MONU #13 - Most Valuable Urbanism:
Issue 13 of this bi-annual forum on urbanism gathers the visions of architects, writers, artists and designers on a general theme of cities’ livability. The phenomenon of city branding on T-shirts and exposés of quality-of-life indexes are joined by such outbursts as ‘The Value of Ugliness’ by Jürgen Krusche and ‘Vancouverism Is Everywhere’ by DoUC. MONU’s blend of radical passion and expert design has made the magazine itself the focus of several international exhibitions, including in Los Angeles, Madrid and Tokyo.
MONU #12 - Real Urbanism:
Most of our cities are shaped by a particular set of values that does not necessarily lead to high quality urban spaces, but instead to scary, ethically unacceptable and distorted forms. To prevent our cities from turning into monstrous “Ideal Cities”, all parties involved in shaping cities – developers, municipalities and planners – have to accept their interdependencies, and try to understand the different interests of each party while daring to navigate into unknown territory. Texts by Jason Lee, Doreen Jakob, Mammoth, Karl Johann Hakken, Maximilian Mendel, Yim Dongwoo, MVRDV, and many others. Interviews with Magriet Smit, Bjarke Ingels, Andre Kempe.
MONU #9 - Exotic Urbanism:
MONU focuses on how cities can succeed in differentiating themselves within a process of globalization. Paradoxically, the exotic is found precisely in the urban through an exuberant collection of essays and projects which include contributions from Vesta Nele Zareh, Owen Hatherley, Deane Simpson, Reinier de Graaf/OMA and Yahuda Greenfield-Gilat.
MONU #7 - 2nd Rate Urbanism:
In an increasingly connected world the economic realities are precarious for most 2nd rate cities. In the competition for jobs and an ever expanding tax base, 2nd rate cities are in a squeeze between the suburbs where land is even cheaper and even more accessible by car on the one side, and the real attractive 1st rate urban areas that draw the highly educated and the creative on the other side. And since planning ‘down’ to a suburb is not an option that is considered by most cities, the fight for the survival of 2nd rate cities is to attract more urban assets. Beatriz Ramo presents one such Urban Shopping List for European second-rate cities.
MONU #6 - Beautiful Urbanism:
Even though the concept beauty remains elusive we think our issue is successful in shining some spotlights on the issue. One of the themes from the articles is that beauty in urbanism is what one could call an emergent quality. It rarely is in the object itself. It exists in the way we perceive spaces and objects, our vantage point. It is while wandering though the city, resolving contradictions, when we see things that jolt our imaginations that we experience beauty. It can be a small detail such as obscure dots on the sidewalk that German civil engineers place all over the city to measure which propel Jeremy Beaudry along daydreaming trajectories as he assembles the dotted pattern of Berlin.
MONU #5 - Brutal Urbanism:
Roughness, violence, brutality, seediness, ghettoization – all these are words that we associate much more readily with the city than with a suburb or the bucolic countryside. It seems even drug related crime develops a different character depending on whether it is in the city or the suburb. As the NYTimes reported in early July, identity theft is the crime of choice for meth addicts and both are flourishing in suburban regions of the US. In contrast crack cocaine or heroin dealers, are supported by heavily armed gangs usually set up in higher density urban zones. These high density areas are suited to ‘urban’ crimes like, prostitution, carjacking and robbery.
MONU #1 - Paid Urbanism:
Our experience of urban life today exists as it does because we have a complex system of subsidies interacting with our urban geography. Taxes, once extracted from the market economy cycle back to the masses as paid urbanism. Used wisely or not, spread fairly or unfairly, this money is probably one of the strongest forces animating our urban conditions today. The places we live in today are in many ways shaped by government spending - Subsidized Landscapes. Since the ‘90s, big enthusiasm about total privatization has subsided. Nowadays, everybody realizes that there is a need to keep certain things in the hand of public administration. Redistribution of enormous revenue is a commonly accepted means of keeping civil democratic societies working.
