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	<title>Urbanism &#8211; The Flaneurbanite</title>
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	<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com</link>
	<description>The French term &#039;Flâneur&#039; refers to the &#039;wanderer&#039;, the &#039;stroller&#039; in the City - the &#039;observer&#039;, in one sense and the &#039;voyeur&#039;, in another - one who &#039;walks the City in order to experience it&#039; (Charles Baudelaire). The Flaneurbanite documents the stories by this modern day act of flânerie - curious, covert, yet candid, she walks the City and tells the stories - the many legends, big and small, told and untold, hidden under its many layers.</description>
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; The themes for 2014 (and beyond) Part 1</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-the-themes-for-2014-and-beyond-part-1/</link>
					<comments>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-the-themes-for-2014-and-beyond-part-1/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Apr 2014 18:08:14 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agile urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alastair Parvin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Candy Chang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crowdsourced urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DIY Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jason Roberts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lean urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[open source urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Participatory Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Better Block. Citizen Urbanism]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=2317</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[This has been sitting in my writing notes ever since the first week of January when, satiated with a wonderful year-end trip deep in southeast Asia, I sat down to think about what 2014 is going to be like in this all-encompassing, jargon-filled world of urbanism. I was going to call these the top buzzwords in urbanism initially, but I couldn&#8217;t help but admit that leaving aside the compelling twenty-first century urbanist propensity to jargonise everything, it is hard to ignore that this is what&#8217;s happening in the world of thinking about cities and places and that at least a few of these have indeed transcended into something akin to a trend &#8211; and at least some of these are here to stay, for good reason. I&#8217;ll tackle one per post. 1. Buzzwords: Lean Urbanism / Tactical Urbanism / Open Source Urbanism / Agile Urbanism The New New Urbanism! What it means: A new wave of urbanism, attempting to cut through the red tape and general lack of insight that surrounds planning decisions in most of our cities &#8211; no more &#8220;Big Civic&#8221;, as the Knight Foundation put it in their announcement for the $600,000 Grant to the Lean Urbanism Movement by architect Andres Duany. In simple words, the idea is to solve community problems at the community level, more often than not by using community resources. Small and bottom-up is the new way to go. It makes sense, and that is perhaps why, never mind the buzzwords, the idea has really taken off in communities all over the western* world. To paraphrase that young star Alastair Parvin,  this is urbanism for the people, by the people, and indeed, Parvin&#8217;s TED talk is a wonderfully articulate example of the theme. Also, remember the much celebrated and much-copied projects by Candy Chang? That&#8217;s what we are talking about. And here&#8217;s another TED talk by Jason Roberts who&#8217;s doing just this through The Better Block. Of course, I also think that our access to social media and technology in general is playing a big role in this wave. Community funding websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo go a long way in making these community projects possible, and have opened up the world of Getting Things Done to almost anyone who has a good idea and the will to make it happen. Also called: Citizen Urbanism, Participatory Urbanism, Crowdsourced Urbanism,  DIY Urbanism, Shilpa Bhatnagar Urbanism. (Why not? Everyone&#8217;s making up their own names for it!). *Why the emphasis on western? Well, the most organised top-down planning systems exist in the West, and it here where the shift from the top-down to the bottom-up approach is news. In the developing world, where top-down planning is usually lacking in resource or foresight, it has been much more common for communities to work their way around their problems of place. The solutions may not be ideal,  as they operate in a much more fragmented and often entirely unregulated environment, but they are certainly lean! Oh and I know a fabulous example of this from India, which absolutely deserves its own post. Coming soon. &#160;]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; Place Engagement through Art at Bankside</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-place-engagement-through-art-at-bankside/</link>
