Conference Proceedings
NUL - NEW URBAN LANGUAGES
Re-Imaging the City
after the Knowledge-based Turn
Milan, 19-21 June 2013

The current proliferation of urban identities is followed, almost inevitably, by a fragmentation of the languages, codes and metaphors used to describe, represent and interpret cities. Urban studies are now faced with a double challenge.
On the one hand, they have to consider the new collective agents who create a dissonant choir of micro-descriptions of and about the city, as well as the ways in which these representations are shared through multiple geo-spatial frameworks and locating systems (both online and offline).
On the other hand, they have to revolutionize their specialist language in order to analyze the contradictory images of an urban world where networks of agents, tensions and latent transformations are harder and harder to decode. The heterogeneous nature of urban geographies thus requires scholars and specialists of the field to experiment with new interpretive instruments. These new forms of assessment should be able to overcome the functional and formal simplifications that belong to an old-fashioned understanding of urban studies and risk to limit its analytical efficacy.



This conference aims at exploring the multiple, innovative ways which are and can used to describe and analyze contemporary cities, with peculiar attention granted to the role of new media (web 3.0, geo-social networks, etc…). These virtual environments, in fact, generate collective, self-organized and informal sources of knowledge which cover international urban networks and highly impact on our understanding of urban spatiality in the 21st century. The different languages used to describe cities have become, in this perspective, interpretive instruments, meta-projectual tools and, at the same time, vehicles to share images of urban landscapes.

The main questions we would like to consider in this international conference are: How can we give visibility to the new forms of interactions between citizens and urban spaces? How do we interpret the extensive quantity of random data coming from the virtual traces we leave on a daily basis through cities? How can we create a dialogue between opposed physical and geographical identities belonging to the same metropolitan region? This event will allow us to show samples of how the major contemporary cities are studied, analyzed and represented, through a highly interdisciplinary perspective, fostering the dialogue between geography, architecture, spatial semiotics and urban studies.
 

LIST OF CONTENTS 

FOREWORD   
• Languages and Representations: interpretation tools in city changing
Rossella Salerno
• Imagine the city beyond the visible
Daniele Villa 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS    
• Many voices but no plan? Planning the city in the field of diverse narratives 
Frank Eckardt
• Why governance will make urban design better.
Dealing with the communicative turn in urban planning and design
Roberto Rocco
• A critical survey and a design proposal for Al Balad, the historic district of Jeddah, KSA
Livio Sacchi

SESSION 1
REPRESENTATION AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE CHANGING CITY 
Chairs: Malvina Borgherini, Andrea Giordano

SESSION 2
 VISUALIZING THE PAST. IMAGINING THE FUTURE
Chairs:  Antonella Bruzzese, Sofia Morgado

SESSION 3
ICT: SHARING VISIONS OF THE CITY
Chairs: Katharine Willis, Paola Pucci

SESSION 4
 NEW URBAN METAPHORS
Chairs:  Antonella Contin, Javier Ruiz Sanchez