Professor Jorge Vanegas 

 Dean, College of Architecture Texas A&M University

Title of presentation :Urban Heritage and the Politics of Identity Construction
 

On their own and at their intersections, the natural environment, the built environment, and more recently the virtual environment, provide the fundamental foundation upon which societies exist, survive, develop, and thrive, at urban, suburban, and rural scales. At the core of the intersection of the natural, built, and virtual environments are People (and all they do) and Place (as defined by all the spaces in which people do what they do, both alone and interacting with others). In the dual roles of being active providers of urban settings, landscapes, infrastructure systems, and facilities within the natural and the built environments, and in some cases, of being custodians throughout their life span, the practitioners of the professions of urban planning and design, land and real estate development, architecture, landscape architecture, construction, and facility management, among others, play a critical role in determining the quality, integrity, sustainability, and longevity of this foundation. In addition, the natural and the built environments are significantly augmented and enhanced through a physical and/or virtual fundamental understanding of engineering, of technology, of business, of humanities, of artistic expression and visual communication, and of life, physical, and social sciences, among multiple other disciplines.  Thus, the identity of a city can be defined as a function (1) of contextually anchored understanding of the nature and essence, of the physical and the non-physical attributes and characteristics, and of the spatial and temporal scales of the natural, built, and virtual environments; (2) of systemic understanding of the symbiotic interrelationship and interdependence of people and place to these environments: (a) on their own; (b) at the intersection of any two of them; and (c) at the integration of all three; and (3) of transdisciplinary understanding of these environments, through an imperative of unity of knowledge, and a concurrent concern with what is between disciplines, across different disciplines, and beyond all disciplines. This presentation will present and discuss an evidence-based integrated strategic, tactical, and operational framework and approach that cities can apply toward the explicit and formal development of a city identity by design. The framework addresses each of these three types of understanding, and is based on a questioning approach to practice that leads to scientific experimentation, meticulous observation, documentation, and analysis (as opposed to anecdotal case description), and cataloguing and archiving the evidence for dissemination and systematic retrieval.