Utopian Hours
October 18–20, 2024
Turin, Italy
What brings architects, landscape designers, master planners, politicians, photographers, and organizers together? Cities. Our love for them as well as our constantly evolving visions of how to make them better is the raison d’etre for Utopian Hours, a European festival on urbanism and design hosted by Stratosferica.
As in past years, the 2024 edition, its eighth, took place live in Turin, Italy. Given its history as the site of Fiat and other manufacturing companies, the city resists the glitz and glam of other larger European destinations like nearby Milan and instead asserts a quieter, more human-scaled urbanism. Here, Uber is illegal, and the subway is only a few years old. Walking the narrow, winding streets you see a mixture of baroque villas, Roman ruins, and modern industrial heritage. Turin is a city that celebrates its past and intentionally moves at a slower pace, a stance that feels radical in the often-dizzying arena of “futuremaking” and urban tech.
Utopian Hours itself was held in lovely urban revitalization project on the campus of Lavazza. Located just a few blocks above the Dora Riparia, a river that flows from the nearby Alps through Turin’s industrial core, a cluster of renovated warehouses have been transformed into the Centro Lavazza, a space used for events and exhibitions. A maze of trees, greenery, plantings, and benches occupies the center of the plaza; a well-used bus line stops just one block away; there was a street vendor slinging snacks and takeaway meals all day and into the night. And of course, the event hall was fronted with an all-day espresso bar roasting Lavazza specialty beans, served as always with a sidecar of sparkling water.
If there was one thing that united the three days of speakers, roundtables, and presentations it was that we don’t need new cities—instead, we need to invest in the spaces we already have. Presenters came from all corners of the globe, representing the entire population spectrum from international capitals like Bangkok, Thailand, (11 million) all the way to smaller cities undergoing cultural awakenings like Tallinn, Estonia (460,000). But the refusal of new, flashy carte blanche planning was the centerpiece of nearly every speech, project, and protest presented on stage. (There was perhaps one exception: A presentation on a new “Startup City” made the crowd collectively scratch our heads when told we’d be given “ecotokens” to balance our spending in alignment with the earth’s wishes in a completely new, ground-up city in the Alps.)
The week started out strong with a familiar leader from New York: Ya-Ting Liu, New York City’s first Chief Public Realm Officer. She shared the thinking behind the creation of such a role in city government, and the responsibilities she takes on in the city of 8 million people. Liu’s ongoing fight to give streets back to people, pedestrians, and vendors was front-and-center, as she’s working to get cars and parking off the congested—and therefore dangerous—streets of Lower Manhattan.
Also representing New York was Matt Grunbaum, an associate partner at Field Operations, whose Saturday night at the lectern captivated the crowd. I introduced the talk, called “Lessons from New York,” which began with a clip from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. An Aussie himself, the opening hooked the audience: The film shot scenes in Tongva Park, a Field Operations transformation of a former parking lot in Santa Monica into a green space. Grunbaum went on to discuss world-renowned projects from the High Line to the landscape for Domino Park in Williamsburg. He also teased some awe-inspiring plans for the rest of the north Brooklyn waterfront. Sustainable features like storm surge control via terraforming and a swimmable East River are just a few of the visions Field Operations has in store for the city.
A focus on walkability was key for several other of the festival’s most impactful speakers. Transit transformation and the dismantlement of car-centric cities was perhaps most convincingly sold by Studio Bereikbaar’s Roland Kager. Coming from the Netherlands, a country renowned for its anti-car culture, Kager encouraged us to look at the data: His work starts with clusters, connections, and education way before design catches up—though the bike storage centers, train stations, and open streets he flashed across the screen were enough for everyone in the crowd to ask, “Why can’t we have nice things?”
