325 / 2019-02-21 12:46:37

[In]visible Cities: Mediatization and communication of Planning knowledge in Egyptian Universities

planning education,visualization,egypt,mediatisation

全体主题 > Spatial data collection, Analysis, and Visualization

[In]visible Cities: Mediatization and communication of Planning knowledge in Egyptian Universities
Mennatullah Hendawy & Gehad Mohamed
How far does imaging the city in planning schools represent the contextual urban realities? As previous students and current practitioners of planning, we noticed two conflicting realities: the city dealt with in Egyptian schools of planning, especially on the undergraduate level, and the status quo of urban realities in Egypt. There is the city planned in academic design studios in which everything appears formal, neat, well- designed and there is the other city that is informal, lacks basic services, and some call it chaotic.
The focus of this paper is accordingly laid on the way academic education shape the planner’s perception and production of the image of the city. Academic education is conceived of as the communication and passing on of planning knowledge between current and future planning practitioners shaping graduates’ perception and practice. The process of passing-on relies on mediating narratives and tools, for example drawings, digital and physical models and 3-D visualizations and the like.
This paper aims to investigate and ignite discussions about the kind of ‘city’ that planning students are exposed to in the process of becoming planning professionals by addressing two main questions: which city is visible for students of planning and how does the use of media in education privilege certain imaging / imagining over others? This is explored through (1) analyzing the educational content the students are exposed to and results or products are expected from them, and (2) mapping what kind of media is employed in communicating and transmitting this content.
The research purpose is both exploratory and analytical. The research follows a qualitative inductive reasoning approach. In order to explore which city planning students are exposed to, data in this study is categorized into three sets, (i) education inputs by professors, (ii) outputs required from students, and (iii) (media) tools employed.
The paper showed that a certain academic city is constructed and envisioned in planning educational institutions in Egypt that is not representative of the diverse socio-economic urban conditions within the country. The academic city of undergraduate design studios is formal and focused on future urban environments that only attracts two percent of Egypt’s citizens. The employment of media in planning education rendering visibilities and invisibilities of the urban has a strong agency in this process.
Keywords: Planning education, planning knowledge, visualizations, communication, media, mediatisation,