1st Edition
Distributed Urbanism Cities After Google Earth
What form of housing will emerge in Dubai, where the majority of the population are non-citizens and the average length of stay is three days? How will depopulating cities reclaim vacant space, reorganize infrastructure and redefine their economic identity? What type of architecture results from the prevalence of airborne contaminants? What kind of urbanism does Google Earth produce?
Exploring the increasingly decentralized systems through which cities are organized and produced, Distributed Urbanism highlights the architectural practices that are emerging in response. Unlike early models of urbanism, in which centralized models of production, communication and governance were sited within a central business district, contemporary urbanism is shaped by remote, distributed mechanisms such as information technologies, (i.e. SatNav, Google Earth, E-trade, Photosynth or RSS web feeds) cooperative economic models and environmental networks, many of which are physically remote from the cities they shape.
Consisting of a collection of case studies on global cities including Rotterdam, Tokyo, Barcelona, Detroit, Hong Kong, Dubai, Beijing and Mumbai, Distributed Urbanism draws on these cities in relation to current events, urban schemes and demographic data. All the contributors, a combination of commentators on urbanism and architecture, as well as practitioners in the field, are admired for their work in the area of urban change.
Foreword Felicity Scott Acknowledgements Introduction Gretchen Wilkins 1. The City You Can’t See on Google Earth Ilka and Andreas Ruby 2. Rural Urbanism: Thriving Under the Radar – Beijing’s Villages in the City Robert Mangurian and MaryAnn Ray 3. Rotterdam 1979-2007: From Ideology to Market Communism and Beyond Michael Speaks 4. MegaHouse Hitoshi Abe and Masashige Motoe 5. BORDERLAND/BORDERAMA/DETROIT Jerry Herron 6. Rubble in the Sand Jan van Schaik and Simon Drysdale 7. Density of Emptiness Jason Young 8. Antisepsis Li Shiqiao 9. BEYOND URBANISM:Mumbai and the cultivation of an Eye Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha 10. Resurrecting Cities: Instant Urban Planning Ignasi Pérez Arnal, translated by Oscar Yanez del Mazo 11. Productive Residue: The Casting of Alternative Public Space Dan Pitera 12. Bubble Cities: Airports, Islands and Nomads Gretchen Wilkins Bibliography Index
Biography
Gretchen Wilkins is Senior Lecturer in Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne, teaching in the Urban Architecture Laboratory and is a co-coordinator of the World Architecture Workshop. Previously she was Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan and Research Fellow at the Japan Foundation. She is the editor of Entropia: Incremental Gestures Towards a Possible Urbanism (Champ Libre, 2008) and On-The-Spot: Atelier Hitoshi Abe (University of Michigan, 2008).
