Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
• The Pop-Up City has a great roundup of urban games hosted by Berlin’s Invisible Playground. Have fun with transparencies to decode a message in the urban landscape or play a real life version of farmville (life imitating web imitating life). In contrast to virtual games, Invisible Playground’s games “focus on the people in the city instead of the stuff.
• What if changing a city was as simple as changing software? That’s the principle behind Renew Newcastle, a not-for-profit company which seeks to incubate small initiatives in vacant spaces in Newcastle, Australia. They achieve this goal using the model of hacking. Rather than creating a new operating system, they created new rules, contracts and relationships to open up space through barter arrangements. “We made the city work for people for whom it had not worked in a long time.” (Grist)
• The L Magazine reports on a Rem Koolhaas’ recent exhibition on preservationism and architecture. Koolhaas considers the cost of preservationism, which he argues has become the dominant mode of contemporary architecture: deterioration, stagnation and showpiece landscapes. Koolhaas advocates for a measure of destruction and regeneration to counterbalance preservation and conservation.
• Polis reports on the phenomenon of collective resource use amongst Bangkok’s urban poor. According to the post, impoverished communities in Bangkok have shown a remarkable capacity to organize and negotiate for “upgraded infrastructure and people-centred housing solutions”. Moreover, redevelopment processes driven by local residents are seen to generate a high rates of return on both social and economic capital.
Image from The Pop Up City
Do you have a World Wide Wednesday worthy article you’d like to share? Send the link to www@spacing.ca