Designing Urban TechnologiesImagining and developing urban technology in the 21st century is about creating multi-dimensional conditions that facilitate human progress and positive changes, consolidating and realizing shared aspirations, and intertwining individual wants and collective needs by design as they are by nature. We invite all urban designers to continue reflecting on the challenges we are living in, bring everyone in to define the problems and adopt forward-looking approaches to sustain livable cities. We collectively inherit cities in their perpetual state of change, we ought to pursue purposeful urban evolution in line with our evolving sense of being. As everything in cities has been designed, consciously or not, everything can be purposefully redesigned. So it starts…
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Mutual Aid as a Long-Term SolutionAt this time of nationwide lockdown, people are physically apart; we also realize once again, in the nonphysical sense, how discrete the country is, and so is the world. People experience different realities: some are hearing ongoing sirens, mourning without saying proper goodbye to family members and lining up for food for hours while others can safely stay at and work from home with all resources at their disposal. People have disparate solutions, and some with none for this crisis.
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The In-betweener: Where Do I BelongOnce upon a time, letters took weeks or even months to travel from town to town. Human settlements seemed so disperse since one could only travel so far via traditional modes of transportation. However, modern technology has greatly shortened the distance across the globe. In addition to instant communication, people can now even travel further and further in a more efficient manner. Therefore, one’s footprint throughout life is expanding. The definition of ‘home’ and one’s sense of belonging have been shaken as this new “nomadic” demographic has emerged, the “in-betweeners” who are born and raised in one place but who study, work, and live elsewhere, transgressing national boundaries.
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Memory "Placed" in Sunset Park, the Ephemeral yet EnduringAnthropologist Edmund Leach says, “it is not just that ‘places’ serve to remind us of the stories that are associated with them; in certain respects, the places only exist… because they have stories associated with them (Potteiger and Purinton, 23).” Through “(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park,” Betty revives and sustains the Sunset Park fresh in her and her fellow resident’s memory. The abandoned Chinese laundromat, the closed-down factory and the “Work in Progress” sign outside a covered vacant lot each tell a unique story. “But when once they have acquired this story-based existence, the landscape itself acquired the power of ‘telling the story,’” Leach goes on (Ibid). Residents in Sunset Park still face a long-haul battle. Nevertheless, their expedition will not cease at the step of raising awareness, what art is typically confined with. The power of the multilayered precious memory cultivated by, rooted in and giving power to the neighborhood safeguards Sunset Park and its people.
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