					<comments>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-place-engagement-through-art-at-bankside/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Sep 2013 08:35:22 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alex Chinneck]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Artists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bankside]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Candy Chang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flaneurbanite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[place branding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[placemaking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Street Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urban art]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=2288</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[I have written about Candy Chang&#8217;s thoughtful urban installations before, and therefore I am delighted to hear that she is bringing her work to London through the next few weeks as part of the Merge Festival at Bankside. The festival is a celebration of the rich cultural heritage of the area, and it aims to encourage public engagement with the place through a series of installations and art projects and performances over the next few weeks. Candy Chang brings her &#8220;Before I Die&#8221; installation to the festival &#8211; the installation has travelled to several cities around the world and has always brought out the most interesting and poignant em otionsfrom the people in these locations. Also of note is artist Alex Chinneck&#8217;s upside-down facade installation at 20 Blackfriars Road. Chinneck&#8217;s works use sculpture and installation to &#8220;play&#8221; with the elements and emotions around post-industrial , pre-gentrification landscapes in London. Fascinating work. The installations are on until the 20th of October, and if I were you, I&#8217;d go and check them out. In fact, I will soon, given my ongoing work with Bankside&#8217;s neighbour London Bridge, and when I do, I&#8217;ll write to tell you all about it. ~]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; Book Reviews</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-book-review/</link>
					<comments>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-book-review/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:59:18 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Archigram]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Architecture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Book Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Le Corbusier]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=2127</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[1. A Guide to Archigram 1961-74 &#124; Dennis Crompton Princeton Architectural Press, Bilingual Edition, 2012 Paperback, 447 pages                           A radical group of young architects &#8211; Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb &#8211; burst onto the British architectural scene in the 1960&#8217;s with a rather futuristic and technocratic manifesto for building, which they called Archigram. Archigram was a movement, a philosophy that  sought to reinvent the &#8216;Modern&#8217;, and at the same time reject the prevailing post-war British interpretation of it. The stocky book, the second edition, has been compiled by one of those architects, Dennis Crompton and and is essentuially a compendium to the movement, containing their history, essays, concept drawings, photographs and pop culture references that made up the movement that was an important point of shaping future British architecture thinking in the &#8217;70&#8217;s and &#8216;early &#8217;80s. It is a fascinating insight into a major movement that fizzled out into the margins after its heyday &#8211; the period of 1961 to 1974, that is covered in the book. Great for an architectural collection or for a visual, graphics or indeed architectural student&#8217;s reference. The only gripe is the unusual form of the book itself that doesn&#8217;t lend itself to comfortable browsing or a particularly aesthetic display. But then that oddity is perhaps a fitting tribute to its subject.You can buy the book here.   &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212; 2. Le Corbusier Redrawn: The Houses &#124; Steven Park Princeton Architectural Press, 2012 Paperback, 192 Pages               This is definitely a collector&#8217;s item &#8211; not so much for its aesthetic, but for its usefulness as architectural study and resource. Almost a century since Le Corbusier first emerged as one of the most significant architects of the twentieth century, this book reproduces all 26 of his residential works in finely redrawn detail. Just for this fact alone, this book is tremendously useful, because despite his prominence, most of Le Corbusier&#8217;s original designs are in poor condition. I am not an architect per se, but I am pretty sure that this would be the first book that reproduces all his residential designs in such fine detail &#8211; layouts, elevations, sections and orthogonal views. What adds to this volume is the subtlety of rendering used in these drawings, which really brings out the relationship between the various spaces in the designs, and provides a veritable &#8216;walkthrough&#8217; the buildings, albeit in two dimensions. The book itself keeps with Le Corb&#8217;s minimalistic and essentialistic aesthetic &#8211; stark, minimal and highly functional. A must buy for anyone interested in the field of Le Corbusier&#8217;s work &#8211; student, professional or lay person.    You can buy the book here.]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; City At Play &#8211; Of Talking Lamp Posts And Whispering Mailboxes</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-city-at-play-of-talking-lamp-posts-and-whispering-mailboxes/</link>
