URBAN ACTION

Theoretical developments concerning the social, civic and political discourse on public space, indicate the effectiveness of practices that enable urban population to shape urban space in the promotion of spatial justice. Social instability has become global, directly affecting many urban populations around the world. As such, it is a basis for the rhizomatic growth (i.e., non-designed multidirectional, multi-initiative growth offering a multitude of options and truths) of social and community initiative that seeks to design a new spatial reality and change the social order. Formal and informal urban practices generally rely on institutional/governmental support. Thus, social entrepreneurs, artists and activists often challenge the urban establishment, city-makers, municipal administrations, as well as planners, architects and urban designers, offering them critical and creative approaches to shaping public space and urban life.
 

The December StreetWise conference seeks to examine informal actions driven by the perception of personal responsibility and realize possibilities of direct intervention by users and passersby in the public space. We will focus on collaborations and initiatives that directly involve the users of the city and encourage them to play an effective role in the design of urban space.
Following recent trends of personal and place-related protest culture, the conference will aim to develop an open-source database of conditions that would foster such actions, and make urban protest modes accessible to the public.

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This open-source database of conditions will not only increase city-users awareness of their right and ability to shape public space and urban life, but also encourage them to take proactive action and actually participate in formulating the public agenda.
 

The conference will be held at the Hadarion (Urban Laboratory of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion, located in Hadar HaCarmel, formerly a most vibrant core neighbourhood in Haifa.
The conference as an opportunity for discourse between activists whose mode of action regards space as a tool for developing a new urban concept. The invited guests include activists whose contribution is the result of the direct link between their actions and urban passersby
in the space in which they operate. Bringing together activists from across the globe means to gather insights and experience gained in different urban and cultural spaces. The conference will be held as an action-space alongside think-tank meetings. At the first day the invited key participants will perform/act at the public space in Hadar HaCarmel.

 

Dr. Zivia Kay, September 2019