urbanHIST

Urban History: INTER-DISCIPLINARY OPENING UP

Different disciplines provide instruments and interpretation keys for urban history. As Nancy H. Kwak remembers in her article “Interdisciplinarity in Planning History” (The Routledge Handbook of Planning History, 2018, HEIN, C. ed), planning history is an interdisciplinary enterprise, a field rather than a discipline, and ‘an exploration of planning history thus requires a consideration of shifting interdisciplinary contributions and layering of methods’.

Three specific actions will be implemented at UVa:

• NEW TECHNOLOGIES APPLIED TO THE ANALYSIS OF URBAN EVOLUTION (Seminar with experts in TICs and urban history researchers);

• Progress in urbanHIST UVa ESRs’ research projects;

• HISTORY AND URBAN CONDITION: Joint Ph.D. Seminar organized by two University Research Institutes of University of Valladolid: Instituto Universitario de Urbanística and Instituto Universitario de Historia Simancas (“I+I Meetings”).

Urban voids, public spaces. Uses of History and Urban Heritage.

The productive restructuring of the last quarter of the 20th century produced in Europe important industrial and infrastructural brownfields. From the point of view of the History of urbanism, this phenomenon is not only characterized by the fact that these are large land lots in urbanized areas and in the hands of few owners (it means by a particular set of actors and of great transcendence on the development of the European finisecular cities), but also because of the problems associated with the use of History and the industrial heritage.

The seminar, which takes part as a program of activities for 2016-2018 established by an agreement between the IUU-UVa and the group of research "Usages de l'Histoire et futurs urbains" (led by the Université Paris-Est, a non-academic partner organisation of urbanHIST), focuses on the analysis of these elements from a comparative European approach, with contributions by researchers from both groups.

Perspectives on History of Urban Planning in 20th Century: Problems and Methods

To understand the complexity of urban planning in the 20th century (its objects, subjects, objectives and tools, its limits and scope, its epistemology, the planning systems and their relation to the modes of production and to the building on the city) from a historical perspective requires not only the knowledge of historiographical methods and currents but also the participation of diverse philosophical and disciplinary approaches.

According to the program of research seminars “Los Viernes del IUU” and the UVa Doctoral Program in Architecture, the aims of the lecture series will be to disseminate recent contributions in the area of the historical construction of the city and urban planning during the 20th century, both in Europe and in other geographical areas in which European influence is relevant, and to boost the scientific debate among scholars from different disciplines that account for the diversity of issues involved in this field of research. Thus, for example, contributions and debates are planned around the historiography of 20th century Urbanism, the historical approach to the Anthropology of urban public spaces or the History and international circulation of tools and models of urban planning for historical urban centers.

Building the City and Urban Planning: Historical Horizon(s)

This series of conferences has as the linchpin to discuss the idea that the process of construction of the city can be considered in itself as a historical product. Moreover, the creation and development of urban planning, as a part of the process of building the European cities in the 20th century, can also be considered in the same way. These proposals that we want to analyze, have a very long scope. To mention just some of the possible developments: if we accept that city and planning are historical products, then it seems unavoidable that the understanding of both phenomena incorporates a historical approach. And, in this case, taking into account the measureless urban complexity, what do horizons of understanding open up before historical analysis?

If, as Alfonso Alvarez Mora recalls paraphrasing Karl Marx, "societies are characterized not by the objects they produce, but by how they produce them," then the analysis of the historical process of material production of the city - and the role played in it by urban planning –, that analysis, put us on the track not only of the comprehension of the analyzed objects - city or cities, plans ... - but, beyond that. It would allow us to inquire about the characteristics of society (or societies) that have produced them. This idea also provides another nuance of complexity related to the historical method: the produced object itself, the materiality of the city, emerges as a document for the study of History. And, if so ... could we not say that the city is, in itself, History?

For more detailed information, please contact the team UVa.