Elders and Participatory Action in Helsinki

Poster about Karhupuisto's Project presented by Cityleft's friends and collaborators Michail Galanakis and Inka Kaakinen for the:

EUROPEAN NOVEMBER CONFERENCE VIENNA 2010
Public space and the challenges of urban transformation in Europe: Politics and culture.

10th and 11th November 2010
Palais Kabelwerk Programme: http://skuor.tuwien.ac.at Interdisciplinary

Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space Department of Spatial Development, Infrastructure and Environmental Planning Faculty of Architecture and Planning Vienna University of Technology

Reconstructing Meta-Doha

by Agatino Rizzo

Qatar has recently come to the attention of the media and the international community for its rising geopolitical importance. Despite its limited size, a growing number of international companies are opening regional offices in Doha, Qatar’s capital city, which is in turn reshaping its cityscape with ambitious public funded mega-projects (for the 2022 FIFA world cup, Olympics, etc.). While this mega-project agenda has brought new useful infrastructures to cater for the country’s ambitious goals, at the same time, it has been responsible for important physical and social fractures within the city. However, while on the one hand Doha’s mega-projects contribute to further urban fragmentation in Qatar they also show better connections with other localities worldwide....

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Metro Doha

by Agatino Rizzo

Doha, capital city of the Arab emirate of Qatar, has grown from a small, port city to a bustling capital region with global ambitions. Today almost 85% of Qatar’s total population (1.4 out of 1.7 million inhabitants) live in metropolitan Doha, while before 1971 (pre-independence) its total population was 30 times less. Blessed with generous oil and particularly gas reserves, since the 1970s the country has undertaken urban mega-projects and expensive land reclamations which have increased the built up area in the capital region by 60 times. In this article we review Doha’s past and current urban development, highlighting Qatar’s different urban phases. Also, by comparing Doha to Dubai, we investigate the impacts of Qatar’s “mega-projects agenda” on two important government-led developments: Education City and Mshereib Redevelopment.

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