The street belongs to all of us

Paris, France
April 26-June 15, 2007 

The exhibition, to be shown in the new Paris Val de Seine School of Architecture designed by the architect Frédéric Borel, was originally intended to open on March 6 and close on April 21, 2007. The dates have been altered because of the delay in the opening of the new school. The City on the Move Institute will be presenting the exhibition and the programme of events in partnership with JCDecaux, Monoprix, Véolia Transport, the Voyage TV channel and the Metro daily. It will also be relayed by a network of cultural institutions and schools from the Paris region, and cultural centres in different countries: exhibition of contemporary artists at the Univer Gallery, of design and urban signage at the Finnish Institute, of photos at the Goethe Institute, at the Special School of Architecture, of works from the favelas at the Argentinian Foundation and Embassy, on urban suburbs at the Swedish Institute, on the taxis of Mexico at the Mexico Centre… reading of literary texts at the National Library, feature on the streets and big housing estates in the journal Urbanisme, city walks, workshops… In addition, contributions are planned from China, Brazil and around Europe. ... Or how to share the street ? The street is somewhere we walk, live, work, parade, sometimes jostle, sometimes even collide; a multitude of activities that intersect and intercept, making it a place of encounter and of conflict: for better and for worse! And in all the cities of the world, the same questions: who and what are the streets for? Who do they belong to? Who decides, controls, oversees? How can we reconcile all the speeds, all the methods of transport, the needs of residents and passersby, of shopkeepers...? How can we make them interpretable, fluid, friendly? How much should advertising, business, freedom of expression, art, be able to express themselves in the street, take possession of the street? City streets have multiple functions. They serve local populations and provide routes across neighbourhoods, and at the same time they often host a multiplicity of activities and function as meeting places and media. However, not all these functions are mutually compatible, which results in a number of dysfunctions and conflicts. As the footprint of the cities grows upwards and outwards, and movement and transportation become increasingly diversified, the problems associated with the use and sharing of the street become more acute. In trying to resolve them, the tendency in modern urban planning has been to divide streets up into a hierarchy of functions, and to keep mobilities and activities separate. Today, there is disagreement around these solutions, which in certain cases prove counter-productive, accentuating the boundaries between sharing and separation. Other solutions are now being explored and implemented around the world, often more based on the concept of sharing as combination rather than division, which in different ways seek to exploit the urban potential of functional and social mixing.

EXHIBITION STRUCTURE - A video space in an 8-metre wide cube, giving an astonishing experience of some forty of the world’s streets: “You’re not in the street, you are the street!” - Some fifty international projects presenting new approaches to the street by urban planners and architects from all around the world - Some one hundred photos from the big international press agencies and documents that examine the media-street – the street’s communicating aspect – and the fiction-street, and issues of governance in response to the new imperatives. Under the scientific supervision of François Ascher, chief curator of the exhibition, and of Mireille Apel-Muller 1. Streets in modern architectural and urban planning projects - Inhabited streets - Multiple streets which combined transportation, functions and activities - Intense streets which encourage events and shopping - Vertical streets which take advantage of the potential of a stratified public space - Intermodal streets which provide connections between transportation systems - Evolving streets which link previously isolated neighbourhoods to the rest of the city Theme curator: Didier Rebois, Secretary-General of Europan and teacher at the Paris - Val de Seine School of Architecture. 2. Media streets: places of communication and exchange - The impact of the new communication technologies on display systems, shop windows, signage - Festival and leisure uses - The new inner lives of the street Author: François Bellanger, consultant, author of works and research on lifestyle trends, new consumption habits, the marketing strategies of big firms supplying goods and services. 3. Negotiated streets: the governance of public space - Safety in the street and the challenge of CCTV - Civility and rule-keeping in the public space - The 7 speeds (modern street design separates mobilities on the basis of purpose and speed, in order to protect residents from noise and maximise traffic flows) - Street governance, between business improvement districts and street assemblies

Theme curator: Eric Charmes, deputy director and lecturer at the French Institute of Urban Planning, author of works on the street, on the new urbanism, on detached housing lifestyles.


FOR INFORMATION: http://www.ville-en-mouvement.com