Green capital? Because so many have to live in parks?
by Ares Kalandides
“The European Commission awarded Hamburg the title of “European Green Capital 2011” in Brussels, February 23, 2009. With Stockholm as European Green Capital 2010 and Hamburg 2011, the two cities were the first to ever receive an acclaimed award recognizing the two most environmentally friendly cities in Europe” (you can read more here).
Yet Hamburg is also a city with a large number of homeless people. Continue reading
by Mareike Forßbohm
On St. Patrick’s Day, the 17th March 2011, Tourism Ireland launched a new online game on Facebook, which is called Ireland Town. As the first national tourism board in the world to launch such a social game, Tourism Ireland intends to promote the island for holidaymakers with this game. Continue reading
Filed under pick of the day
by Nils Grube
The New South Mall in Dongguan, China — the largest in the world and twice the size of Minnesota’s Mall of America– has just a 1% occupancy rate. The mall is located between the two emerging megacities Guangzhou and Shenzen, in an area that may one day be considered to have a population near 50 million. But growth of these has not reached the midpoint soon enough for the mall. It is a good example for several development projects of this fast, in some parts uncontrollable growing country, which have been enormous duds. Today, of the 2,350 leasable store spaces, around 50 are actually in use (gadling.org). Continue reading
Filed under miscellaneous
Oberhafen/Hamburg
by Ares Kalandides
(for Part 1 see here)
Material resources are things such as the quality and quantity of available space, the use and exchange value of land, density, heterogeneity etc. From my experience what is particularly important for the creative economy are spaces of interaction – not only among the members of the creative community, but also with the ones who do not belong to it. Continue reading
Filed under conferences, opinions
By Mihalis Kavaratzis
There is great value in city associations where practitioners can come together and exchange ideas on common practices, challenges and lessons for the future. ‘Eurocities’ is such an association and the people who have set it up need to be commended. In November 2010, Eurocities published their report on ‘A shared vision on city branding in Europe’ (the report is available through the Eurocities website at: http://www.eurocities.eu). The report consists of 40 examples from city branding practice in Europe. Unfortunately, this is a report that, in my view, takes us many steps back. Continue reading
Filed under opinions
The Oberhafen area
by Ares Kalandides
Having spent three days in Hamburg for a symposium, I will dedicate several posts in the following days to issues that inspired me there. The symposium was part of a reflexion process about how to develop the area of Oberhafen, which is part of the much larger Hafencity area. In a few words, this is an area of the Hamburg harbour formerly used by the train company, now housing a few commercial uses in the remains of a former train station. For the time being there is no plan for its long-term development, but one feasible possibility seems to be to turn it into an important location for creative businesses.
I was asked to participate on the first day in a panel discussion under the title: “Urban space as creative potential: What are the conditions for success?” (you can download the complete programme in German here). Continue reading
Filed under conferences
by Mareike Forßbohm
NEMONA – Network for fashion designers and seamstresses / tailors in Berlin-Neukölln
NeMona is a pilot project in the field of fashion and production in Berlin-Neukölln and it is aimed at fashion designers and seamstresses. The aim is to promote the partnership networking between these two groups for new sources of jobs and to develop business models.
NeMoNa will develop further the existing Fashion Network Neukölln in order to support and strengthen designers as future employers of seamstresses and tailors. Continue reading
Filed under pick of the day
by Nils Grube
This movie by Kurt Wolfes is the English version of the film “Hamburg, mal ganz anders”. It was produced in 1969 and was played as supporting film for the movie “Love Story” (1971). Continue reading
Filed under miscellaneous
Why can’t they make image films of this quality for cities?
Filed under miscellaneous
By Mihalis Kavaratzis
In a series of vivid and well-argued recent posts to this blog, Ares Kalandides has talked about the relationship between urban planning and city branding using the city of Athens, Greece as an example. There was a distinction between symbolic planning (i.e. the shiny projects with obvious city branding potential - in this case Panepistimiou St.) and local-improvement planning that is attempting to solve ‘real’ problems of the city in the sense of making life for (part of) the city’s population better (in this case Phylis St.). Let me start by stating my agreement with the argumentation and, to an extent, with the distinction. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
