[oberlist] DE* cfp: MONU #25 - INDEPENDENT URBANISM

[ober]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU #25 - INDEPENDENT URBANISM

http://www.monu-magazine.com/submit.htm
East German guards watch the crowds massing on top of the Berlin Wall in
1989. Photo: GDR Museum

Although the idea that the nation-state as the exclusive agent of
connections and relations between political communities is increasingly
considered obsolete, the world has witnessed the emergence of more than 30
new countries over the last 3 decades. Especially the fundamental changes
in world politics that unfolded across Europe at the end of the 1980s and
early 1990s - most emblematically symbolized by the fall of the Berlin
wall in November 1989, that led to the dissolution of the USSR and
Yugoslavia - caused the creation of most of the newly independent states.
Fifteen countries, such as Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Ukraine, or Uzbekistan, to name just a few, became independent with the
implosion of the USSR in 1991. Similarly, the former Yugoslavia dissolved
into the independent countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,
Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia and Montenegro, which in turn changed into
the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and finally into the
separate states of Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo (although the
independence of the latter has not yet been universally recognized).

However, the creation of independent new countries over the last 3 decades
was not limited to the territories of the USSR and Yugoslavia, but
occurred in other parts of the world as well, due to a variety of reasons.
There is, for example, the case of East Timor, a now sovereign state in
Maritime Southeast Asia, achieving independence only in 2002. Some of the
fairly new states in Africa include Namibia and the State of Eritrea. But
the newest of all the new nation-states is South-Sudan, another African
country, having gained its independence from Sudan just a couple of years
ago in 2011. Nevertheless, it is quite predictable that South-Sudan will
not be the last addition to this list of newly independent nation-states
for long, but will most likely be joined by even newer independent
countries very soon. Some of the candidates that might soon top this list
include Scotland, a Flemish Republic, Catalonia, Veneto, or other regions
such as West-Papua in Indonesia.

Reflecting on countries on their way to independence and on the meaning of
nation-states is fascinating. However, in this new issue of MONU we
neither want to speculate on possible future independent nation-states,
nor on those countries that recently gained independence in general, but
more specifically contemplate the impact independence has had on their
cities and what these cities do with their new-found freedom, what
strategies those cities develop to thrive, what potential they have, how
they might rise to success, but also what struggles and difficulties they
face. All phenomena surrounding cities of countries that recently gained
independence we would like to call "Independent Urbanism". We are
especially interested in discovering to what extent these newly
"independent" cities, for example, use different methods to overcome their
biggest challenges compared to the methods that were used by
post-industrial cities of the West, some decades earlier. How are these
"independent" cities managed and marketed in a more advanced way than
cities in the past, using all the available opportunities and technologies
to which cities have access today?

Furthermore, we would like to find out what kind of new urban concepts
"independent" cities apply to face up to their social, cultural,
political, ecological, spatial, and especially economic challenges? How do
they manage, for example, to attract investment or the creative class? How
do they deal with urban renewal, provide affordable housing, sufficient
schools, infrastructure, and improve the quality of their neighbourhoods
and architecture and thus the life of their inhabitants? How do they
handle poverty, unemployment, crime and corruption, but also environmental
problems? How do they make most of their potential while avoiding a
sell-out and loss of identity? How do "independent" cities gain
recognition, placing themselves on the map and in the minds of people?
What kind of incentives do they initiate to survive? How do they employ
the media or events in their development? How do they deal in general with
the incredible chance of a fresh start? To answer all these questions this
new call for submissions for MONU #25 on "Independent Urbanism" invites
analytical texts, investigative essays, deep research, enlightening
projects, fascinating photography, documenting infographics, and smart
investigations. Abstracts of around 500 words, and images and
illustrations in low resolution, should be sent, together with a short
biography and a publication list, as one single pdf-file that is not
bigger than 1mb to info at monu-magazine.com before June 30, 2016. MONU's
autumn issue #25 will be published in October 2016.

(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, May 2016)


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