Master Programme Relational City

The Master Programme Relational City. Other ways to conceive the plural city is based on the idea that the new challenges of cities, plural and intelligent, are not just working in conjunction with basic disciplinary aspects of urbanism, infrastructure, paths, patterns, but are also closely linked to energy balance criteria and thermodynamic models, theories involving dynamic urban systems, socio-cultural aspects related to the culture of networking and complex behaviours and the evidence that the town still has economic potential for develop an ecosystem-like economy.

Here you can have an overview of the content of the master:

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We are receiving applications for the 2011-12 program which is organized by the ESARQ School of Architecture and the Faculty of Humanities at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. Review the requirements for admission and apply online.

El dibujo como herramienta para estudiar la ciudad II

Dibujo por Pilar Celorio

En un post reciente, hablamos de la importancia del dibujo como herramienta para estudiar, conocer y comprender las ciudades. Manuel Arenas y Guillem Carabí comparten aquí nuevamente algunos dibujos de Barcelona, que forman parte de la asignatura Visions Urbanes de la ESARQ UIC.

La ciudad como sistema adaptativo

La ciudad ya no puede ser un lugar pensado desde las reglas, sino un espacio vivido desde los principios.

Ya han pasado muchos años desde que se ha podido constatar el fracaso de planificar las ciudades a medio y largo plazo. Quizás este sistema fuera pertinente a principios del siglo XIX donde todavía se podía planificar atendiendo a curvas de crecimientos predecibles y comportamientos sociales estables. Hoy a principios del siglo XXI está ya claro que crear regulaciones es tan absurdo como pensar que lo que hoy es válido lo será también pasado mañana. La ciudad depende en mayor medida del comportamiento y el uso del entramado urbano que de la constitución física específica de cada calle, cada acera, cada edificio. Naturalmente hay secciones de calle que restringen un comportamiento “urbano” o malbaratan una lógica de lo “común” y en cambio otros dispositivos urbanos favorecen el desarrollo de la identidad (tanto individual como compartida) o ayudan al florecimiento de acontecimientos urbanos que establecen vínculos emocionales con sus habitantes.

SENSEable Cities: Exploring Urban Futures at the City Centered Festival

City Centered Festival is a free, three-day festival of locative media and urban community in San Francisco. The event included demonstrations and installations in the Tenderloin district, a symposium in the Mission district and community training workshops, and it just took place in June 2010.

We want to make an overview on the work that the MIT SENSEable Cities presented there. You already know about our deep interest in the use of new and innovative tools to explore and research the concept of “relational city“, so let’s take a look:

Master Programme Relational Barcelona

Our friends from Ecosistema Urbano has uploaded the presentation and programme four our 2010-2011 course at scribd. Here you can take a look:

Drivers of Change

What will our world be like in 2050? ARUP’s new set of 175 cards investigates leading drivers in greater depth that have particular relevance to our on-going urban history. They include energy, waste, climate change, water, demographics, urbanisation and poverty. The cards can be used for developing business strategy, brainstorming, education and to help the reader to gain greater knowledge of the issues which are driving global change.

El dibujo como herramienta para estudiar la ciudad

El dibujo es una buena herramienta de conocimiento de la ciudad. En la asignatura Visions Urbanes de la ESARQ UIC cuyos responsables son Manuel Arenas y Guillem Carabí, ambos del equipo de dirección y coordinación de nuestro Máster Barcelona Relacional, se estudia como el dibujo nos puede ayudar a comprender las ciudades.

The Urban Connection | An actor-relational approach to urban planning [Book]

We recently found out this book, that is somehow related with our programme and want to share some of the ideas that Luuk Boelens had in mind when writing the book. Described with these words:

The Urban Connection develops a promising actor-relational approach to urban planning. With respect to the usual governmental planning, it is focused outside in, instead of inside out. It derives its leitmotif from the actual debate about state controlled versus neo-liberal planning and reflects on innovative post structuralist scholars in the field of planning, economics, social geography and governance.

Documental “Soluciones para el tránsito” Discovery Channel

Fuente: Discovery Channel

Using Innovative Tools to Understand the City

This is the first of a series of coming posts by which we’re going to explain the contents and goals of our Master Programme as part of a global approach in which technologic and relational links interact in order to better understand our cities and why we decided to provide each student with an iPad as an academic tool.

A few days ago, Fabian Neuhaus made this question: How do we identify our selves with the spaces we use and how do we navigate with the many obstacles the urban environment contains?

He pointed:

Living in the city means to constantly negotiate spaces as well as navigate space. This becomes more difficult under the density aspect as well as the mobility aspects. Also the cycles of change are very short and frequent adaptations require constant reorientation. Aspects of repetition and routine play an important role in the navigation of everyday situations. Being familiar with the aspects makes this task a lot easier. However, as soon as there are changes, new features or temporary obstacles, those have to be integrated.