Extending the Material Biography of Byblos through Understanding Ancient Common Commodity Spaces and Human Artifacts

Hoogbouw vraagt om interieurstedebouw

Al decennia staren beleidsmakers en stedebouwkundigen zich blind op hoogbouwbeleid door middel van hoogteregulering. Ook al blijft dit vanuit gezondheid en welstand verstandig, dit is een eenzijdige benadering. Zeker nu er steeds meer openbare ruimtes binnen de hoogbouwprojecten ontworpen en gerealiseerd worden, rijst de vraag hoe we voorbij de...

Changing Minds: Towards Water-Based Architecture and Public Space for the Future Urban Archipelago

This blog contribution supports the Urban Archipelago expo at Nieuwe Instituut (NI) in Rotterdam, designed to consist of four elements: a map, a view, a model, and a series of films that depicted a future of living with water, as well as a booklet that documented student work. The expo has been part of the Water Cities Rotterdam, which opened...

Cities of the Future: Societal by Nature

In the Minds of People: Port-City Perspectives, The Case of Rotterdam

Following the geographical ‘Any-Port Model’, urban design has stipulated and enforced the disunion of port and city over the recent decades. In conjunction with other disciplines, the emphasis has laid at dislocation of production activities in favor of logistic-productive dynamics. At the same time, professional focus was on the urban areas...

The Port-City Portrayed in its Public Spaces: Introducing Micro Biographies of Places

This article aims to extent the notion of port-cities and counter the mainstream narrative that port and city, in cases like Rotterdam, have become disunited by reviewing its public spaces in their unique port-city characteristics. These characteristics can be found by systematic approaching and describing public spaces as biographies of place,...

Mapping Maritime Mindsets: Mental Maps

Imagine: You are asked to draw a port city from memory. What would you put on paper? Do you think of harbours? Water, docks, cargo, moving loads, and ships? If your drawing shows these elements, don’t be surprised. Sixty-five graduate students also took on the challenge. In answering: “draw the port city of Rotterdam by mind”, the drawings of...

Public Space in the Entrepreneurial City

This issue of The Journal of Public Space explores the relationship between public space and entrepreneurship. The ideas developed during the Habitat III Conference in Quito, when considering: How to implement the ambitious aims of the New Urban Agenda in context of the current socio-economic realities and to reach a fairer share of the benefits...