Architect Margaret Helfand, reporting from the 10th annual Venice Architecture Biennale, describes the exhibition as a "call to arms" in a "life or death" struggle to ensure humanity's survival in a rapidly urbanizing world.
"To survive â€" and thrive â€" in this urban future, we need to ensure the continuation of our species by lusting after the good (strength of the public realm, education, health care, security, mobility, culture, and democracy), and eschewing the bad (crime, depletion of resources, short-sighted thinking, and denigration of the environment that nurtures us). Just as sex has traditionally been our instinctive response for self-preservation on the individual level, intelligent planning and design of the urban global web that now connects us all is the visceral and intuitive drive that will be just as critical to our survival as a species in this new world. And, just as architects were beginning to despair at our lack of influence on the evolution of our planet in a positive direction when the world is in such a mess, we have been invested with a new and powerful libido.
Urbanism is hardly thought of as a glamorous subject, [but] it may well hold the key to our survival on this planet."
Read the full story: Sex and the City: Field Notes from the 10th Venice Architecture Biennale - Part 1
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