"the weak metropolis"

...
when does a metropolis collapse?
.
"Governments on both sides of the Atlantic have avoided grappling with fundamental problems, counting on renewed growth to help borrowers who cannot afford to pay and creditors who cannot afford to walk away. "
- NYtimes.

“What is it like to live in a city during the age of globalization, the Internet, changing workplace situations and imbalances both ecological and economic?” - Andrea Branzi





"But four years into this age of financial contagion, the global economy cannot seem to pick up steam. Every promising leap seems to end with a sickening thud. The easy answers are exhausted, and political leaders face a rising tide of anger that is constraining their ability to make more difficult choices..." - NYT (read here)

"In contrast to the construct of the historic Charta, the so-called “Weak Metropolis” is a living framework which reacts flexibly to societal and political changes in the urban context, and further develops existing situations which have evolved over time. Andrea Branzi invites discussion of the following question:“what is it like to live in a city during the age of globalization, the Internet, changing workplace situations and imbalances both ecological and economic?” and lays out ten “modest recommendations” as to how the city could be understood according to new social and functional logics.

He considers the industrialized city as a rational mechanism for growth and prosperity to be an outdated concept. He believes that the urban development of the 21st century should not follow an established set of rules or separation of functions according to a pre-developed plan. His “New Charter of Athens” is a manifesto not for the city of the future, but much rather for the city of the present with all its deficiencies and contradictions."

taken from here.

image: Andrea Branzi,
PROJECT “Epigrammi” photography Giacomo Giannini

-----------------------------