Abstract
Planners have a good grasp of Sense of Place and Place-Making at urban, neighborhood an city scale. However, we are confronted in the last 70 years with the metropolitan and megapolitan scales and the population is still stranged from identity and sense of appurtenance to the metropolis as a whole, beyond their emotional ties to their own particular medium-size city within the metropolis. The metropolis and megalopolis is the next scale in physical planning. Scales are relevant and the phenomena that take place within them are drastically different and have to be addressed at that specific scale. - At the Architectural Scale (1:50) of the individual building, the identity is allocated on the iconic image and its singularity - At the Urban Design Scale (1:500) of the neighborhood, the identity of public space, squares and streets, are strongly provided by the cultural invariants, leitmotivs, and arrangements, on the components. - At the Urban Scale (1:5.000) of the city, the identity is provided by the cultural software but allocated into the Icons and Leitmotivs that represent the city in the collective subconsciousness. - At the National Scale (1:500.000) of the country, the identity, promoted mostly in the last 200 years, is bound t the culture, the language and the value system. Mostly represented by the flag and the map. - At the Continental Scale (1:5.000.000) the identity is anchored on the national cultural and philosophy-religious family appurtenance: Confucio-Taoist, Animist, Krishna-Buddhist, or Plato-Aristotelic, etc. Appaertencace is promoted by these cultural invariants embedded in the patterns, icons and leitmotivs of their urban legacy. - At a Global Scale (1:50.000.000) of the world, the identity is in the process of being build up around the integrative concepts of Environment, Climate-Change and Pandemia impacts. The identity is lately hung from the moon blue-ball photo from the Apollo landing. But Metropolises and Megapolises are still, as a new phenomenon, lacking a sense of identity and appurtenance. Place-making at the 1:50.000 scale is in search of authors that will be able to grasp this identity and to turn it into the physical realm of the metropolitan space integrating the urban, neighborhood and architecture identities. The new scale requires a new intellectual approach to Design and Planning. The Session Proposal abstract intentionally presents controversial points with the objective of promoting discussion and debate. Out of the creative energy of polemical discussion, innovative new paradigms might surge and be brought to life.
