book about the legacy of the Olympics in former host cities. I think that’s an interesting question to ask: what will a city be like after the events are over?

Urbanized
Hustwit’s last project, Urbanized, turned out to be a really enjoyable documentary. At first, I thought ‘how the hell are you going to capture today’s urbanization in one documentary?’, but I backed the project anyway through a Kickstarter campaign. The result was quite impressive, in terms of giving an overview of the many challenges our cities are facing, and because of its visual presentation of pressing urban issues. The problem is that you can’t include all the necessary - historical, cultural, economic, architectural, etc - nuances in a 85-minute documentary. Therefore I think the film is particularly good for a wider audience of people not being experts in the urban studies or architecture fields, showing some of the pressing issues that everyone should be aware of. To me, watching the film only raised countless questions, only making clear that “the city” is far too elusive and undefinable to understand or ‘fix’ as a whole. But still, I’m planning to show Urbanized to my parents, so that they will get a sense of what it is I’m spending all my time on.

The Olympic City
Hustwit now started working on a new project, together with photographer Jon Pack. It will be a photo book that looks at the legacy of the Olympic Games in former host cities around the world.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing this book. Hosting the Olympics has be come a means for cities to create prestige value and attract all kinds of investments in the global arenas cities nowadays compete. It is always thought to generate tourism and business activity. But what happens after the Games are over? That’s what this book will be about. 

Olympic benefits
Although the book will document both the successes and failures, I’m quite sure the total sum of costs and benefits involved with organizing the Olympic event is a negative one. This is something Belgian Professor Stefan Kesenne recently showed in a publication about the impact of large sports events on the local and national economy of the host city. While candidates for hosting such a big event (the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup) always present extremely positive models showing the miraculous economic blessings of organizing it, realities are invariably less bright. These reports are often so misleading because they are carried out by lobby groups or other ‘idiots’ (as Kesenne puts it) that only show say what the IOC or FIFA want to hear, because otherwise they can forget about the event.
The exorbitant investments accompanying the organization of such an event create jobs, of course. But “so does building a bridge in a desert”, says Kesenne. The largest benefits of the tournaments, being the tv-rights and ticket revenues, go straight to the IOC and FIFA.  

With this in mind, I think The Olympic City will be a valuable book because it visualizes the misleading planning and broken promises always associated with the Olympics. Unused, inactive and decaying sports facilities, instead of flourishing economies and vibrant urban districts. And I believe a photographic book can be a strong medium to get your message across. 

Oh yes, you can support the project through its Kickstarter campaing. Check out the video of the makers below.

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Source: Kesenne, S. (2010) “The orchestrated public misleading of IOC and FIFA” (In Dutch)

Recently, VH1 aired a new episode of the “Rock Docs” series. In the documentary, two subjects close to my heart come together: the tensions that spatial segregation of social groups within a city produce, and hiphop. 

The documentary tells the story of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. It starts with Rodney King, revisiting the site where police officers beat him up in 1991. King was assaulted by a group of officers who used excessive violence in arresting him. The act was caught on camera and reached the media. It caused a lot of anger, not in the least among those having experienced disproportionate violence by police officers. Film maker John Singleton expresses his mixed feelings about the act being recorded. He says he was hurt to see it, but happy that the violence finally was visible for the masses. The anger reached a high when the officers were discharged from the indictment in April 1992. As one of the people in the documentary says: “that’s when the heat, which had been there for decades, turned into a boiling mess”.

After the acquittal, the tensions erupted into an emotional protesting of the black community, which later that day culminated into riots. The documentary is a collection of video material from 1992 and interviews with protagonists and rappers.

The connection with hiphop is quite obvious. In the early 1990s and since the 1960s, spoken word and later rap music had been a outlet for black and latino communities all over the United States. Much of the music was an expression of everyday experiences in deprived urban areas and a dissatisfaction with societal and political realities. 

Back in 1988, a provocative song called “Fuck tha Police” was released by L.A. hiphop group N.W.A., as one of the songs on the album “Straight Outta Compton”. The song highlights the tensions between young blacks and the police. It turned out to be prophetic and basically became the theme song for many of the rioters in 1992. 

