- Attractiveness and Inventiveness in the Public Spaces    click here to open paper content374 kb
by    Villalobos Hernandez, Maria Altagracia | M_Villal@planning.nyc.gov   click here to send an email to the auther(s) of this paper
Short Outline
Innovation is everything but patrimonial rejection. This research works with unscreened places that overlap realistic images and mysterious forms that would provide an opening to induce experiences of interaction.
Abstract
“New” economic, cultural and technological forces are involved constantly and unavoidably in the
permanent accumulation of survival urban strategies. Urban forms and political structures
continually get together by negotiating their past, present and distant future theoretical
conceptions of the urban space, in order to rebuild, destroy and un-build the environment in
which people live. This research paper explores one of these key issues to stay alive; specifically,
the one related with the aesthetics and programmatic dimensions and repercussions of the visual
technologies in the public urban scape, with particular focus on Lower Manhattan, New York, US.

This research works with unscreened places that overlap realistic images and mysterious forms
that would provide an opening to induce experiences of interaction more and more complex and
seductive; places that mediate urban control and de-control; spaces where the reinvention
process that combines science and art happens; out-door interstitial opportunities of collective
experiences that combine hyper-realistic objects and metaphysic perceptions.

Methodologically, this paper is divided in three blocks: the first one, synthesized fragmentation,
is related with those ordinary problems of accessibility and how new technologies can help in the
redesign process of the systems of urban information and movement; the second one,
cosmogonist experimentation, suggests some generic actions oriented to identify technologic
elements that should be considered in the reinvention process of urban scapes as instruments to
change the perception of locations; and thirdly, skeptical faith, contains considerations related to
the levels of abstraction and flexibility in the urban strategies and how they could help local
governments to be successful not only in the present but in the long-term local identity.

Innovation is everything but patrimonial rejection; urban designers should protect metaphorical
lucidity –perhaps hyper-melancholic- in the contemporary urban landscape, in order to offer not
partial, but a temporary diverse scene of collective life.
Keywords
synthesized fragmentation-cosmogonist experimentation-skeptical faith
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