Architecture & Urbanism in the Age of Planetary Crisis

Architecture and urbanism play a significant role in the production and reproduction of urbanization and the supremacy of the state and capital, which results in the current planetary crisis. Unveiling the interconnection of this crisis and architecture and urbanism is the first and the most significant step to finding out the ethical function of architecture and urbanism in the solution of this crisis. 

Wars, deforestation, poverty, soil erosion, hunger, pollution, injustice, climate change, inequality, mass extinction of species, uncontrollable wildfires, and current epidemics - the ravages of our time - as well as mass migration have changed the 21st Century to a century of planetary crisis.

In addition to the ecological effects of this crisis, especially climate change and associated extremities which mostly preoccupy our attention, the social impacts of the current crisis are also major concerns. We are witnessing alarming inequalities that are unprecedented in history. While the richest 1% of the world population is holding almost 50% of the wealth of the planet, the majority of the rest is struggling with poverty, wars, autocratic regimes, racism, and famine. All these make the most excluded communities of the world more susceptible and vulnerable to the impacts of this crisis.

With all its different aspects from injustices to environmental disasters, this crisis is a result of a union of hegemonic forces between state and capital which are both products and byproducts of current urbanization and its consumerist life, centralized services and hegemonic control mechanisms over massive populations that largely reside in easily steerable dense areas. These characteristics eradicate human scale relations, and people’s will and control over their lives, their self-sufficiency and independence and builds consumer, dependent and vulnerable societies.

This conference aims to examine the different roles architecture and urbanism, as agencies of the current urbanization, have played in the emergence of the current planetary crisis and more importantly to explore the necessary shifts in the education and practice of architecture and urbanism which can lead to possible solutions to this crisis and promise a better world for all of its inhabitants.