The documentary is a good collection of archive material and interviews with people involved in the riots and present at the time. It shows how a collective rage turned into riots and looting, with the police being outnumbered and unable to intervene. Eventually, military troops had to enter the area to stop the anarchy.

What I would have liked to see more in the documentary, is a bit more of a political historical context. Also, and related to the politics, a focus on the geographical developments in Los Angeles that have been a factor in the build-up of the tensions would have been nice. The topics are both touched upon briefly, but I missed a somewhat deeper analysis of how it was possible that the situation previously to the tipping point of the Rodney King case arose.

Nevertheless, I absolutely enjoyed watching the one-hour documentary. It tells more about some of the music that I have been listening to for years. For example, Dr. Dre’s album “The Cronic” was recorded during the riots, even sampling the audio from video material shot during the days of chaos. The album is said to be a great capturing of the spirit at that time. The details of how the record came together and how the riots influenced this, described by rapper Kurupt, were really exciting to me. Great documentary.

The documentary can be watched online at VH1 here. US residents can visit the page without problems, but for those in other countries it is officially not possible to watch it. However, there is a way of circumventing the geo-block, using Firefox and a special add-on. How? Read this page.

Previously and related on City Breaths:
Ice Cube on Architecture
Musical Urban Activism in Detroit
Back to Normal?
Local Perspectives on the Riots in London

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How yet another sustainable and intelligent concept is adding to Amsterdam’s smart and innovative character.

Car2Go Amsterdam. ©Car2Go

Today, I registered for Car2Go, which is an incredibly smart car use program that started off in Amsterdam about six months ago. Amsterdam is the fifth city worldwide and the first in Europe to have a Car2Go program. It is now expanding to another 8 cities worldwide.

It is actually a corporate initiative. Daimler, the German automobile multinational that initiated the project, deployed 300 electric-powered Smart cars. The cars are easy to park, because they have parking permits for all inner-ringroad districts, and of course because of their compact size.

To register, you need to pay €9,99. There’s an app and a website to find the cars that are parked nearby. You can even reserve one, up to 15 minutes before driving off. After getting into one of the cars you pay per minute, 29 cents to be exact (9 cents whilst parking). Because of the parking permits, you can drop them of wherever you like within the ringroad (and some districts further away). When you park them at a charging point, you get free kilometers for your next drive (the navigation panel in the car shows where the nearest charging point is).

This is really what urban car use should look like, I believe. Not only is the sustainable side of it something that makes me feel happy. The flexibility of it is great and the costs are relatively low. The cars are easy to find and to use, and it seems to me that the concept is in line with all kinds of societal and economic developments that are going on.

The ideal of car ownership in cities seems to be fading, which of course is a good thing for jsut about anyone who is is not a SUV manufacturer. It actually only makes sense, because why would every urban househould need their own car? I think that’s more and more something of the past. And yes, there have been car-sharing initiatives before that are comparable to Car2Go, but not in such a sustainable, efficient and affordable way.

Landing page of the Amsterdam Smart City website.

Amsterdam Smart City
Daimler specificly chose Amsterdam to be the first European city to deploy the concept. This is partially because of the existence of ‘Amsterdam Electric’ (a Daimler representative states in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant today), which is a network of public charging points. The number of charging points will be around 1000 by the end of 2012, which is quite a lot for a city the size of Amsterdam. The existing ‘electric infrastrucure’ made Daimler choose Amsterdam as the first European city to have Car2Go.

These municipal investments are what made the program work. But it’s also the physical fabric of the city that I think is a good match with Car2Go. The small cars are perfect for the fine grained streets in the central districts, and the small parking spaces. Also, Amsterdam is not as congested as other cities, making inner city car rides doable and not extremely time-consuming. Also, more and more people living and working in Amsterdam most of the time don’t need a car, but for the moments they do, Car2Go offers the right flexibility.

Amsterdam has been hailed for their ‘smart city’ initiatives - both in media and academia - particularly because of the numerous small scale initiatives that use new technologies in a coordinated way that are almost seamlessly integrated with the city’s existing social, economic, infrastructure networks and cultural and historical layers. 
This is something Saskia Sassen addressed at the PICNIC conference, last September, saying that we shouldn’t want to create ‘smart cities’ from scratch because the technologies are not ‘sufficiently urbanized’ yet. Rather, we should organically deploy technology to enhance our existing urban environments. 

