- Attractiveness and Inventiveness in the Public Spaces    374 kb by    Villalobos Hernandez, Maria Altagracia | M_Villal@planning.nyc.gov    Short Outline Innovation is everything but patrimonial rejection. This research works with unscreened places that overlap realistic images and mysterious forms that would provide an opening to induce experiences of interaction. Abstract “New” economic, cultural and technological forces are involved constantly and unavoidably in the permanent accumulation of survival urban strategies. Urban forms and political structures continually get together by negotiating their past, present and distant future theoretical conceptions of the urban space, in order to rebuild, destroy and un-build the environment in which people live. This research paper explores one of these key issues to stay alive; specifically, the one related with the aesthetics and programmatic dimensions and repercussions of the visual technologies in the public urban scape, with particular focus on Lower Manhattan, New York, US. This research works with unscreened places that overlap realistic images and mysterious forms that would provide an opening to induce experiences of interaction more and more complex and seductive; places that mediate urban control and de-control; spaces where the reinvention process that combines science and art happens; out-door interstitial opportunities of collective experiences that combine hyper-realistic objects and metaphysic perceptions. Methodologically, this paper is divided in three blocks: the first one, synthesized fragmentation, is related with those ordinary problems of accessibility and how new technologies can help in the redesign process of the systems of urban information and movement; the second one, cosmogonist experimentation, suggests some generic actions oriented to identify technologic elements that should be considered in the reinvention process of urban scapes as instruments to change the perception of locations; and thirdly, skeptical faith, contains considerations related to the levels of abstraction and flexibility in the urban strategies and how they could help local governments to be successful not only in the present but in the long-term local identity. Innovation is everything but patrimonial rejection; urban designers should protect metaphorical lucidity –perhaps hyper-melancholic- in the contemporary urban landscape, in order to offer not partial, but a temporary diverse scene of collective life. Keywords synthesized fragmentation-cosmogonist experimentation-skeptical faith Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2005: Making Spaces for the Creative Economy   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper