Session: #602

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
Archaeology and the future of cities and urban landscapes
Session format:
Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Title & Content

Title:
For future reference: understanding the city, (re)presentations of the urban landscape and the past-as-present
Content:
The session examines the politics of the past-as-present with reference to the urban landscape as a field of inscription. The term ecumenopolis was coined by architect Constantinos Doxiadis in the 1960s to denote the world-city of the future. Current urban sprawls and projections for the future include numbers of people unheard of until recently residing in a single city of the aforementioned kind. The environment of crisis, a global phenomenon with varied local and/ or regional impacts, raises the question of how we can understand, interpret and protect the city and its heritage under rapidly changing circumstances.
We welcome contributions from distinct disciplines with a common axis of studying the urban condition in a coherent way, among others: how (re)presentations of the past are constructed and communicated in the urban setting and how this entangles itself with the practice of archaeology as socially evolving and involving audiences; alternative archaeologies, such as graffiti and street art and urban comics; urban space – in particular heritage sites - and how it is transformed in relation to tourism and because of its consequences (i.e. gentrification, prioritizing of certain sites over others, site (in)visibility); mechanisms of the social memory of space and the kinds of knowledge that emerge as a result of the use and abuse of architecture, especially iconic urban architecture; the “building-as-image” attitude toward urban heritage promoting a visual approach as opposed to a multisensory somatic experience.
Keywords:
urban heritage, urban growth, past-as-present
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no

Organisers

Main organiser:
Professor Athena Hadji (Greece) 1
Co-organisers:
Professor Magdalena Saura (Spain) 2
Affiliations:
1. Hellenic Open University
2. Polytechnic University of Catalonia