UD-M-301-100 Urban Design Project 3: Collective insurgencies

Instructors: Prof. Dr. Regula Valérie Burri; Prof. Dr. Monika Grubbauer; Dr. Hanna Katharina Göbel; Prof. Bernd Kniess; Gözde Sarlak-Krämer

Event type: Project

Org-unit: Urban Design

Displayed in timetable as: UD: Project 3

Crediting for:

Hours per week: 2,8

Location: Hamburg

Language of instruction: German

Min. | Max. participants: - | 30

Grading:

Beschreibung:
Annual theme UD 2023/24 | Liminal Cities

Faced by a multiplicity of global crises, urban life today has reached a tipping point. Most pressingly, an accelerating climate catastrophe calls for feasible social and ecological alternatives beyond western capitalist hegemony and its dependence on profit-oriented production and excessive mass consumption. Equally, the resurgence of military conflict in and beyond Europe combined with the worldwide renaissance of right-wing and fascist movements and parties ask for the active re-invention and creative re-appropriation of collective practices of solidarity across all domains of urban life. Finally, decades of neoliberal rule and entrenched globalisation have left behind deeply fragmented and highly individualised societies now reflected in a planetary urban landscape of unprecedented global interdependency. Situated at the crossroads of these and other current global challenges, today’s city emerges as a city in transition – a liminal city.
Originating in 20th-century European ethnography, the idea of liminality refers to an intermediate stage in rituals and rites of passage in which participants shed their old identities before having arrived at fully formed new ones (Varvarousis 2022: 24). Liminality, in this sense, opens up a space of political potentials, hope and fear, anxiety and anticipation. Turning its attention to sites of urban in-betweenness, this year’s theme wants to explore the city in its multiply liminal dimensions. Where does the liminal character of the contemporary city break to the surface most visibly? What does it mean to experience liminal in-betweenness on an individual, collective or even societal level? What, as a consequence, are the political potentials of liminal practices “from below” and where, in reverse, can we detect possible pitfalls, impasses and blind spots of liminal urbanism?

UDP 3: Collective Insurgencies

In UDP3, we turn our attention to alternative and collaborative forms of inhabiting the city. In particular, we will investigate how the transitory character of current urban life re-emerges at the level of insurgent practices of inhabiting, such as local housing initiatives, coop projects, urban and political initiatives and their spatialisation in Hamburg. Particularly interested in their practices of spatial appropriation, re-coding and commoning, we will examine diverse forms of local initiatives, their neighbourhood environments as well as their embeddedness within broader social and physical settings such as private and public funding schemes, regulatory frameworks, local and regional development politics, administrative routines and civil society initiatives. What are the key topics of transition, undecidedness and in-betweenness that shape places of inhabiting in the city in Hamburg? Is it possible to differentiate these topics along different project phases such as conceptualisation, realisation, use, etc.? What fights have to be endured and which alliances have to be formed? How do collaborations emerge, grow, maintain themselves? How does the temporality of these places, groups and practices come into play when inhabiting the city? What, finally, can be the role of alternative forms of collaborative insurgent practices in preparing broader societal transformations in the city? How can the more short-term oriented temporal rhythms of such places be translated into the longer time horizons of built urban space and lasting social change?