Table of contents for City Visions in Topos

Over the last 15 years, we have witnessed the spectacular collapse of a wide range of entities –both state and private – that became over-reliant on urbanization activities as their primary driver of economic growth. This is a phenomenon that I refer to as “speculative urbanization”. Indeed, I would contend that it is one of the most consequential aspects of on-going urban migration and economic modernization developments being seen around the globe. Speculative urbanization refers to endeavors that actively instrumentalize proposals for – and the manufacturing of – new urban settlements and infrastructure expressly focused on achieving uncommon economic and political returns, as opposed to conventional urbanization activities that are undertaken to meet real (rather than artificially projected) demographic, social or market demand. This phenomenon includes the political re-designation and…

The term “smart city” is often used for marketing purposes and political campaigns – but being smart is not optional, not something cities can choose. Jarmo Eskelinen, president of the European Network of Living Labs and CEO of Forum Virium, a non-profit enterprise owned by the City of Helsinki, says that today, all cities are more or less smart anyway; how smart they are depends on how well they are aware of their urban and technological challenges, and on horizontal processes across the different silos of existing cities. Therefore, he suggests we skip the word “smart” altogether, and speak simply of “future cities.” When speaking of smart cities, the tendency is to emphasize the “smart” – smart is taken to be virtual networks that accumulate and connect hugely varied information;…

Art and Culture Production Centre, Kleivan, Norway A team of students from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design have built a seaside sauna. The project is located on a quay in Kleivan, Vestvågøy, a former fishing village in Lofoten, Norway. It is part of a building complex that also contains three cottage buildings – a fishermen’s cottage, a cod liver oil production and a cod salting building. The three abandoned structures were constructed in the early 1900s and are considered of historical value. Both the quay and the three buildings are listed in the “Cultural Heritage Plan of Lofoten”. The project was developed by Scarcity and Creativity Studio (SCS), a design and build studio within the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. The studio’s aim is to renovate the…

High-profile landscape architecture projects are by now obligatory tools for American municipal governments seeking to attract investment dollars and jobs. The narrative of outmoded infrastructure or former industrial land turned park is by now well established and the discipline of landscape architecture has emerged as a leader in their design. Catalyzed by these new public spaces, American downtowns and nearby neighborhoods are experiencing what the popular press and scholars alike herald as a “return to the city” or an “urban renaissance.” But whose renaissance is it? Who is returning? It is urgent to frame these spaces historically and geographically to take stock of the effects recent High-profile landscape architecture projects are by now obligatory tools for American municipal governments seeking to attract investment dollars and jobs. The narrative of outmoded…

The public sauna situated at the harbor of Gothenburg in Sweden might not be a discreet project, but it is most definitely an agglomeration of small-scale initiatives that fosters a much-needed creative resistance towards the long-term strategic visions and plans in place for the transformation of this derelict harbor area. Commissioned by the city planning authorities and public developer Älvstaden Utvecklings AB, the public sauna by Berlin-based architectural practice Raumlabor is one of several prototypes constituting the initiative “Public Space and Bathing Culture”. The collaboration between the city’s representatives and raumlabor have so far resulted in prototypes such as the beach, the pool, the sauna, a sailing school, the roller-derby rink, urban farming, a park at one of the abandoned hangars at the site, and “The Mountain” – a water…

Los Angeles is a place of urban contradictions. The city is at once laid-back and hypercompetitive. Rich yet run-down. Ugly but fascinating. It is hard to “tell” this city in any one coherent narrative. And there are few elements of its spatial reality that embody this contradictory character more convincingly than the Los Angeles River. Most tourists, and even many people living in Los Angeles, don’t even know there is such thing as an “LA River.” The river does not have a proper name. And yet, it is there – and it has been vital to the functioning of LA. First, it functioned as a water provider. In the early 20th century, a brutal concrete-fuelled makeover transformed it into a completely cemented linear space monster. From then on, it acted…

