Tuesday 2 October, 9.30pm until 11.00pm, Plano B, Rua Cândido dos Reis, 30, Porto, Portugal
The debate will be in English.
Tickets: €4.00 available from OASRN
In this, the ‘Urban Age’, a million migrants a week currently fuel the dynamic growth of urban centres in Asia and Africa. By contrast, the discussion in a largely post-industrial Europe has shifted from the ‘urban renaissance’ to whether cities will survive at all. Against a backdrop of economic slowdown, the report State of the European Cities, which surveyed 258 cities within the European Union, shows a third are stagnating and another third suffer from significant population decline. In shrinking cities, it is the younger generations who are most likely to move away. In Porto, within a single decade, more than 30 per cent of the population has abandoned the central city. Alongside these demographic and economic realities, fears over environmental damage, wellbeing and social fragmentation fuel a cultural ambivalence about cities. Architecture magazine A10.eu claims the European city ‘has reached its upper limit’, and suggests replacing the paradigm of ‘growth equals progress’ with an approach based on seeking ‘the advantages of shrinkage and changelessness’.
The UK’s LSE Cities programme promotes ‘social sustainability’, highlighting responsible investment and the corporate responsibilities of developers. The project Arrebita! Porto also emphasises the role of social enterprise. And the World Future Council Foundation contends that addressing de-industrialisation, ageing infrastructure and run-down estates will require a shift from urban regeneration – addressing the ‘physical, economic and social wellbeing’ – to eco-regeneration – for example, through EU-funded, low-carbon transport, water and waste networks and renewable energy initiatives. But the idea of ‘the sustainable city’ has dominated regeneration initiatives for more than 20 years, so is it really the answer?
How can urban centres recapture a sense of dynamism? Given the reality of economic cycles and population movements, is it time to accept that planning for shrinkage can be as creative as planning for growth? With emerging cities in the East taking up the mantle of economic dynamism, should European cities follow an alternative ‘model’, based on cultural identity and urban memory? Or does a focus on preservation and heritage risk fossilising the city and turning it into a museum piece? Has the role of architecture and design as a starting point for innovation and regeneration been overstated anyway? In short, how can new opportunities be maximised and social advances realised?
 | Alastair Donald associate director, Future Cities Project; architecture programme manager, British Council |
 | Professor Nuno Grande architect; assistant professor, Department of Architecture, University of Coimbra |
 | Will Hunter deputy editor, Architectural Review; architecture tutor, Royal College of Art |
 | José Paixao project manager, Arrebita!Porto |
 | Luis T Pereira founding partner, [A] ainda arquitectura architecture studio, Porto |
| Chair: | |
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Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive |
Cities should be seen as drivers of economic growth and human development, says report published at World Urban Forum
Claire Provost, Guardian, 6 September 2012
he idea here is that when you start with a blank canvas, so to speak — rather than an organically growing city, with its various demands — you can build the innovation in from the ground floor, avoiding the urban planning mistakes of yesteryear.
Susan DeFreitas, Earth Techling, 6 June 2012
City is the ultimate handbook for the archetypal city and contains main sections on ‘History', ‘Customs and Language', ‘Districts', ‘Transport', ‘Money', ‘Work', ‘Tourist Sites', ‘Shops and markets', ‘Nightlife', etc., and mini-essays on anything and everything from Babel, Tenochtitlán and Ellis Island to Beijing, Mumbai and New York, and from boulevards, suburbs, shanty towns and favelas, to skylines, urban legends and the sacred.
PD Smith, Bloomsbury, 10 May 2012
Porto is a small city –like the Talking Heads ironically sung of London– and, on top of it, it is also a shrinking city. Misquoting Paul Virilio, one could even say it is a city on the brink of disappearance – if not dangerously sinking into long-term cultural and economical insignificance.
Pedro Gadanho, shrapnel contemporary, 21 November 2009
In the not too distant future, demographic and ecological developments in Europe will result in a fundamental change in the design task and call for a substantially new approach by architecture and urban design.
Hans Ibelings, A10.eu, September 2008
It is difficult to speak of a standard European model of the city if we take into account the diversity of the continent’s cities, especially in terms of their respective traditions, whether Anglo-Saxon, Central European, Nordic or Mediterranean. Nonetheless, we can extract a set of common characteristics that are present in all these cities, and which define a similar way of understanding the city.
Joan Clos, Urban Age, 1 November 2005