					<comments>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-city-at-play-of-talking-lamp-posts-and-whispering-mailboxes/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:16:05 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bristol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[innovation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[internet of things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[placemaking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[smart city]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Street Furniture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Street Furniture Series]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=2105</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Does this blog need one more wonderful example of using creativity, art and technology to to foster engagement with the city? Of course it does! Watershed, a cross-platform cultural and art production agency based in Bristol, UK,  recently commissioned a competitive award called the Playable City Award 2013. The idea was to encourage the use of creative technology and art to create a sense of challenge and surprise to encourage people to interact with the city &#8211; in this case, Bristol itself. The winning entry by London based experience design studio PAN, does exactly that, and how! Titled &#8220;Hello, Lamp Post!&#8220;, it will enable citizens to use a smartphone to do just that &#8211; talk to street furniture. You read that right. So, in simple terms, if you have a smartphone and are in Bristol this summer, you will be able to hold conversations with lamp-posts, mailboxes, or even a manhole cover. Though it sounds a bit nuts, the technology behind it is fairly simple &#8211; every piece of street furniture has a code stamped on it that is used by the civic authorities to maintain these facilities. PAN&#8217;s interactive project uses the same open system of codes to build a network of interactiveness into the city&#8217;s street furniture, allowing people to engage with what are a) perhaps the most ubiquitous and ignored parts of a city, and interestingly, b) what are the endpoints of the Smart City. So it essentially brings the concept of Internet of Things to the physical city. The idea is to weave &#8220;play&#8221; into an essentially serious, hard coded environment and encourage regular, lay-people to have fun with their city. Additionally, every &#8216;conversation&#8217; will be recorded and fed back into a system that can be accessed by anyone &#8216;playing the game&#8217;, so to speak. &#160; Slightly weird, but such fun, when you think of it. And so many possibilities for future application! To begin with it allows people to explore their city in a new way, through a series of new benchmarks. It will allow people to interact with each other across the city, hold conversations around a medium of street furniture, as crazy as that sounds. I think I&#8217;ll visit Bristol this summer just to play. Oh, and if you are interested in the Internet of Things in the context of the city and public realm, you should definitely pick up this book. Highly recommended. &#160;]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism*Design &#124; Two fantastic LED interventions</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanismdesign-two-fantastic-led-interventions/</link>
					<comments>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanismdesign-two-fantastic-led-interventions/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:20:01 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flaneurbanite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[landscape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lighting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lisbon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Place Making]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[placemaking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Portugal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Public Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urban art]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=2083</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;ve been following this blog, you would know that in keeping with my interest in place making and destination branding,  I am a keen follower of art / design based interventions in public spaces that foster new interest in, and therefore engagement with the space &#8211; you&#8217;d remember I highlighted this in Candy Chang&#8217;s work last summer and in this fabulous temporary landscape intervention in Jaujac, France. But what you probably don&#8217;t know is that I also have a personal love affair with lighting &#8211; I think I might have some moth genes in me, as I am drawn to beautiful lighting in all forms (and might have gone overboard with this year&#8217;s Diwali and Christmas lighting at home). So I was doubly delighted when I came across these two public space interventions, designed with not much more than LED lights. 1. The Bay Lights, San Francisco &#124; The World&#8217;s Largest Light Sculpture The Bay Lights is an iconic light sculpture designed by renowned artist Leo Villareal. Inspired by the 75th anniversary of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, this unprecedented project will be 1.8 miles long, 500 feet high  and will sit on the west span of the Bay Bridge itself, lending it the glamour that has mostly been hogged by its more famous neighbour, the Golden Gate Bridge. Using 25,000 individually programmed LEDs, Villareal is going to create a continuous and complex display that will be visible for miles around, for a period of two years. This ambitious project, which is currently under installation, d is expected to bring $97 million to the local economy in the form of tourism, investment, and business. The installation won&#8217;t be a traffic hazard, as the lights will be turned away from the bridge &#8211; viewable