Closing Address

Ole Bouman

As an architect, writer, and editor, I�m quite used to organising knowledge. This is exactly what I want to do today, to organise the knowledge that was presented thus far. I will do this firstly through a series of general remarks that emphasise the major underlying conditions of all the developments and facts and figures presented today. I will then ask each of today�s speakers a very precise philosophical question.

I recently attended a conference in Athens, together with Saskia Sassen actually, on how that city could address the incredible supermodern developments vis-�-vis the upcoming Olympics in 2004. Instead of investigating the specificity of Athens with regard to this modernisation process, it was trying to �jump on the bus� and react as every other city in the world where I have attended conferences. And so I�m really amazed actually how , in this case, Dublin is also discussing its role in the global economy, which as far as I�m concerned lacks a certain awareness of its own specificity. The symposium has addressed the issue of the general tendencies, but hasn�t pointed out so much the specific qualities of Dublin when faced with the modernisation process.

I have the strong impression that discussing this �jumping on the bus� of modernisation has a lot to do with social and physical reactions and strategies, but also - and this has been a weak point today - with the digitalisation process and biotechnology. This reflective discourse is already lagging behind what is really going on here and in other European cities. While coming to terms with what�s really going on, the truth itself is already light years ahead in trying to dematerialise social and individual behaviour.

Much has been said about politics and the problem of enforcing policy, but without realising that the capacity for politics to do this on its own is extremely weak. So the basic question should be: where was the money today? For instance, there are all kinds of specialisms represented here today, but where were the bankers, the developers, the chief executives? These are the people who really decide what kind of spatial development a city will take.

There is a paradox in talking about citizenship today. If we really accept the idea of entering a network society, we should really be thinking not of citizens but of �netizens�, people acting and behaving socially on the net. If the city itself is then dissolving into a kind of atomic society, we should think in a more profound way about what exactly is the quality of citizenship today. Is there still someone who can be called a citizen?

Much has also been said about �identity-building� for cities. Many cities are very aware of the need to define an �identity� in terms of competition with other cities in attracting capital. I think we could use the more precise term �profile�. �Identity� has something to do with a belief, and with a behaviour that is a representation of that belief, and with a historical awareness and rootedness. �Profile�, on the other hand, is arbitrary. Many cities give up the idea that they represent a historical �identity�, and present a �profile� as a goal in itself.

There was a lot of talent here today assembled behind the table, widely distributed through the different disciplines, but I have the strong feeling that more and more the big discursive talents in the urban discourse are confined to consultancy. Even governmental departments dealing with spatial and urban issues are becoming consulting offices, while the real decision-making is done through the big companies. Being a consultant is of course a highly attractive career, but can also be very damaging to implementation trajectories.You can give your best ideas to a nice policy paper, but nobody guarantees this policy paper will be implemented.

Finally, a very important issue that came up through many of the papers is the division between short-term and long-term thinking. One can say that as long as we don�t deal with it, the basic dialectics of the need to think in the long-term, and the actual character of money, the need to capitalise and get returns in the short-term, we will never come to terms with that side of the modernisation process. Europe, which has historically regarded the long-term as of greater value, is now also bowing to the short-term American economic model. This tension is very important to discuss.

All of the above issues provide me now with a critical framework to ask a few more specific questions to some of the speakers today.

To Dick Gleeson, Deputy City Planning Officer, Dublin Corporation, who talked about the public mandate and the physical strategies in the city:
Why does he think the city needs to be so competitive? Hardly anyone today has the courage to ask this.

To Jim Walsh, Research and Policy Analyst, Combat Poverty Agency, who talked about social strategies as complementary to the physical ones:
Does he really think they are complementary? The social program quite often lags behind. Many cities rely on the physical program only, providing themselves with an alibi not to be engaged in any social program.

To Karen O'Keeffe, Director, Elephant and Castle Project, Borough of Southwark, London:
Does she really think that at this scale of urban development, you can still think in terms of a �win-win� situation? She was very enthusiastic about the possibilities and the capacity to enforce high quality policy. But who is losing here? You have to be very honest in making explicit the social and urban dilemmas that are there: who is making the decisions, what kind of choices are being made, and who is taking the profit.

