The symposium "PROBE ; Documenting the Contemporary City" is part of a series of symposia being held over several years to address the current and future state of the city. The series will provide a wealth of opportunities to discuss urban issues from multifaceted perspectives and to formulate new proposals for the future.
Here on the cusp of the century, we sense dramatic changes underway in the society and environment in which we live. The economy, environmental problems, and mushrooming information technology are all extending beyond national boundaries. All are becoming global. The world is undergoing profound changes politically, economically, and culturally. Change is apparent wherever one looks, and cities and architecture are hardly immune to its effects.
The goal of these symposia is to provide opportunities to talk about how, surrounded by drastic social change, we can find new approaches to creating more livable cities. We will reassess now-obsolescent concepts and debate new ideas for understanding systems, gathering, over several years, a range of experts concerned with these issues. At these symposia, city planners, architects, visionaries, representatives of local governments and the business world, and members of the community will share their visions of the city. The result, we hope, will be to create a foundation for actionable proposals, thus laying the groundwork for moving from ideas to action.
It is our hope that, by the end of the series, these events and the books resulting from them will comprehensively document the contemporary city in a useful and stimulating way.
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How is the globalization
of capital impacting the city? |
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When concepts of the state
and collectivities have lost force, what is this thing we call acity? What are
the social qualities that those who inhabit the city must have? How, in that context,
should cities be built? |
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If place loses significance
and memory, and places become increasingly huge and indistinguishable from each
other, can the city - which has become an entity without form or depth - survive? |
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Given the pressure on all
aspects of the social system to make course corrections, how should Japan 's city
planning system be reorganized? |
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Does the concept of sustainability apply
to city planning, and, if so, how? |
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What will be the professional capabilities
and social roles of urban planners and architects? |
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Will the city continue to have meaning? |
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