The Carleton Urban Research Lab is hosting a “Summer Cities” course in June-July of 2019. Titled “The Muddy Logics of the Tiber,” and will be based in Rome, Italy. The course uses the city as a case study to explore the various flows (speeds, volumes, viscosities, intersections and collisions) of Rome’s migrant populations throughout its history, with the urban and hydrological transformation of the city along the Fiume Tevere (the Tiber River) as a parallel theme of research and investigation. The course will result in a series of layered drawings and speculative mappings that are informed by, and provoke, questions surrounding water, cities and equity.

 

The course will be augmented by the expertise and participation of a group of local and international academics, researchers and designers. These will include a series of lectures, film screenings, walking tours and on site classes to situate the architectural and urban histories of Rome as part of the contemporary circumstances in the geo-politics of global migration. Inspired in part by Rome’s centre as a site of pilgrimage – Ancient Roman, Papal Christian, and now, Mediterranean and African migration – this course will address the myriad, and unending flows of urban life in the Eternal City. Given recent politics regarding Italy’s turn to more right-wing politics and policies regarding borders and boundaries, the course uses the Tiber and its history both as a focus and analogue in thinking through the spatial politics of the city as a space of strange vectors and movements.

 

Time and finances permitting, the course will offer an option to travel either to the Arno Valley Watershed or to the spectacular city of Matera – designated the European Capital of Culture in 2019.  Please contact Professor Saloojee for details.