reSITE, the world's most interactive and dynamic conference focusing on cities and urbanism, has released its first lectures from its annual conference held on June 22-23 in Prague. Bringing together architects, city leaders, mayors, city planners, developers, investors and many cross-disciplinary experts from all over the world, the conference discusses many unexplored issues of cities and urbanism with radical solutions for the 21st Century. 

reSITE's this year theme was "In/visible City", which basically tackled with all city problems 'for a usable infrastructure' for healthy and sustainable  urbanism. The first two lectures are focusing on the cities of Paris and Lisbon with Jean-Louis Missika, Deputy Mayor of Paris and Rui Ramos-Pinto Coelho, Executive Director of Invest Lisboa. 

World Architecture Community is media partner for the sixth edition of the reSITE and we brought to you a wide range of festival keynotes, lectures, discussions and sessions from the two-day event.

Video by reSITE

In the first lecture, titled "How Paris is reinventing itself", Jean-Louis Missika in conversation with Linda Bartosova, reporter of the Czech Television, discusses the roles of citizens in city planning and decision making and Airbnb's role in Paris. 

In a 28-min video, you will find the answers of all these questions regarding the city: How sharing will influence the use of public space and will sharing prevail? Will it still be possible to book an Airbnb in Paris in the future and what restrictions did the city adopt? What Paris does to prevent gentrification? How does the city of Paris involve citizens to city planning, urban desig and decision making?

Video by reSITE

In the second lecture, titled "How Lisbon Magnetized the World", Rui Ramos-Pinto Coelho explores 10 years of Lisbon's evolution in 10 minutes and he discusses the major problems underlying all cities: How to finance urban projects to improve public space? How to attract international talent and investors to the city? Rui Ramos-Pinto Coelho, Executive Director of Invest Lisboa, shares his expert knowledge and practical experience at reSITE2017: In/visible City, the 6th annual international confrence.

"Rui Ramos-Pinto Coelho tells the heartening story of what happened in the last ten years in Lisbon city and he describes the situation of Lisbon in 2007 by using the words 'bankrupt, loss of inhabitants, degraded city centre, collapsing, unmotivated'. Within a decade, the city is hopefully beating the all-time records in real estate investment, tourism and entrepreneurship. Moreover, within the same period tourism has grown in double digits! While entrepreneurship didn’t even exist before 2007, today the city Lisbon is one of the top European start up cities." 

"He clarifies that the media has been also playing a big role in the process. Wallpaper Magazine even announced the city as "the Best City in the World" in 2016. So does this glow of enthusiasm show us a bit of exaggeration? Well, in his humble opinion – this might be the truth. Yet still what the city has achieved within less than ten years are worthy of respect and very inspiring for other cities around the world. As he explains the big part of the success were 'soft infrastructure like urban planning, reorganization, partnerships, incentives, legislation, leadership, hundreds of small projects and Startup Lisboa' that had a tremendous effect on the city."

reSITE, founded in 2011 by Martin Barry, is dedicated to understanding the intersection of design, policy, culture and economy in a continually urbanizing world. This year, reSITE received a record-breaking audience housing over 1000 visitors from 31 countries and the event's newly-designed 360-degree stage created a movie-scene-like atmosphere. 

All images © Tomas Princ

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