At the Conference Centre, University of Pretoria, took place an international conference that include insights into world Capital Cities through expert presentations that show how cities adapt for life.
Architect Luis Taboada representing Uruguay, lectured the audience on a sequence of events that changed Montevideo through the last 100 years, y two cycles of Ideas, Laws, and Construction
His approach showed how utopist ideals struggled through the years making it to the laws, and then materialize as built environment many years after, eventually very different from the initial model.
As laws and bylaws express as restrictions, the city adapts itself in different ways, such as “the pocket strategy”, spaces of opportunity with special rules that grow with office blocks, malls, hotels.
The Capital Cities Project is a cross-faculty research project initiated by the Faculty of Humanities, but incorporating expertise from several other faculties within the University of Pretoria community. Researchers and postgraduate students from the Faculties of Humanities; Law; Health Sciences; Natural and Agricultural Sciences; Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology; Theology; and Economic and Management Sciences collaborate by asking new questions about Pretoria/Tshwane as a city, and as a capital city. The uniqueness of capital cities in general and our capital city in particular, will be investigated from the viewpoint of a variety of disciplines.
The Capital Cities Project represents an invitation by the University of Pretoria to the residents of the city, civil society and public authorities on all levels, as well as international communities, to engage one another in theory and practice about the capital cities in which we live, and the capital cities in which we want to live.