from a distance but not from the bridge itself. The Bay Lights from Words Pictures Ideas on Vimeo. Having only seen the artist images of what the installation will look like, I can&#8217;t wait to see what it will look like in real life &#8211; and this will certainly add mileage to my plans for visiting the Bay area soon. The Bay Lights will be switched on on the 5th of March 2013. Can&#8217;t wait. 2. Ikea and LIKEArchitects&#8217; LEDscape, Lisbon, Portugal A much smaller and more seasonal installation was made in Lisbon, Portugal, that nevertheless had citizens and place makers sit up and take notice. A collaboration between Ikea and LIKEArchitects resulted in 1,200 pulsating LEDARE bulbs affixed to 1,200 HEMMA floor bases installed in the form of an interactive maze of light at the Centro Culural de Belem during the Christmas period. &#160; The beautiful installation created a temporary, albeit compelling visual and physical landscape that visitors were encouraged to engage with and explore. Such fun, such beauty, and such light! I think just looking at these images will take me through the darkness this January. PS: If you like this post, you will like this book: &#160; The Art of Placemaking: Interpreting Community Through Public Art and Urban Design, by Ronald Lee Fleming &#160; &#160; ~]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; Exploring London&#8217;s layers through The Blitz</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-an-explosive-history-of-london/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:11:09 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Flaneur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flaneurbanite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Blitz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Wor II]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=2069</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[I have a deep fascination with maps and mapping and am always on the lookout for interesting ones. So I was delighted, when thanks to The Monocle (one of my all time favourite magazines) I came across this interactive map at bombsight.org that shows every single bomb that was dropped on London by the Luftwaffe during The Blitz in the Second World War between 7th October 1940 and 6th June 1941. At its zoomed out version, it shocks and boggles the mind, because it looks like not one inch of London was spared &#8211; to look at the visual depiction of the sheer number of bombs that fell on the city is staggering, and for people like me, who have thankfully not directly experienced war, simply unimaginable. Beyond the morbid study though, the map also serves another purpose for the curious urbanist when you zoom in to street level. Since it gives precise locations of where the bombs fell, it can serve as a fascinating tool to walk around the city with, and to explore the physical layers of development and redevelopment that took place because of the Blitz. Much of the city was destroyed and subsequently rebuilt, but then again, a lot escaped ruin and has been preserved. It would explain the harshness of a &#8217;50&#8217;s concrete block set right against an elegant Georgian facade, and how sometimes walking through the city can be a startling study in physical contrasts. Interestingly, I traced my footsteps around London with it and it turns out I have so far never lived on a bomb-hit street. Let&#8217;s hope that doesn&#8217;t change. ~]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; Of Loneliness in The City</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-of-loneliness-in-the-city/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:52:56 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Flaneur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flaneurbanite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Leo Hollis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lonesliness In The City]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philosophy]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=1987</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Last week, I listened to a talk by Leo Hollis, historian, urbanist and author, at a wonderful event by Salon London (I give away this last detail quite reluctantly, as I&#8217;m a big fan of the Salons, and extremely selfishly, would be loathe to see them become too popular!). Hollis spoke about Why Cities Are Good For You &#8211; also the title of his upcoming book. I&#8217;m a staunch believer in the goodness and greatness of cities (surprise!), and had a moment of intense agreement with Hollis at the beginning of his talk when he threw out a question to the planners in the audience (of which, much to my surprise, there happened to be more than one, in a group of maybe forty people). The question was &#8220;When you plan a major city, what would you focus on first and foremost&#8221; and my answer to that was public space &#8211; because it is the public realm where the people of the city (its most important assets, not the buildings as frequently presumed) engage with each other and therefore the city itself. While I greatly enjoyed the talk and mostly agreed with Hollis about Why Cities Are Great For (us), there was one point which I disagreed with partly. Hollis argues (and isn&#8217;t the first person to do so) that loneliness in the city is a myth. Now I do not entirely disagree with this, and I certainly am not one of those people who argue for the small town community and the village as being wholesome places of community engagement and individual success (quite the contrary to that in fact, and in fact if you know me well, you might have been subject to