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#19 Aequòpolis
2006

City places

by Paolo Rumiz

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Separatism in the North is mainly felt in the provinces. I was much more aware of the Balkan war starting in the provinces than I was in the capitals with their embassies. I received an accurate impression of many of the changes of the past twenty years in these outlying areas, rather than in the cities. We have large cities like Bratislava, Prague or Budapest, which are becoming westernised at the speed of light.

This isn’t a good thing, because I don’t go there to find a faded photocopy of myself. I want to find something else. I also think that in the case of Eastern Europe, you need to go to the provinces, because the old Hapsburg mould was hibernating somehow during the terrible Communist period. You can find places that are just as they were during my grandmother’s time, or my great-grandmother’s. Places where, most importantly, the twentieth-century ethnic cleansing has had less of an impact.

Where minarets and spires still coexist, hidden right in the provinces. I’m using symbols, but it’s also true for synagogues and a thousand other things, not just religious identities but also cultural and linguistic ones. It is much harder to find these things in Italy.

You need to move off the main roads, you have to risk getting lost, you have to find the Cheyenne tracks off the dual carriageways and motorways, and find your own path. Then you’ll find that the media only cover an Italy that, in terms of territory, is just one tenth of the real country.

Paolo Rumiz

A journalist for La Repubblica, he is also a special correspondent for the Trieste newspaper Il Piccolo. Since 1986, he has dealt with events in the Balkans and in 2001, he went to Islamabad and Kabul to report on the American attack in Afghanistan. He is well known for his summer tours by bike, train or sailing boat, of which he gives daily accounts in the Repubblica: his last was in 2005, with Moni Ovadia in Jerusalem.

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THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
Daniele Sandri
Aequòpolis should not be a place that pollutes and strips natural resources down to the bone, but it should blend into them, becoming an integral part of them.
Silvia Amaduzzi
Utopolis. Today, a just city is a Utopia; an emerald City to be built from the errors of unsustainable development in the modern megalopolis.
Domenico D'Alessio
Aequòpolis, the city that gives a natural aspect to urbanisation. A city that allows you to feel as though you were someone in a sea of nobodies, to find an equilibrium in which you can feel alive.
Guido Tamino
The reality portrayed is a perceived, fleeting, rapid and confused one. It is the reality that we intercept, perceive and experience, as we walk.
Andrea Cadorin
The artificial installation has become naturalised, and Nature has become urbanised. A selective process.
Francesca Pasini
Cities give great chances, from a perfect stranger you can become someone. This is the reason why many people live in a big city.
Katja Onjukka
People need more open, green spaces where they can relax, breathe fresh air, smell the grass. We have to discover the secret of greenery.
Mario Ruggiero
Starting with the observations of Daverio, "is the growth of cities a question of numbers?" and Branzi "a city has to offer opportunities" I’ve seen a growing, seeping form of random development, mainly driven by the market. A development that risks isolating the individual.
Fabrizio Luca
Modern cities compress, draw in and heap together any kind of shape, like a funnel. Yet Nature tries to adapt itself to this city.
Simone Trotti
This is Bangkok, a city of angels and temples. Bangkok, unrecognisable. It overruns all boundaries and keeps expanding. Insatiable.
Ilaria Di Emidio
A liveable city, a possible city. Not destroying what exists, but redesigning it, changing the perspective: today, cities are not wrong, just interpreted badly.
Ilaria Di Emidio
A liveable city, a possible city. Not destroying what exists, but redesigning it, changing the perspective: today, cities are not wrong, just interpreted badly.
Giorgio Caviglia
The city is created and grows fed by its diversity. All attempts at planning should be aimed at making the most of its peculiarities.
Susanna Ferraro
Vertical development as an objective; the text becomes part of the metropolitan fabric, integrating and elevating it towards an aequòpolis.
Cristina Venanzetti
You can see the city because the eye of a 20th century human being can distinguish more than 100 different shades of grey. There has also been a physiological adaptation to cities that are ever greyer.
Maria Rosaria Delle Cave
Outside of the conurbations, towards the provinces, losing yourself in the unexplored footpaths to find yourself.
Katja Onjukka
People need more open, green spaces where they can relax, breathe fresh air, smell the grass. We have to discover the secret of greenery.
Stefano Cremisini
An idealised space where nothing is stronger. Everything is on the same level, there is no dimension, no above and no below. A utopian cohabitation of different shapes.
Domenico D'Alessio
Aequòpolis, the city that gives a natural aspect to urbanisation. A city that allows you to feel as though you were someone in a sea of nobodies, to find an equilibrium in which you can feel alive.
Tommaso Colombo
The city is a cohesion of different realities. The basic idea is to transpose this variety of aspects which make up the city through a type of “aequòpolis” composed of different features.
Vincenzo Lodigiani
While preserving the inevitable, oppressive and negative aspects of the great modern metropolis, the new city has the ability to transform itself, offering its inhabitants escape routes towards refuges where they can find their own equilibrium, on a personal or group level.
Paola Slongo
Metropolitan suburbs like giant Tetris blocks: anonymous masses suffocating the sky; indeterminate pieces of solitude fixed in a precarious equilibrium.
Beatrice Cesana
Large cities are like Leopardi’s hedge. A barrier to be overcome with the help of the planners’ imagination.
Ilaria Comello
In some cities, going home is not something that everybody wants to do: architecture and good government can make sure that it is.
Sabrina Grillo
“A famous story says that in Babylon, part of the city was occupied by enemy invaders and the other parts knew nothing about it. The city was not communicating with itself.” Predrag Matvejevic
Paola Busnelli
Sustainable city... to live or to lie? Man is at the heart of the question. Man is responsible for the answer: Live or lie? Act or submit?

