Events

European Humanities University’s (EHU) Laboratory of Critical Urbanism invites students from Belarus, Lithuania, Germany and beyond to apply to “Mapping Visaginas: International Summer School on Sources of Urbanity in Former Mono-functional Towns”.

International summer school will take place from August 22 to September 3. It is a two-week course on mapping social practice in relation to the built environment of the Lithuanian formerly mono-functional town of Visaginas.

NB! Applications should be sent to Dr. Benjamin Cope, urbanism @ ehu.lt, by April 17.

Visaginas is a showcase of the risks involved in the transition from a town reliant on the external top-down allocation of resources and work force, to a town compelled to survive in a competitive environment of a multilateral and multi-scalar determination of resources and workplaces. The urban structure and services of Visaginas were planned and built from scratch in the context of the short-term economic abundance related to the project of the adjacent Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (1975-2009). For this reason, Visaginas was considered to be one of Soviet Lithuania’s best examples of a centrally planned mono-functional urban unit, highly successful in terms of architectural decisions, quality of living and human capital. From the 1990s – due to the gradual shutting down of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant as a consequence of Lithuania’s EU accession, determined by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 –, the town has stopped growing, with concomitant social phenomena of increasing unemployment, dwellers’ anxiety about the future and around 20 percent population decline.

The identification of sources of urbanity is a key task for a variety of locations in different regions of today’s world in which relations of production, recreation and welfare are being radically transformed across multiple scales. The use of an existing built structure and applying new social technology for keeping urban areas alive and well integrated depends on a town’s infrastructural and industrial history on the one hand and the major structural vulnerabilities a particular location encounters on the other. This Summer School’s aim is to qualitatively scrutinize and confront these two variables as manifested in Visaginas and to present them in the form of conceptual maps. And, further on, to propose future scenarios for the town in a form of soft planning interventions and community projects.

A 5 ECTS certificate will be provided after handing in a final paper. The summer school’s fee is EUR 950 for international participants and EUR 60 for participants from Lithuania and Belarus. For more details about extra costs, scholarships and accommodation visit EHU Laboratory of Critical Urbanism website.