To keynote speaker Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology, The University of Chicago, who described extensively how the global economy is acting today:
There is a �big bubble� dimension to the latest great transformation of the global economy through information technology industries. Investments that are made today anticipate profits which are far beyond our grasp. This should be taken into account when advising cities, as she did, to improve their competitive bargaining capacity. If cities incorporate such development which only anticipates future profits, these cities will suffer greatly when the bubble bursts.

To Maureen Gilbert, Head of Independent Living Services at the National Rehabilitation Board, who talked about the public appeal of today�s urbanism and architecture:
Could she think about and elaborate on the shift from thinking about the public to thinking about the consumer? In social terms there is a big difference between the two. The consumer is satisfied with image politics, whereas the public wants a lot more out of city policy.

To Andrew McLaran, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography and Director of the Centre for Urban & Regional Studies, Trinity College Dublin, who showed very decisively the shift of investment in office space from the centre to the periphery of the city:
If it really is a preference for the information industry to establish in Ireland, it might be interesting to reflect on the specific cultural effects of this, and the kind of effect they have on the way we think about urban space and social texture. If there are so many of them available as partners in discussion, why not address them immediately in terms of their cultural effect and what kind of contribution they make to the network society?

To Paul Leech, architect and engineer, Dublin, who was impressive in his story of doom (which is strongly rooted in the idea of biological determinism, where nature is destroyed by the human hand):
Could we transcend this problem through genetic engineering, which is a very specific use of the human hand, so that the ecological story of doom becomes at least shaded?

To Don Murphy, architect, VMX Architects, Rotterdam, who presented the Netherlands in a most convincing way as the perfect country:
There is a strange enthusiasm in the Netherlands for statistics, especially among architects, for example MVRDV. However, there is always a kind of consciousness to be shown when you try to sustain and justify architecture and projects through statistics.

To Colm T�ib�n, novelist and journalist, Dublin, who made a very strong stance concerning the eternal fight between culture and capital, which of course is a very dialectical way of thinking:
I would challenge him to elaborate on the process by which culture is �eaten up� through entrepreneurial spirit. I don�t think there is still such a strong dialectic between the two. Culture is also I think in his own terms corruptible. Culture can also be enterprise (it is enterprise in most cases).
Also secondly, with regard to his asking Dublin Corporation to say �sorry � for their mistakes. In the Netherlands there is a discussion about the �sorry� democracy, in which politicians excuse their own mistakes and corruption by just saying �sorry� in parliament. �Sorry� is absolutely not enough.

To Adam Caruso, architect, Caruso St.John Architects, London, who did a perfect job in presenting a Jane Jacobs-like vision of the city, which of course I very much sympathise with:
But in terms of �getting real�, which was shown largely on the screen in the lecture of Don Murphy, we must think the theory of the city in terms of texture , materials, tectonics and social grain. We should reflect on the city being transformed into a capsule civilisation, a cellphone culture. If so many people are willing to go so quickly into a virtual domain in which much of their social behaviour is defined by completely private conversations, I think architecture cannot rely just on this Jane Jacobs idealization of the public realm. We really should think in terms of architecture! What does this cellphone culture mean to us?

To Gerry Cahill, architect, Dublin, who discussed the separate profession of architecture:
We are here in a school of architecture, an d I think that architects and the professional institutions should think about the role the discipline actually plays. I don�t believe that the creative part of design, of producing space, comes from architecture! I think in terms of a collaboration, of interface design, of installation technology, of the creative capacity of clients. Architecture dissolves into a much larger social transformation. I am very curious how these institutions, not just in Ireland, can come to terms with the dissolution of architecture as a separate discipline of design. It instead becomes the specialism of directing space, where the architect, like in film, plays the role of the director.

Ole Bouman is the editor-in-chief of Archis, the Netherlands' leading magazine for architecture, city and visual culture, and the author of several books including The Invisible in Architecture (1994). He has curated exhibitions including RealSpace in Quick Times, the Dutch entry to the XIX Milan Triennale (1996), on architecture and digitization, and Egotecture, on the historical relationship between personal identity and architectural space, for the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam (1997). Currently in preparation are Ice Cold New Media, an exhibition opening at Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam in January 2000, the next Manifesta art event in Ljubljana (June 2000) and transPORT 2001, a project with Kas Oosterhuis for the Rotterdam 2001 Cultural Capital of Europe programme.