THEMATIC GROUPS
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
THE URBANIZATION of (IN)JUSTICE
Public spaces in uncertain geographies
The University of Cyprus, Department of Architecture invites you to the annual meeting of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP)’s Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures, which will take place in the United Nations Buffer Zone in Nicosia in the period between 16th and 18th May 2018.This meeting is organized in parallel to the Cyprus Network of Urban Morphology conference, “Urban Morphology in South-Eastern Mediterranean Cities: challenges and opportunities”. The purpose of this meeting is to unfold, discuss, rethink and challenge prevailing discourses about“just” or “unjust” processes of urban transformation from the perspective of public space.We look forward to a critical and constructive debate on the research, policy and public agendas about this issue to contribute to the academic and public discussions on the role of public space to achieve “just” cities.
Theme. Over the past few decades, cities around the world have become radically and rapidly changed in the sense of scale, scope and complexity. This is mainly due to the increasing mobility of people, goods and information as a result of technological developments, liberalization of economic systems, economic fluctuations, wars, and climate change. These changes challenge the processes of production of built environment and create conflicts and contestations between different urban groups, who have contradicted claims on the decisions and processes influencing urban transformation.
Such situation brought the discussions on just/unjust urban transformation processes in urban research, policy and public debates.It raised questions on privileging the interests of affluent urban groups, while disadvantaging vulnerable communities. We see public space as central in these debates, as possible facilitator of a more just process of urban transformation.Public space is able to embrace different political, economic and cultural manifestations of urban groups, which allow them to voice their rights on the city. Public space can also submit encounters and interactions between different urban actors and perform as a place of negotiation between them. Public space is potentially able to promote fair allocations of wealth, resources, benefits and opportunities.
Different views on public space can provide us ways of thinking to develop planning and design strategies, policy measures, civil initiatives, and social movements to oppose processes of unjust urban transformation. Yet, in the context of a rapid-shifting economic, political and social reality, it is more and more urgent for critical re-thinking of public space as facilitator of urban justice.
The aim of this conference is to share international and interdisciplinary perspectives of public space as a facilitator of (in)just urban transformation processes from various angles based on practical and/or theoretical work. We particularly welcome topics such as:
- Public space in relation to urban just and unjust conditions, today and through time
- Public space and equity, public space and diversity, public space, identity, spatiality and power
- Re-thinking public space through the connections between notions of justice, social relations, and spatial form
- Responses to unjust urban patterns in form of emerging practices of self-organization and negotiations of difference in cities’ public spaces
- Role of actors in the production of public space.
- Everyday practices of establishing spatial justice and injustice
- Creation of subjectivities in or with public space
- Politics of public space
The meeting will be dedicated to the presentations, discussions and roundtables of high quality work of scholars and practitioners. We are interested in contributions from urban studies, urban planning, urban design, architecture, social geography, anthropology, sociology, ethnography, cultural studies, political science, history and others. Paper presentations will be followed by roundtable discussions to consolidate the ideas, concerns and recommendations presented during the meeting, and set the basis for further practical and theoretical explorations.
Format
The meeting will combine various formats of exchange including the keynote speeches of CyNUM and PSUC, presentations from the contributions to the call for papers, field visits on the second day and a workshop on the third day.The workshop participants will have the opportunity to visit locations within Nicosia in collaboration with local stakeholders and practitioners, to reflect on the case studies visited and to discuss, exchange views and propose ideas with the purpose of sharing resources and producing knowledge on contemporary public space concerns.
Abstract submission
Abstracts of paper proposals (300 words) should address at least one of the topics outlined in the call for papers (Please check the guidelines for the abstract at the conference website. Speakers should also submit a short biography (100 words).Submissions will ONLY be accepted online through www.easyacademia.org, where participants may register and instantly submit their abstracts using the provided template.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by the Conference Committee. Final acceptance will be based upon review of the full-length short paper.Full papers will be published in an electronic version in a form of a conference book of papers. The authors of the selected papers will be encouraged to prepare their contributions in the form of scientific articles for the publication in the thematic issue of a scientific journal.
