Britta's notes on Florence workshop

March 24, 2013 MINUTES OF THE FLORENCE WORKSHOP (MARCH15-18, 2013)

Participants:

Laura Colini laura.colini@googlemail.com; Orhan Esen orhanes@superonline.com; Beatriz Garcia Peralta beatriz.gperalta@googlemail.com; Britta Grell britta.grell@t-online.de; Antonio Guterres brito.guterres@gmail.com; Marvi Maggio marvi_maggio@libero.it; Giancarlo Paba giancarlo.paba@unifi.it; Raffaele Paloscia raffaele@unifi.it; Anna Lisa Pecoriello astrospiff@tiscali.it; Antonella Perini mail@antonellaperin.it; Camilla Perrone camilla.perrone@unifi.it; Katerina Polychroniadi kapolaki@gmail.com; Angela Stienen angela.stienen@phbern.ch; Lorenzo Tripodi lorenzo.tripodi@gmail.com; Aysim Turkmen aysimt@yahoo.com; Iacopo Zetti iacopo@controgeografie.net

TOPICS DISCUSSED

A) FUTURE of INURA (Common Office; format/costs of meetings, new common projects) B) NMM Project in General C) New Participants D) NMM Book E) Time Schedule - Next Steps

Common Office:
Our discussion in Florence focussed on two points: 1. How city groups can become more active and take over more responsibilities and tasks (for example, by founding their own associations). 2. How to finance the activities of the network (fees, sponsorship, voluntary work, EU money). We propose to have a longer session during the retreat of the annual conference 2013 dealing with the future structures of the network and the common office.

Format/Costs of Meetings
We discussed the cost issue of the Lisbon conference with Antonio from the organizing group, and (with some exceptions) agreed that in the future the annual conferences might need a new format to keep them open for all INURA members and interested people with low incomes. Issues raised were time of the conferences (high season), length of conferences (one week maybe too long) and places (cities and accommodation). Antonio offered to talk to the other organizers in Lisbon on how they can still possibly lower the costs of this years' annual meeting.

New Common Projects
Orhan proposed two possible new "common projects": An INURA network for city tours, and the cooperation of INURA groups with regard to a new rating system for urban development projects that was discussed in a meeting in Istanbul. We propose to have a workshop dealing with these and probably other proposals during the retreat of the annual conference 2013.

B) NMM Project in General
We decided to continue with the NMM project (despite the failure of the COST proposal), to focus on the book project (and discuss the online mapping project later), and to do this in the most open and collective way as possible.

WE AGREED THAT THERE WILL BE NO INDIVIDUAL EDITORS OF THE NMM BOOK (ONLY INURA). All contributors will be listed with their names somewhere in the book.

How city groups will deal the authorship of the maps, city portraits and contributions to the third section (comparisons) is left up to them.

C) New Participants
We agreed to open up the NMM project for new people/cities. Iacopo and Britta volunteered to contact those cities that already raised interest (Warsaw, Barcelona etc.) and to think about possible new participants. We might need to put together a "manual" (How to participate in the NMM project?) especially for newcomers. We will ask all participants to revise their maps and city portraits until the Lisbon conference so we can solve some of the technical and organizational problems and issues there.

The deadline for the maps and city portraits will be the END OF November 2013 (see time schedule below).

Publishers
Camilla presented us a very attractive offer of FIRENZE UNIVERSITY PRESS (put link here). The best part of the offer is that we might be able to have both (a online version at no or very low costs) and an affordable printed version with coloured maps. We might be also able to set up our own INURA series (for further books of INURA members).

Laura volunteered to contact another independent publisher (Bedford Publishers in the UK) that has a very interesting program / series (AAA Publications) and books with a more innovative layout (than the ones by Firenze University Press) whether they are interested.

THERE WERE NO FINAL DECISIONS ON THE PUBLISHER BUT NOONE RAISED MAJOR RESERVATIONS. We asked Camilla to stay in contact with Firenze University Press.

