The city is an extremely multi-faceted structure, one of the most complex cultural products ever brought forth by human beings. Cities are not only growing and expanding, but are also becoming increasingly dense. More than half of the world’s population already lives in cities.
The economic, social, technological, ecological and cultural antagonisms of global society accelerate and intensify in cities. Which trends and problems are emerging amid today’s global urbanisation processes? Which aspects are used to talk about cities today? Which criteria to assess and design them? How are cities being reconstructed and expanded? Who is involved in these complex transformations? Only an interdisciplinary approach is able to adequately address these questions. Arts universities can make an important contribution to answering these questions.
PUBLIC CITY, one of ZHdK’s overarching research focuses, addresses various key topics, including the city and the public, urbanity and public spaces. It endeavours to bring together researchers from ZHdK and from other national and international research institutions dealing with the manifold aspects of urban transformation processes. The aim is to facilitate dialogue between different artistic, scientific and theoretical approaches.
PUBLIC CITY gathers, showcases, promotes, intensifies and coordinates the interests of researchers and forms a network of university and non-university institutes, public administrations and NGOs in Switzerland and abroad, in order to foster interdisciplinary and cross-cultural exchange and to generate productive synergies. Regular workshops and lectures by invited experts provide ample opportunities to present and discuss current issues, perspectives and discourses.
The university-wide research focus PUBLIC CITY is based at the Institute of Contemporary Art and is coordinated by Jürgen Krusche in association with project managers and researchers from various institutes at ZHdK.