Conference program

September 24.
10:00 - 13:00 Opening lectures

14:30 - 17:30

Section 1: Travelling concepts, cultural transfers, different scales

The majority of European cities are not metropolitan, neither in their scale nor in their
networks. The continent's network of cities and towns is in constant transformation, due to
the EU integration process: regions emerge and evaporate, as political and economic
borders of nation-states blur. What are the conditions that make culture-led urban
development work in different relational and urban structures? In what ways are cultural
events, strategies and concepts transferable between different contexts? What is the role of
cultural translation in localizing global experiences? How to learn locally from international
‘best practices’?

14:30 - 17:30

Section 2: The Creative City and the crisis

Architecture has played a central role in the Creative City, but with the weakening of the
global real-estate market, the abandonment of large-scale development projects and with
European states reluctant to stimulate economies through investments, creative classes and
industries face the challenge to reconsider their position in urban development. What is the
role of cultural organizers, architects, designers and municipalities in addressing living
conditions in today’s cities? What are the new professional models developed by architects
and designers? How do cultural initiatives find funding in the current economic conditions?
What are the perspectives of the Creative City concept in the aftermath of the economic
crisis?

September 25.

10:00 - 13:00

Section 3: Infrastructure, technology and urban culture

Urban infrastructures and networked mobile technology are becoming the new urban agoras
where services are not ready-made products but rather platforms for new exchanges. Built
space and technology are not parallel universes anymore but intertwined, symbiotic,
augmented realities that define the ways culture is consumed and used in the everyday.
What are the challenges that municipalities face in reconsidering infrastructure in the light of
new technologies? How can cultural infrastructures in cities be connected to networks of
information and knowledge distribution? How can technology enhance the uses and access
to public space and culture? What are the policy elements of developing the ‘open source
city’?

10:00 - 13:00

Section 4: Innovation at the peripheries

While in previous years the center-periphery relationships have been significantly
reorganized in the contexts of both urban agglomerations and national economies,
peripheral neighborhoods and marginal regions were forced to experiment with strategies to
avoid dependance on the centers’ economic, cultural and technological capital. These
communities have become laboratories of social, economic and cultural innovation. The
problems of peripheries are not only geographical but also technological, which raises the
question of innovation options and policy limits in developing regions. How can peripheral
neighborhoods and regions, and marginal communities reposition themselves in the
emerging regional and global cultural and technological networks? What is the role of
bottom-up cultural initiatives and culture-led planning at the peripheries and in small cities?
14:30 - 17:30 Closing lectures: perspectives and new strategies
The closing session of the conference will turn analyses into anticipations, by addressing the
following issues: Can culture become once again a catalyzing force? What might be the new
context of culture and how can it be tackled by economic, policy and management models?
Who is able to finance today's cultural developments? How can culture become once again
a catalyzing force? What are its perspectives and what are the areas it has lost? What are
the main dilemmas related to culture-led planning at the beginning of the 2010s?