RL

Thursday 10th October 2024

Class 2: Cities - experiences, environments, connections

4. Cities of Meaning and experience

‘Intertextuality’: Crossing between different representations, genres and media

The soft city? - a view of the city which is about personal experiences, symbols, images: Brick lane, depictions of London etc.

5. City and nature: the more than human city:

Key idea: The resources a city uses and its ecological footprint - London and a massive area of land required to support it

Planetary Urbanisation

The relationship between cities and the natural resources it uses

2006/7 first time 50% of the world’s population live in cities

2050: 68% projected (UN population division 2018)

EG: Shenzhen, Guandong, PRC = Shock city

Population growth 1985-2015= 6,040%

Neil Brenner and Christian Schid on ‘Planetary urbanisation

  1. The creation of new scales of urbanism

  2. The decentring of cities - suburbs and hinterlands

  3. The end of wilderness: No part of nature is unaffected by cities. = Planetary urbanisation

New environments- new ecosystems:

Cities as a new ecosystem of animals such as foxes and rats.

6. World cities and global cities - cities of connections:

Cities in networks and systems: London:

British Empire and the East Indian company had massive effect on trade: Canary Wharf used to be the centre of all trade coming into England during the 1800s = a load of money

Architecture in London for the 20th century was made to imitate old buildings of importance= give London the idea of importance

The nature of London in the 20th and 21st century was all about establishing the multicultural connections between many countries.

Saskia Sassen: (The global city book)

Cities as a ‘command points’ of the global economy
Cities of power and connection
Global cities - local inequalities

Cities and difference:

Jennifer Robinson argues:

Our thinking about cities needs to look beyond the ‘usual suspects’ of western global cities, beyond New York, London etc and look towards the ‘ordinary cities’ of an urban planet.

Alternative idea to focus on: Suburbanisation, i.e: Bid rent theory etc.