"Each epoch dreams the one to follow"
Michelet, Avenir! Avenir!

“Nutopia: Exploring the Metropolitan Imagination” is a mapping process which seeks to explore the possibility of re- imaging utopia in relation to ‘the city’. The ways in which we can challenge the idea that city centres are purely spaces of consumption; look at possibilities for non-economic exchange; examine tensions between resistance and commodification and look at how this impacts our personal lives; the possibility to reinvent our cities, to reclaim; to consider the redevelopment and ownership of cities in the face of privatization; city architecture ~ Cathedrals to commerce; the language of regeneration, place as a perceptual landscape informed by a linguistic architecture.

The Nutopia Symposium took place over two days and one night in an empty shop in Cardiff city centre, April 2009. There were 4 sessions looking at: “Sustainable/ Development”, “Resistance, Patterns, Rhythms: Urban Economies and the Everyday”, “Under Construction: The Language of Regeneration” and “Utopia’s, Dystopia’s and making up as we go along”. These titles were mediated and responded to by a cross section of speakers from a range of practices and disciplines. Plus a series of group projects and workshops run by artists, activists and environmentalists which sought to open up dialogue between delegates and place theoretical ‘talk’ back in the physical life of the city: Mark Chapple’s “Without shops we have nothing” re- mapped Zimbabwe’s failing economy onto the streets of Cardiff. Rob Bermingham took 7 delegates on a group bike ride following cycling desire lines around the city. Esther Pilkington & Daniel Ladner asked “Where would you take a stranger?” presenting a proposal for a utopian practice using city narrative. RoToR’s set up a situationist game exploring Cardiff and Poppy Nicol’s ‘Greening The City” began an investigation into the places where we might begin to grow urban plants. Ben Stammers and Simon Whitehead invited early risers to go on a 5.30am “Vulpine” walk following the imagined path of an urban fox and Sophie Hope’s “The Arcades Treaty”, a drinking game down the pub which asked participants to write a drunken manifesto. The event managed to transpose the difficulties associated with decision-making processes and the knock on effect that has on, getting things done.

