Urban design otherwise | Catalina Ortiz | Brussels Centre for Urban Studies

            Cities are more than concrete infrastructures designed by architects, urban planners or policy-makers. Artists and creatives have much to contribute to the collective imagination and affective experience of urban life. These intangible yet powerful dimensions can foster attachment and meaning – or provoke alienation and exclusion. Art occupies an ambivalent position in this dynamic: while it can create spaces of encounter, reveal hidden stories, and challenge dominant narratives, it is also increasingly instrumentalised to serve political, economic or branding agendas.
          

Urban design otherwise: co-creation processes in/with popular neighbourhoods in Medellin

This talk reflects on lessons from three consecutive co-creation projects in Medellín, Colombia—COiNVITE, Living Heritage, and Living Archive—developed through a learning alliance with international students, cultural organisations, grassroots groups, state agents, and built environment practitioners. The work recognised everyday spatial practices in informal neighbourhoods as living heritage and highlighted the agency of Integral Neighbourhood Upgrading as a path for progressive urban planning and design. I argue that planning and design must innovate by incorporating visual, digital, and performative storytelling to advance epistemic justice. The talk considers how reframing self-built neighbourhoods can help overcome stigma and inform alternative upgrading interventions.

Catalina Ortiz

University College London

Professor Catalina Ortiz is a Colombian urbanist and educator who is passionate about spatial justice. She is committed to an ethics of care and an engaged scholarship to trigger radical spatial imagination for a negotiated co-production of space. She uses decolonial and critical urban theory through creative methodologies to study the politics of space production to foster more just cities and the recognition of multiple urban knowledges. Her work revolves around critical urban pedagogies, planning for equality, and southern urbanisms. She is Director of the UCL Urban Lab at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London (UCL).