fabulation session 20131107-8 AltArt, Transylvania. Faciliated by Istvan Szakats

Cities are becoming ever more significant habitats for humans in the future. Envisioning the future of the city can bring forth significant assumptions on our individual and social identity. What kind of paths can city development take? What kinds of social movements will it encompass? What will be our place in the city we will live in 20 years from now? Who will be and what we will do?

(notes from day 1)

Group – Rarita

Cities – general ideas

• Most population in Europe lives in cities (60%?) – one cannot escape statistics
• Surveillance – recent history ante ’89 vs traffic surveillance; to be watched (CCTV) vs, feeling constantly watched; anonymity in public spaces vs rural “surveillance” where you can’t escape getting noticed
• City annihilates or amplifies individuality
• Sectoral industry cities are different from continent to continent / country to country
• Paris as example of homelessness, rats, misery vs tourism mania
• Cities have different orientations (industrial, cultural, touristic)
• The issue of ghost cities, abandoned or failed cities (ex. Detroit, Chinese cities)
• Pathological behaviors in cities
• Homelessness – big in capital cities, small or non-existence in small cities
• One is always a minority and never the target of everything that is going on in a city.
• Sustainability – cities are the least sustainable form
• Everything that has to do with cities is a paradox
• Every city has a potential for a better path to the future
• Rural-urban distinction

Characteristics :

• Lots of people
• Crowds
• Special districts for all tastes/hobbies – thematic, food, cultural, for specific groups
• Concentration yet variety
• Cities cluster/marginalize on specific purposes (case of immigrants- rent price control, parking control)
• Communities that always “flock together“, small communities
• Traffic – the too many cars issues yet cars define social status and become a ”must have”
• There is always a chance for leisure activities (running exercise)
• Biking is more and more used
• Lots of services
• Geography / landscape defines cities
• Eco-cities and real sustainable cities– can they exist ?
• Food – farmers, bio products

Likes – What do a like/love in a city??

• There are communities for everything
• Divers population
• Safety
• Cities are “walk-able”
• Multicultural and the challenges to deal with it
• History
• Multiples, culture crash
• Cities are too big to experience
• The chance to change cities
• Concentration
• Gaining anonymity
• Variety
• Cities as culture magnets
• Velocity – speed, access, information, mobility
• Variety of foods / cuisines
• Connectivity, internet and easy access
• Freedom and obscurity
• Different cultural backgrounds and different styles
• The chance to make choices
• Regenerative cities – cities can transform, improve themselves – urban planners, architects , landscape architects can use challenging concepts to transform cities
• Love a city that still has/keeps a human size
• Changing realities
• Friendly people
• Interest in marginal groups
• Infinite freedom
• you can find communities that welcome you
• getting the chance not to be noticed

Dislikes – What do I hate most in cities?

• Stigmatization
• Racism
• Bad urban planning – historical vs new neighborhoods
• Lack of forests
• Traffic jams
• Claustrophobic
• Dependence on resources
• Distance from nature
• Concentration of people that never talk to each other
• Loosing anonymity
• Social/public spaces that make you feel strange
• Intolerance
• Getting the chance not to be noticed
• Lack of interest of who you are
• Distraction
• Burden of making choices
• Loneliness (an appearance? Lonely groups cancel themselves out)
• No place for losers – just for successful people
• The social pressure to show you are successful
• Hating the city itself because everything manmade is not perfect
• Crime ; crime happens if neighborhood structure allows it.
• The inhumanity of the city – it does not work on human scale, timeframes, imposes roles, lack of access,
• Dependence on resources (ex. electricity)
• Bad urban planning..
• Garbage / waste
• Ignorance
• Many choices but actually trivial
• Lack of safety
• Crime – riots
• Protests , strikes
• Pollution,
• Strikes
• Unfriendly for animals – created for the interest of the supreme human race.
• Cities grow without a limit
• Sexual violence, sexual assaulting, domestic violence
• Ignorance

Others

• Poverty vs richness,
• Rules and slaves,
• Small image, big image,
• City is always on the verge of collapse
• Using more images then before
• Internet – urbanization of mental space
• You have limited time to generate as many identities as you like.

(notes from day 2)

Trends

* Less sustainability with environment * The gap between online and offline will increase * Dilution of class geography * Less social interaction * Nation state → city state * More visible infrastructure * Increased mobility /instability * Persistence of slums? * Can’s say (for now)→ citizenship dilution * Mega goes mega mega * Self gentrifying slum (pride) * Would be nice to turn existence to life * Dependent on meditation (Technic) * Aging/ generation gaps shrinking * Architecture will change /less nature * The number of religious people will grow * More madness (religious) * Music/dance

Scenarios

Group – Mihaela

Minks Scenario

The mayor of Minsk was a well famous charismatic cosmonaut. He was a guest for a year in a Bollywood reality show regarding life on the Indian Space Station.. The show illustrated the daily life of cosmonauts, men, women, pets and robots.

The mayor from Minsk was the first foreign guest in the show. The crew of the first Indian mission to Mars came to Minsk one day for a very meditatized event invited by the mayor.

The mayor has the Bollywood support but also the one of space nostalgics in Belarus. He started in Minsk the first space art scholarship for unprivileged kids and helped to establish a space/science/tech- research hub. The mayor influenced a lot the development of the city because of his political charisma and legitimacy.

Minsk became a tech oriented society connected with the Baltic tech hub, but left aside the social problems of the city among communities that do not interact with space industry. The communities fit with a European opinion of what a society should be rather then the Bollywood ideal of space industry and the supporting infrastructure on Earth.

There is a group of “radical disintermediationalists” protesters against centralized technology, mediation of experience and for direct experience of reality. mostly average citizens and post-media hackers and trickters. they try to hijack the TV broadcasts of the mayor and his Indian guests and reduce access to the event of the fans in India; The protesters created the first physical protest in years. thousands on the street but since such a physical protest has not happened recently, the security to be prepared for such things is incomplete because protests are old fashioned and unusual. The authorities try to offer free vodka to buy-off the protesters. Vodka has been restricted in the city since 10 years ago.

Other groups are also trying to claim attention during the spectacle, e.g. protesting against the failed re-forestation initiative to protect the city from floods caused by the melting permafrost. The authorities and specially the Mayor promoted it as a safe and eco solution but not as complete and successful and the river crossing Minsk is still a threat.

The disintermediation society …

The direct experience of reality ; any tech that puts layers between you and reality is not to be trusted, has to be replaced, destroyed. Technology destroys reality and create an electro-magnetic pole that destroys the tech use in that day.

The low probable high impact protest led to the freezing of routine life in the city. The Protests gets people to occupy the transport infrastructure (metro, electric cars, etc) Attempt to disinter mediate the transport infrastructure by using metro carriages for parties, blocking other users. ‘Mediation’ shows that there is no available transport (ie. Electric cars, busses, etc). aim to get people stay home with friends, join parties and avoid the ‘mediated spectacle’ of Bollywood.

Assuming the future