TransUrbanism

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"TransUrbanism" is a collection of essays and interviews about urbanism in a time of global transformation of the city itself.

Issued:	2002
ISBN:	90-5662-236-6
Dimensions:	23 x 16 cm
Pages:	240
Type:	Paperback
Language:	English
Price:	Sold Out

With: Arjun Appadurai, Knowbotic Research, Rem Koolhaas, Scott Lash, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Arjen Mulder, Edward Soja, Lars Spuybroek, Mark Wigley, Brett Steele, Roemer van Toorn.

Edited by Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder.

TransUrbanism is a collection of essays and interviews about urbanism in a time of transformation. Transurbanism is a theory of the transition of cities from the way they are now towards a design process in which the highly informed character of every built environment is used as a design resource by that environment itself. TransUrbanism proposes a design strategy that would allow cities to organize themselves as complex systems in which small local structures incorporate global flows.

The four urban functions of working, living, leisure and transport which Le Corbusier once so elegantly deployed in his model of the city can no longer be separated from each other either spatially or socially. Living and transport have become practically the same. Insofar as a house still has any function beyond providing a place to sleep, this derives from the theme-park character of the surrounding neighborhood. The city has ceased to be a clearly localizable spatial unit and has transformed into what might be termed an "urban field," a collection of activities instead of a material structure. Cities today are in a state of continuous decomposition, but are also continually reorganizing and rearranging themselves, expanding and shrinking.