Organizers: Christian Haid (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, DE); Annika Levels (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, DE), Anna Steigemann (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, DE)
Contact: christian.haid@metropolitanstudies.de; annika.levels@metropolitanstudies.de; anna.steigemann@metropolitanstudies.de
In the wake of state rescaling, globalization, and migration, also urban public space has undergone tremendous transformations. Moving beyond the often proclaimed death of public space in the 1990s, today many scholars, activists, planners, politicians, and urban citizens speak of revitalizing, reclaiming, restructuring or re-appropriating public space. However, these diverse sets of actors have diverse sets of ideas about the ideal future public space, thereby often developing imaginaries that are highly ambiguous. Planners and politicians envision the future of public space most often in the name of ecological and social sustainability, to which they most often respond with physical restructuring measures. By contrast, scholars and activists tend to idealize recent urban processes of redemocratization and imagine public space as a political and inclusive arena being able to accommodate and foster diversity. Such imaginations then often rub against mundane and everyday uses and the possibilities urban citizens can envision in public space. These various and at times mutually exclusive aspirations pose major challenges for today’s and future cities and their citizens and demand new ways of governance, challenge legal and social norms as well as everyday practices. Furthermore, they increasingly blur the lines between seemingly fixed categories of chaos/order, exclusion/inclusion, formal/informal, public/private, democratic/authoritarian and many others.
In this panel we particularly welcome papers that stress the intersections of such varied imaginaries of the ideal public space. What challenges or even opportunities do such ambiguities present for planning, governing, as well as living in public spaces, both within urban studies as well as concerning the concrete and very recent transformations in these ambiguous public space forms? The separation of realms of governance and of everyday aspirations is still prevailing within various conceptualizations of public space. How can we develop ways of bringing these together? How can we go beyond such separations and develop interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives that incorporate the interwoven dynamics between these urban scales?
B2.1 Ambiguous Imaginaries – Public Space in the Ideal City” Representations, policies, contradictions and challenges for tomorrow’s urban life
Chairs: Christian Haid (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, Germany) Annika Levels (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, Germany) Anna Steigemann (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, Germany)
Contact: christian.haid@metropolitanstudies.de; annika.levels@metropolitanstudies.de; anna.steigemann@metropolitanstudies.de
Foka Zinovia
“Shared Public Space” in Conflict Areas: Cultural Appropriation in Nicosia’s Walled City
Felix Hartenstein
Public Appropriations of Private Space – Ambiguous Notions of Publicness in the Egyptian Resort Town of El Gouna
Lucia Capanema Alvares
Public Spaces in the hegemonic city: between government policies and everyday appropriations, imaginaries and possibilities
Toru Takeoka
Sexworkers, Regulation and “Right to the City”: The Streets in a Red Light District of Tokyo
Distributed Papers
Johannes Marent
Envisioning Public Space: An Investigation in Istanbul’s Urban Imaginary
Sabrina Howard
Bus Notes: Los Angeles Public Buses as Critical Public Space
Makrygianni Vasiliki, Foteini Mamali
‘Public spaces and migratory practices in Greece’s crisis scapes: a comparative study between Athens’ and Thessaloniki’s conflictual spaces of encounter
B2.2 Ambiguous Imaginaries – Public Space in the Ideal City” Representations, policies, contradictions and challenges for tomorrow’s urban life
Chairs: Christian Haid (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, Germany) Annika Levels (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, Germany) Anna Steigemann (Center for Metropolitan Studies Berlin, Germany)
Contact: christian.haid@metropolitanstudies.de annika.levels@metropolitanstudies.de anna.steigemann@metropolitanstudies.de
Malin Rönnblom, Linda Sandberg
Imagining the ideal city – planning the gender equal city
Eva Eylers
Thomas More’s Utopia: Amaurotum and the vision of a public life
Robert Cowley
Reframing the Problem of Public Space in the Sustainable City
Sandra Meireis
Disguise and Subversion – Popularizing Artistic Urban Strategies in Berlin
