Paper City drawn for Blueprint by Laurie Chetwood

Blueprint and the RA’s exhibition Paper City: Urban Utopias will travel to Cambridge, and will be on show at the School of Architecture for a week from 26 November. The exhibition coincides with a conference Minimum…or Maximum Cities for which Blueprint is media partner.

Minimum…or Maximum Cities? After the Crash: Recharging Metropolitan Life

Thursday 26 November

Department of Architecture, 1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge, CB2 1PX

What is the future for cities? Are they expanding at an ever-increasing rate or are they being abandoned and shrinking into oblivion? Are cities polluted and overcrowded, or isolated and anonymous? Are they sociable or anti-social? Well, it depends who you read because each description reflects the confusion about the state of the world’s cities. The economic and cultural anxiety pervasive in western cities, and fears over megacities in the developing world have had a significant impact on the way that we see the benefits and drawbacks of urbanisation. As a result, many commentators and theorists appear profoundly pessimistic as to the future prospects for the city and the planet. It has been said that a culture of shrinkage is set to develop; or alternatively, that the city will have finally swallowed the world.

So how should we, in the post-crash world, seek to reinvigorate the social, cultural and economic life of our urban centres? Do widely expressed fears represent a welcome mood of caution in hazardous times? Or should we be concerned at a collapse in our own belief in the benefits of an urbanised future? How might new opportunities be maximised and social advances realised? Does the ‘minimum’ city provide a means to retrench, rethink and rebuild? Or is a ‘maximum’ urbanism the answer, based on expansive cities for a dynamic and globalised planet?

From transport systems to energy grids, from social networks to economic activity, this is the forum in which to debate the implications of min/max alternatives.  And given the often fraught debates over lifestyles, liberties, aesthetic values and technologies, to clarify the cultural attributes that can best help address the urban future.

Sessions include: 

· The Anxious City: The Dilemmas of Growth

· The Agile City: Local Ties versus Global Reach

· Powering the City: Innovations in Energy 

· The Future City: Rewriting the Rule Book

Speakers include:

Anna Minton (Author, Ground Control); Penny Lewis (Scott Sutherland School of Architecture); Jon Coaffee (Professor of Spatial Planning, University of Birmingham);Richard Williams (In the City, University of Edinburgh); Alastair Donald (Convenor, Min-Max-Cities Group); John Adams (Emeritus Professor, UCL); Austin Williams (Director, Future Cities Project); Timandra Harkness (writer, NESTA FameLab); Marcial Echenique (Professor of Land Use and Transport Studies, University of Cambridge);Steve Melia (University of West of England, Car Free UK); Ying Jin (Department of Architecture, Cambridge, Energy Efficient Cities); James Woudhuysen (Professor of Forecasting and Innovation, De Montfort University); Vicky Richardson (Editor, Blueprint); Darryl Chen (Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today); Karl Sharro (ManTowNHuman

Conveners

Alastair Donald (Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Ye Zhang (Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge)

Paper City: Urban Utopias is at the Royal Academy until 27 October