Registration
To register for the conference please visit the conference’s website. Participation in the AESOP TG meeting with all its related activities is free of charge. AESOP TG delegates can also attend the CyNUM conference welcome reception and the keynote speeches free of charge. Moreover, coffee breaks are offered.
AESOP TG delegates, who would like to participate in the whole CyNUM conference and receive the full package and documentation, will have to register for the conference. AESOP TG delegates can also register for the conference farewell dinner and/or the conference field visits separately at an additional cost.
Important Dates
Call for papers: October 1st, 2017
Abstract submission: December 5th, 2017
Acceptance notification: January15th, 2017
Author registration and payment: February 15th, 2018
Full paper submission: April 30th, 2018
Conference: 16th -18th May 2018
Publication of proceedings: July 2018
The Venue
The location of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean offers a unique venue at the confluence of three continents and a multitude of cultures that face unique urban challenges. Throughout its history, Cyprus has been undergoing various dynamics related to refugees, migration and social fragmentation, which have led to changes in urban spaces and everyday social life, thus turning it to fertile ground for collaborative ideas among public space scholars and practitioners from different backgrounds. Nicosia, the last divided capital of Europe, offers an ideal location to discuss the issues addressed in this conference. As a city with a prolonged history of conflict, internal refugees’ displacements, migration and tourists’ flows, economic fluctuations and rapid, often abrupt urban transformations, it serves as a laboratory to observe and explore the production, development and the role of public spaces in unstable and contested contexts. More information about the venue is available at the conference website.
Contacts
For further information on AESOP TG PSUC Nicosia meeting please contact:
Nadia Charalambous (local host Cyprus),
Organising Committee
Nadia Charalambous, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus.
Andreas Savvides, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus.
Ceren Sezer, Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Nikolai Roskamm, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning,FH Erfurt, Germany.
Scientific Committee
Ali Madanipour, Architecture, Planning and Landscape Department, Newcastle University.
Wendy Pullan, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge.
Tarek Osseiran, United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat).
Nilly Harag, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel.
Christine Mady, Notre Dame University, Louaize, Beirut.
Elena Konstantinidou, National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
Vítor Oliveira, University of Porto, Portugal.
Related Links
The general TG blog at the AESOP page
The TG wiki page: http://publicspaces-urbancultures.wikispaces.com/
The TG FB page: https://www.facebook.com/AESOPPSUC/
The TG contact:
CyNUM2018 conference: http://cyprusconferences.org/cynum2018/
- Details
- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
GENERAL THEME
In the contemporary city, we are witnessing different “practices of re-appropriation of space” and self-organization: regeneration of empty buildings, spaces of cultural production, urban gardens, renewed green areas given as well as public spaces re-shaped through practices of commoning; beside this, we could also mention experimentations that are activating new social services and welfare spaces, and squatting projects which are defining different modes of co-existence, housing and service provision.
This is a vast field of activity and experiences - both illegal and legal - with the widespread involvement and the leading role of the inhabitants, individually or in associations, and other local actors, challenging roles and meanings of the institutions.
We should consider in particular micro-practices that are able to broaden and transform the city and urban societies, alongside more stable forms of social production. A specific kind of “collaborative city making” built upon a mix of practices, social relations and modes of local activation.
As a consequence, the way we are looking at the city is radically changing: questioning the relationship between the State and the citizens, these processes of self-organization are re-configuring both the mechanism of place making as well as the organization of social relations and local services.
These practices of re-appropriation are representing different modes of city organization as well as different cultures of action/policy making in the contemporary city. They are also representing different modes of what ‘public’ means in the city: some practices of re-appropriation are acting as collective actions that take into consideration the mechanism of social inclusion, while others are acting in a way which could be described more as private, or specific only to some groups and thus quite often with exclusive impacts, rather than designing public/collective actions and open access.
