Call for Participation:
Becoming Local Vienna
Networking Meeting of the Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP)
Organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space, Department of Spatial Planning, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, Vienna University of Technology
Ass. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein and DI Tihomir Viderman MSc
29 August 2014, Mobiles Stadtlabor, Resselpark, 1040 Vienna (U4 Karlsplatz)
The AESOP Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures hosts a one-day networking meeting “Becoming Local Vienna”, which is organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (http://skuor.tuwien.ac.at) at Vienna University of Technology. The meeting will explore local links between the umbrella theme “Becoming local” and issues of emancipation in planning and design, which lie in the focus of successive WWTF summer school (30th Aug to 5th Sep). The focus will be put primarily on practical experiences and empirical approaches. Moreover, the meeting seeks to produce concrete outputs and conclusions concerning possibilities and limitations of various approaches and methods to empowering and constituting city publics in an inclusive way.
The meeting has been conceived as a series of workshops, which will be offered by the AESOP research partners from Istanbul, Paris, Naples and Zagreb along five learning fields:
A – Beyond participatory discourse and process (workshop 1)
B – Between emancipatory practices and everyday life (workshop 2)
C – The material, the mental and the lived space (workshop 3)
D – Cultural practices creating alternative values (workshop 4)
E – Between Everyday Life and Scientific Insights (transversal)
Workshops will discuss processes and practices that connect global forces and locally present issues, while putting a specific emphasis on situated learning experiences and citizen-empowerment perspectives as a means of inducing spatial changes in design and planning that are meaningful for the local dwellers and their everyday lives. Guest hosts have been invited to propose inclusive workshop formats for up to 30 participants, thus opening an opportunity for exchange of knowledge and experiences among researchers and practitioners, civil servants, NGOs and activists whose actions and interest are directed at creating inclusive public spaces. Each of the workshops will be open by a talk by a guest partner researcher on own experiences from practice-based work, which will be brought into dialogue with inputs from actors working in the Vienna’s local context. Colleagues and students interested to actively participate in the sessions (10min short practice-oriented contribution, see table below) please contact Tihomir Viderman (tihomir.viderman @tuwien.ac.at) by the 15th July 2014. A significant portion of the workshop will be dedicated to a debate and output-oriented work engaging all the participants, during which they will be able to get to know each other, exchange ideas and discuss experiences in a convivial atmosphere. For those generally interested to participate, please register at
