Make_Shift City

Description

Make_Shift City Renegotiating the Urban Commons
Makeshift implies a temporary or expedient substitute for something else, something missing. Make_Shift City extends the term to embrace urban design strategies. Make_Shift City implies a condition of insecurity: the inconstant, the imperfect and the indeterminate. It also implies the designing act of shifting or reinterpretation as a form of urban détournement. Austerity urbanism and the increasing scarcity of resources among the cities and boroughs of Europe in particular has far-reaching consequences for civic space. Where there is a lack of regular planning processes, gaps arise as open spaces that enable an ad-hoc informal urban design. What often results is a process of urban commoning: the renegotiation of shared spaces and shared resources. This urbanism of small acts is an emancipatory practice; a re-imagining of the city space and its potentialities.

Francesca Ferguson / Urban Drift Projects (eds.)
In cooperation with the Berlin Senate for Urban Development

256 pages, approx. 250 col. / 21 x 26 cm / English, German