Abstract

The aim of our article is an attempt to present the concept of urbanity that has been shaped throughout centuries along with the development of European civilisation and now entered a new phase of social production of space based on cultural dimensions. The future of the majority of World’s population is connected currently with the urban life with the assumption that qualitative characteristics of life in the 21st century define the quality of civilisation itself. Contrary to many scientists’ predictions of the decline of the city and urbanity, new reviving urban projects, social local activities and everyday urbanism appear which are connected with redefinition of the city as a community. The rebirth of cities, currently referred to as “urban renaissance”, “urban resurgence” or “urban revival”, can be also defined in terms of new urbanity regarded as an insightful and creative attitude towards the city and its culture. The elementary order of things was determined in the last decades not by the space but by the time and its acceleration and simultaneously the role of architecture alters. The course of thinking about the city is changing from a single space-time city towards a personalised city, based on individual identities and corresponding places in the physical and virtual space. That can mean a new role of the city in the creation of urbanity. In the era of advanced communication technologies, a question arises about the ontological status of the city when the emphasis is placed on independence and individuality in interactions between people. Social life becomes detached from traditional spatial patterns and practices. We are interested in the urbanity understood in the wider context of cultural urban studies which are focused on new ways of organising the communication space and social relations. We will refer in this article to the values constitutive for the city and urbanity that guided the idea of the city since the dawn of time as well as its new deconstructed forms (e.g. the pop-up city, neo-bohemia, the creative class, neighbour communities, urban guerrilla gardening, experimental urban farms, etc.).

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Authors (2)