Scenario 1: City of Culture & Agriculture with Mathilde Gardien

This first edition is created in collaboration with Ideas City and the New Museum in New York.

The stage is set to explore scenarios for the city of Arles and its rural context. Bringing together international and local experts and influencers, the weeklong workshops reflects on the possibilities and opportunities of five future city scenarios: 1/ City of Culture & Agriculture; 2/ City as Campus: 3/ 21st Century Factory Town; 4/ UNESCO City 3.0, and 5/ The Global Village.

Created by LUMA Arles, Scenario 100 is a prospective exercise whose approach aims to prepare for tomorrow.  It is not about foreseeing the future but about developing possible and impossible scenarios in their perceptions of the moment on the basis of the analysis of a hypotheses and available data.

Scenario 1: City of Culture & Agriculture

Arles is a city bordered on all sides by rural land. In the context of urban planning, how do we take advantage of this interface while prioritizing principles of stewardship? How do we conserve its ecological and cultural heritage? When someone is a steward of something, they take it upon themselves not only to care deeply for it, but to consistently improve it. Can these principles inform, and even be at the heart of, the economic development of this small city? The aim here is to emphasize the physical and imagined modes of connectivity between the heart of Arles and the surrounding land. This means rebalancing the links between the city centre and its peripheries, which are interdependent. 

How can Arles be a place of nourishing livelihoods that enables dwelling, moving, and cultivating? And further, how do we organize, govern, and replicate such developments?

LUMA Days #1 > 22 – 27 May 2017