Dossier

Open city. The challenges of the future

N116-Oct 20

Dossier's contents

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureThinking the cities of tomorrow

Times of crisis are also times of danger for democracy. Fear of the future can fuel the temptation to embrace an authoritarian response. What do we need to do to make...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureTowards collective vows of luxurious poverty

Rather than thinking of the city as a doomed reality, as a certain catastrophic environmentalism does, we can see it as a yet-to-be fulfilled promise that the...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureImagining the symbiotic city

The COVID-19 crisis has been an anthropological shock, in other words, a dreadful experience for millions of people that will be forever etched on their memories and...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureThe year of the plague

Ebola was the first in the succession of new diseases that tested humanity’s immune systems in the early 1990s. It was to be followed by avian influenza in 1997, and...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureTechnological sovereignties

Democracy and technology are two poles that engage in odd relationships of attraction and repulsion. The very technologies that provided minimum services while the...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureListening to the digital ordinary

If the presents and futures of our everyday urban life are entwined and unravelled in digital entanglements, knowing how to listen to them is crucial. But the right...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureThe end of the (common) world

The Flat Earth theory and other denialist utopias are the radical expression of increasingly widespread indignation at the mental and material decay of the common...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureThe far right and authoritarian populism, challenges for liberal democracy

The surfacing of far-right or so-called “authoritarian populist” political parties in the United States and in some parts of Europe seems to be contradictory, as they...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureUltra rhetoric

Ultra rhetoric is a new reincarnation of sophist rhetoric. It places fake news – a technological version of classic fallacies – at the heart of its communications...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureHow can Vox be defined? Five pointers for its interpretation

Vox’s electoral ups and downs indicate that its base is not as solid as it seems. This party, based on a vertical structure, limited ideological theorisation and high...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureCities that learn from science: the response to a design crisis

COVID-19 has spread faster in dense urban areas, resulting in a higher mortality rate compared to rural areas. By drawing the diagram of the virus’s behaviour and its...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureThe city is bare: nature as necessity

The lockdown triggered by the pandemic has revealed the shortcomings of urban living as we knew it to us. The rural world now offers tranquillity and contact with...

Il·lustració © Raquel Marín
Open city. The challenges of the futureAlternatives to the “plaza dura”. Fostering urban biodiversity and citizen empowerment

In terms of urban design, a “plaza dura” is deemed to be a solution for the urban planning of a public space with a large surface area, generally made of granite or...

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