WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:06.780 I think that European cities are fantastic accumulations of, let me 00:06.780 --> 00:08.140 say, infrastructures. 00:15.000 --> 00:18.780 Hello and welcome to European Urbanism, episode 6. 00:19.200 --> 00:23.740 And for this episode, which will also be the last episode before the 00:23.740 --> 00:29.160 big summer break, I talked to Professor Viganò from the EPFL in 00:29.160 --> 00:29.620 Switzerland. 00:29.620 --> 00:35.540 And we talked during the lunch hour at the Karlsruhe Dialogues. 00:36.080 --> 00:39.160 So you will hear a lot of background noise. 00:39.380 --> 00:40.560 It can't be changed. 00:41.360 --> 00:43.300 I hope you don't mind. 00:47.550 --> 00:49.290 Yes, I'm Paola Viganò. 00:49.410 --> 00:55.350 I'm a professor of urbanism, urban design in Switzerland, at the 00:55.350 --> 00:58.410 Polytechnical School of Lausanne and in Venice, in the Architectural 00:58.410 --> 00:59.390 School of Venice. 00:59.390 --> 01:01.290 I'm an architect and an urbanist. 01:01.870 --> 01:08.390 And I work also realizing projects, making designs for cities and 01:08.390 --> 01:08.850 territories. 01:09.670 --> 01:11.770 I like to move between scales. 01:12.210 --> 01:17.530 So the idea that when you deal with space, space is not monoscalar. 01:17.950 --> 01:21.190 Space is multiple in its dimensions. 01:21.650 --> 01:26.430 And also from the scale point of view, to reflect on a city you need 01:26.430 --> 01:30.510 to be very close, to be very detailed, and at the same time you need 01:30.510 --> 01:33.790 also to understand some logics that are more extended. 01:34.230 --> 01:39.770 And I think we need this today very much to understand that the urban 01:39.770 --> 01:43.570 configurations, the city has changed, it's not anymore something you 01:43.570 --> 01:47.710 can recognize as different from other environments. 01:48.810 --> 01:54.490 And in fact the urban conditions in which the majority of people, the 01:54.490 --> 01:59.790 majority of Europeans for sure live, is a hybrid situation where you 01:59.790 --> 02:04.290 have agriculture, you have industries, you have houses, services, and 02:04.290 --> 02:08.950 this heterogeneous urban system is what I'm interested in. 02:09.470 --> 02:11.770 I'm interested in it for a couple of reasons. 02:12.670 --> 02:16.970 The first one is that there is a very severe evaluation of the city in 02:16.970 --> 02:17.490 general. 02:17.490 --> 02:23.830 When you ask people or when even the policy makers refer to cities, 02:24.050 --> 02:28.030 cities seem always to be on one side a place that is producing wealth, 02:28.210 --> 02:33.970 of course, but on the other side the contemporary type of cities are 02:33.970 --> 02:41.890 seen as a waste, small, completely fragmented, out of control, chaotic 02:41.890 --> 02:42.870 spaces. 02:42.870 --> 02:48.170 So first of all I want to react to this negative image because that 02:48.170 --> 02:51.690 type of city has been constructed by us. 02:52.430 --> 02:54.970 It was not someone arriving from another planet. 02:55.750 --> 02:59.590 So it is the result of a lot of different decisions. 03:00.410 --> 03:05.430 Some decisions were taken by the policy makers, many others were taken 03:05.430 --> 03:10.330 by the people, by the individuals, by the families deciding to live in 03:10.330 --> 03:12.190 a certain place instead of another. 03:12.870 --> 03:17.190 Some were taken by big powers, for example railway companies deciding 03:17.190 --> 03:21.650 where a certain line should pass, and many others were taken by small 03:21.650 --> 03:22.090 groups. 03:22.630 --> 03:27.730 So the city of today is the result of this also in a way democratic 03:27.730 --> 03:32.190 process in which the different actors could take some part of the 03:32.190 --> 03:32.650 decisions. 03:33.210 --> 03:38.090 And of course there is not one unique regulatory power that can 03:38.090 --> 03:40.510 embrace all this complexity. 03:40.510 --> 03:47.210 So cities are horizontal also in that sense, that there is not only 03:47.210 --> 03:51.170 one power that can guide and can govern. 03:51.630 --> 03:57.090 We have imagined for a certain time that we could make plans able to 03:57.090 --> 04:01.170 structure everything of the city space or of the regional space. 04:01.550 --> 04:06.610 We understand today that plans can have a role but only if they remain 04:06.610 --> 04:10.970 extremely attentive and extremely open also to contributions that are 04:10.970 --> 04:12.610 coming from other sides. 04:13.290 --> 04:17.510 And the result is this heterogeneous urban condition which I see also 04:17.510 --> 04:18.230 as a value. 04:18.550 --> 04:22.730 As a value because inside it there are some potentials. 