Among these practices, many of them are re-opening spaces or re-activating some specific territories/neighbourhoods benefiting from very localized creativity and capitalizing on social relations that are fully embedded in local societies.
These experimentations are focused on action that is simultaneously redefining the modes of social conflict as well as the routines and spaces of citizenship. Sites where these practices may eventually unfold, that are produced by these practices can be considered as arenas where to experiment and shape political capacity, thus challenging the very functioning of local democracy.
Discussing the tension between the different models of local activation and cultural/political production and the problematic erosion of the capacity of institutions in answering local need, we consider whether practices of re-appropriation are de facto substituting the role of institutions as well as weakening the transformative impact of traditional social conflict; and so doing reinforcing neoliberalism, and, as a consequence, an unequal distribution of disadvantages and uneven geographies in unstable contexts.
The topic is fully in focus on the theme ‘Unstable Geographies - Dislocated Publics’ developed by the AESOP Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures. Urban life is characterized by diverse manifestations of instability which continuously stretch or redefine the processes of city making, the production of space and place, the sense of institutions and their relationship with the inhabitants (organized or not), the diverse “cultures of public”, the everyday struggles related to the capitalist system of production, the role of the politics.
SESSIONS AND CALL FOR PAPER
The general theme will be articulated into three main focuses developed in different sessions, illustrated by the following call for papers:
1. Historical and cultural roots/rooting (as praxix) of self-organization in the city.
Planners have often confused reality with its representation, mistaking the city for the map that represents it. They have not sufficiently thought about the city as a dynamic set of people and of places produced by the visible and invisible relations that people establish with their living environments, but as a combination of forms and signs, situated in a space they imagined as continuous and homogeneous. By separating form from life, they conceived the city not as a process, not as the result of complex practices and social relationships, but as a drawing, as a mental product, designed in a laboratory or in a cabinet, and then projected, all at once and imperiously, on a territory they imagine empty, lacking life and history. On the contrary, the history of the city and urban life and of the territories themselves are crucial to understand how, if we focus on the moment when the city emerges as a coherent spatial agglomeration, we frequently underestimate what Soja calls «dynamic processes associated with the spatiality of social life and the social construction of human geographies».
Through the history, it is evident how processes of self-organization and self-management have a founding role in the shaping of different forms of territoriality. These processes cannot be reduced to classical dichotomies such as public/private; instead, they are connected with different forms of association, aimed at the production of common goods. They are specific forms of production of urban and territorial space, which have been produced by different historical processes, intimately linked with the cultural and environmental nature of the various geographic contexts. They have been called into question and marginalized by the establishment of modern nation states, or of colonial empires. It is crucial to investigate the rationality (the “collective intelligence”) that directs these experiences. It can be understood starting from the relation with the environment and with the territorial context, a founding element that constitutes specific cultures, abilities, competences, forms of relationship. By comparing different situations, we can reach a wider understanding of the complexity and richness of processes and cultures that took roots in them.
This panel investigates this huge set of problems, and aims to bring back the attention on the historic and cultural roots of self-organization, on its diversity, and on the organic and participative approaches to planning that try to highlight not only the dynamics of production of space, but also the different forms that the right to the city can take.
2. Searching for an "enabling" space. Dialogues and bridges between institutions and self-organization practices for a collaborative territorial planning and management.
In recent years, collaborative practices between different subjects in urban planning have changed following the transition from the rational paradigm to complexity.
The involvement of inhabitants, local communities and organized committees, as well as a wider network of public and private actors, in the government of the city (and the so called “participation”), seems to be a consolidated passage, at least in rhetoric, and it has also influenced in some cases norms and planning tools. This new collaborative perspective, which the seminar intends to underline and problematize, sees pressure for experimentation and consolidation by the institutions, but also by the inhabitants and other actors.
There is a wide interest not only in terms of policies, but also in terms of building co-research areas, where knowledge is the result of a multiplicity of shared practices and knowledge, within an emerging interdisciplinary approach including all the disciplines of the “urban”.
