Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Andries Botha: Thank you for the question Sara. I don’t know whether we can protect cities from sameness. Seems to me that there is a – things are built, things are absorbed, in a manner which is a response to a very very effective and efficient and seductive global media campaign. Global distribution of goods. However, on the other hand, you know I’d like to say, that Taiwan would be different to Johannesburg. Because, Taiwanese people, as they absorb global culture, absorb it in a unique way. So, I think we can keep valorizing, what it is that makes us particular, makes us unique as a people, and the belief that the valorization of that particularness will never be less, it cannot possibly be less. However, we will absorb that global input in a unique way, and we shouldn’t be afraid that it will be less. So I would imagine that a global Pakistani city would be completely different to a global American city. The food that we eat, the smells, certainly the people, how they absorb and transform global culture, and in addition to that I really do believe governments do have responsibilities to actively promote multimedia and how it absorbs global culture and assimilates it into its locality. I think that’s what really needs to happen to create that uniqueness.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Answertext will be available soon.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: I think again this is something I am going to leave to people who have far more knowledge and insight than I do. But, I will say just to reference an earlier question that I think there is a lot to be learned from Mike Davis’ book, Planet of Slums, about the direction cities are going, which is -- a direction which is quite frightening. And the trend of course is towards more sameness and towards destruction of local cultures, local knowledges, and so that is a concern that I think we are only beginning to get our head around and understand about. Mike Davis really does a lot to help us begin to ask the right kinds of questions about that.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala: I think that we can do something to make the city proud. There should be no war, no discrimination for woman, [inaudible]. You need to [inaudible] and I think, with all this we will be the city will be protected from sameness and we can retain the identity of the city by its deeds.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Well, I remember going to Zurich Airport and seeing Starbucks. That was the only coffee shop at the Zurich Airport. Or you go to China and I’ve seen McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken or I go to Delhi and I see the same McDonald’s or I go to Prague and I see the same McDonald’s. As long as we allow the takeover of the places where we live which you call home to become into something else that instead of just a sharing that it has become monopolization of just one culture. As we find languages disappearing around the world into one language, for example, English being spoken more and more in different parts of the world, it actually does not bring us together. It does not unite us. What we find is basically we are all becoming replicas of the United States or its corporations and that is not a good symbol for any of us. It is the start of destruction.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: For me this question is like the prior question. Can we really keep a unique identity as individuals while becoming a global citizen? And the calculus of awakened awareness opens enormous space in which we can both be in common ground and yet realize our deeper individuality. But then the artificial boxes of our egomental and ego structures and ego culture and ego consciousness. And this question is the same for locations and ecologies, local ecologies. All of our local cities have the unique, or could have, the unique features and distinctive charm and special strengths and yet be part of a global community. So that the question of identity, retaining unique identity, while overcoming artificial differences, identity of different cities, it’s the same issue. And it seems to me as we enter a global age and there is a pull to commonality, that does not take away the uniqueness of our cities. Of our cultural ways, of our unique personal identities, of the food we eat and the local. May we always have the unique cuisine that enriches the diversity, enriches our global community and the uniqueness of all great cities like the City of Berlin. Sitting here in East Berlin, in this wonderful square, looking around us, are the incredible uniqueness of this place. We want to retain places like that all around the world and I think this is possible to do.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: I think there has been an increase in ordinances that speak to preserving historic buildings, historic sites as a way of preserving the unique identities of cities and to, and this actually creates a way of preventing the incursion of sameness. But as I had previously indicated, these are concurrent things, sameness, that we find all over the world. Being able to buy the same product, the same foods from the same food chains from one city to the next. At the same time, having these laws that are being implemented that seek to preserve historic sites, communities with civically minded people that understand the importance of preserving their culture, the uniqueness of their buildings, more and more becoming advocates and activists for preserving the uniqueness of history and culture coming to the forefront as well. So I think this is already being done. That doesn't mean that more cannot be done, but it is, also speaks to the political will of the leaders that understand the importance of creating the space for people to be able to celebrate and honor their culture, their -- and their history.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: If we care for to keep the cultures. If we care for, that the power, the superiority, the federal power, the national power, the global power, whatever power, won’t destroy cultures, but will understand to leave a lots of autonomies of different kinds to the local popularisation like education, language, culture. If we care for, that not one language is destroying the other languages. Today there exits a danger, especially when we go on like that, we will have shortly English as the only language in the world. English will be the only language which will keep remained to us. That means only one language, one culture, one colour. Everything will be uniform and made in the same kind of manufacturing. Look at the cities in America! The all look the same, because there is an uniform culture in America. In Europe there is a multifarious culture. We have to care for that is stays like that and then the cities will keep their nature and won’t become uniform. Yes, that’s a question of willing. That’s a question of local power. That’s the question of subsidiarity, where everybody keeps that what he is doing most efficient. If we do that in that kind of way, we will keep the cultures and if we don’t do that, we will have a global culture, a uniform language. Everything will be uniform. Everybody will wear exactly the same clothes; will live in the same houses. The world will become a boring place.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: How can we retain the identity of different cities? Earlier question, what’s the future of the city? It depends on what city and yet there’s a sameness about the energetics of the city but yet there’s also a very different feeling from the people who inhabit the city. Again, the people behind me, these are very different people than the people in Italy, not so much different maybe, but for me from San Francisco or you go to Johannesburg -- very different. So, the people who live within the city can protect it from sameness and by preserving the cultural heritage of the city. What is it that makes that city? What is it that makes Berlin, Berlin? And how can we honor that? And how can we make that more? How can we promote the uniqueness of each city and honor it? Not in a competitive model but in a way that is constructive. And then how can these cities then interact together, to honor each other and to make relationship between each other? So they’re not trying to replicate everything the same. In the States, you have cities that are the same by having the same malls, they have the same shops, they have the same and a lot all over. Same cities happening, same development happening in the cities and in the country even. It’s about finding the value in the uniqueness, finding the value in what that can contribute to the whole and then the diversity, really honoring the diversity that we all have and really giving artistic license to those designers and architects to not homogenize our cities. It is beautiful here, this is my first time to Berlin, and seen that 90% of the country of the city was destroyed and now rebuilt, it’s unique.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: Yes. This is a very interesting question. I think we have to start by educating our architects, our engineers, our local and municipal politicians and our mayors of our cities in order to find this identity. Sometimes there exists the idea that new and foreign things are better and thus we lose the identity of our cities. But this identity makes us really different and special and it gives us a certain character. There only have to be included some new concepts into our constructions and our organizations of services of our cities. Thus we have to distance us from norms of uniformation and forms of reproducing models of development. We have to oppose to concepts and organizational structures. Because otherwise we will really lose our own identity and the potential that a particularity of development of cities may have. As we have seen in some countries of Europe, this particularity represents also economical profit, a sense of local pride, it represents qualities of folklore and identity that really reforce the relation and the richness which cultural manifestations and connections between other countries may have. We have to move us and make our urban planners be conscious of the strategical importance of keeping and getting identity for our own cities.

