reSITE 2014: A Place for Sharing Experiences and Positive Examples

How to prevent rural depopulation while also making city centers more attractive, the reSITE festival asks

Where are the people going?, asks many a mayor or sociologist. The countryside is depopulating, and residents, shops, and services are gradually disappearing from city centers as well. Are people leaving for jobs, or for the cheap prices of shopping centers in the suburbs? What impact does the expansion of peripheries with retail parks, warehouses, and satellite development have on cities? And how have other cities around the world solved this pressing issue?

The festival reSITE, held in cooperation with the Institute of Planning and Development of the Capital City of Prague, will serve as a place for sharing experiences and positive examples for the third time. From June 19 to 20, 2014, at the new Prague hall Forum Karlín, around forty world architects and urban planners, representatives of the most successful city administrations and municipalities, innovative developers, economists, or civil society representatives will share their knowledge and rich experiences. Not only to listen, but also to engage in discussion, an additional five hundred participants will be afforded immediate contact with the speakers.

Among the speakers and discussing guests are stars such as Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University and a specialist in urban economics, Michael Kimmelman, the exclusive architecture critic for The New York Times, emphasizing housing development, public space, infrastructure, community development, and social responsibility, or Michael Desvigne - the most significant landscape architect of today, collaborating with architects and studios such as Herzog & de Meuron, Foster + Partners, Rem Koolhaas, Renzo Piano, or Richard Rogers.

One of the main topics will be architecture and urbanism of cities and municipalities as a support for (local) economic development. It is becoming clear that cities with a diverse offer of education, culture, civic activities, or sports have a significant advantage in the eyes of investors. Investments in these areas are multiplied from the private sector, which positively impacts employment, services, infrastructure… “There is no doubt that cities and municipalities are carriers of new, autonomous economies. There is a clear relationship between their success, prosperity, and activity, and consequently the satisfaction of citizens. And we will attempt to define this with experts from New York, London, Rotterdam, and Paris,” says Martin Barry, founder and director of reSITE, which this year’s prestigious festival added a series of workshops and informal debates, useful and applicable for representatives of smaller local towns and municipalities.

Given the significant interest in the festival, the organizers recommend not to postpone purchasing tickets via a simple registration form. This can be filled out and submitted here. Current information about the festival program is available here.

The organizational team has projected the central theme, namely Cities and Landscapes of the New Economy, into four main lecture and discussion panels. Their defining element is the diverse composition of speakers, where alongside architects and urban planners, economists, investors and developers, sociologists, of course representatives of local administration and self-government, academics, or people representing civil and engaged society will sit.
“Economics, the human dimension, a beautiful and functional urban environment, focusing on proper data assessment and interdisciplinary cooperation, and smart city management – all these will again provide local mayors, their teams, representatives of self-governments, and especially the wide active public with new guidelines for their daily practices,” explains the composition of the panels, program director of reSITE Osamu Okamura.

The reSITE festival in the panel Density and Urban Development will focus on the relationship between building density, economic efficiency, and the intensity of development. Significant space will be devoted to contributions related to Strategic Planning and Public Discussion, a topic that resonates in many Czech and Moravian cities, including Prague, Brno, or Ostrava. Speakers from world metropolises will demonstrate the necessity of entering this field with a clear, long-term vision and strategy. This is also necessary in the question of Industrial Past: Innovative Future, where in so-called brownfields and industrial heritage sites lie unforeseen opportunities for development. Several motivations from previous sections will then be summarized and developed in the panel Civic Resilience: A City for All, defining residents as an integral part of the new urban economy.

Although the festival, thanks to other speakers such as the excellent Italian-Spanish architect and designer Benedetta Tagliabue, top landscape architect and urban design expert Stig Lennart Andersson, or co-founder of the world-renowned Dutch studio West 8 focused on urban design and landscape architecture Adriaan Geuze, has undeniable international outreach, it will also be accessible to representatives of the general public and leading representatives and activists in the public space of our cities thanks to simultaneous interpretation into and from Czech.
“All present experts will be available in the main program, workshops, or informal meetings for local interested parties. We have no doubt that many topics will resonate with representatives from multi-million metropolises as well as towns with a few thousand inhabitants,” says Martin Barry, according to whom simultaneous translation will be standard during the main discussions and accompanying events. “In this dimension, quality, and scope of urban issues, the reSITE festival has no equal in Central and Eastern Europe”, he adds.

The concept of the reSITE festival, which in the previous two years attracted over 600 speakers and listeners from twenty countries, is interdisciplinarity. Thanks to this, the event has become one of the best-attended and received within all of Europe. In individual panels, developers meet with officials, architects with transportation experts, urbanists with economists, and politicians with activists working in public spaces… The unique concept has gained trust from real authorities since the first year, such as Winy Maas (MVRDV), Enrique Penalosa (former mayor of Bogotá), Craig Dykers (Snøhetta), Reinier de Graaf (OMA), Alexandros Washburn (chief planner, New York), or well-known urban planner from Denmark Jan Gehl.

Among the invited guests of reSITE 2014 are: Michael Kimmelman [chief architecture critic at New York Times • NYC] / Edward Glaeser [economist • Harvard University • Cambridge] / Michael Desvigne [Desvigne & Dalnoky • founder • Paris] / Benedetta Tagliabue [EMBT • co-founder • Barcelona] / Adriaan Geuze [WEST8 • founder • Rotterdam] / Mark Johnson [CIVITAS • founder and president • Denver] / Stig L. Andersson [SLA • founder, creative director • Copenhagen] / Margaret Newman [Head of office Janette Sadik-Khan • New York City Department of Transportation • NYC] / Tomáš Hudeček [mayor of the capital city of Prague] / Eugene Asse [director of the Moscow School of Architecture • Moscow] / Andrej Griněv [Artkartel • Moscow] / Tomáš Ctibor [Institute of Planning and Development • Prague] / Petr Palička [Penta Investments • Prague] / Adam Greenfield [London School of Economics • London] / Jan Ludvík [Karlin Group • Prague] / Pavel Hnilička [Institute of Planning and Development • Prague] / Jochen Partsch [mayor of Darmstadt • Germany] / Michael Brown [director • Calgary Municipal Development Authority • Calgary] / Jón Gnarr [mayor of Reykjavík, Iceland] / Maxwan [Rotterdam] / Sandor Finta [chief architect of Budapest • Budapest] / Tereza Stöckelová [ProAlt • sociologist, activist • Prague] / Nicolas Buchoud [Cercle Grand Paris de l'Investissement Durable • president • Paris] and others.
 
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