Celebrations of Urbanity Editorial
By Alessandro Busà
Celebrations of Urbanity - The Urban Reinventors, Issue Nr. 2, December 2007
In the last two decades urbanity has been an omnipresent matter/issue/subject in progressive urban planning debate, and an everlasting mantra in urban rhetoric. As far away as its actual implementation still seems to be from most of the self-centric signature-productions of the architectural stardom, the shift to an anti-modern urbanism seems now widely accepted, obvious and advantageous to forward-thinking urban planners and designers. That urbanity per se is a goal, though, has yet to be determined. In a new, after-modern era wherein the notion of urbanity is widely celebrated, bill boarded and squeezed into an often narrow iconic vision by realtors, private enterprises as well as by entrepreneurial administrations, our first aim must be to question, challenge and re-discuss urbanity […].
Alessandro Busà is Chief Editor of The Urban Reinventors, as well as a licensed Architect (Berlin’s Chamber of Architects), a Ph.D. candidate in Urban Planning at the Technische Universität Berlin and a visiting scholar at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of Columbia University in New York. His writing and research interests explore entrepreneurial shifts in urban policies and recent strategies of reinvention of the urban environment in western cities. His main research areas are architecture, historic preservation, urban planning, urban design, urban and suburban regional development, urban redevelopment strategies, creative strategies, urban renaissance, urban regeneration. Busà has been awarded the Erwin Stephan Preis of the Technische Universität Berlin in 2004, and has worked in 2005 on “Traccia di Memoria”, winning project in the architectural competition for a monument to the Italian Resistance in Florence. He has lectured in Italy, Poland and Germany. Urban writer and photographer, he recently directed a documentary film on the gentrification of former East Berlin (“Ein Berliner Haus”), which was awarded a special mention by the Festival der Nationen (Vienna) in 2006. Busà has heretofore published several articles and book chapters in Germany and Italy and cooperated in research projects in both countries.