We agreed: Everybody who has other ideas and wishes needs to present concrete proposals from their "favourite publishers" as soon as possible (before the Lisbon conference) so we have a real base for taking a final decision. Please, contact Britta for further information (book proposal, information concerning number of pages, size etc.).

Layout
We would very much prefer to pay a person for doing the layout of the book instead of leaving this to the publisher or some student assistants. The Florence group volunteered to contact Manuela (who did the layout, together with Lorenzo, of the INURA book "The Contested Metropolis"), and Katerina volunteered to ask somebody in Athens (a graphic designer close to social movements) whether they would be interested and how much they would charge us.

Finances
Britta volunteered to apply for funding (around 10.000 Euro) from the Antipode Foundation (http://antipodefoundation.org/scholar-activist-project-awards). The next round of funding should open in May.

Katerina proposed that we should not waste our energies by looking for funding from the EU or other sources but think seriously about the possibility to finance at least the book by ourselves. In the case, we will publish it with FIRENZE UNIVERSITY PRESS, we would need a minimum of 7.800 Euro (for the layout and printing). Depending on the number of cities participating, between 200 and 400 Euro per city would do.

We agreed that SELF-FInancing is a possible fallback option that will allow us to move ahead without any sponsorship from outside.

Book Sections
The general structure AND CONTENT of the book was reconfirmed. (See minutes of the Vienna workshop from January 2013.)

Open for discussion is whether we will need a fourth section for conclusions (and who will write them), the title and other "minor" issues such as the format.

Part I / Introduction
Lorenzo introduced us to the WIKI that was set up to facilitate the discussion and work on the common introduction of the book, including the timeline (INURA history) and what was called the theoretical/political issues or dialectics that could help us to structure the introductory text: Gender, Academia vs. Activism, International vs. Local, North vs. South / East vs. West (and issues such as mapping as a method, legal/illegal – formal/informal, crisis, the lack of a common theoretical approach). Please see: http://inura.wikia.com/wiki/Theoretical_/_political_issues.

Lorenzo volunteered to collect more material, opinions etc. from other INURA members concerning the history and conflicts / political issues mentioned above. Katerina volunteered to provide a first draft / framework for the introduction. Other people (has to be added who) volunteered to write subsections for the introduction and send them to the coordinating group.

Coordinating group: Katerina, Marvi, Laura

Part II / City Maps and Portraits
Iacopo and Britta volunteered to contact the city groups who have already answered to our questionnaire, the ones who have not done so (but participated in the "first round") and new ones who raised interest to draw a map. We decided to have another workshop on technical / practical issues during the retreat of the annual conference in June.

Coordinating group: Iacopo and Britta

Part III / Comparative texts
After discussing the drafts / first ideas for two articles ("Spectacular Urbanism" and "Possible Urban Worlds") and the inputs from the Amsterdam and Vienna groups we reconfirmed the list of possible contributions (that came out of the discussions in Vienna). We are aware that most groups that have sent in abstracts still need to figure out, who will start and facilitate the writing process and who / what city will be involved in the contribution (either as a "case study" or as authors). We very much depend on the motivation and willingness of INURA groups to cooperate with each other and to start discussing more in detail the content of their contributions.

Coordinating group: AYSIM AND ?? (We considered to ask Penny and Dimitra and maybe also Philipp whether they want to be part of this coordination group. Who will contact them and ask??)

D) Time Schedule - Next steps
THE COORDINATING GROUPS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR FACILITATING AND ADAVANCING THE FURTHER WORKING AND WRITING PROCESS.

APRIL: We will send out an e-mail to all INURA members before Easter to inform them on the current stay of play and ask them for contributions and comments (Laura will do this).

JUNE: During the retreat of the annual conference at the end of June we will have a short plenary session (information only) and a workshop to discuss practical problems related with the maps and the city portraits.

JULY: Decision on the publisher

NOVEMBER: Final deadline for city maps and portraits.

JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2014: Final deadline for all the other contributions to the book. Last NMM workshop for final decisions, most likely in Athens or Berlin.

SUMMER 2014: BOOK READY !!!