COST Action Writing Urban Places looks at what our future urban cities reveal
The majority of the global population currently lives in urban areas, and this is expected to increase in the future. Thus, the current context of European cities offers unprecedented challenges for urban planners, architects, and policy makers. Factors like migration, ageing of the population, gentrification, and demographic shrinkage have an impact on urban identities.
There is wide-spread European knowledge related to the urban condition coming from a variety of relevant disciplines. If harvested, this knowledge holds vast potential to generate innovative cooperation and creative concepts that could raise the usability of scientific research in urban planning in Europe. On the one hand we can strive to improve and correct many aspects that must certainly change in the coming years, but on the other hand we can also foster and protect some of the qualities that make life so rich in our cities.
While the metropolis dominates contemporary urban culture in Asia and the Americas, Europe is a continent predominantly populated on a relatively even spread of medium-sized cities. In many ways this medium size explains the high quality of urban life throughout Europe. The COST Action Writing Urban Places. New Narratives of the European City offers an innovative approach to understanding the specific challenges and qualities of the mid-sized city. By using narrative methods, the Action has developed a human understanding of communities and societies in terms of their situatedness.
Cities are not only buildings, squares, and streets. They are fundamentally the lives of their past, present and future inhabitants, and these lives can be understood and communicated through the stories people come up with and tell each other. The Network is bringing the urban stories from these lesser studied cities to the fore, as knowledge that can benefit a many other cities and their citizens throughout the whole continent.
“The network offers a creative and interdisciplinary environment for both researchers and practitioners, especially for young researchers from the European periphery countries, to experience and reflect on our urban contexts by using and sharing narrative methodologies.”
Susana Oliveira, Writing Urban Places Vice-Chair
Launched in 2019, the COST Action is an interdisciplinary network that brings together artistic and scientific research in the fields of literary studies, urban planning, and architecture from 35 countries, departing from two main ideas. The first idea is to investigate how people experience their cities. The second focuses on how urban stories about those cities can be shared and raised to the level of urban and architectural strategies.
The network is divided into four working groups that have been studying urban narratives theoretically and methodologically, as well as developing fieldwork projects and communication strategies which have successfully involved the local communities from several mid-sized European cities. Research and practice with communities has been carried out using different formats, such as exhibitions, workshops, training schools for young scholars, and artistic performances; in cities like Limerick, Almada, Tampere, Tallinn, Çanakkale, and Osijek.
“We are very excited about this shift from reflection to action and back. The wide geographic spread of cities we visit and investigate allows us to test and evaluate narrative methods, and adapt them to the different social, cultural and climatological contexts of the specific cities.”
Klaske Havik, Writing Urban Places Chair
Skopje Brutalism Trail
From 28th to 30th September 2022, Writing Urban Places will be working in Skopje, where some of the most pressing urban questions and conflicts that define the contemporary European city have a very strong presence in the city’s architecture. These exceptional laboratory conditions will serve as basis for an investigation on the meaning and appropriability of European cities and stories, carried out using instruments and methods form architecture, theatre, and literature. You can find additional information about this event on their website.
Further reading
Much of the Action’s work has been developed through a number of issues of the Writingplace Journal.
The booklet Vademecum: 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places develops a theoretical approach to the European city through a series of words and their possible, unconventional meanings.
COST Action blog: Writing Urban Places and European myths
Additional information
View the Action webpage
View the Network website
Follow Urban places on social media via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.