Quality of City: Spaces in the shade 2010

Spaces in the shade

Anyone living in Southern cities knows how invaluable are those old trees spending shade at the main square, especially during the hot hours of the day.

This poetic theme might become the departure point for the gathering of poets, planners, architects and philosophers as was the case in 1995 when "Myth of the City" meant taking poets and planners around Crete to discuss at different locations (university, village, archaeological site, city like Chania and Iraklion etc.) living conditions in cities. It was interesting to hear how everyone cherished the fact of not attending a specialist conference. The poet Brendan Kennelly said in future he shall never go again to just poetry festivals and what then become the next book of his under the title: "Poetry, my arse".

One things is for sure: all those who participated in that conference rushed through both locations and papers presented without taking fully note what everyone contributed and what could be observed through the camera lens of Hartmut Schultz as to what else is entailed when traveling through such a landscape and its cities as to be found on Crete. 2010 means 15 years later to grasp the opportunity to revive the presentations made back then in order to have a basis for contemporary discussion to which can be added all the experiences which have been made in the meantime, for example, by Anna Arvanitaki at the Greek Ministry of Public Works and Environment, now just the Ministry for the Environment as of September 2009 when the new PASOK government under Prime Minister J. Papandreou took over and thereby appointed a new Minister Birbilli to undertake this huge task, namely how to save Greece from still further destruction not merely because of the mounting debt, but from an over consumption of land due to all kinds and forms of speculations. The building boom of second homes has stretched things to a limit. Cities are ever more expanding and in a landscape once the home of so much philosophical thoughts when walking along a donkey path, there are now more and more houses all striving to have a view of the sea or of some natural space. It seems there is no way to safeguard a natural landscape from this phenomenon called "building everywhere" till in the end there is no real natural land left. Already at the 1995 conference Brendan Kennelly coined the appropriate term "rururb" to designate land which is neither city nor rural but somehow in-between. The Irish poetess Paula Meehan declared then what plannes need to take into consideration is the need for cities to keep wild, uncultivated places.

Thus even it revisiting the "Myth of the City" does not take place in real time and in real place, even though it is hoped that we do succeed in making it happen, but given the financial uncertainties it is clearly a matter of being realistic about this chance of realising it, it can take place in the imagination with the aim to free spaces. And then we can include that poetic theme of finding some shade to rest and to remain cool while thinking what to do after the hot afternoon has passed by and slowly the city re-awakes in the afternoon to take another turn at life till late into the night.

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Quality of City: Spaces in the shade 2010