From this point of view, which opens to the search for a new model of representative democracy or deliberative democracy, it is to rethink both the role of the institutions as well as of the citizens, and the relationships between the different actors interacting with the construction of a territory. On the one hand, the public subject should wonder how to enhance the capabilities, the design, the skills and the social leading role, which territories express. On the other hand, local actors themselves should be able to pursue traditional conflictual but also subsidiary logic, learning to be the protagonists of a shared process of defining the public / collective interest. All actors, beyond the features and roles, have to start a path, specific to context and dynamics, which has a “enabling” character for everyone, because it requires each one to get out of the own frames and routines, to build new ones.
The session therefore focuses on this reflection, discussing the characteristics of processes, actions, collaborative interventions looking at what they have generated in terms of new skills, new organizational practices, new ways of interacting. So what is this "enabling" character? Is it necessary to develop an epistemological advance, and which one, that will overcome the state-private-community dichotomy? What achievements have reached the urban and territorial self-organizing movements in Italy and in the world? What practices has the public actor introduced, through which changes in the structure of public administration and management? Can we still talk about the right to participate and the utility of open forms of conflict?
3. Powers and terrains of ambiguity in the field of urban self-organization today.
Self-organization processes have always been part of the city's construction, of the ‘collaborative city making’ discussed above. They are by definition ambiguous situations where different subjects, with different intentions and interests, interact and can also conflict among them. This gets even more complicated in a condition where the role of institutions is changing (up to the modern state) and with socio-economic dynamics that are impacting on the welfare state. The radical change in the State organization and policy making involve a backwardness of the welfare state and an ambiguous support to neoliberal dynamics. In this process, the self-organization process is at risk to become a beneficial factor to such a retreat as it tends to control social conflict.
Agents involved in processes of self-organization can at the same time create important spaces of autonomy within these dynamics subordinating or expressing innovative pathways if they are structural and construct in this way a ‘city from below’. The question is how these processes can be used to substitute the welfare state provision or to profit for social resources de facto commodifying them. The interest is also to investigate whether these forms of autonomy are capable of creating ‘new spaces of freedom and action’ and/or ‘new institutions’ that might be able to change the way of making cities and to think and offer urban services. Finally, we want to investigate whether and how such processes are helping to create unprecedented forms of social inclusion, especially in increasingly diverse cities, or if they are creating benefits for closed communities in a general backwardness of public accountability.
To do this, it is probably also necessary to refine or redefine the interpretative tools and elaborate at the same time specific survey methodologies. What information, in terms of research methodologies, can offer ongoing studies and research?
Starting from the critical reading of the practices and processes in progress today, the session seeks to capture the problematic nodes and the ambiguities of practices and processes of self-organization in the city.
ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFERENCE
The conference will be held over three days, with three morning sessions (one for each day) on the following topics:
1) Historical and cultural roots of self-organization in the city;
2) Searching for an "enabling" space;
3) Powers and terrains of ambiguity in the field of urban self-organization today.
In the afternoon, fieldtrips and workshops will be managed by scholars, activists and local stakeholders. Video exhibitions and other non-academic events will be provided in the evening sessions.
The three thematic sessions will be introduced by keynote speakers and the other speakers will be selected through a call for paper.
A workshop organized by the AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures will be specifically dedicated to the debate on the final frames on the theme "Unstable Geographies - Dislocated Publics" and to the discussion on the topics to be developed in the next cycle.
A selection of the best papers will be published in a scientific journal.
DEADLINES
October 10th, 2017 - Deadline for the abstracts (max 4.000 characters)
October 25th, 2017- Conclusion of abstract selection and communication to selected authors
December 5th, 2017 – Deadline for final papers (max 30.000 characters)
Abstracts and papers will be in English.
Please, send the abstracts and the final papers to
PLACE AND DATE
The conference is a joint event of the Italian research network “Tracce Urbane / Urban Traces” and Association of European School of Planning (AESOP) Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures hosted by Sapienza University of Rome.
