RUC

Dr. David Pinder, Reader in Geography, School of Geography,
Queen Mary, University of London

Understandings of cities have been increasingly mobilized in recent years, with a focus not only on how their technologies, infrastructures and material fabrics support mobilities but also on how they are in turn shaped by them. Critical studies of networked infrastructure such as transport, telecommunications, water, energy and the like have provided powerful perspectives on the dynamic processes that constitute modern urbanism, while mobilities have also come to the fore through explorations of how city spaces and structures are used, practiced and performed.

This lecture seeks to contribute to such debates, and specifically to the long-standing tension in urban thought between movement and settlement, by addressing visions of mobile cities from the 1960s in which urban spaces are literally mobilized,  presented not simply as cross-cut by movements but as moving, roaming and floating entities themselves. It focuses on the work of European urbanists and architects, in particular those of the Archigram group, to ask how their proposals were imbued with critical and emancipatory intent? What were the roots and consequences of their celebration of flow, flux, mobility and nomadism? And how might examining their implicit politics of mobility shed critical light on current talk of ‘nomadic cities’ and what has been identified as a ‘nomadic metaphysics’?

Time: 2. december 2010 from 10 - 12 am
Place: Kort og Stensal, HUS 02 
Contact for more information: John Pløger, Dr.Art. Lector