After Postmodernism: Readdressing the Role of Utopia in Urban Design and Planning

摘要

The last few decades have brought massive political, economic and social change to urban areas. Trends such as population growth, the rise of dual economies and oppressive political regimes, and continued transnational migration have accelerated urbanization and caused urban resources and territories to become increasingly contested. The question is, can urban design and planning respond effectively to these changes? And how do these changes affect places? These questions need to be analyzed in the context of current theories and practices of urban design and planning. Beginning in the 1960s, many urban designers responded to the excesses of modernism by embracing such concepts as context, the quotidian, and multiplicity, and integrating them into design practice. Among planners, a similar assessment fueled development of a participatory model, sometimes called "planning from below," that expanded the range of participants in urban interventions to include NGOs and social movements. For many, therefore, urban design and planning discourse today is based on critical reassessment of actual places produced by the Modern Movement-which has, in turn, suggested alternative ideas about the relationship between socio-political space and design. But this opposition is seen as arising within a postcritical era, dominated by pragmatic approaches that emphasize materiality and technology and that view public spaces as arenas for spectacle.