The conference will be held on December 11th-13th, 2017, at the Faculty of Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, v. Eudossiana 18, Rome, in the centre of the city, near the Coliseum and the church of St. Peter in Vincula.
The conference will be free access.
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE: BUILT ENVIRONMENT SPECIAL ISSUE on PUBLIC SPACE and URBAN JUSTICE
A serie of essays that Matej Niksic (Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia) and Ceren Sezer (TU Delft, Urbanism) organized and co-edited is now available online from Built Environment:
http://www.alexandrinepress.co.uk/built-environment/public-space-and-urban-justice
Taken together, these essays provide a useful guideline for the ways to study public space to promote urban justice in the city. Check them out! Special thanks to the authors: Ana Maria Fernandez Maldonado, Christine Mady, Burak Buyukcivelek, Eva Schwab, Penelope Carroll, Karen Witten and Claire Stewart. Thanks for support at Built Environment from Ann Rudkin (Alexandrine Press), Stephen Marshall (UCL), Lucy Natarajan (UCL) and David Banister (University of Oxford) and to Orhan Kolukisa for his cover image.
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Planning and Complexity
Conference program
The workshop was hosted by the Department of Spatial Planning and Environment, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. The workshop took place on May 23th-25th, 2018.
The conference included:
- four keynote speakers
- 25 inspiring talks
- 3 workshops
The presentation files can be found at the right >>
Day 1 - Wednesday 23 May 2018
10:00 Registration with coffee (Room: Atrium)
10:30 Opening by Fleur Gräper - Deputy Province of Groningen (Room: Atrium)
10:45 Welcome by Ward Rauws + Hello Game (Room: Atrium)
11:40 Keynote Prof. Michael Batty (Room: Topweer)
12:40 Lunch (Room: Topweer)
13:30 Energizer (Room: Topweer)
13:45 Parallel sessions
Authors: Stephen Marshall and Nick Green
Title: Measuring and mapping organized complexity
Session Chair: Stefan Verweij
Discussant: Stefan Hartman
Authors: Hans Bil and Geert Teisman
Title: Elaborating complexification: an emerging practice in which governments modestly enhance the complexity of decision-making in order to deal more effectively with societal issues
Discussant: Christian Lamker
15:15 Coffee break (Room: Topweer)
15:30 Mini-workshop: Adaptive planning - Ward Rauws (Room: Topweer)
16:15 Coffee break (Room: Topweer)
16:30 Parallel sessions
Session Chair: Ulysses Sengupta
Authors: Solon Soloumou, Ulysses Sengupta and Robert Hyde
Title: A strategic planning problem: examining the unpredictability of urban transformation based on the changing temporal order of planned projects
Discussant: Stephen Marshall
Title: Brownfield development in the light of great housing demand. Building feasibility scenarios in a complex and politicized environment.
Discussant: Mariëlle Prins
Understanding complexity: political dynamics & planners’ roles (Room: Topweer / Format: Classic setup)
Author: Nils Björling
Title: Ecologies: politicizing complex adaptive systems
Discussant: Beitske Boonstra
Author: Christian Lamker
Title: Rethinking planning processes as role-systems – puzzling towards playful spaces of transformation
Authors: Jasper Meekes, Dorina Buda and Gert de Roo
Title: Lessons from complexity: theoretical implications for planning based on the study of leisure-led regional development
Discussant: Ines Portugal
18:00 Drinks (Land van Kokanje, Bar Bubbels)
Day 2 - Thursday 24 May 2018
09:00 Parallel sessions
Author: Angelique Chettiparamb
Title: Responding to a Complex World: Explorations in spatial planning
Discussant: Christian Zuidema
Authors: Mark Zandvoort and Maarten van der Vlist
Title: Planning for infrastructure replacement strategies under uncertainty
Discussant: Javier Ruiz Sánchez
Authors: Camilla Perrone and Gert de Roo
Title: Planning and rationality: a multi layered perspective
Discussant: David Andersson
Author: Sharon Zivkovic
Title: Systemic Innovation Labs: A lab approach for addressing wicked problems
Authors: Emma Puerari and Timo von Wirth
Title: Urban living labs as local transition experiments: a new way of navigation spatial transformations?
