[artinfo] Shrinking cities[cfp]

[DAVIDE MERONI]

 From Superflex web site http://www.superflex.net/index.shtml

WHAT TO DO WITH SHRINKING CITIES IN EASTERN GERMANY?
CALL FOR PROPOSALS!!!
IDEA COMPETITION

Superflex is looking for Chinese proposals for the development of
strategies for action for the shrinking cities in eastern Germany.

BACKGROUND
Shrinking cities is a phenomenon, which is happening all over the world
these years; in the USA, Britain, or Belgium, Finland, Italy, Russia,
Kazakhstan, and in China. Shrinking cities contradict the image, familiar
since the Industrial Revolution, of the "boomtown", a big city
characterized by constant economic and demographic growth. Cities shrink
when industrial production and investment move elsewhere in the world.
The dramatic changes in eastern Germany since 1989 have led to more than
a million empty apartments and to the abandoning of countless
industrial parks and social and cultural facilities. This is a general
pattern of our civilization.

The phenomenon of shrinking cities urges us to rethink traditional ideas
of the European city, as well as future development of urban worlds. City
planning may solve some of the problems, but we need new approaches to
tackle the fundamental economic, social and cultural problems, challenges
and prospects of shrinking cities Germany's Federal Cultural Foundation
has initiated a three-year project, called Shrinking Cities. The project
seeks to expand Germany's city- planning
debate beyond questions of demolishing surplus apartments and improving
residential quarters.

The project addresses new questions and perspectives and places
developments in eastern Germany in an international context, involving
various artistic, design, and research disciplines in the search for
strategies for action. In sum, the project of Shrinking Cities is a
research and exhibition project, which emphasises first, an international
study of processes of shrinking and second, the development of strategies
for action for eastern Germany
(http://www.shrinkingcities.com/).