Twenty-Second International Seminar on Urban Form, Rome, Italy, 23-26 September 2015

摘要

The major ISUF Conference of 2015 had as its principal theme 'City as organism: new visions for urban life'. It took place in Rome, perhaps one of the most organic cities in history. A remarkable event was therefore anticipated both in respect of discussion topics and venue. It was indeed a remarkable conference, though by no means entirely in ways anticipated. Many speakers were coy about addressing explicitly the subject of cities as organisms and the sub-theme of 'new visions for urban life' was often no more than implicit, at least among the main presentations. Two of the keynote lectures that were arguably exceptions were the introductory presentations by Giuseppe Strappa and Michael Conzen. Strappa explored 'The city as process: Rome's urban form in transformation', using the history of Rome as an example of organic process, emphasizing the rational side of city as organism (such as the metabolism of the city) and giving comparatively little attention to what he called the romantic side of the organic city. In contrast, Conzen's extension of the organic aspect of the city was his proposal for inclusion of more ecological and environmental methods in the toolbox of ISUF as a fifth (geo-ecological) sub-field: the other four being process-typological, configurational, historico-geographical, and spatial modelling.