hintergrund 09

Description

The effects of direct and indirect influences of colonization and the handling of cultural identity were discussed. Necessary repositionings between East and West were in focus, as well as questions of demarcation between public and private, interior and exterior space, and the role of architecture and mass culture as an instrument of control. Ackbar Abbas foregrounds descriptions of the two cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong based on their different historical starting points and their current treatment of the idea of the cosmopolitan. Sandra Buckley looks at urban movement flows, normative in- and exclusions, and social in-betweens in contemporary Tokyo. Roemer van Toorn describes a ‘time in transit’, an approach to a repositioning of megacities between tradition, history, and recent neo-conservative, post-Fordist global tendencies.