Delegates Dinner on Thursday night. A long table in the shop, food from the Vegetarian food studio, wine …. Then back to the ‘future inn’ after the pub.
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Delegates and speakers were invited to submit contributions on the idea of New – Utopia’s. This newspaper has been made from their submissions.
The premise behind this ‘paper’ is really to document, concretise, inspire, provoke, evoke a sense of what it means to live amongst contemporary town planning and architecture; how to navigate the complexities of the 21c city with ones ethics and sense of self remaining in tact.
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The Event:
I began putting the Nutopia symposium together in response to a research project I have been making in Cardiff over the last year and a half. I set out to explore the city’s Victorian and Edwardian arcades in the light of the ‘under construction’ SD2 shopping centre, to the East of the arcades. Nutopia is one event in a constellation of projects which have emerged from my research. The SD2 shopping centre is a vast enterprise covering almost a third of the city centre with, what will be, a covered retail area. The developers and architects have based the facades of their design on the cities Victorian and Edwardian passages and have named the development “Cardiff’s Grand Arcade” giving the interior roof a pitched glass ceiling, mirroring the iconic arcades found in Cardiff and across Europe.
This juxtaposition of architectural manifestations interested me, as they seemed to signify two bookends in the trajectory of high Capitalism. The Victorian Arcades are well documented as marking the advent of a new middle class and all of the frippery, gazing, meandering, colonising, manufacturing and shopping which that inspired and, likewise, the new SD2 shopping centre seems to be a manifestation of our part in a global economy and an embodiment all of the ethical, geographic, economic and social issues that, that dis- location evokes. And maybe latterly, it stands as a rather precarious monolith to a now by – gone moment.
There are many parallels in the evolution of both projects and to set up a polarity where Victorian Arcades are good and new shopping centres bad would reduce the complexities and the nuances of what is happening both in terms of what exists physically in the world and perceptually or conceptually in their philosophy. For example both developments are about the city re-inventing itself and following a international trend. In a mediation published in the Western Mail, February 1864, titled,“ The Architectural Growth of Cities, and the Future of Cardiff” architect Edwin Seward spoke of a dream he had to replicate Paris’s famous arcades in Cardiff City centre, developing the cities back lands and narrow streets into fashionable shopping arcades. At the time his desire to develop the city was a desire to be modern. This was inspired by a sense of Civic pride and the city fathers drive to create a great city, one that was a bit better than Swansea and also showed Wales to be as good as any English City. The 1882 Guide to Cardiff is keen to emphasis that in contrast to common perceptions Cardiff was not filled with smog and sooty men hot from the mines but as civilised and as beautiful as any English town, the guide is also keen to stress the modernity of the city. But in 1884 a great city meant architecture that inspired people to ‘improve’ themselves, to learn, it was a place that had an intellectual life and could engage with the thoughts and ideas of the time the “metropolitan imagination” was quite different to our perceptions of civic life today.
Present day Cardiff is faced with a different dilemma. Following a trend for cities to be ‘destinations’ for shoppers (as opposed to great places to live?) the city needs to keep an eye on nearby competition such as Bath and Bristol. So if these neighbouring cities re- develop logically so must Cardiff. In this case I am told that it is about providing shoppers with a retail ‘offer’- (which sounds like a basic human rite if you believe the rhetoric of the developers) and that must include all the names one would expect to find on the high street. We all moan about ‘clone town’ Britain but apparently all of us want a mirror image of every other high street. The developers know this because they have done market research and also because that is where we spend our money. I wonder if, in a sense, an argument could be made that these anonymous shopping paradises are a kind of neo – liberal utopia. Everyone has a right to be there, to look or to buy – social, class distinctions that would have demarcated the arcades in Victorian times, have been eradicated. The high street is an ‘inclusive’ idyll for all. Of course like all utopia’s it has a dark side and while we may drift through the image of a 21-century shoppers paradise the chains of supply, the materials that make and the people who make them are an invisible, ethical and social can of worms. It is well documented that behind the picture life is not as carefree as the marketing spin suggests.
Victorian architecture is a collage of many styles from Greek to Classical to Gothic and, like SD2, they used these styles to reference another era and create a sense of grandeur, status and integrity. However SD2 are doing this differently by creating localised Facades and fitting them onto designs that you may find in other cities. Perhaps it seems a bit more like camouflage than pastiche, a sort of Trojan horse. Unlike Cardiff’s arcades built by local speculators SD2 is being built by Land Securities, a London based Ftse 100 company. They will generate wealth by charging the many international chain shops rent on the property. So this is the first difference, SD2 is not about locality and profit from the enterprise will not necessarily stay in the city.
Nutopia emerged from the research I have been making on site and also in response to the many interviews and conversations I had with the developers, architects, engineers, historians, shop keepers, small business’s, planners and academics that lived in the city. I must also point out that the project is part funded by the SD2 development and I think this is important to raise, first of all because I don’t feel that this has effected my approach to the situation and in many ways I have found the developers open to dialogue and very supportive of what I have been doing and also interesting people to talk to who work in a different world to me –so that has been interesting, however I personally don’t see a shopping centre as a ‘development’, so another layer of complexity is raised through that meeting of individuals rather than logo’s. Secondly when I took on the funding I did so on the premise that if I am to use the money then I must do so in a way that is ‘responsible’ in all senses of the word. i.e. that it is easier, even if it is only perceptual, to effect change in dialogue rather than in opposition.
What quickly became apparent was that issues, ideas and discussion which were occurring locally in Cardiff have much wider parameter’s and at the core of this discussion is the question:
who are cities for?
Talking to people like architect, Adam Sharr, planner, John Punter and historians, Elaine Davy and David Mclees, what seems clear is that people don’t come to cities to consume, they come to cities to feel part of something, to engage with the bigger picture to be part of an exchange. That may be cash for goods, but it may also be gossip, glances, stories, ideas or narratives. The reason that people go to cities is because they want to feel connected to other people, to be included, to participate. And if you look at the ‘old’ architecture of any city you will begin to notice that those buildings are generous, that they embody a human impulse to chat, to run into someone, to tell a story on the street, to meander, to stroll, to be involved in secret trysts in a forgotten corner, to idle, wander, to look, to people watch and to stroll.
To my mind what has happened is that this basic human impulse; the impulse to coonect, has been commodifed. That the desire to participate has now been re- branded as the desire to shop, the need to exchange is the desire to consume. Indvidual personal and ethical codes are now called consumer choices suggesting that our mark on the world is made through the brands we chose to support. Wondering, idling, drifting has been replaced by “dwell time”, “spend power”, “retail offer”. And the architecture that we have been given embodies processes of commodification and speaks in that language.
The Nutopia Symposium sought to connect people around these questions and create a social situation where by delegates from a range of backgrounds could meet. I wanted the event to be a place where genuine connections could be forged between people from a range of backgrounds and interest groups and so designed the symposium to create social spaces, conversation gaps, an evening dinner in the shop, games and workshops in small groups against the backdrop of a series of presented papers and more formal discussion (summarised below).
The last point to mention is that when I put out the call for papers, for people to take part last September (2008) the world was a different place. The banks had yet to be nationalised, we hadn’t officially fallen into recession, Obamma wasn’t president and poor old Gordon didn’t seem to be in the shit quite as much as he is now. What has been interesting is the way in which these seismic changes have effected individuals perceptions. I think in many ways it means that if we want change now is the time to do it. I felt that although many of the speakers and delegates offered a damming critique of the last 10 years ‘development’ the direction for change emerged with equal clarity.