04:23.270 --> 04:29.030 Potentials for example to solve or to give possible solutions to some 04:29.030 --> 04:32.650 of the questions we have today, some of the challenges, also from the 04:32.650 --> 04:33.870 ecological point of view. 04:33.870 --> 04:38.570 And of course from the social point of view and from the economic 04:38.570 --> 04:39.170 point of view. 04:39.410 --> 04:45.850 So first of all I have worked a lot in my daily work on re 04:45.850 --> 04:48.970 -establishing the value of what is there. 04:49.130 --> 04:54.270 Which means also to read carefully and to listen and to understand 04:54.270 --> 04:58.890 those logics that have formed this space. 05:02.670 --> 05:08.150 When you say you listen and you read, do you go out or do you... 05:08.150 --> 05:08.970 Yeah, you go out. 05:09.330 --> 05:11.410 You go out, absolutely. 05:12.050 --> 05:16.470 I mean you cannot make urbanism without going out. 05:16.910 --> 05:18.870 It makes no sense. 05:19.090 --> 05:24.050 So of course it's repetitive and circular work in which you go, you 05:24.050 --> 05:30.670 understand, you insert hypotheses, you discuss possibilities. 05:31.310 --> 05:36.410 You put also your imagination, you make maps, you make images that can 05:36.410 --> 05:39.150 construct a debate for example about the future. 05:39.450 --> 05:41.070 How can we discuss the future? 05:41.490 --> 05:43.670 We have to structure the discussion about the future. 05:43.810 --> 05:48.910 For example scenarios in which you force yourself and the people 05:48.910 --> 05:54.670 around to imagine in detail what might be a future if we go along 05:54.670 --> 05:56.090 certain directions for example. 05:56.090 --> 06:00.770 For example one of the scenarios we have proposed since a few years 06:00.770 --> 06:04.850 and it is coming back as an interesting tension, something to be 06:04.850 --> 06:06.970 debated, is the no car scenario. 06:07.690 --> 06:13.510 What if the future cities, the future extended city, not the center of 06:13.510 --> 06:17.670 the city but the future extended city will be used without a car? 06:18.010 --> 06:19.210 Why without a car? 06:19.550 --> 06:23.130 There are ecological reasons but there are also social reasons. 06:23.130 --> 06:28.090 For example a population that is aging a lot, the European population 06:28.090 --> 06:33.150 has this problem, will have problems to drive for example alone. 06:33.430 --> 06:37.190 So we have to imagine, and of course kids, they cannot use a car. 06:37.670 --> 06:42.850 So maybe we have to imagine that to go beyond the car, the centrality 06:42.850 --> 06:46.290 of the car, will reveal new possibilities. 06:46.290 --> 06:49.510 It is not just a problem, it is also revealing new possibilities of 06:49.510 --> 06:54.410 using space in a different way, of finding a new spaciousness in the 06:54.410 --> 06:57.670 city because all the space occupied by cars might be free. 06:57.810 --> 07:01.570 So you can imagine a lot of new things that you can realize in terms 07:01.570 --> 07:05.570 of public spaces but also in terms of a form of inhabiting, of living, 07:05.730 --> 07:08.530 activities that can use space in a better way, etc. 07:08.530 --> 07:11.190 More democratic also from this point of view. 07:11.710 --> 07:15.090 I don't really think that the electric car will be a solution because 07:15.090 --> 07:20.330 electric cars need a lot of electricity which is not easy if we 07:20.330 --> 07:22.510 imagine to get out of the nuclear, for example. 07:22.510 --> 07:27.790 So I think there is a strong adaptation that is needed where new type 07:27.790 --> 07:32.450 of mobilities will increase our health, for example, if it is active 07:32.450 --> 07:38.130 mobility, will redesign our cities, the public spaces of our cities 07:38.130 --> 07:42.790 and will also probably redesign partially our house and our apartment. 07:43.650 --> 07:48.150 In any case you have to give quite a big part of your garden or your 07:48.150 --> 07:50.470 garage to the car. 07:51.430 --> 07:55.450 So this is just an example and the point is let's try to imagine that. 07:55.710 --> 08:00.530 We don't know if it is interesting, if it is working, but the only 08:00.530 --> 08:05.950 tool we have is our imagination and to discuss what we can imagine. 08:06.810 --> 08:12.070 So the second scenario that I briefly introduced today is what will be 08:12.070 --> 08:17.270 the future city when the work will be very different from today and 08:17.270 --> 08:18.970 much less than today. 08:19.270 --> 08:20.570 What are we going to do? 08:20.650 --> 08:23.430 How will we use our time, our space also? 08:23.430 --> 08:33.250 And I think that there is an incredible new condition where we have to 08:33.250 --> 08:37.610 understand that cities and territories need a lot of work to be 08:37.610 --> 08:38.030 maintained. 