The current insecurity around real estate along with the global financial crisis and state budget cuts presents an opportunity for urbanists (scholars as well as practitioners) to contemplate on and develop new practices to advance urban research and empower local communities. TransUrbanism is our transdisciplinary approach to urbanism as a practice for conducting urban research and planning. Urban Art Interventions are components of TransUrbanism. They are action projects in which urban activists, planners, architects, artists, and social workers collaborate to generate 1:1 scale urban settings to stimulate public imagination regarding alternative urban scenarios. In this article by discussing two different research projects carried out in the Helsinki-Tallinn Euro-region, we present our understanding of TransUrbanism and its relevance to both shrinking and growing cities.
more...