Summary Of Papers:
Sustainable/ Development
Can community development and grass roots projects be integrated into architectural design and regeneration? The session sought to expand an understanding of how that can be achieved. Papers were given by Steve Garrett/ Cardiff, who set up the award winning Riverside Market. His paper described growing co-operatives he had worked with in Cuba and the potential for cities to be more agriculturally sustainable. Chris Carlsson/ San Francisco – Author of "Nowtopia: How pirate programmers, outlaw bicyclists, and vacant-lot gardeners are inventing the future today” reading excerpts from his book he discussed how outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, even the Burning Man festival, are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation that challenges politics as we know it. Whilst developer, Mark Hallet from Igloo, described how he intends to approach the development of “Roath Basin” the last area of Cardiff Bay to be re- developed.
Summary: The discussion focused on approaches to re- development, and highlighted the chasm between grassroots approaches in relation to what must inevitably be a ‘top down’ re-organisation of space when a lead in of 10 years is normal for a re-development programme. The clear message seemed to be that it is the system that needs to change to allow greater generosity towards ‘users’ of a place and also more flexibility to change a spaces usage into, for example allotments, city gardens or transitional spaces. That planning should not mean social engineering.

Resistance, Patterns, Rhythms: Urban Economies and the Everyday
Papers mapped the tension between dominant economic frameworks present in the city and questions pertaining to redevelopment/ mass consumption and social dystopia’s in relation to ideas of resistance and human exchange, rhythms and intervention within these framework; the ways in which we lay claim to the city. Dr. Jill Fenton, Queen Mary University of London, Geography Department: ‘Surrealism’s Re-enchantment Project for City-zens of the 21st Century’. When a surfeit of processes – credit crunch, recession, regeneration, gentrification and globalisation – significantly alter the flows of our cityscapes, make visible their perspectives in the twenty-first century, it is challenging to imagine the global city and its citizens as open to alternative tides that are creative and playful; in fact to perceive the evolving of what could be described as a passionate urban geography. Professor Malcolm Miles: Professor of Cultural Theory, University of Plymouth and author of Urban Utopias (2008), Cities & Cultures (2007) and Urban Avant-Gardes (2004). Image is key to a city’s symbolic economy. Competing globally, cities such as New York and Barcelona have transformed external perceptions of decline to become cultural and economic hubs. But does a symbolic economy reflect the everyday life and cultural activities of a city? Or do redevelopment schemes looking to a global impact marginalise a city’s own people and the imaginative lives they lead? Dr. Bas Spierings: Department of Human Geography & Urban and Regional Planning at Utrecht University “IMAGINATIONS OF CONSUMERISM AND THE MAKING OF CONSUMPTION SPACES”. Offers an analysis the influence of the dominant image of contemporary consumerism on the making of upgrading strategies in Dutch city centres. It scrutinizes how the image of ‘shopping flânerie’ supplies arguments and tools to deal with ‘past failures’ – i.e. the rise of chain stores and the physical impact of the post-war reconstruction period –, ‘present problems’. It discusses the following questions: How do local authorities, property developers and retailers imagine spatial practices and experiences of shoppers? What consequences does this have for the design and development of consumption spaces? And, in turn, what consequences could this have for the spatial practices and experiences of contemporary shoppers? DR. Tom Hall, School Of Social Sciences, Cardiff University took the idea of rhythm as its starting point and used this as a way in which to draw attention to the mundane and pedestrian work of upkeep and recycling in the city. I make no claims for utopian futures; instead, and with present-day Cardiff in mind, I point towards the ways in which thinking about urban rhythms might give us some purchase on the idea of the good city.
Tom Hall is a lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences.

Summary: This session offered reflective take on the more practical questions raised earlier in the day and enforced the polarity between the problem of “planning” a place its relationship to the user; the question being, what is the relationship between the planner and the planned for? In turn one must then ask what is the relationship, (either implicit or explicit) between the planner, the architect and the developer to the dominant systems, economies or ideologies which redevelopments will inevitably embody. To reiterate the question: Who are cities for? People/ consumers/ shoppers/ the mass/ the individual/ the locals/ the tourists…..