But what about interventions that don’t require millions or billions of dollars? Or ones that can happen tomorrow, rather than ten years from now? Utopian Hours is committed to uplifting grassroots and emerging urban practitioners working outside of corporate hierarchies. Saturday’s presentations included Nicolas Détrie, a tall, curly-haired Marseille native spearheading Yes We Camp. His activist design organization takes neglected urban spaces and activates them with joyful, interactive, and above all helpful interventions. And he does this without enormous amounts of capital. “My goal is to reveal people’s inventive capacities,” he said. “What could we all do with more confidence, more support?” Yes We Camp identifies three dangerous trends characterizing cities today: loneliness, distrust of institutions, and polarization of ideas. “Our current system is intent on producing a fragmented society,” he said.
How to combat these trends? Through supporting collective creativity. While Yes We Camp has a mission to raise funds and own more sites to guarantee long-term activation and resist gentrification, it currently operates on a low-cost or free leasing basis from cities, showing the possibility of even just a few week’s engagement with place. If Yes We Camp can turn a fallow dirt plot in northern Marseille into a thriving park, market, and workshop, why can’t we? After all, Yes We Camp is just “a gathering of moneyless boys and girls dedicated to a better world.”
“You don’t need deep pockets to take action” was a familiar rallying cry for Zala Velkavrh of Prostorož, a nonprofit urban design studio. Her presentation on urban interventions in Ljubljana focused on similar small, yet impactful moves: She presented her design for “the cheapest park bench ever” that nonetheless served the public elegantly with a recognizable design. She also shared moves that felt inevitable but took years to accomplish, like simply filling the long-empty fountain at the center of her city, therefore cooling the surrounding area and offering a moment of joy and interaction.
Sunday’s program brought perhaps the most cohesive series of speakers that took on the big, political questions of the weekend. Right after the troubling bitcoin city presentation, attendees entered the world of Belgian photographer Nick Hannes. (I had the honor of introducing his talk, “Are We Still Building New Cities?”) In his photo book, New Capital, Hannes critiqued the political agendas behind new cities from behind the lens of his camera. In his work he seeks out both architectural subjects and everyday people, and his process is focused, internal, and rigorous. His demeanor is one of concentrated attention. Exploring cities on foot for days and weeks, he makes urban exploration his creative canvas. The results are a comprehensive study of how new cities and capital are colluding to create “capsular” architecture—spaces akin to social media bubbles, where money protects those with privilege from the chaos of the world beyond their fences and checkpoints.
Next came one of the youngest presenters of the weekend, but by far one of the most impactful: Sneha Visakha, a Brandeis PhD student and host of The Feminist City podcast, delivered a searing speech that first defined feminist urbanism, and then positioned this practice of intentional design for all as the only way forward. “If you’re against cars, you’re a feminist urban planner already, as most women don’t own cars,” she stated in her introduction. This was followed by sharing a comic strip on screen that laid the groundwork for her presentation: “A woman wanted to go for a walk at night. She did. The end.” This simple narrative, free from tragedy, is nevertheless a fantasy for women living in cities today. “Fifty percent of the population does not share in the same rights and freedoms of movement,” she said. What we’re talking about when we talk about safe cities and safe places are, really, spaces free from male violence.
Visakha made a point about the triangularity of male violence: Like bullying, it’s not just about the bully and the victim, but a third party—the audience. Spectacle and voyeurism are key aspects of city life that contribute to the odd push-pull effect of feeling alone and anonymous while in the crowd of a city.
Similar tensions and complexities are also legible in the act of citymaking itself. There is no easy binary between good and evil for today’s urbanists and designers: Our cities are the battleground where we see the effects of climate change, social justice, systemic violence, and more playing out on the streets. Most Utopian Hours speakers asserted hope through simple, approachable actions. We don’t need millions of dollars or decades of building campaigns to make change; we need community, support, and unifying visions to activate and uplift all the spaces we already have.
Overall, the message was: Cities are complex, though they are not as complicated as they may seem. Identifying problems and sharing solutions with others, no matter how small, is the way we all take steps forward.
If you’re already excited for next year’s edition, Utopian Hours is already planning its ninth iteration for 2025. You can snag a “super early bird” ticket for only €45.
The Architect’s Newspaper is a media partner for Utopian Hours.