08:38.830 --> 08:42.570 It's not the manufacturer's work, it's not the old industries of the 08:42.570 --> 08:48.810 past, it's not even the old rural agricultural work of just 08:48.810 --> 08:50.590 cultivating fields. 08:50.590 --> 08:55.070 It's really something related to the big challenges that territories 08:55.070 --> 08:59.150 have to face in the future, the many ecological and environmental 08:59.150 --> 09:05.970 risks, for example, that are asking for maintenance, for taking care 09:05.970 --> 09:06.950 of the territory. 09:06.950 --> 09:11.150 And also, of course, there is the question of the production of food, 09:11.330 --> 09:13.710 because we are more and more on this planet. 09:14.090 --> 09:17.430 And of course, the question of which type of agriculture, how can we 09:17.430 --> 09:21.450 imagine different types of agriculture that are probably much more 09:21.450 --> 09:25.350 healthy, but asking much more work. 09:25.350 --> 09:31.330 So in that sense, I think, and I imagine that we will have our former 09:31.330 --> 09:36.650 industrial sites, we have gigantic industrial sites still in Europe 09:36.650 --> 09:37.830 that are not used. 09:38.690 --> 09:43.190 They will be maybe reused for some new industrial activities that will 09:43.190 --> 09:46.070 not ask for a lot of human work. 09:46.870 --> 09:53.170 But around, we have this incredible new work of maintaining the 09:53.170 --> 09:59.030 territory that we have a little bit forgotten or just given to some 09:59.030 --> 10:01.550 public institutions as a rule or two. 10:01.550 --> 10:07.170 But on the contrary, if we imagine this as our living space, 10:07.870 --> 10:14.830 playground, and also our playground with a societal playground, I 10:14.830 --> 10:19.490 think that this might restore on one side the dignity of doing 10:19.490 --> 10:22.630 something, of having an occupation, of having a work. 10:22.630 --> 10:26.590 And on the other side, really transforming the way in which we 10:26.590 --> 10:31.950 maintain and we maintain with the value it has our territory. 10:33.130 --> 10:39.530 You are from the EPFL in Lausanne. 10:39.890 --> 10:43.850 And I was wondering, how is Lausanne incorporating new work? 10:44.070 --> 10:49.570 Because I'm working at the KRT and we have all these discussions about 10:49.570 --> 10:54.850 experiments, as you said before, and how to incorporate the space and 10:54.850 --> 10:56.330 how to use it as playground. 10:56.730 --> 11:00.330 So does this come up at the EPFL? 11:00.330 --> 11:05.690 Well, I think EPFL, as all technical schools, has a lot of trust in 11:05.690 --> 11:06.250 technology. 11:06.570 --> 11:10.010 So in a way, the idea that technology will solve everything. 11:10.730 --> 11:14.790 But, for example, one of the strategies of these big schools has been 11:14.790 --> 11:16.710 the one of decentralizing themselves. 11:16.710 --> 11:22.690 So in the past year, EPFL has been opening a new part of the school, 11:23.010 --> 11:28.810 for example, in some alpine valleys or in some areas that are a little 11:28.810 --> 11:30.110 bit more marginal today. 11:30.690 --> 11:34.510 And I think that the universities, in general, universities today can 11:34.510 --> 11:36.350 play an incredible role. 11:36.350 --> 11:38.670 I mean, we are crossing this transition. 11:39.410 --> 11:47.910 And who more or better than a university can indicate and can test 11:47.910 --> 11:54.430 also, can test as the force, the strength to test some different 11:54.430 --> 11:55.270 trajectories. 11:56.850 --> 12:00.050 Decentralization, for example, of the universities is, of course, a 12:00.050 --> 12:01.030 very interesting thing. 12:01.350 --> 12:05.730 It has to be maintained, not reducing the university to a kind of 12:05.730 --> 12:10.410 second level, second type, second degree of cultural production. 12:10.730 --> 12:13.390 So it has to be maintained at the optimal level. 12:13.490 --> 12:15.550 But it is an interesting starting point. 12:15.550 --> 12:20.750 Because in this moment also all the old policies of decentralization 12:20.750 --> 12:25.990 that have characterized Europe until the 70s, then there has been a 12:25.990 --> 12:30.410 kind of cutting, cutting, selecting, concentrating, and many 12:30.410 --> 12:33.110 territories have been left outside of it. 12:33.110 --> 12:39.870 So the idea of horizontal metropolis is also the idea of rethinking 12:39.870 --> 12:44.750 decentralization, in which the question is not to bring a little bit 12:44.750 --> 12:47.910 of everything in all parts in order just to guarantee a kind of 12:47.910 --> 12:48.470 survival. 