The URBZ website takes off into cyberspace this week. With no loud explosions, no fire and lightning. Just a quiet floating off from its web-lab and field-sites where it was being built, evolved, brainstormed and experimented along with a series of activities and initiatives we conducted in cities, studios, streets and beaches all over the world.

The massive global virtual network that is the world wide web has been visualized as a version of galactic expanse. Its virtuality gives in to easy interpretations as being somehow above human life. However, a closer look reveals it to be a connection of minds, thoughts and experiences – a connection of people and their lives through an intricate, interactive communication network.

No wonder some prefer to think of the virtual world as an underground channel, rooted as much as possible in the tasks and travails of human engagement. Still others see it as mirroring our lives in all capacities. Sometimes it emerges in our dreams as one huge gigantic city, with billions of labyrinthine streets, alleyways, roads, bazaars, and homes, full of teeming human energy, producing, interacting, exchanging, copulating, living lives. Either way, the most important thing about it is that it is a system that simultaneously feeds and is fed by the energy of its users. That is what makes it so potent. That’s what makes it possible to think of it in a variety of ways, makes it possible to be used so diversely, in a myriad of  styles, for so many things. There are few systems which actually invite people to contribute to the collective process of growth.

Thus, for urbanologists like us, harnessing its potential in the world of urban engagement in all its dimensions -  design, planning, research, creative thought, livelihood and several others – was spontaneous.

As a collective of urban practitioners who believe that all users of cities – residents, travelers, itinerants, workers, should be involved in the process of making and re-making cities, the evolution of URBZ emerged as and when we did our thing – organized workshops, walked through streets, made friends in so-called slums and favelas and confirmed that the most successful cities were those in which the residents had the greatest control over their own lives. The more tools of control they got, the more successful was their ability to manouvre through the world of regulations that characterize contemporary urban life.  Tools did not just mean those that service activities and enhance skills such as planning, architecture, design – but also those that open up thoughts to new possibilities, think up new images, build and re-build tradition, play around with histories, create fictions – basically use creativity in its most extreme forms.

Thats why URBZ’s online is an organic accompaniment to everything that we do. MASHUP workshops, Typhoons, and creative catastrophes everywhere.

We invite you to participate, contribute, help it grow.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 6:35 am You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.