I’m excited to see where Amsterdam is going in this smart (or wise, or sustainable, or organically technological) development, looking at the work Amsterdam Innovation Motor and Amsterdam Smart City are currently doing, from large developments to almost surgical interventions. 

Previously on City Breaths:
Should we not reconsider the term “Smart Cities”? 
Smart Cities Should be Open-Source
Employ Technology to Create Ownership, Rather than Smart Cities
 

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Next to basic urban preconditions and soft location factors, connectivity is an important aspect for urban livabilty, says Ericsson’s ConsumerLab. Some notes an thoughts on this research.

The 13 cities in the research. ©Ericsson

Through its ConsumerLab research program, Ericsson looked at city dwellers’ satisfaction with urban life, based on results from surveys in 13 large cities worldwide. The results were presented at the New Cities Summit in Paris.

The full report can be read here. It’s a nice looking, digestible document. The academic in me immediately starts asking questions about details, the setup of the research and the interpretation of the results. But we shouldn’t always approach everything in an academic way. One thing that can be concluded from the methodological explanations, is that the results come from people that live on a Western standard (in cities from developing countries, only ‘more affluent’ people were interviewed).

The things urbanites are most and least happy with. ©Ericsson

The report shows that much of the findings are in line with urban amenities-theories, saying that the aspects of the city that are promote a certain ‘bohemian’ atmosphere are very much wanted, such as estaurants, entertainment facilities, markets, and cafés. The things that urbanites are least happy with are things like unclean public space, parking problems, non-transparent governments and bad air quality. Basically, it says that people like vibrant, clean, efficient and democratic cities. One interesting addition found in the report, is that mobile network coverage, preferrably data-ready, is among the top 5 things that make people satisfied with their urban environment.

Mobile connectivity
The thing that is relatively new to a study on livability, is mentioning the availability of mobile networks as a key factor. Okay, it is not surprising to read this in a research carried out for a company that facilitates 40 percent of the world’s traffic. But you can’t deny the conclusion. Mobile networks and mobile internet can give people access to the good things a city has to offer and to information that can improve their everyday lives. Think about real-time public transport information and weather forecasts, information about the opening times of institutions and how to get there, etcetera. I eagerly make use of many of the possibilities it has to offer.
As good and promising this technology is, I think the real challenge is not only in the evolvement of this internet of things, or connected society, but also (and maybe more so) in overcoming the digital divide. In line with the kinds of people interviewed for this research, the individuals that currently benefit most from these technological developments are the young, skilled and/or affluent. For these people, I would argue, the benefits are only marginal, compared to the potential improvement of individual lives and societies as a whole, if marginalized people (because of their income, status, age, location, etc) were to be able to bear the fruits of this development. How do we deploy technology in such a way that we give the marginalized the possibility to improve their lives? I think that is the most imporant question right now.

Comparative means of transport. ©Ericsson

Commuting and 24/7 livability
One of the findings is that the average commute time in the 13 cities (which include Mumbai, Paris, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, London, Seoul, Johannesburg, Cairo, Sao Paulo, Moscow and Beijing) is two hours and twenty minutes, which I think is extremely high. As someone from Amsterdam, where people in the ‘metropolitan region’ (most of them by bike) commute for no more 60 minutes (most of them less than 30 minutes), travelling to the New Cities Summit at La Défense in the morning makes me feel like the city of Paris is cracking and the infrastructure is bursting at the seams because of the many people and vehicles it has to process. I think it has to do with the degree of functional division in the city. For example in Paris, the suburbs and banlieues practically only have a residential part to play, while other places, such as La Défense (employing 170.000 people) are only designated for business (and retail) purposes. The functional and spatial division means that people need to commute. Of course - and especially for business - there is the importance of clustering, but on the other hand, diversity is also important to the vitality and livability of a city. Take La Défense again. I walked through the district at night, after 11pm, and it was completely desolate. This (post modern) post apocalyptic atmosphere was in stark contrast with the lunchtime vibes in the sun, with thousands and thousands of people flocking the public space, having their lunch breaks on the grass, shopping, playing pétanque and rushing from their offices to restaurants and back. What I am saying is that there is something to say for 24/7 livability, instead of just 8am-8pm livability.  