Author: Mariëlle Prins
Landing airports. Analysing the transformation of airport areas.
Discussant: Bart Rijke
10:30 Coffee break (Room: Topweer)
11:00 Keynote Prof. Juval Portugali (Room: Topweer)
12:00 Lunch break (Room: Topweer)
13:00 Energizer (Room: Topweer)
13:15-16:15 Workshop with the Province of Groningen (Room: Topweer)
19:00 Dinner (‘t Feithuis)
Day 3 - Friday 25 May 2018
09:00 Parallel sessions (Topweer and Boerdam)
Session Chair: Christian Lamker
Author: Sharon Wohl
Title: Boosting transformative capacity: cultivating affordances within the apparatus of self-organizing urban spaces
Author: Mohamed Saleh
Title: Rethinking planning’s perspective on urban ruptures: the contextual tensions of post-politics in Egypt as illustrative case
Author: Beitske Boonstra
Title: Unplanned or other planned – spatial planning, self-organization and intentionality during the 2015-2016 European refugee crisis
Discussant: Emma Puerari
Authors: David Emanuel Andersson, Fred Folvary and Luca Minola
Title: Fiscal principles for the self-organizing city
Author: Koen Bandsma
Title: Nudging the self-organization process: under which conditions do urban planners perceive nudging an effective instrument to guide processes of self-organization
Authors: Eric Cheung and Ulysses Sengupta
Title: Enabling sustainable mobility: an ICT approach to enabling landscapes for bottom-up processes
Discussant: Claudia Yamu
10:30 Coffee break (Room: Topweer)
11:00 Duo-keynote Prof. Jean Hillier & Prof. Gert de Roo (Room: Topweer)
12:30 Lunch break (Room: Topweer)
13:30 Parallel sessions
Session Chair: Emma Puerari
Discussant: Hans Bil
Author: Ines Portugal
Title: Moving beyond a reductionist approach: Potential for Agent-based modelling and Cellular Automata applications in tourism planning
Discussant: Jasper Meekes
14:30 Coffee & Closing (Room: Topweer)
15:00 End
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- Parent Category: THEMATIC GROUPS
- Category: Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
AESOP Thematic Group on Public Spaces and Urban Cultures
REPORT on the group’s meeting in Vienna, Austria, held within the framework of “UNSETTLED – Urban routines, temporalities and contestations” International Conference in Vienna, organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SkuOR), 29-31 MARCH 2017 at TU Wien.
The working meeting of the AESOP TG Public Spaces and Urban Cultures took place during the “UNSETTLED – Urban routines, temporalities and contestations” International Conference in Vienna in March 2017. Under the theme of "Unstable Geographies - Dislocated Publics" AESOP Thematic Group for Public Spaces and Urban Cultures proposed meetings in Beirut, Lebanon (10th/11th November 16), Vienna, Austria (29/30th March 17), Ljubljana, Slovenia (25th/26th May 17), Lisbon, Portugal (July 17), Rome, Italy (fall 2017), Wageningen, The Netherlands (fall 2017/spring 2018) and Nikosia, Cyprus (spring 2018).
The conference aimed to explore conditions and conceptions of the unsettled, across urban practice and urban theory. In this context, the interdisciplinary conference speakers reported from experiences in Amsterdam, Berlin, Birmingham, Chicago, Dubai, Ghent, Hanoi, Seattle, Tel-Aviv, Texas, Thessaloniki, Toronto, Vienna, Whitechapel (London), and Zataari (Jordan) emphasizing urban culture and public space as areas for intersecting research and action. The contributions presented critical, subversive, reflexive, interventionist, activist and visionary research, ideas and practices concerning notions of the unsettled
Continuing and expanding the debates of the conference, the TG meeting in Vienna took place on the add-on day, consisting of a workshop and excursions to different sites in Vienna: 31 March 2017, 9.00 – 11.30 (Workshop); 12.00 – 15.00 (Excursions).
