MEDS Reaction LX 2013 used the Urban Parliament as a temporary structure for collective debate, reflection and public learning. During the workshop, participants gathered around a series of thematic sessions to discuss urban space, public life, design practice, community agency and the possible formulation of urban rights.
The MEDS Reaction sessions were convened around explicit topics. Each topic opened a conceptual field — such as Equipped Square, Mind the Gap, Common Sense, Handmade Urbanism or Open Source City — but the conversations often moved beyond the initial title. The editorial task is therefore to show both the convening theme and the themes that emerged through discussion.
The Urban Parliament also hosted off-sessions beyond the formal debates. These included critical conversations about the Reaction deployment, exchanges with community members and invited guests from fields such as anthropology, sociology and architecture, daily surveys between participants and tutors, Graça Popular Assembly meetings, singing sessions and Portuguese lessons. After the workshop, the structure remained active in Graça, continuing to host public uses and local political encounters.
The edition can be read as a laboratory for urban rights. It did not aim to produce definitive answers, but to turn design questions into collective controversies: who has the right to intervene in public space, who defines the rules of use, how far can open data replace local knowledge, what role should architects play, and how can communities recover the power to shape their own environments?
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