There are more interesting things to read and think about in the report, such as the use of social networks, what people do in their commuting time, and that different demographics produce different desires. Read it here.

This post is part of a series, reporting from the New Cities Summit in Paris, organized by the New Cities Foundation.

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Geoffrey West, educating us about how cities work.

According to Geoffrey West, distinguished professor at Santa Fe Institute, we need to develop a “science of cities”. West compares contemporary urbanists to the Wright brothers, who are credited with inventing and building the world’s first airplane and making the first human flight. The Wright brothers got their plane to fly, but they didn’t know anything about, for example, aerodynamics. Nowadays, you need science to build a Boeing 747.

The analogy with cities, as West implies, is that we are now urbanizing at an unprecedented speed and that there is no real science that tells us how to do it. Most of our urban planning is based on assumptions, mostly derived from best practices (which are not always time proof). Given the great challenge of urbanization that we are facing (everyday, 1 million people are moving to urban areas), it is remarkable that there isn’t a science that tells us how our cities should grow.

Cities are mammals
As I wrote before, that science is what Geoffrey West has been working for a while. He is conducting research, using methodologies from biology and physics, in order to understand how cities work. Basically, he is trying to find out whether there are quantative predictive laws of life, because, in the end: cities are people.

West and his team already produced some interesting findings, much of them in line with the biology of mammals. There is a certain sub-linear economy of scale, which, for a mammal, means that it needs less energy for every extra cell (the exponent of this is around .75). And that’s all because of how the networks that make an ecosystem function work.

What West does, is essentially trying to understand cities (which are social organizations) in a similar way. The first findings are interesting. There seems to be a same kind of power law that holds for cities. When a city doubles in size, it doesn’t need a doubling of facilities, infrastructure, etc. It would only need about 85% more.

This systemic scaling also appears to hold for socioeconomic quantities. When a city doubles in size, things such as GDP, wages, the number of ‘supercreatives’, patents, etcetera, will be 15 percent more than double.

According to West, bigger cities work better because of the networks. The multiplier effect of networks in bigger cities cause for the pace of life to increase. I’m not sure this is always a good thing (for example, I would rather work in Berlin than in London, because it is less rushy), but it definitely makes cities more efficient for various purposes.

Social metabolical rate
West finished his talk in a way only a physician could: by quantifying why people live together. He explained that the natural daily metabolic rate of a person is around 90 watts (the energy we need to consume to stay alive), but that the social metabolic rate (everything we need to do what we do) is around 11000 watts. Meeting the social metabolic needs of one person can only be done by aggregation: people need to live together in order to meet the needs of every single one of them.

This post is part of a series, reporting from the New Cities Summit in Paris, organized by the New Cities Foundation.

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CITIES did a great video on Amsterdam’s food transportation system, in collaboration with Rabobank and ZTRDG. It researched the opportunities to supply local hotels, restaurants and shops with the food produced in Amsterdam’s surroundings. CITIES proposes bringing together all the separate transportation flows into a shared and sustainable urban food infrastructure. Make sure to check it out! It has English subtitles and wonderful graphics!

This research is part of CITIES’ overarching project Farming The City. 

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Gordon Matta-Clark: “Splitting” (1974).

Over the past years, there has been a strong current of photographers preoccupied with urban decay. Detroit is the primary example of this fascination with abandonment, ruination and former glory. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre for example, have become superstars by capturing Detroit’s decline in dramatically bombastic and wistful images.

In this light, it is interesting to take a look at the works of Gordon Matta-Clark.

Gordon Matta-Clark: “Conical Intersect” (1975).

Matta-Clark was trained as an architect, but quickly turned his back to mainstream architecture. In his works, he criticized the pretentious abstractions that architecture, according to him, consisted of. He wanted to show how architecture was disconnected from the physical reality of everyday life. His famous works include abandoned houses and derelict warehouses, slashed with a chain saw. This was also a comment on the collapse of American cities and the American Dream. Much of his work was set in New York, demonstrating the city’s failed social policies and architectural plans.

Gordon Matta-Clark: “Day’s End” (1975).

The works of Matta-Clark are not quite cases of ruin gazing, contrary to much of the contemporary decay photography. Nevertheless, there are some corresponding elements. They both emphasize how architecture, industry and political and socioeconomic realities often deviate from their initial designs or heydays.

Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand: “American Hotel” (2010).

Of course, ruin photographers often rearrange the scene to create a perfect composition of decay, but Matta-Clark makes major alterations to the derelict buildings to convey imperfect realities and how these contrast with the once perfect plans of architects and policymakers. These physical articulations of disappointing realities were of course allover New York in the 1970s. Matta-Clark is considered one of the first to contest fancy architecture and urban policy and the relationship between the two.

Not only do Matta-Clark’s works show the uncertainty and transience of our physical and mental realities. The fact that the buildings he incised and transformed were often demolished soon after the alterations and that they only continued to exist in picture and film, added to the notion of temporality. Matta-Clark’s own impermanence (he died in 1978, aged 35), only contributed to his cult status.

Failed Architecture
The different ways of looking at, and making use of our decayed built environment will be topic of discussion during the next edition of Failed Architecture, on Wednesday May 9 in TrouwAmsterdam. The subject will be dealt with from different angles, including that of an urban explorer, a photojournalist, an artist and an architect. The obsession with failure in image will be also be presented in a historical context. A short lecture about the Japanese notion of Wabi Sabi (acceptance of transience as a central idea in aesthetics) will add another perspective to the theme.

The Ruins of Detroit
From May 12 to June 30, the hailed works of Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand will be at display in Galerie Fontana Fortuna in Amsterdam.

Pictures of Matta-Clark’s works are courtesy of Artists Rights Society.
Picture of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre is courtesy of Galerie Fontana Fortuna.

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Coffee culture expresses new ways of working and living 
and helps shaping our cities

Coffee Bru, Amsterdam.

Coffee helps us. It helps us get out of bed, it raises our productivity and promotes creativity, it’s the driving force of conversations and the fuel for writers and bloggers. This piece is also written in a coffee bar, my personal favorite. It’s called Coffee Bru and was recently named the best coffee venue in The Netherlands and Belgium in a newly published coffee guide. Coffee Bru is located outside of Amsterdam’s centre in a neighbourhood in transition. In a typical week, I spend about three days working in this place. Sitting here consuming coffee just helps me through the day and through my work, or at least gives me the illusion that my productivity benefits from the consumption experience.

Energy impulse for the city
But coffee is not just providing myself and other people with energy. It also ‘helps’ the city. Since coffee culture has grown so rapidly over the past years, coffee has become a catalyst for urban development as well. And this is not just a revival of the ‘coffee houses’ that first emerged in Europe in the early 1600s. It is more of a phenomenon in which several developments in the society and the economy meet, while having a strong connection to spatial dynamics.

Coffee places: physical articulations of our economies and societies
This mechanism has to do with the processes of postindustrialisation and several economic and societal developments that are associated with it. One of them is that in more flexible economies, the boundaries between social and professional life are fading. Business meetings are sometimes hard to distinguish from just hanging out or catching up, especially for smaller and more flexible businesses (eg. freelancers).
The fusion of professional and personal lives are related to the fact that businesses and individual professionals are becoming more and more footloose (at least within their city) and that this makes so called third places (places other than the house or the office, such as coffee bars and libraries) easier to use for work purposes.
Next to this, we are more and more concerned with aesthetic reflexivity and the sign value of things, rather than use value. Coffee (consumption) is a product/service that is increasingly subject to this. We are willing to pay more for fancy-named, exotically flavored or artisanally brewed coffee, because we like the product, but also because we like to relate ourselves - our identity - to the product or the experience (yes, you too). Several years ago, the hip thing to consume was coffee with flavours and creams, preferrably in huge take away cups. Over the past years, the hip has shifted towards more artisan coffees, strict brewing rituals and freshly baked cookies and cakes in small-scale and cozy cofee bars with vintage and ingenious interiors.

A variety of brewing methods is the new wave. ©Mabel Suen

The spatial division of coffee venues
In the meantime, the Starbucks-esque coffee venues have become more mainstream, generating large visitor flows and revenues. They are typically situated in the city centres or on the main streets of gentrified neighbourhoods.

The new type of coffee bars are generally situated in other places. One the one hand, because they cannot afford the high-end locations as they are often startups run by young people, but on the other hand because their crowds are also in other places. The main audience of the new coffee venues generally consists of people from twenty to fourty, with a dash of hip (or hipster). Looking around in these places, you see many students and young professionals/freelancers working, reading and socializing. (What’s also remarkable, is the amount of young mothers with babies hanging out.)

