Creatively destroying New York : Fantasies, premonitions, and realities in the provisional city
histoire urbaine, littérature, renouvellement urbain, New York, terrorism, terrorisme, catastrophe naturelle, natural disaster, art, cinema, cinéma, développement urbain
Abstract from the distributor :
This lecture places the attack on the World Trade Center in the context of New York's history as a place that is seemingly destined to be destroyed and rebuilt with stunning regularity. It explores three ways of looking at a central experience, and cultural trope, about New York City: that it is a city of creative destruction, regularly destroying and rebuilding itself. Professor Page begins with a discussion of extraordinary moments of destruction, both natural and human-made (from fires and blizzards, to acts of terrorism), and then argues that it is the "regular" processes of creative destruction - through private real estate development and government urban renewal - which are far more important in shaping both New York's physical organization as well as its cultural image. Finally, he explores how the imagination of New York's destruction - in art, literature, and cinema - is not only at the heart of New York life but of American culture as a whole.
Max Page is Assistant Professor of Architecture and History at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he teaches urban, architectural, and public history.
Max Page
MIT Video
2002-02-25
01:32:40
EN
Enregistrement vidéo
http://video.mit.edu/watch/creatively-destroying-new-york-fantasies-premonitions-and-realities-in-the-provisional-city-8988/
September 11th and the city / Urban trauma and the resilience of cities
conflit urbain, guerre, violence urbaine, reconstruction, ville détruite, terrorism, terrorisme, natural disaster, catastrophe naturelle
Abstracts from the distributor :
September 11th and the City
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote "The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities." The test of terrorism, then, may well be the power to inflict the greatest harm to those same centers of culture, commerce, and exchange. This is something that the September 11 terrorists well understood. Mohamed Atta was a man well acquainted with the power and majesty of cities--and presumably their durability and resilience. He was trained as an engineer, architect and urban planner. Yet, warped by fundamentalism, Atta became the "perverted dreamer" that E. B. White imagined decades ago in Here is New York, a man who would "loose the lightning" on Manhattan and attempt to destroy it, symbolically and literally. And even as the rubble of the World Trade Center smoldered in the days and weeks following September 11, pundits in the United States, too, foretold of the death of downtown and the end of the city as we know it. But cities have endured trauma and violence for millennia, much of it far worse than that unleashed by Mohamed Atta on September 11. Any study of the city in history will reveal that human settlements possess an essential ability to resurrect themselves in the wake of devastation, a point that the Resilient City colloquium hopes to reaffirm.
Urban Trauma and the Resilience of Cities
This paper examines the near-ubiquity of urban resilience by analyzing the concepts of trauma, recovery, and remembrance. It questions the definition of "resilience," by exploring the relationship between recovery of the built environment and other ways that a "return to normalcy" may be measured. Urban trauma, like urban resilience, takes many forms, and can be categorized in many ways. First, there is the scale of destruction-which may range from a small single precinct to an entire city (or, potentially, an even larger area). Second, one may rank these traumas in terms of their human toll, as measured by deaths and disruption of lives. Third, one may organize these destructive acts according to their presumed cause-some result from the largely-uncontrollable forces of nature, such as earthquakes and floods; others are hybrids of natural forces and human action, such as fires; while still others result more wholly from deliberate human will, whether executed by conquering armies, aerial bombardment, or terrorist strikes. It is not enough to ask general questions about urban recovery; we must ask who recovers which aspects of the city, and by what mechanisms. The process of post-disaster recovery is a window into the power structure of the society that has been stricken. Similarly, to ask about remembrance is to inquire how what is remembered gets constructed, when, and by whom.
Thomas J. Campanella is a Faculty Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the University of North Carolina, and a former Fulbright fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Lawrence J. Vale is a Professor and Head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
Thomas J. Campanella
Lawrence J. Vale
MIT Video
2002-02-11
01:06:42
EN
Enregistrement vidéo
http://videolectures.net/mitworld_campanella_vale_scut/
Cities under siege: September 11th and after. City (Vol. 5, No. 3)
New York, September 11, 11 septembre, 9/11, urbicide, catastrophe, terrorism, terrorisme, sécurité, Catterall Bob
<div><b>Extract from the section introduction by Bob Catterall:</b></div> </div> The image of a siege suggested itself as we first began on the 13th of September to explore with others the meanings of the attacks, and their implications for policy and action, on New York and Washington on the 11th...</div> </div> The inquiry started in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England and is being edited in San Francisco in late November. The bulk of the contributions were written for this issue and are from Canada, Greece and Mexico as well as the US and Britain. We have also included immediate responses in the form of a sermon from Newcastle and Mike Davis' contribution to a US teach-in. Eric Darton's strangely prescient discussion of his 1999 book on the World Trade Center preceded September 11th. We end this feature with Haleh Afshar's thoughts about the nature of Islamic fundamentalism, or, rather, renewal and return.</div> </div> <b>Section contents:</b></div> </div> Bob Catterall - Cities under siege: September 11th and after: Introduction</div> Nicholas Coulton - 'Wiser than the calculations of rulers...'</div> Mike Davis - The future of fear</div> John Rennie Short - New York, September 11</div> John Friedmann - Cities under siege?</div> Mark Gottdiener - Thoughts on Tuesday's events</div> Peter Marcuse - Reflections on the events: Urban life will change</div> Eduardo Mendieta - The space of terror, the utopian city: On the attack on the World Trade Center</div> Lila Leontidou - Attack on the landscape of power: An anti-war elegy to New York inspired by Whitman's verses</div> Stephen Graham - In a moment: On glocal mobilities and the terrorised city</div> Michael Safier - Confronting "urbicide": Crimes against humaniaty, civility and diversity and the case for a civic cosmopolitan response to the attack on New York</div> Divided we stand: A conversation with Eric Darton</div> Gustavo Esteva - Embracing the otherness of the other</div> Haleh Afshar - Terrorism and the Middle East</div> </div>
NC
Routledge
2001
383-438
Revue
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccit20/5/3