Cecilia mijares iii

BOOK PROPOSAL MARCH 2016 ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION MA HISTORY AND CRITICAL THINKING CECILIA LARREA MIJARES

Zaatari Camp, Jordan. 50,000 inhabitants

This book will start with a brief overview of the development of

demand to be examined, studied, re-thought and questioned, in

Urban Planning as a discipline; from the modernist utopic views

order to keep moving forward and try to get ahead of this

and attempts to find a universal solution, until arriving to our

unstoppable force of human movement. How can we conceive

contemporary situation and questioning whether this practice is

cities in our global situation? What determines what a city is? Is

still alive, or as Rem Koolhaas suggested, it has failed and died.

there a need for a new term or a reinterpretation of our conception of urban life?

In Sigfrid Giedeion´s view “Town planning is possible when different levels of human activity have attained unity and

The analysis of the evolution of this discipline is not researched

equilibrium”. Taking the planning of the city as the point of

through the practice itself or through its results, accomplishments

intersection between singularity and plurality, the book will explore

or projects, but rather through the methods used to arrive at

the variation of these concepts used to define and differentiate

certain proposals or ideas. From the use of the first diagrams to

spaces, activities and their interconnections; how these concepts

contemporary modes of visualizations of data and techniques and

have also evolved with the practice and shifted back and forth

technologies used as strategies to convince and sell. This

from ideas such as “individual vs. collective” to “public vs. private”.

analysis will prove to be useful for professionals of this field, who

These concepts, which according to Paolo Virno are today

are currently dealing with different methods that can be

insufficient to explain the experience of today´s forms of life, have

questioned or compared in order to determine their intentions and

blurred their boundaries and turned into “multitude”, which is

potentials.

defined as “diverse identities, challenged to communicate and act

But, questioning the compositions of cities, as well as

in common while remaining internally different, composed of all

understanding the evolution of the ways in which they were

diverse figures of social production” by Hardt and Negri.

thought, designed and built, is also valuable for the general public,

With this idea as its core, the book will go on to explore the

in the sense that it will lead to reflection on how we came to be

current urban situation in different contexts and how these affect

where we are, how cities became the way they are, and finally to

the possibility or impossibility of city planning, regarding issues

understand the role we each play in these dynamics of singularity

such as population growth, migration, lack of natural resources

and plurality, and how our identities can be defined and shaped,

and other implications for their development. Different types of

or weakened and threatened by the way we live and co-exist with

settlements, different types of communal living. Not always static,

one another.

not always moving, but in permanent growth and evolution;

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