'Smoothing': lecture by René Boer at Central Saint Martins

• At Central Saint Martins, René Boer gives a presentation about the smooth city, and the porous city as alternative
• With the new Burnished Bronze Edition of Smooth City!

What: Smoothing
Where: Central Saint Martins, Granary Square London N1C 4AA, Room D102A
When: Wednesday 28 October, 18:30–20.00 hr
Admission: Click here for tickets

Critic, curator and writer René Boer joins us to talk about the rise of the Smooth City: the insatiable drive to control, polish and sanitise urban life into a seamless 'experience'.

Around the world, cities are being pushed towards ever greater perfection, efficiency and control, and towards the active erasure of anything aberrant or alternate. Safe, clean, well-functioning streets matter. But the smooth city leaves almost no room for the experimental, the incompatible or the unruly, and in doing so it erodes the democratic and emancipatory potential of urban life.

Boer traces where smoothness comes from, what it looks like and what it costs us. He also makes the case for working collectively towards something else: porosity.