WORKSHOP
The workshop under the title “Our Unsettled Geographies” hosted by the AESOP TG for Public Spaces and Urban Cultures was divided into two parts.
The first part was intended to introduce the Thematic Group’s values, structure and activities to all interested parties. The opening was made by Sabine Knierbein, TU Wien, Austria and Gabriela Esposito de Vita, CNR and University Federico II Naples, Italy, giving a concise presentation on the Group’s general aims, group organisation and proceedings as well as a short description of the current umbrella topic “Unstable geographies - Dislocated Publics”. The presentation was followed by a short summary of different experiences within the Thematic Group given by Katarzyna Bartoszewicz from Gdansk University of Technology, Poland and Elina Kränzle and Tihomir Viderman from TU Wien, Austria. After the presentation the time was given for workshop participants to ask questions and exchange views and ideas on the topic of the group’s functioning and goals. The TG Public Spaces and Urban Cultures invited all interested participants of the workshop to join the structures of the group, and opened up the discussion on new modes of cooperation in the future.
The second part of the workshop was devoted to the presentation of research of the following speakers:
Marleen Buizer (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) The ‘right to challenge’ – settled or unsettled business, settling or unsettling practice;
Sahar Khoshnood (TU Darmstadt, Germany) Revisiting Historical Public Spaces as ‘Everyday’ Heritage (in the case of central Tehran);
Shahed Saleem and Sarah Milne (UCL, UK) Migrant Constructions of Identity and Belonging: Whitechapel’s German and Muslim Religious Buildings;
Anna Richter, Bernd Kniess, Dominique Peck (HafenCity University Hamburg) How to do things with research.
After the research presentations a discussion followed regarding different notions of unsettled, locally-embedded perspectives on the city, urban societies and urbanization processes, public space accommodating diverse cultural values. Participants reflected on presented research, projects and programmes as well as urban policies and practices in the light of conference‘s debates with a special focus on broadening understanding of the paradigm of the unsettled in urban cultures and public spaces.
During the debate members of the research networkTracceUrbane joined the workshop, introducing the next event to be held in Rome (December 11th-13th, 2017).
Finally the introduction was made to the AESOP Annual Congress 2017* in Lisbon and an invitation to join the formal AESOP Thematic Group Meeting to be held on Thursday 13th July 2017.
EXCURSIONS
The excursions following the AESOP TG Public Spaces and Urban Cultures workshop were open to all the conference participants and offered insights into specificities and approaches in urban practices in regard to community strengthening, negotiations, transformations as well as conflicts and contestations in public spaces of the city of Vienna:
Community Cooking is a Caritas Wien project that has been running since 2015, offering a kitchen to the neighborhood surrounding the Brotfabrik Wien. Lisa Plattner & Sam Osborn
Logic of the Open Space - On Design Processes and Negotiation Practices in Public Space, Local Urban Renewal Office GB*7/8/16 & GB*9/17/18. Barbara Jeitler & Manfred Schwaba & Amila Širbegović
Spaces of contestation in a “settled” City, INURA Vienna. Justin Kadi & Bettina Köhler & Johannes Puchleitner & Mara Verlic
Report by Katarzyna Bartoszewicz, Gdansk University of Technology, faculty of Archictecture, department of Urban Planning, Gdansk, Poland
- PUBLIC SPACES FOR LOCAL LIFE / Shared values in diversified urban communities as a foundation for participatory provision of local public spaces, 23-27 May 2017, Ljubljana Slovenia
- New special issue for the journal of Built Environment themed "Public space and urban justice"
- New UNISDR Guidebooks released
- "Public space and the City" at the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference 2017