“Architecture has entered into a new engagement with digital culture and capital – which amounts to the most radical change within the discipline since the confluence of modernism and industrial production in the early twentieth century. Yet this shift has gone largely unnoticed, because it has not taken the form of a visible upheaval or wholesale transformation. (...) What is most insidious about the digital regime – and where it differs from earlier social and political paradigms that relied on labour – is how essentially automatic, and therefore effortless, it is, once programmed and wired. There is no limit to quantity, duration, multiplication, connecting, cross-referencing. (...) The digital is essentially beyond exhaustion – an endlessly upgrading and mutating integration of the city, its architecture, its constituent elements, and its bodies.”…

City of Workshops, Vienna, Austria The “Superscape 2014” competition was launched in November 2013. It asked for a vision of Vienna about 40 years from now, focused on the changing relation between public urban and private living space and its effect on the role of architecture and urban planning. The “City of Workshops” concept by Nikolas Kichler and David Steinwender was awarded a special mention. The City of Workshops starts out from the pressing issues of our time, climate change, a market economy penetrating all sectors of human activity, and ever-increasing social inequity. The concept encourages a culture where intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are no longer the result of individual existential pressures but emerge from the desire of wanting to contribute while being related to, and furthering the needs of,…

Situated between a clumsy urban mall and a sleek hotel, sweeping from a highway overpass down to the harbor front, is one of Copenhagen’s latest infrastructural gems, epitomizing an ease and efficiency of everyday urban life. The striking and heavily hyped Copenhagen Cykelslangen, the “Bicycle Snake” delivers cyclists along a 280-meter-long bicycle bridge – or extended ramp – from a first-story-level, heavily-trafficked highway overpass to the ground-level, car-free harbor front. Elevated 5.5 meters above ground level at its highest point, and resting on elegant, evenly spaced white pilotis, the Bicycle Snake has replaced what used to be an uncomfortable bicycle trek down two flights of stairs, followed by a slow, cautious ride through crowded pedestrian plazas. Now, in less than one minute, cyclists glide along the gentle curvature of the…

During the times of turbo-capitalism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a small, closed club of Russian architects, men who are now around 50 years old, dominated construction activity in Moscow. Even international stars like Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster were not able to take advantage of the competitions they had won. While a small number of architects were mainly concerned with increasing their wealth, most were merely trying to survive. Under Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov, public space was not an issue. His conservative taste became the general standard and found its peak in bizarre antics like the monument to Czar Peter the Great – which is, at nearly 100 metres in height, one of the highest monuments worldwide. Architecture as a Luxury Item In 2007 architects Dmitri Likin…

Under Gardiner is a modern infrastructural public space project that vies to become an urban social magnet in an effort to transform and rejuvenate Toronto by providing multiple new activities and connecting communities. It proposes adapting the space under the Gardiner Expressway, with the construction of phase one (1.7 km and 10 acres from Strachan Avenue to Spadina Avenue) to be completed in 2017 in conjunction with improvements to the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway. The entire project is phased from 2017 to 2031. The collaboration behind the project is unusual because it extends from the municipal scale with the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto, to designers Public Work and Ken Greenberg, to private donors and philanthropists Judy and Wil Matthews. The project is divided between being built…

On December 24, 1900, The Boston Globe ran a piece imagining what Boston would look like at the turn of the millennium. The lavishly illustrated article by Thomas F. Anderson painted an elaborate vision of a city with moving sidewalks, airships soaring high above the streets, and pneumatic tube delivery of everything from newspapers to food. The author’s predictions were sweeping and optimistic: Boston would be so beautiful that the word “slum” would be eliminated from the city’s vernacular. Glimpsing the future. Such descriptions, in retrospect, are almost comical – yet a hope of glimpsing the future continues to enchant us. A vibrant thread in fiction and film, speculations have become a genre in their own right, encompassing, as a common trope: the future of the city. Notions vary widely,…