My City / Your City: City of 2050

Urban innovation and strategic planning in Antwerp. The city of Antwerp is undoubtedly a front-runner in city planning having unfold in the past years an impressive repertoire of city-wide urbanistic instruments to address its future challenges, which are common to most European cities: climate change, provision of housing, sustainable mobility, economic development, access to services and green areas, etc. The lecture will give an overview of the different strategic plans the city has launched to address these challenges through the lens of some of the projects BUUR (www.buur.be) and other companies are working on there, as an appetizer to open the debate on Cities of 2050. Some of the projects include the coverage of the ringroad, studies on housing densification and urban economy, the green plan and the water plan, among others.

For 10 years now, Architecture Workroom Brussels (AWB) operates between the fields of culture, architecture, urban planning and many other domains. Being the moderator of a never-ending dialogue between governments, social actors, entrepreneurs, citizens, activists, academics and artists, AWB explores what is needed to make our increasingly ever-changing society more futureproof. To do so this Brussel’s based think-and-do tank sets up new types of projects that are not only feasible today, but that also have a transformative impact in tomorrow’s environment. In the framework of ‘reSITE salon: City of 2050’, Nik Naudts will focus on the tools and methodologies used by AWB to continue this ambitious mission for our shared territory in transition.