In-Between Economies

shape our built environment. What we currently experience as urban life is a complex convergence of economic systems, social relationships, and infrastructural space. The city exists not only as material form, but emerges as an assemblage of complex interdependencies and intersecting narratives - all of which can be understood in an any number of possible combinations. We are interested in precisely this space, in-between the global and the local, where the largely immaterial movements of the global economy meet the local and very material scale of the everyday. With In-Between Economies, (emphasis on the plural form here) we seek to understand economies not as a typically financial or academic construct, but rather as an assemblage of overlapping relationships, operating both in and outside of the money cycle. Consequently, it is relevant to ask where In-Between Economies exist at the present moment, and how these liminal spaces come into being to begin with.

>> Why is it important to discuss economies in an urban context? Bearing the twin marks of globalism and a near-universal market economy, the beginning of the 21st century has been characterised by ceaseless fluctuations and a sense of volatility, all of which has a run-on effect in the way in which we understand the built environment. The vast amount of money tied to speculative property investment has, in many places, emerged as a conduit for economic globalisation. However, the city and its infrastructure can only be abstracted, monetised, and ‘globalised’ as objects of investment to a certain degree - buildings themselves are bound by place. In this sense In-Between Economies also refers to the spaces in-between virtual and material domains, and the exchanges that exist in-between the two. The expansion and contraction of economies is often directly visible in our lived experience of the built environment, and the inertia of bricks and mortar thus becomes either an obstruction to economic growth, or a byproduct of previous endeavours. Traditionally architectural understandings of space and form play a fundamental role in this context, but architecture as a discipline might well be too slow to grasp it. We look for more agile methods, frameworks, and understandings to be found in-between economies. Actual sites provide the starting point for our understanding of In-Between Economies. Former industrial areas, now populated by residential buildings and programs, show how changing economic circumstances can result in variable interpretations of architectural type. Manufactured landscapes of beach parks and promenades drive up property values in their surroundings. Sites with state functions, and the complex web of bureaucratic infrastructures supporting them. What conditions must be present in order for in-between economies to appear? How can architects, urbanists and citizens configure these conditions more aptly? And where does this situate contemporary discourse surrounding the built environment? Through an ongoing dialogue with both experts and the larger public, we hope to reframe the discussion surrounding both economies and the built environment.