Urban Design and Development Seminar Five

Ø  Planning the management of change sustaining historic urban landscapes

Ø  Rethink what is technology. What it does to human. What it has done to us.

Ø  Technology in a broad sense – the law, zoning etc.

Ø  Heidegar – rational thinker – ‘Being and Time’ destroyed philosophy by questioning it. Changed the way of thinking in a wide range of areas.

Ø  ‘A city is a tool for human living in the world’ – enables our way of living

Ø  Technology brings forth the context, essence of whatever it comes into contact with

Ø  Instrumentality is fundamental in technology

Ø  Technology transforms whatever it comes into contact with. Into something for our benefit (resources)

Ø  Technology transforms resources into something that can benefit us

Ø  An organisation (e.g. human) is a technology

Ø  Transforms it into (resources) a ‘standing reserve’.

Ø  Nature is a human construct. We created nature because we removed ourselves from nature

Ø  ‘sustainability’ only exists because we realised that we are not sustainable

Ø  Next step is enframing (process of framing) Technology is a framework that frames everything for its own use

Ø  Enframing is what technology does. It subsumes the technology into the framework of the technology

Ø  Example is an empire – it transforms everything in its territory for its own use. Administration and physical infrastructure frameworks enabled Rome to be an Empire

Ø  Organisation: Any human construct that achieves a human purpose

Ø  Institution: Is something that has history, norms, and values. The institution transforms these values in the world

Ø  Institution is a technology that takes its frameworks forward in an institutionalised way

Ø  They are both technology – they transformed humans, just like technology transforms resources into a standing reserve

Ø  A city is a human technology

Ø  Is it possible for a city not to be a technology, in Heidigers sense? Can a city be anything but a technology? No. How can we make a city so that it is something other than a technology?

Ø  To be self-sustaining – the ultimate challenge

Ø  Culture – totality to escape from our animal state of being

Ø  Sense of place – manifests in built and living expressionism, patterns and systems developed by inhabitants

Ø  Identification and mapping of cultural elements and cultural ecology through direct observation. Cultural mapping as a component of integrated planning