MDASLA Victor Stanley Lecture Series: Daniel Vasini - Smart Cities for People

MDASLA Victor Stanley Lecture Series: Daniel Vasini - Smart Cities for People

Thu, September 26, 2019

7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT

University of Maryland - College Park

The MDASLA is proud to present the next lecture in our long-running series sponsored by Victor Stanley.

Smart Cities as Second Nature

West 8 approaches the production of nature in two different - but characteristically Dutch - ways. First, we take a classic civil engineering approach for creating landscape - a logic based on utility and necessity. Second, we are part of a landscape tradition that confers identity and, therefore, understand the need for creating symbols in the production of landscape. This method envisions a new nature, a 'second nature' of constructed landscapes that respond to pragmatic demands (water management, population growth, traffic congestion) and also reinforce the culture to which they belong (identity, symbols, expression).

In a departure from the old demolish and install engineering methodology, or the current preserve and protect model, we are adding and expressing new natures. The real future in today's debate about sustainability lies not in a political or philosophical dialogue about what we are protecting or how we are going to 'sustain' it, but rather how to actively create new ecologies. Creating land and then painting it: in many ways, this is the soul of Dutch culture.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mdasla-victor-stanley-lecture-series-daniel-vasini-smart-cities-for-people-tickets-64195616818?aff=erelexpmlt