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City places

by Paolo Rumiz

Write a comment

Search illywords

Images

THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY

Daniele Sandri

Aequòpolis should not be a place that pollutes and strips natural resources down to the bone, but it should blend into them, becoming an integral part of them.

Silvia Amaduzzi

Utopolis. Today, a just city is a Utopia; an emerald City to be built from the errors of unsustainable development in the modern megalopolis.

Domenico D'Alessio

Aequòpolis, the city that gives a natural aspect to urbanisation. A city that allows you to feel as though you were someone in a sea of nobodies, to find an equilibrium in which you can feel alive.

Guido Tamino

The reality portrayed is a perceived, fleeting, rapid and confused one. It is the reality that we intercept, perceive and experience, as we walk.

Andrea Cadorin

The artificial installation has become naturalised, and Nature has become urbanised. A selective process.

Francesca Pasini

Cities give great chances, from a perfect stranger you can become someone. This is the reason why many people live in a big city.

Katja Onjukka

People need more open, green spaces where they can relax, breathe fresh air, smell the grass. We have to discover the secret of greenery.

Mario Ruggiero

Starting with the observations of Daverio, "is the growth of cities a question of numbers?" and Branzi "a city has to offer opportunities" I’ve seen a growing, seeping form of random development, mainly driven by the market. A development that risks isolating the individual.

Fabrizio Luca

Modern cities compress, draw in and heap together any kind of shape, like a funnel. Yet Nature tries to adapt itself to this city.

Simone Trotti

This is Bangkok, a city of angels and temples. Bangkok, unrecognisable. It overruns all boundaries and keeps expanding. Insatiable.

Ilaria Di Emidio

A liveable city, a possible city. Not destroying what exists, but redesigning it, changing the perspective: today, cities are not wrong, just interpreted badly.

Ilaria Di Emidio

A liveable city, a possible city. Not destroying what exists, but redesigning it, changing the perspective: today, cities are not wrong, just interpreted badly.

Giorgio Caviglia

The city is created and grows fed by its diversity. All attempts at planning should be aimed at making the most of its peculiarities.

Susanna Ferraro

Vertical development as an objective; the text becomes part of the metropolitan fabric, integrating and elevating it towards an aequòpolis.

Cristina Venanzetti

You can see the city because the eye of a 20th century human being can distinguish more than 100 different shades of grey. There has also been a physiological adaptation to cities that are ever greyer.

Maria Rosaria Delle Cave

Outside of the conurbations, towards the provinces, losing yourself in the unexplored footpaths to find yourself.

Katja Onjukka

People need more open, green spaces where they can relax, breathe fresh air, smell the grass. We have to discover the secret of greenery.

Stefano Cremisini

An idealised space where nothing is stronger. Everything is on the same level, there is no dimension, no above and no below. A utopian cohabitation of different shapes.

Domenico D'Alessio

Aequòpolis, the city that gives a natural aspect to urbanisation. A city that allows you to feel as though you were someone in a sea of nobodies, to find an equilibrium in which you can feel alive.

Tommaso Colombo

The city is a cohesion of different realities. The basic idea is to transpose this variety of aspects which make up the city through a type of “aequòpolis” composed of different features.

Vincenzo Lodigiani

While preserving the inevitable, oppressive and negative aspects of the great modern metropolis, the new city has the ability to transform itself, offering its inhabitants escape routes towards refuges where they can find their own equilibrium, on a personal or group level.

Paola Slongo

Metropolitan suburbs like giant Tetris blocks: anonymous masses suffocating the sky; indeterminate pieces of solitude fixed in a precarious equilibrium.

Beatrice Cesana

Large cities are like Leopardi’s hedge. A barrier to be overcome with the help of the planners’ imagination.

Ilaria Comello

In some cities, going home is not something that everybody wants to do: architecture and good government can make sure that it is.

Sabrina Grillo

“A famous story says that in Babylon, part of the city was occupied by enemy invaders and the other parts knew nothing about it. The city was not communicating with itself.” Predrag Matvejevic

Paola Busnelli

Sustainable city... to live or to lie? Man is at the heart of the question. Man is responsible for the answer: Live or lie? Act or submit?

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