one of my rants against suburbia, but that is another topic), but I do disagree with the notion being a complete myth. Hollis and other proponents of the argument against loneliness cite the multitude of fleeting, temporal and superficial &#8220;relationships&#8221; that form a necessary part of existence and engagement within a city as proof that it is really hard to be lonely in the city. I agree that it is this collection of temporal engagement that underpins the concept of the public realm that I speak of above, and which lends the city the vibrancy and the &#8220;life&#8221; that other places often lack. However, I also believe that what this engagement is an antidote to, is ALONENESS, not loneliness. Being alone is a purely physical state &#8211; as opposed to being LONELY, which is essentially an emotional condition, more likely to be NOT satiated with fleeting, superficial relationships, of which the city has plenty. At the same time, I admit that the city does offer a far greater chance of alleviating loneliness in the sheer number of opportunities it provides for finding other people to develop more meaningful connections with over time &#8211; and yet, it is the very nature of city life that might prevent us from finding the time that is essential to explore and form deeper, more meaningful relationships. This is made worse by the fact that we city dwellers are more globally mobile and migratory than ever before, though I&#8217;m yet to come across a proper research study that has explored this last particular correlation (pointers welcome). I think the cure for loneliness in the city may be found at that particular point of equilibrium where chance, time, engagement and mobility coincide to create the opportunity for meaningful and most importantly non-temporary relationships. But these points of equilibrium are hard to locate in the complexity of 21st Century cities, and it might just be getting harder as the world gets drastically more urban and infinitely more complex. But one thing is for sure &#8211; you can never be alone in the city. That&#8217;s what the countryside is for.]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; The Art Of Urbanism</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-the-art-of-urbanism/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:34:40 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Candy Chang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[community development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flaneurbanite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[placemaking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social activism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Street Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urban art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[urban planning]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=1950</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[With all due respect to my chosen profession,  I think that all too often, we urbanists and designers (and I include myself here!) can come across as stuffy, jargon-spouting bores. I think more often than not, we end up alienating the masses in our discourse rather than including them, which should be the central aim of all urbanism and design discourse. This has been one of my pet peeves over the last few years, and if you get me started, I&#8217;ll happily provide you with a 30 minute rant on the topic. However, that won&#8217;t be today, because I have chanced upon Candy Chang&#8217;s website. Candy Chang is an artist, an architect and urban planner based in the US. She believes in emotional engagement as a device for generating collective wisdom about our urban spaces, and she uses a combination of street art, philosophy and social activism to generate this discussion and new strategies for public space. I have come across discrete initiatives by Candy Change before, but I was delighted when I came across her website, which details out the vast expanse and brilliance of her projects. (Click on the images for a detailed description of each project. All images copyright Candy Chang and The Civic Centre). What I love about Chang&#8217;s work is that it is essentially rooted in simplicity, &#8220;often using simple analogue tools like stickers, stencils, and chalk&#8221;. Little wonder then that she has been so successful, and that her work has spread across the globe to places like South Africa, Malaysia, Finland, Mexico, Kenya, and Kazakhstan. Visit her website for a fascinating journey through her work. And here&#8217;s to many more Candy Changs in the profession.]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; Container Urbanism</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-container-urbanism/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 May 2012 11:45:37 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[container urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flaneurbanite]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trends]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=1914</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[I was thinking about how shipping containers seem to have become the new pop-up urban spaces for any number of uses  &#8211; from retail, to culture, to even hospitality &#8211; and thought of the term &#8220;Container Urbanism&#8221;.  And then I thought to myself, &#8220;what a brilliant term to describe the trend!