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Bill Joy: The cities feel different to me when I travel. There’s some homogenization. If I go to a Hilton Hotel in different cities maybe they have similar room layouts. There are certainly restaurant chains. Here I am in Berlin for the first time and I stumbled across a Starbucks. But the cities feel very different to me. And I think also over time we can expect them to become more different because of cultural activities that emerge in the different cities. London is great for theater, that wasn’t always the case, it was hundreds of years ago of course. But cities develop unique personalities. Where I live in Aspen, Colorado we have a lot of non-profit institutions focused on things like bipartisan dialogue about issues, training leaders. Institute for physicists come to retreat in the summer. We’re in the mountains and our little city is very different than almost any other city I’ve been in. London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, cities in the third world, cities in Africa, these to me all feel very different and I expect them to stay different over time.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Bora Cosic: By appointing builders which are urbanists, planers of own environment, intelligent and generous people. People which will not surround us with stupid and horrifying buildings, which will not dispossess parks and wide streets, which will build pretty, interesting and strange constructions, far away from the monotony of Stalinist dogmas which surrounded us, children of socialism, for decades. However, there were always stupid builders and other wonderful "neimar" (architects), which with there mystery increased happiness in our lives and do not only give a roof over the head.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Brian J. Weller: Well, I think this question runs from the last question and I would say there are a number of strategies. One is to resist transnational corporations from dominating local cultures. On the face of it the say yeah, we’re coming in to give local jobs. I’m talking about corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s and so on. But the real truth of the matter is that they’re simply exporting money and resources from each locality and that they are going to corporate offshore accounts, certainly out of the communities. So, unfortunately, cities become looking the same particularly when these transnational corporations in a sense plant or seed, you know, these very similar-looking structures. So, you go to McDonald’s anywhere in the world. You go to [Hallean] anywhere in the world. You know, it’s a sign of mass marketing, mass consumption, mass approach, really, to consumption. I think that’s the thing about sameness. So, we’ve got to keep local cities vibrant by really restoring our local traditions; use local building styles, local materials, keep ethnic diversity active through art, music, dance and theater. The other big thing, I think, is to return cities to a sense of human scale. That’s something that the corporate footprint, which is so clumsy, doesn’t really respect. I mean why is it that so many American tourists love to come to Europe? Well, they love to come to Europe because there is this richness, this diversity of local special environments; local special culture. Yeah, I think resisting this onslaught from the transnational trend, that’s the way to go for it.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Catherine David: There is no standard and it would be alarming if there was one. I think every cities has its relations to the present and to history, which are sometimes difficult and every city has to come to terms with it. And every city has to consider the wishes and interests of the population and so there is no sameness of cities as there are no cities which evolute in the same way. And it is a little bit simplifiing to consider it as essential that there are McDonalds, Starbucks and other companies in every city, thats not true. The transformation of cities works in another way. And so it suffices to travel a little bit, to open your eyes to see that the cities do not look alike. And I personally can not imagine how someone could confuse for example Teheran, Kairo and Los Angeles as they differ a lot except for their number of inhabitants.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