12:48.470 --> 12:53.230 No, but it's really to profit of the capacity of generating wealth 12:53.230 --> 12:55.570 that the metropolitan areas they have. 12:56.110 --> 13:01.570 And I think that all marginal territories that are close to those 13:01.570 --> 13:04.950 metropolitan areas might profit of this. 13:04.950 --> 13:09.890 Because there is really a production of activities, a production of 13:09.890 --> 13:14.870 services, and you can imagine that digitization can give an incredible 13:14.870 --> 13:19.490 contribution to give inhabitability to territories that today are 13:19.490 --> 13:24.590 inhabited, but not really giving you the same opportunities that you 13:24.590 --> 13:25.850 can find in other areas. 13:25.850 --> 13:30.630 So the problem is that these big metropolitan areas are really very 13:30.630 --> 13:36.230 concentrated, they are too attractive, they attract a lot of jobs 13:36.230 --> 13:37.050 fundamentally. 13:38.390 --> 13:44.810 So the question of reimagining jobs and to use some of the strength of 13:44.810 --> 13:48.730 the metropolitan condition and universities are for sure probably at 13:48.730 --> 13:51.030 the first position on that. 13:51.030 --> 13:56.790 Because knowledge-based technology, also in general cosmopolitan 13:56.790 --> 14:02.250 atmosphere, so you have really an incredible creative richness in 14:02.250 --> 14:02.890 those sides. 14:03.330 --> 14:08.330 So universities can play a very important role in rebalancing, for 14:08.330 --> 14:12.750 example, this relation between central and less central territories. 14:16.580 --> 14:18.480 And how is it in Lausanne? 14:18.720 --> 14:20.380 I don't know the university. 14:20.740 --> 14:24.060 So is it more decentralized? 14:25.040 --> 14:30.380 It's starting, it's decentralizing, and this is interesting, yes. 14:30.780 --> 14:34.100 And so how does it do it mobility-wise? 14:34.320 --> 14:40.400 Is public transport good in Lausanne or is it more that the institutes 14:40.400 --> 14:45.440 go out or is it that students have to move around the city? 14:45.440 --> 14:49.440 When I'm talking of decentralizing, I'm talking of decentralizing at a 14:49.440 --> 14:53.300 bigger scale, not just of the city, but really, for example, in a 14:53.300 --> 14:55.680 faraway Alpine valley. 14:56.260 --> 14:58.440 I'm talking of that type of decentralization. 14:58.440 --> 15:03.280 I think that in Lausanne, as in many parts of Europe, the question of 15:03.280 --> 15:06.080 mobility is still not solved. 15:06.300 --> 15:12.780 There is still a lot of car mobility and not so much mobility related 15:12.780 --> 15:13.980 to active mobility. 15:14.520 --> 15:15.420 Very, very few. 15:15.420 --> 15:21.600 So in that sense, there is a project designed to be realized about no 15:21.600 --> 15:23.660 -car city or no-car metropolis. 15:24.240 --> 15:26.260 Of course, the point is not no car. 15:26.540 --> 15:30.240 I'm not imagining that all cars will disappear, but really to go in 15:30.240 --> 15:33.820 that direction in a clear and regular way. 15:33.820 --> 15:37.720 And the consequences might be really to redesign completely the city. 15:37.880 --> 15:40.980 You can imagine to redesign the city just starting from this point, 15:41.060 --> 15:42.760 how you change the mobility. 15:43.100 --> 15:46.120 And that would be the starting point for a new project for the city, 15:46.260 --> 15:46.580 for example. 15:47.460 --> 15:50.400 And I think it would be also a more inclusive project. 15:52.480 --> 15:58.700 Is there anything you want to say about European cities that you want 15:58.700 --> 15:59.940 everyone to know? 15:59.940 --> 16:06.720 No, I think that European cities are fantastic accumulations of, let 16:06.720 --> 16:08.180 me say, of infrastructures. 16:08.960 --> 16:13.060 When I go teaching, for example, in the United States or in other 16:13.060 --> 16:17.920 continents, each time I have to recognize that what makes a European 16:17.920 --> 16:21.500 city different from the others is that in the European city you have a 16:21.500 --> 16:25.120 lot of investment in the space, in infrastructures. 16:25.120 --> 16:30.060 Although we can be very critical, but then when you go in the American 16:30.060 --> 16:34.600 city, in the North American, but of course in the South American, you 16:34.600 --> 16:39.040 understand that the difference is that there is not the same 16:39.040 --> 16:44.000 accumulation, the same amount of investment, energy, labor, 16:44.260 --> 16:48.620 infrastructure, just to organize the space where we live. 16:48.620 --> 16:55.040 So it's an incredible heritage, the European city, although it is not 16:55.040 --> 16:57.240 anymore the old city of the past. 17:22.010 --> 17:23.950 And so, see you soon!