The European project SmartCity was initiated by Dédale in September 2007 during the previous edition of Emergences and represents a vast programme of reflection and creation based on the concept of the “intelligent city”. SmartCity was officially launched within the framework of Emergences 2008 and aims to spread throughout France and Europe in the long term.
On the cutting edge of new practices and the latest technological advances, SmartCity offers to transform urban space – within which numerous societal issues are focused – into a privileged site of experimentation. Artists, researchers, architects, thinkers, politicians, industrialists, engineers and campaigners are invited to imagine new forms of appropriation of urban space and, in so doing, define an alternative vision of the city which is (re)centred around its inhabitants.
The Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP), along with the Parc de la Villette, is a partner for Emergences 2008. As a small ‘city’ within the larger one, the CIUP constitutes an ideal prospection space for the first phase of SmartCity.
Several experimentation chantiers (work sites/projects) will be conducted on the CIUP territory from July to September, based on predefined axes of investigation. At the crossroads between urbanism, architecture, activism, sociology, visual arts and multimedia creation, the SmartCity chantiers are devised in direct correlation to the CIUP site.
The results will be revealed on Tuesday 30 September, during an international conference at the CIUP, organised by Dédale in collaboration with CitéCulture, the FING (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération) and its programme Villes 2.0. As the climax of Emergences 2008, this meeting will allow researchers, artists and industrialists to compare their views on the intelligent city and to present some highly innovative projects.
This event also marks the starting point of a series of new artistic experimentations which will take place in the coming months, on the site of the Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris and in other European cities.