The »Strategy« of the Archis SEE network is still under discussion among member initiatives (see also Forum). The aim is to collate the different strategies that member initiatives use to intervene in the urban development of their hometown or region/country. The different approaches and tools used to implement these strategies will be documented and may in the future provide a useful source of knowledge for further action.
Positioning
Architecture and urban development now have to contend with an increasingly internationalized political and economic framework. They face the task of developing new forms of planning that are able to deal with this shift in spatial and power structures. This demands that planning be repositioned, in order better to respond to a development that has become increasingly apparent over the last two decades: the significant expansion of cross-border exchange has given rise to transnational structures that express a new kind of interrelation of the local and global spheres.
Approach
Urban initiatives can gain a perspective only when they apprehend themselves as part of this overall political system (that is to say, of ‘governance’), in reference to a strategy that can contextualize itself within various social situations and simultaneously prepare new contexts for social actors. An urban initiative is strategic in the sense that it must react to various social and cultural contexts and mediates between the special needs of individual social groups and the mechanisms of the dominant international power structure. Yet it must also be cooperative in as much as it, in turn, provides various social actors with new contexts in which to open up space, the repercussions of which are felt beyond the local (and national) context. In this sense, interventions must be communicative because actors can only be mobilized through structured dialogue: dialogue that takes place, moreover, not only at the local but also at the international level.
To that end, what is required is a cooperative strategy that mediates between the local and international levels, offering a new context in which to reflect on local problems and re-contextualize the latter in different locales in order to develop new planning strategies. This includes translocal planning that affirms and puts into effect transnational management mechanisms. By providing a space for international communication, Archis Interventions is attempting to do just this.
Spatial Matrix
The next logical step will be to develop a spatial matrix, to question strategic positioning in this new spatial order – to increase the initiative’s visibility, and to gain a better understanding of the strategic playground.