Urban Production and Products of Urbanity
The production of value has ever been concentrated in cities. They are the driving force of economy. But the globalization process enabled the relocation of the productive industry to developing countries - where salaries are low and the environmental restrictions are almost of no concern. Additionally the land value of urban ground is rising permanently, especially in dense megacities leading to speculations and displacement of productive areas from the city to the periphery and thereby consolidating the post-industrial production as post-urban. The monofunctional emphasis on the development of housing in the city is challenging the notion of the urban understood as a dense, mixed, diverse, lively and open condition.
How can material and non-material production be reintegrated in the dense urban fabric? Which industrial branches are suitable to fit the needs and challenges of the urban context? Which spatial and legal regulations can help to advance the urban production? Can re-urbanization of production increase social collectivity? Or how could the display of the productive sector in the city be beneficial in order to engage with environmental issues? How can we overcome and transcend the mental obstacle of modernity with its functional separation and ensure mixed, dense, lively and collective production?
The fourth issue of Moinopolis aims to investigate contemporary conditions of urban systems of production and to search for new concepts and strategies of its spatial articulation. It further seeks to understand the interrelation between the production in the city and the production of the city. We are interested in positions, projects and observations on the production in urban space. Diverse contributions that critically engage with the topic may be submitted in form of speculative papers and essays, experimental projects, insights, images, interviews or manifestos.
Text: Radostina Radulova 19.11.2016