Artisan Roast, Edinburgh.

Whatever the exact composition of the audience may be, it seems that much of the visitors also like living in neighbourhoods in transition and/or cannot afford to live in ‘better’ neighbourhoods. As is the case for the venues. The (slightly) off-centre location provides a suitable space to lower rents, and somewhat edgy character with which they like to identify themselves. 

And that is what many young urban dwellers like: the ‘undiscovered’, slightly hidden and rough character of the venues combined with innovative products, services and interiors. An initial result is often a flocking of young people, partly because there is a high demand for good meeting places, which has to do with the above mentioned shifts in society and economic structures.

Local buzz and gentrification
Popular meeting places, in turn, create a certain vibrance for their environment. This can help the neighbourhood develop, increase liveability (whatever that may be exactly) and attract more people and businesses to the area: a next phase of gentrification. It is evident that there is a correlation between commercial and residential gentrification. Commercial gentrification attracts more activity, making an area more attractive for more affluent residents. Residential gentrification on the other hand, generates a demand for more upscale commercial activities.

There is a lot to say about gentrification. A mild version of it is generally perceived as something good, but just as there is a momentum for these avant-garde venues to set up shop in not-so-hip areas, there is a certain tipping point in the gentrification process. This often entails (a.o.) rising rents, a declining share of social housing (at least in the Netherlands), at some point disappearing facilities and amenities for the less well-off, and in the more profound cases chain stores entering, standardization and a looking-alike of neighbourhoods.

We’re all gentrifiers
But let’s not go on and on about gentrification, that’s a whole ‘nother discussion. What is striking to me is that coffee bars are physical expressions of changes in taste and the ways we live and work. The popularity of these venues, in turn, can work as a catalyst for certain areas, because it creates a particular local energy, attracting more activity to these neighbourhoods. This is just an observation. And while I happily fuse my work with the enjoyable activity of consuming coffee and being part of the coffee culture, I’m aware of the fact that this makes me a small cog in processes of gentrification as well. But that’s something we can hardly escape, since our ‘cities of production’ have already changed into ‘cities of consumption’.

I’ll take a V60 Yirgacheffe, thanks. That’s to show how much I know about artisan coffee brewing my favorite.

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“Progressive anti-capitalist forces can more easily mobilize to leap forward into global coordinations via urban networks that may be hierarchical but not monocentric, corporatist but nevertheless democratic, egalitarian and horizontal, systemically nested and federated (imagine a league of socialist cities much as the Hanseatic League of old became the network that nourished the powers of merchant capitalism), internally discordant and contested, but solidarious against capitalist class power - and, above all, deeply engaged in the struggle to undermine and eventually overthrow the power of the capitalist laws of value on the world market to dictate the social relations under which we work and live. Such a movement must open the way for universal human flourishing beyond the constaints of class domination and commodified market determinations. The world of true freedom begins, as Marx insisted, only when such material constraints are left behind. Reclaiming and organizing cities for anti-capitalist struggles is a great place to begin.”

            - David Harvey, Rebel Cities, 2012, p. 153 

Recommended: Owen Hatherley’s review of Rebel Cities for The Guardian.

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Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel, Detroit. By Andrew Moore ©Reflex Art Gallery

Talks and Q&A | Wednesday May 9 | 20:00h | English | 5 euro

In previous editions of Failed Architecture, we have primarily looked at the why, how and when of failed architecture, trying to get a grasp of the various dimensions of failure and to understand according to whom certain buildings or built environments are malfunctioning. This time, we will try to figure out why many people like to see and talk about failed architecture and whether this influences the future of failed buildings.

Aestheticization of modern ruins is popular: we love romantic, wistful pictures with perfect compositions and dramatic light, beautifying decay and mortality. Over the past years, the number of so-called urban explorers has grown, visiting or breaking into derelict buildings. Just take a look at the infinite number of pictures of abandoned buildings, ruined factories and rundown train stations on Flickr and other websites and blogs. These ruinous structures seem to be much more to us than just piles of rubble. Detroit is the primary example. The extreme case of decay, deindustrialization and poverty after a prosperous century has become the mainstream case of failure fixation and a popular subject in picture, writing and film. Where does this fascination come from? Why are we so preoccupied with failure in photography, urban analysis, literature and other media? And does this obsession help or obstruct attempts to restore urban ruins and learn from past failures? These and other questions will be answered.

