urban potentials
what is urbanity how and where do we experience it and in what ways does it condition our perceptions of the contemporary city does art play a major role how about architecture music or popular culture through theoretical analyses and practical suggestions gathered at a series of related conferences that took place across europe in the summer of 2007 this reader explores the issue of urban potential asking how such a phenomenon can best be discovered enjoyed and exploited . the venues for the conferences were rotterdam dresden wroclaw budapest and salzburg ; accordingly each individual city was used as the prototype for discussion during its corresponding conference so that concrete and applicable discoveries could arise . the resulting texts by experts in the fields of art architecture sociology and cultural studies are gathered here shedding light on themes both international and local in scope . creative open minded and urbane in and of themselves these essays present artistic strategies to strengthen alternative planning methods and models of action . in particular they investigate the concepts of wasteland and contradiction in relation to the development of the urbane .