Reclaiming Imagination of the City

For much of modern history, the city was conceived as a project of human will—a rational grid imposed upon a passive landscape. Urban development, guided by master plans and grand ideologies, sought to create order from chaos, shaping cities as symbols of state power, industrial progress, or fixed cultural identity.

Over the past decades, this top-down model has been challenged by a growing recognition of cities as complex, living systems—or porous assemblages. The instabilities of our times—rapid gentrification, neoliberal development, ecological precarity, and the erosion of cultural memory—are central to the contemporary urban experience, particularly in a city like Tbilisi. While its unique historical fabric and vibrant community life are celebrated, a central paradox has emerged: the very “informal” and multi-layered character that makes the city authentic is now a target for commercial development that threatens to sterilise it.

Participants wrote from one of four positions. Local communities—long-term residents of the historic courtyards, small business owners, artisans, whose lives are interwoven with the city’s physical and social fabric. Heritage professionals—architects, restorers, historians, conservationists advocating for historical integrity against decay, neglect and aggressive development. Planners and developers—the officials, architects and investors shaping the city through data, financial projections and a vision of progress and growth. And the city’s nonhuman citizens—an underground river, a cormorant nesting on Metekhi cliff, a fig tree sprung in ruins, or the collective consciousness of the crumbling brickwork itself.