I was invited to talk about #inequalities related to #ageism and #healthylifeexpectancy in cities a d how #cityoflongevity can tackle it at the amazing event #ForumInequalities, hosted by Triennale Milano and organized by Stefano Boeri Architetti, whom I thank for the wonderful opportunity. It was the pre-launch event of Triennale's 2025 exhibition on this same subject. I also had the chance to listen to and share with one of the most extraordinary line-up of global thought leaders on the topic of inequalities related to cities and urban development that I have ever come across. I was particularly impressed by
#RichardSennett, Member of UN Committee of Urban Initiatives with his call for a real "Right to the City". Francesco Billari, Dean of Bocconi University, who with his usual lucid rhetoric in his beautiful talk "contrasts vs. destiny" reminded us of the importance of choices to be made today in light of what we already know will happen tomorrow. The Scottish anthropologist #TimIngold is absolutely convinced that the technological proliferation to which we are witnesses and protagonists will collapse, in toto, because of its energy impact on the planet, and this is where his Manifesto for a new humanism" or even, I would say, for a "post-new-humanism" takes shape. Naturally of great impact was the beautiful talk "Forms follow bacteria" by #BeatrizColomina, Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Architecture, Princeton University and #MarkWigley, Professor of Architecture, Dean Emeritus, Columbia University, which opened a luminous window on the relationship between wo/man and context, between possessing and being possessed (by bacteria), between the visible and invisible in our race of life on the planet. Paola Antonelli Senior Curator at the Department of Architecture and Design and Director of R & D, MoMA, who with the talk "Creatures: Experiments in Communication and Empathy" touched on the multiple dimensions of how art, design and architecture twist on each other in solving and generating inequalities.
A very rich day of which it is impossible to report all the nuances. Yet two quotations are obligatory for the emotion they aroused, at least in me. The testimonies of
#KimiaZabihyan and Nazanin Aghlani from the #GrenfellNextofKin, on the Total System Failure that happened at Grenfell Tower, and #AmosGitai's short film, like a sort of direct take through a time-gate from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Reality in its most ruthless forms, real or fictionalised, reminds us how inequalities are, perhaps, the real uber-pandemic of our century. #ageingintelligence UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing #cityoflongevity
