Switzerland – Deep Urbanism for an Age of Disruption

„Switzerland – Deep Urbanism for an Age of Disruption“ wurde herausgegeben von Strelka Press mit einem Vorwort von Anastassia Smirnova. Das Buch entstand im Rahmen der Vorlesungen im Advanced Urban Design Masters Programm der National Research University und dem Strelka Institute in Moskau. Das Buch beschreibt die spezifischen Aspekte des Städtebaus in der Schweiz und folgt den Ideen unseres Projektes zur Landesausstellung Ostschweiz 2027. Auf diesem Fundament skizziert das Buch eine Theorie des «Deep Urbanism», eine Sicht auf Stadt und Städtebau als komplexem System in Interaktion mit seinem Territorium, illustriert anhand des Fallbeispiels Schweiz.

„We perceive urbanity as space, but we live it as interaction. Cities are catalysts for such interactions, stabilizing our relationships through infrastructures and institutions, spaces and stories. Technological progress increases the network depth and speed of interactions, which in turn fuels innovation and progress. The result is self-reinforcing growth and, globally, the ever more-rapid transformation of nature into culture with all the risks this entails. Cities are not static and autonomous. Cities have depth.

This essay, therefore, does not frame the discipline of urbanism as just a design profession that deals with urban spaces and building typologies, and sometimes with history, laws, regulations or land economy. Rather, it proposes a complex system science which I call “Deep Urbanism” and which I define as the discipline of the relationships – the connections and connectedness – that generate a complex system of people and their material, technological and symbolic culture acting on a territory with its specific emergent dynamics and externalities.”