China Keitetsi: Answertext will be available soon.

by China Keitetsi

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Constantin von Barloewen: This is a question of modern architecture, there are different possibilities. There is, e.g., Remy Kohlhaas who always tries to develop architecture models in a responsible way. And there are architects for landscape and gardening. But there is the threat of the unscrupulous greed for profits of the big investors or prestige projects by politicians, e.g. think of Columbia, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai where the highest skyscrapers in the world are about to be built. I.e. more and more sky scrapers and the like are becoming prestige projects of politicians or of whole governments. And there the human being, the individual and the identity of the individual is neglected. There is no "green" architecture, there are no so-called "green lungs", there is only the maximization of space by building sky scrapers. The human being is neglected in this sort of abstraction of concrete architecture. And there are only a few ecologically motivated architects trying to do something about it, or even architects who can achieve almost poetic buildings even with concrete. E.g. what Oskar Niemeier achieved in Brazil, his whole life´s work in the field of architecture. Growing is the need for architects of landscapes like Roberto Bolemarx from Brazil, the greatest landscape architect of the 20th century, who create green sectors as a balance to the abstraction of modern architecture. More and more old buildings are torn down, e.g. in Shanghai, and are then replaced by inhuman sky scrapers. There is the need to find a unison in architecture from local traditional ways of building and modern technology instead of replacing the whole traditional building culture by the abstraction of sky scrapers.

by Constantin von Barloewen

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Dedi Baron: Answertext will be available soon.

by Dedi Baron

Sep 9, 2006 3:45:00 PM cite

Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas: Well, when we are going to analyze the cities, they actually try to follow the westernization concept of cities. And for me, there is the way where its cities can develop their own according to their uniqueness, and this can be done by preserving and maintaining their assets, their culture. And for me in that way they will develop in their own way maintaining their uniqueness. But the reality is most cities are being developed having sameness characteristics although we have some cities who tries to project their uniqueness and that’s fine. And for me, I would love to see more cities trying to project their own uniqueness rather than sameness which will be boring. But I still believe that there is still a uniqueness of its cities in the world which attracts tourist, for instance, and this is because of, as I said, culture and location. And so we appreciate this uniqueness. So, just like saying Berlin is different from Frankfurt although there is that, what do you call that, sameness, I see differences in terms of history and maybe perhaps that would be one ingredients to maintain, the uniqueness history, which place us as a way of trying to avoid sameness in terms of cities development.

by Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas