Here are details of a Forum on the theme of Resilience and Design, edited by Rob Cowley, in the journal Resilience. As well as an introduction by Rob, it consists of four short essays on ‘urbany’ themes, mainly, by myself, Tania Katzschner, Nathaniel Tkacz, and Filip De Boeck. Here is the list of contents:
Resilience and design: an introduction, Robert Cowley
Planning as design in the Wicked City, Clive Barnett
Design, responsibility and ‘Staying with the Trouble’: rethinking urban conservation in Cape Town, Tania Katzschner
In a world of data signals, resilience is subsumed into a design paradigm, Nathaniel Tkacz
‘The Hole of the World’: designing possibility through topography in Congo’s urban settings, Filip de Boeck
And here is the abstract for the whole collection:
“This forum aims to encourage theorists of resilience to engage more closely with different aspects of design theory and practice. The introduction outlines a series of largely unacknowledged parallels between resilience and design, relating to the valorisation of processes over states, the loss of faith in ‘planning’, the ambivalent status of boundaries and interfaces, and open-ended political possibilities. Four short reflections then follow on various design-related topics: the significance of the ‘wicked problem’ in contemporary urban planning and design, and the urbanisation of responsibility; design’s potential to repoliticise and engender new forms of responsibility; the significance of the digital interface; and the condition of everyday life in the ‘unplanned’ post-colonial city. Readers are invited to build on or refute the explicit and implicit links made between resilience and design in the various forum contributions.”
I have a bunch of free e-copies of the Forum, so let me know if you’d like one!
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