This conference day is organised at the occasion of metrolab.brussels' 2017 MasterClass, an intensive pedagogical and practical experimentation on how to design more inclusive urban spaces. With more than 180 registered participants and incredible speakers, the "In/Out : Designing urban inclusion" conference has been a success!
What do we mean today by "inclusive" urban policies? How does "inclusion" relate to other principles of social development such as "cohesion", "integration" or "solidarity"? How can political, technical and civil society actors translate their will of inclusion into hospitable spaces? What exactly makes the inclusive or hospitable quality of a place (be it a building, a square, an avenue, a neighborhood, a city)? These questions have been the core of the collective reflections. They have been explored by internationally renowned scholars and practitioners in architecture, urban planning, geography, sociology, political science, law and philosophy.
Programme
08:30 Registration
09:00 Introduction – Rudi Vervoort (Minister-President, Brussels Capital-Region), Mathieu Berger (University of Louvain/MLB) and Benoît Moritz (University of Brussels/MLB) : Introducing Metrolab, the 2017 MasterClass and the speakers
Morning session: Inclusive architectures
09:20 Miodrag Mitrasinovic (Architect, The New School, NY). Designing infrastructures of inclusion
Miodrag Mitrasinovic will discuss how design – broadly construed – has been employed as an agent of social and political change, and a catalyst for spatial and urban transformations in cities across the world, arguing simultaneously for the centrality of designing in the conceptualization and production of inclusive and participatory urban space.
10:10 Matthieu Poitevin (Architect, 'ARM Architecture/Caractère Spécial' - in charge of the realisation of La Belle de Mai, in Marseille). How to make place for culture in a popular neighbourhood?
La Belle de Mai is an huge cultural place localized in a popular neighbourhood of Marseille. For nearly 15 years, architect Matthieu Poitevin has been working on the renovation of this former industrial infrastructure. His intervention will be focused on the process that has been installed to guarantee the progressive opening of the cultural infrastructure to a large public. He defines himself as an “architecte frichier”.
10:50 Coffee break
11:10 Teddy Cruz & Fonna Forman (Architect and Political Scientist, University of California San Diego). Reimagining urban borders in a time of global closure (EN>FR translation) In this talk we will discuss our work on informal urbanization and citizenship culture in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, and amplify this contested border site as a laboratory for rethinking urban border zones across the world. Special attention will be paid to evolving ideas of citizenship.
12:10 Questions & Answers
13:00 Lunch
Afternoon session: The social qualities of urban environments
14:00 Introduction to the afternoon session - Louise Carlier (University of Louvain/MLB)
14:10 Joan Stavo-Debauge (Sociologist, University of Lausanne). Hospitality and the inclusive city
Joan Stavo-Debauge will examine how the concept of hospitality can contribute to our understanding of urban environments as we strive of more inclusive cities. For us, ‘hospitality’ refers not only to a personal virtue, but more generally to a quality of environments, situations, ambiances, objects, spaces, buildings, or institutions. We will attempt do present some of the main features of such a quality.
14:50 Jean-Paul Thibaud (Sociologist, Ecole Nationale d’Architecture, Grenoble). Ambient modes of urban hospitality
This lecture explores the close links between hospitality and ambiance. What does one gain from talking about ambient hospitality? What about the ambient modes of urban hospitality? Relying on a socio-aesthetic perspective of the urban environment and the experience of city dwellers, ambiance helps to highlight the sensorial, bodily, affective and infra-political dimensions of hospi- tality. Such a perspective enables to question the qualities of movement, the basic trust and the sensitivity to others in a public space.
15:30 Paul Simpson (Geographer, University of Plymouth). Creating (in)hospitable environments: Felt experiences of infrastructure and ambiance / atmospheres
This lecture explores relationships between hospitality, ambiances / atmospheres, mobility, and infrastructure. It does so by considering the felt sense of the social and material environments cyclists gain when moving along their regular commuting routes. More specifically, the focus falls upon how various forms of shared transport infrastructure choreograph bodies in their movements through the city and so contribute towards the co-production of various (in)hospitable ambiances / atmospheres between differently mobile bodies. This discussion will be illustrated with examples drawn from video interviews conducted with 24 commuter cyclists in Plymouth, UK. Based on this, the paper argues that such felt experiences of (in)hospitable ambiances / atmospheres should be considered further in planning for cycling and when evaluating future infrastructural developments.
16:10 Coffee break
Keynote lecture
16:30 Maya Wiley (Jurist, Counsel of NYC Mayor De Blasio until 2016, now professor of urban policy and management at The NewSchool, NYC). Race, Class and the Reinvention of New York City: An Insider’s View
New York City is not just the largest city in the United States, it is the most diverse and one of the most segregated. It is the most vibrant and cultural, with its own parochialism. It is one of the nation’s richest and poorest cities.
At a time when the promise of US Democracy is being questioned along with the legacy of racism and xenophobia, cities continue to be the locus of our challenges and possibilities. Maya Wiley, a racial justice advocate and former Counsel to New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio’s progressive administration, presents an example of how one large city is experimenting and innovating in a way that takes on the challenge of reversing income and wealth inequality, shrinking public spaces and resources as they meet the daily needs of residents. Sharing her experience as an advocate charged with civil and human rights, universal broadband access, with supporting local businesses and hiring through government contracting, Professor Wiley will share perspectives from the trenches of New York City’s senior cabinet.
17:30 Questions & Answers + Closing
18:00 Drink
