[Urbanstudy] Streets: A workshop, January 2, NIAS, Bangalore

[Curt Gambetta]

(This was sent earlier to the group, but emails to the group were not reaching recipients. Thus I am sending again! -Curt)


Dear friends,

A one-day workshop on Streets is being organized by the Urban Research and Policy Programme (URPP) of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), in collaboration with Art, Resources and Teaching Trust (A.R.T), Bangalore. 

The workshop will be held on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010, from 9.00 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., at the NIAS Auditorium, NIAS, Indian Institute of Science campus.

The workshop will examine the past and present and look towards the future to understand how a street shapes and produces the social, economic, physical, and political environment of the city. It will provide a platform to move beyond thinking of the street as a stage set or benign backdrop to urban life, to suggest instead that the street plays a more important and active role in shaping how people move, interact, do business, comprise or negotiate with authority and make claims to urban space. The workshop is part of a larger event on 'Streets' that includes an exhibition and film screenings, beginning on Sunday, January 3, at Venkatappa Art Gallery (programme to be circulated soon). 

There will be four thematic sessions:  'Imagining the Street', 'Boundaries and Grids', 'Producing the Street', and 'Politics beyond Marginality', as well as a concluding open session on 'Thinking the City through the Street'. 

Speakers include Ravi Sundaram (SARAI, Delhi), Nikhil Rao (Wellesley College, USA), Prasad Shetty (CRIT, Mumbai), Shveta Sarda (Cybermohalla Lab, LNJP - SARAI), Curt Gambetta (Rice University, USA), Annapurna Garimella and Fiza Ishaq (A.R.T., Bangalore), Lalitha Kamath (TISS, Mumbai) and P. Rajan, Jonathan Anjaria (Bard College, USA),Zainab Bawa (CSCS, Bangalore), and Solomon Benjamin (NIAS).

We invite you to participate in the workshop. 

For registration, please contact:
NIAS Urban Programme  niasurpp at gmail.com
Mariyammal:  nias_mmu at yahoo.co.in, 22185078
or
Sanam:  sanam.roohi at gmail.com, 9243092970


With best wishes,

Solly Benjamin
Curt Gambetta
Annapurna Garimella
Carol Upadhya


STREETS: A Workshop, PROGRAM

9:00 - 9:30    Registration & Tea

9:30-9:40      Introduction to the Workshop        

                               Curt Gambetta and Solomon Benjamin


Session I. Imagining the Street 

The opening session looks at how the street has been produced as an
object of inquiry, an agent of change and a site of governmentality.
Investigating sites in India from late colonial times, the Nehruvian era, and
more recent experiences of documentation and mapping, the session considers the
wider politics and consequences of the modalities that both produce and
regulate the street. 

Chair:                     Solomon Benjamin (NIAS)

9:40 -10:00             Ravi Sundaram (SARAI-CSDS, Delhi) 
The Street as Image:  From Planning to the Digital Surface

10:00 -10:20           Nikhil Rao (Wellesley College, USA)
Street Scheming: The Street and Planning in Late Colonial Bombay

10.20 -11.00           Discussion 

11:00 to 11:20         Tea break


Session II. Boundaries and Grids 

This session will investigate the related terrains of boundary and grid as sites of contestation and transformation. How do we conceptualize new specializations and contestations? In what ways are concepts of public life linked to a politics of legibility? Do the ambiguity or illegibility of boundaries between street and urban fabric suggest more complicated claims to
the city? What alliances are drawn around the grid and the rule of law?And, what consequences do new urban morphologies have for the relationship between architecture and the street?

Chair:                      Harini Nagendra (ATREE, Bangalore)

11:20 - 11:40          Prasad Shetty (CRIT, UDRI Mumbai)
Rethinking the Street: Problems with the Idea of Public Space

11:40 - 12:00          Shveta Sarda (Cybermohalla Lab, LNJP - SARAI)
Confronting The Survey: Negotiating Spaces & Blurred Boundaries  

12:00 -12:20           Curt Gambetta (Rice University)
Between Architecture and Infrastructure

12:20 to 1:00           Discussion


1:00 to 2:00             LUNCH 


Session III. Producing the Street

Who produces the street? Does the economic rationality that is emphasized by the new forms of infrastructure and management erase more complex historical meanings that are produced within the street? Are there more complex memories and living traditions embodied in streets such as processional rituals or territorial appropriations that reinforce contesting forms of producing the street?  

Chair:                     Jyoti Hosagrahar (SUI and Columbia University)

2:00 to 2:20            Annapurna Garimella and Fiza Ishaq (A.R.T., Bangalore) 
Procession and Community Identity: Muharram in Johnson Market, Bangalore

2:20 - 2:40             Lalitha Kamath (TISS, Mumbai) and P. Rajan (Bangalore)
Co-producing the Street: A Brief History of the Life of and Tussle over Bangalore’s CMH Road

2:40 - 3:20             Discussion


3.20 – 3.40            Tea break


Session IV. Politics Beyond Marginality  

Does the lived experience of streets point to occupancies and
appropriations that substantiate a counter to High Modernism? Are there shifts
in the nature of property now sought to be titled and disciplined to reduce
streets into spaces of transitions rather than dwelling?  

Chair:                    Amita Baviskar (IEG, Delhi)

3:40 -4:00             Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria (Bard College)
Street Dwelling  

4:00 -4:20             Zainab Bawa (CSCS, Bangalore) 
When Roads and Railway Tracks are Widened ...

4:20 - 5.00            Discussion


5.00 – 5.30           Open Discussion: Thinking the City through the Street 

In an era of intensive urban renewal and emergent governmentalities,
how does ‘thinking the street’ affect how we think about cities? 

Chair:                   Carol Upadhya (NIAS) / Solomon Benjamin (NIAS)