City Portraits: Detroit
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
CALL FOR PAPERS

Venezia - Torino, Italy
(CALL FOR PAPER CLOSED)
IUAV Venezia - School of Doctorate Studies
Politecnico di Torino

CITY PORTRAITS CONFERENCE
City Portraits is a series of conferences promoted by the Università Iuav di Venezia- School of Doctorate Studies and organized by its PhD students and doctors. The series will cover cities all over the world and address the subject of urban complexity from a variety of viewpoints, which is the only way to understand it. 

PORTRAIT OF DETROIT
The portrait of Detroit is a proposal to reflect upon the paradigms of growth and urban development, by exploring the recent urban history of a city that for half a century was considered the metaphor of the “american dream”. Grown around the development of the manufacturing sector, Detroit faced a seventy-year-long process of shrinkage and decline bound to the weakening of the automotive system. 
The queries that emerge out of the Detroit case history question many theoretical fields. On the one hand it signals the urgent need to investigate on urban systems shrinkage and degrowth, on the reuse and the recycling of the built environment. On the other hand the reflection seems to cross more general regional and urban planning matters, dealing with the management and the design of “postmetropolises” (Soja, 2000), with the treatment of contemporary urban landscapes, and with the “city-ness” condition in present times (“City-ness”, Brenner 2009). 

CALL FOR PAPERS
The call for papers treats more closely the “operational” dimension of policies, plans and projects for the “vacant city”. The aim is the collection, the comparison and the dialogue between practices, projects and experiences related to the deindustrialization, neglection and abandonment of urban segments. The call is addressed not only to the “extra” ordinary detroiter condition, but also to the manifold reality of those cities of the world facing similar processes, even if with different bearings.
Then, the main focus of the call is on urban reciclying and reuse, and on those planning practices more closely related to the treatment of degrowth, to urban downsizing and to the fostering of new forms of local development. A special concern will be granted to those contributions committed to investigate the informal and temporary dimensions, and the capability of this kind of actions on the urban environment to invent new uses, to foster place-making, to generate new urban identities as far as encouraging innovative ways to engage local society. 

The call for papers encourages the candidates to present their contributions according to these four macro areas of reference:
1. Reuse as a mean of “sense-making” 
2. Reuse as a way to intervene on the urban body     
3. Interventions on the “space between things”
4. Urban vacancy as an occasion for the development of new practices

Candidates can submit their proposals by sending all the files in a compressed folder to 
EMAIL |  detroitcityportrait@gmail.com

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 
• Venice, 24th october 2013 | Palazzo Badoer
IUAV School of Doctores - Aula Tafuri    
It will be structured around three sessions in which a group of american and european lecturers will discuss about the recent vicissitudes of this american city: Detroit. 
 

• Turin, 31st october 2013 | Castello del Valentino | Politecnico di Torino
It will be dedicated to the presentation of a series of contributions offered by researches, professionals and Ph.D. candidates, and collected through an international call for papers.
 

IMPORTANT DATES
• 25.08.2013 | Deadline for abstract submission 
• 8.09.2013 | Notification of acceptance
• 20.10.2013 | Full paper delivery
• 24.10.2013 | 1st conference day - Venice
• 31.10.2013 |  2nd conference day - Turin

INFO & CONTACTS
Conference website
Iuav Website
EMAIL | detroitcityportrait@gmail.com