polis: a collective blog about cities worldwide

Urban-Think Tank on Borderlands



Formal and informal urban form in Caracas. Source: Jorge Karpati

“If we extend Goethe’s metaphor [‘I call architecture frozen music’] beyond architecture, we might say that urbanism ‘frozen politics.’ It then becomes apparent that there is a need to develop new mechanisms that can ‘unfreeze’ the boundaries of this condition to open up opportunities for new forms of communication — a need to transform static conventions into dynamic interaction. Not only will this engagement with the edge create an architecture and urbanism that is greater than the sum of its parts, but, through responsible manipulation of the borderland, it will also open up the border-space that makes the 21st century democratic city possible.”

Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner, Michael Contento and Lindsey Sherman, from “Trans-Borderlands: Activating the Plasticity of Urban Border-Space [PDF],” 2011

This is part of a collection of quotes related to cities. They don’t necessarily reflect our views, just topics of interest. We welcome you to add others.

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