Report by Susan Parham from the C.E.U. – INTBAU Conference
4 – 9 May 2004, Viseu, Portugal
Globalisation is a long standing and well established process, as Elizabeth Plater Zyberk and Matthew Hardy pointed out. It would be presumptuous to assume this is purely a 20th and 21st Century phenomenon. As Javier Cenicacelaya and others noted, this is the age of urbanisation with an astonishingly rapid increase in urban populations across Europe. It is thus an especially critical time to work on the shaping of the urban space that is so quickly expanding.
Claudio D’Amato Guerrieri made a very useful contribution in linking architecture to this transforming urban condition. Matthew Hardy and Doug Kelbaugh helped to tease out some of the economic and social implications for urbanisation of greater connectivity among cities, elites and capital while populations sometimes languish; stranded in less mobile circumstances. INTBAU Secretary Matthew Hardy suggested that chief among concerns about globalisation is the loss of local identity that can result. This loss challenges local economies and social life as well as built form traditions.
Read the full report.