&#8221;, and was patting myself on the back for coining it &#8211; until I googled it and realised that others thought of it a little before I did. Dang. Missed nomenclature glory aside, it is certainly something to sit up (pop up? OK, no bad jokes) and take notice of. Cheap Housing in Africa This is a trend that might have started in Africa. Shipping containers have a sea life of 5-10 years, and shipping companies have found it easy and profitable to dispose off their old containers in Africa. Some companies like Safmarine even donate these old containers to charities that work in Africa. Critics call it an ugly dump of western trade, which is entirely true, but at the same time, one cannot argue with the fact that these containers are providing entire communities with a cheap and recycled, if not entirely durable form of shelter. It in fact has gone well beyond housing &#8211; containers have become shops, warehouses, offices, and even schools. I&#8217;m not sure this is at all a solution to the developmental issues of African cities (it in fact might just be exacerbating the problem by generating more urban waste) but I&#8217;m sure that the people who&#8217;ve found shelter and livelihood in these cheap containers would hail them as life-savers, even if for the short  term. Little wonder, then, that there are now formal companies in Africa that &#8220;specialise&#8221; in providing container developments. You read that right. Container Retail And where the West smells a profitable trend, it runs to, with open arms. How many &#8220;pop-up&#8221; (there goes that term again) retail formats using containers have you heard of in the last five years? if you live in London or New York, chances are that the term &#8220;pop-retail&#8221; has started to give you a rash. The most notable one of these in the news recently has been Boxpark &#8211; the word&#8217;s first shopping mall made entirely out of shipping containers (about fifty of them) in Shoreditch in East London. It is not a permanent structure, though &#8211; true to its pop-up (argh) philosophy, it will be around for only five years. If you haven&#8217;t heard of it that much, don&#8217;t worry, it&#8217;s probably abut to &#8220;pop-up&#8221; near you soon. This is one trend that&#8217;s showing little signs of dying out. Container Everything-You-Can-Think-Of But it doesn&#8217;t stop here. From cinemas, to restaurants, to hotel rooms, to office spaces, everything and everyone is jumping onto the container bandwagon. It has moved well beyond housing for the underprivileged. Architects are now designing  container houses for the super-privileged. Containers are literally taking over the world. Container Disaster Relief But it&#8217;s not just all profit-making and consumerism faddism*. Containers are being put to good use in disaster relief in various parts of the world. Notably, in Christchurch, New Zealand in Haiti, post earthquake, these containers are being used to provide essential services like health-care, grocery staples and education, and also to quite literally, restart the economy in ravaged Christchurch. *Faddism: The trend of following a particular fad, just because it is a fad. Now there&#8217;s a useful new term for you. Don&#8217;t forget to mention that I coined it, though.]]></description>
		
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		<title>Urbanism &#124; Would you exchange your car for a lifetime of tram journeys?</title>
		<link>http://shilpabhatnagar.com/urbanism-would-you-exchange-your-car-for-a-lifetime-of-tram-journeys/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Shilpa]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 May 2012 15:57:42 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Urbanism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Murcia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public transport]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sustainability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Urban transport]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://shilpabhatnagar.com/?p=1880</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[In Murcia, Spain, the new tram service offers a lifetime pass to citizens, in return for their cars &#8212;- Last summer, the city of Murcia, Spain made big news because of their radical new initiative aimed at cutting down congestion and pollution in the city. The idea was simple, but pretty radical and as as far as I know, never tried before &#8211; the city government and the tram company Mejor en Tranvia offered free lifetime tram passes to citizens in exchange for one of their roadworthy cars. At that time, I thought the idea was brilliant, but I was still slightly sceptical about whether it would work. At the very first level, I assume they would have done their background research and ascertained that a major number of car journeys made by the citizens could be replaced by the tram service in the first place &#8211; that the tram service actually served the same origin and destination points for most citizens. The second, but most important factor was of course, economics. Would it make economic sense for the citizens to replace their cars for the tram, even if their journeys were free? I did not know the answers to those questions and I wondered what would come of it. I tried doing some online research but given my fairly limited (ok, non-existent) knowledge of the Spanish language, I couldn&#8217;t get very far. Given the campaign was launched in July 2011, I am wondering what became of the campaign &#8211; how successful was it? If it was indeed successful, shouldn&#8217;t we all be sitting up and taking notice? There are so many cities around the world, which could benefit from a similar campaign &#8211; provided the economics add up, of course. I would really like to know.]]></description>
		
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