Psychiatric Hospital Bloemendaal. By Rob Funcken.

We have invited several guests to discuss the beauty of failure with us:

Hans Aarsman is a photography journalist, photographer and writer. Aarsman will analyze forms of failure photography in order for us to understand the underlying motives of the photographer and the collective love for beautiful decay. 

Rob Funcken is a Brussels-based photographer, graphic designer and former urban explorer. He has been invited to talk about the act and glamour of urban exploring, and why so many people are intrigued by the act of urban exploring and the photography connected to it. 

Kim Bouvy is an artist working with photography and text, exploring the ways our urban environment is perceived and valued and how that again is being reflected in visual culture and architecture and urbanism. 

A fourth speaker is yet to be announced.

Location: De Verdieping / TrouwAmsterdam | Wibautstraat 127 | Facebook

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(Source: failedarchitecture)

And a series of film nights called Shadow Cities

L.A. Noir. (by Flickr user jamescastle3)

I started reading the great book “Noir Urbanisms”, in which dystopic images of the modern(ist) city are being explored and explained. From Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums and everything in between, the book shows how the shadow sides of our cities are being represented in media. Here’s an introductory excerpt:

“There clearly is an uncanny alchemy between dark representations and the urban experience, registered in the realm of images composed by photography, art, cinema, and architecture. For here it is that, as James Donald suggests, the familiar turns unfamiliar, the city of planning and order gives way to the unsettling influence of dark mysteries and memories. [..] portraits ranging from urban anxiety and nihilism to utopian desire, from scenes of dislocation and disposession to “warped spaces” in which the urban uncanny appears as the nightmarish crisis of the human. [..] a shadow always hung over the modernist halo. Inequity and oppression punctuated the drama of freedom on the street. The experience of immersion in the crowd produced feelings of enstrangement and routinization, and the gathering of the multitude could easily become part of the spectacle of mass society that capitalism staged. The rhythm of daily urban life might suggest a symphony, but it also spelled the boredom of routinization. The awesome promise of technology and planned futures was also terrifying. One way in which modernism expressed this terror was through the image of urban dystopia. Its dark visions of mass society forged by capitalism and technology, however, did not necessarily mean a forthright rejection of the modern metropolis but a critique of the betrayal of its utopian promise. The dystopic form functioned as a critical discourse that embraced urban modernity rather than reject it.”

        -Gyan Prakash: Imagining the Modern City, Darkly.
         In: Noir Urbanisms. Dystopic Images of the Modern City (2010). 

If you like this, and if you’re in Amsterdam om April 26, you should visit Shadow Cities. Shadow Cities is a series of film nights in which the seamy sides of living in an urban environment are being highlighted. On April 26, Jacques Tati’s classic movie “Play Time”, which is set in a modernist city, will be screened and discussed. Check out the event page. 

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Amsterdam and part of the Randstad area, seen from space. ©André Kuipers

Past Friday, Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, who is currently on a ISS mission, flew over Amsterdam and took this wonderful nightly picture.

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Entry of the Spinhuis, a former women’s penitentiary. The Spinhuis now houses the University of Amsterdam’s sociology department. ©Panticore

“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls [..]” 
       - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 1974 (p.11)

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Paramount Theatre, New York, 1937. ©George Mann    

“A city is a geographic plexus, an economic organization, an institutional process, a theatre of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity […] the city creates the theater and is the theater”
      - Lewis Mumford, “What is a city” in: Architectural Record, 1937, p. 185.

[The picture of New York City’s Paramount Theatre was taken in the year Mumford published “What is a city?” in the city where he was born and where he lived, worked and died. The Paramount Theatre is no more. Built in 1926, it was converted to office and retail use in 1964.]

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This is part of a series of definitions of cities featured on City Breaths. The aim is to collect definitions from different perspectives. The definitions will tell us something on what the role of urban space is in sustaining human life, the way we experience and perceive urban space and the sensations it creates in us. You are welcome to add more definitions. The other definitions can be read here.

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