Under Construction: The Language of Regeneration.
Papers in this session reported on and contextualised urban regeneration projects looking at the ways in which regeneration is as much a conceptual process or linguistic framing as the physical changes that occur. Zoë Skoulding Bangor University Presented her recent collection of poems, Remains of a Future City (Seren, 2008), which drew partly on a text from 1958, ‘Formula for a New City’, a Situationist manifesto by Ivan Chtcheglov, which explores the quarters of an imagined city. Underlying my interest in such sources is a set of questions about collective dwelling, citizenship, paradoxical relationships between the local and the global, and connections between a shared European history and the instant global communication of the present. Nell Quest Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology, Rutgers University Fulbright Advanced Student, 2008-2009, France.
Until recently, Marseille was often presented as France’s “problem city,” a gritty hub of poverty, crime, and unassimilable immigration. More recently, however, large-scale attempts have taken place to transform the city’s landscape and image, with tremendous local, national, and transnational investment. These efforts seek to capitalize anew on Marseille’s diversity and Mediterranean position to promote increased tourism and industry. Little is known, however, about how these efforts are perceived, felt and experienced by Marseille’s various social actors…. Karem Said, The American University in Cairo A host of architectural projects are being built along Cairo’s desert periphery, typically conceived as self-referential, enclosed worlds, and artfully promoted as “villages,” “cities” or “lands.” Roads of high-speed traffic are often the only public spaces that lie between these areas, which compounds their isolation and heightens possibilities for culturally remote social formations. This is precisely what state-capital contingents desire, as they attempt to create distinct environments, in many cases to encourage innovation and creativity. Utopian desires and imaginings will be reconsidered in light of these architectural projects, focusing particularly on spaces designed for innovation and learning.
Summary: This session opened up a middle way between the polarized position of the ‘planners’ and ‘planned for’ or the ‘them and us’ situation which seemed to be the sticking point in the previous sessions. Instead the papers opened up a more physical or bodily experience of place and traced strands, narratives and threads through the chaos. This opened up a discussion that really centered on notions of perception, shared history, language and identity as the elements which make places.

Future Cities…Utopias, Dystopias and making it up as we go along.
We are already living in the future…. presentations explored possible techniques, visions or solutions that maybe utilised in the making and re- making future cites. Dr Rachel Armstrong is speculating on the future of humankind, non Darwinian techniques of evolution and the challenges of the extra-terrestrial environment. Rachel presented scientific research that is being done with living architecture.
"The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution: and we are part of it." from The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
Anne Marie Culhane: Sheffield Based artist who initiated The ORCHARD CITY Anne Marie’s presentation explores the patterns, form, interaction and diversity of the ORCHARD CITY: ORCHARD CITY flows across and links gardens, rooftops, balconies, verges, gap sites and parks. Drawing from the learning and design of forest permaculture, ORCHARD CITY re-animates the city soils, and once established requires minimal ongoing maintenance and gifts us unexpectedly high yields of fruits, berries and culinary, edible herbs, medicinal plants and vegetables through the year. Mac Dunlop: Artist and writer presented a 20-minute meditation on our addiction to energy exploring human behavior in the urban environment through a small fiction:. What if there were far too much of it, everywhere, all the time? Professor Gonçalo Furtado, Oporto University, Portugal “On Two Infinite Scales: The Contemporary Metropolitan Condition and the Construction of ……” I will focus the present situation of contemporary architecture, which has gradually been marked first by the phenomenon of digital information and, more recently, by a bio-technological vision. In my opinion, the contemporary condition suggests the need for a (Godelian) dialogue between the infinitely large and the infinitely small. Facing an unknown situation – a metacity and new urban hybrid experiences - , the role of the so call critical metropolitan project, and the experimental research that it privileged, becomes crucial and critical.

Summary: Here another dynamic emerged around the use of technology in the future to cut Carbon Dioxide emissions and create urban sink holes in ‘Living architecture’, the premise of this being that it allows us to continue with currently unsustainable levels of consumption. In contrast other presentations suggested that we actually have everything that we need and it is a matter of re-organisation, city greening projects, urban orchards using less and growing more. This discussion really questioned the nature of the changes we face asking do we find new technology that allows us to continue at the same rate of consumption but which may have, as yet, unknown side effects or do we look for less comfortable ways of living which share out resources in a different way?

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Thanks to: Garry Bartlett (tech/ design), Paula Morrison (Intern) & Zoe King (project manager form Safle), All of the speakers and delegates who made the event so productive and in particular to the “Chair’s” Peter Draper, Pratap Rughani, Emma Posey and Wiard Sterk, who did such a great job of directing the sessions. Peter Clark of Morgan Arcade Estates for generous loan of the shop, Julie in security department.

Web links:
www.arcadesproject.org
www.nowtopia.org
www.riversidemarket.org.uk
www.rounded-developments.org.uk
www.frontedbyhumans.com
www.igloo.uk.net
www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/G-H/dr-tom-hall.html
www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/fentonj.html
www.geo.uu.nl/urban/spierings
www.malcolmmiles.org.uk/
www.welcomebb.org.uk/
www.untitledstates.net
www.zoeskoulding.co.uk
www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/41719.htm
www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/people/A_armstrong_rachel.htm
www.amculhane.co.uk
www.thepoetrypoint.wordpress.com
www.random-people.net
www.rotorrr.org
www.bloc.org.uk
www.cyclecardiff.org.uk
www.safle.com
www.stdavids2.com
www.jenniesavage.co.uk

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Project © Jennie Savage 2008