Events
Upcoming events
#3: Arts and Urban Citizenship
Arts-based practices and urban politics
Third seminar in the series 'Where is Urban Politics?'
Please register here.
Join us on Tuesday 21 January for a lecture by Rita Sitas, senior researcher at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. Details of her talk are as follows:
Arts-based practices and urban politics
Over the past two decades there have been increasing ‘urban turns’ in art, and ‘artful turns’ in urban studies across the world. In many ways the positive role of arts in urban justice has been exuberantly asserted, and in some places, well-funded. But circulation of Anglophone global North perspectives have been more energetically enabled than those from elsewhere. In this talk I will reflect on quieter forms of artful “activism without announcement’ (Mlandu, 2022), paying attention to intersectional feminist and queer initiatives and the role they play in troubling politics and power dynamics in, between, and from African cities.
Rike's talk will be followed a response by Senka Neuman-Stanivukovic of the Transitions and Social Justice Group from the Rudolf Agricola School, as well as time for questions and discussion. You are warmly invited to join us for drinks afterwards.
This event is organised as part of the kick-off of the Erasmus+ partnership project ACT-UP! Active Citizenship through Theatre for Urban Politics.
Schedule - Project kick-off ACT UP! and WUP lecture
Tuesday 21 January 2025
14.00 - 15.00 - ACT-UP! project presentation with the project partners
15.15 - 16.45 - lecture by Rike Sitas, followed by drinks
Venue:
Learning Landscape
University College, University of Groningen
Hoendiepskade 23/24
All guests are invited for drinks afterwards.
Please register here.
Rike Sitas
Past events
Please see under 'recordings' for recordings of past events.
#2: (Re)politicising Housing
Second seminar in the series 'Where is Urban Politics?'
In recent years, housing policy has reemerged as a major domain of contestation in cities across Europe. In this seminar we bring together speakers from economics, philosophy and spatial planning to share and exchange on the the (re)politicisation of urban housing, to consider and critically evaluate the ways in which housing policies and regulatory decisions contribute to or undermine forms of spatial and socio-economic justice.
Wednesday 13 November 2024,
13.45 - 17.45, including drinks.
University College Groningen, online joining also possible.
Co-organised with the PPE Centre, RUG
Please register here.
Schedule
13.45 walk in
14.00 keynote: The financialisation of housing: drivers, outcomes and options for reform Josh Ryan Collins (UCL, UK) - including response by Dirk Bezemer & questions
15.00 coffee break
15.15 Housing allocation, clustering and spatial justice - Elisabetta Gobbo (EUR)
16.00 Urban Interventions: property development, spatial planning, and the just city - Christian Lamker and Sara Özogul (RUG)
16.45 closing discussion
17.00 drinks
Josh Ryan Collins
Elisabetta Gobbo
Christian Lamker
Sara Özogul
Keynote:
Josh Ryan Collins (UCL, UK)
The financialisation of housing: drivers, outcomes and options for reform
Housing has two economic functions. It is a consumption good – it provides shelter – but also a financial asset. This lecture will argue that housing affordability and wealth inequality crises facing high income economies have their roots in long-term shifts in financial-, macroeconomic- as well as housing policy that have driven up the demand for housing as a financial asset. Supply-side policy reforms, which still dominate policy agendas, will not be sufficient to ameliorate the housing crisis if they are not supported reforms to these policy areas and the wider role of the housing market in the economy. In particular, effort should be focused on breaking the powerful feedback-cycle between debt- and wealth-driven financial flows and house prices and reducing the potential for rent extraction from home ownership.
Further speakers:
Elisabetta Gobbo (Erasmus Institute of Philosophy and Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Housing allocation, clustering and spatial justice
Housing allocation (i.e., the mechanisms that determine who gets which housing and where) influences important aspects of socio-spatial arrangements in the city, particularly residential clustering/segregation and gentrification. A theory of spatial justice, I assume, should be able to explain when and why such relevant socio-spatial arrangements are wrong. In this paper, I focus on the literature on residential segregation (Young, 1990; Anderson, 2008; Shelby, 2016; Sundstrom, 2024). I contend that, in the literature, authors tend to conflate the notions of voluntary residential clustering, mandated segregation, and marginalization, and thus are unable to properly identify the conditions under which clustering is wrong and why (besides the obviously unjust case of mandated racial and class segregation). I propose using a relational-egalitarian framework to analyze what, if anything, is wrong with residential clustering, focusing on the concept of spatial marginalization. In doing so, I offer a novel way to understand the disagreements in the debate, propose using the concept of spatial marginalization to guide the discourse on spatial justice, and, hopefully, suggest some interesting considerations that should underpin de-segregation policies.
Christian Lamker and Sara Özogul (Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen)
Urban Interventions: property development, spatial planning, and the just city
Housing markets, developments, and spatial planning are deeply interconnected and central to building just, sustainable cities. The ongoing focus on housing crises has led governments across the spectrum to set ambitious targets for addressing shortages and affordability. Yet, despite expanded regulations, these goals are rarely achieved. This contribution explores two decades of housing market and planning regulations in the Netherlands, arguing that a fragmented regulatory structure—marked by conflicting and often non-binding policies—complicates housing objectives, resulting in inconsistent interventions and limited progress toward cohesive urban strategies for just cities. Understandings relations towards the just city and sustainability ambitions is a crucial step towards finding potential answers and enabling strategic urban interventions
Venue:
Learning Landscape
University College, University of Groningen
Hoendiepskade 23/24
🗺️ https://g.co/kgs/JwWvgWx
Registration:
Please register here.
The event is free of charge.
#1: Rediscovering Urban Politics
Rediscovering Urban Politics
First seminar in the series 'Where is Urban Politics?'
Monday 16 September, 2024
14.00 - 17.00
With Ross Beveridge (University of Glasgow (UK),
Philippe Koch (ZHAW School of Architecture, Design and Civil Engineering, Switzerland)
and others.
Urbanisation is changing landscapes, social relations and everyday lives across the globe. At the same time, urbanisation is also changing the ways democracy is understood and practiced. In this lecture, we provide a novel way of thinking the relationship between democracy and the urban based on two main arguments. First, across the globe claims for and forms of urban collective self-rule signal that the city retains democratic significance in a very specific sense: as an object of practice and thought the city is a source and stake of the urban demos. Second, urbanisation unsettles seemingly fixed boundaries between the state and society and thus opens the possibility of weaving together a new democratic fabric encompassing both. There is a democratic politics of urbanisation that shifts perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of collective urban life. Seeing democracy like a city, we argue, foregrounds a way to re-locate democracy in the everyday lives of urbanites and to unlock the transformative potential of an urban democracy.
They will draw on recent work like their book “How Cities Can Transform Democracy” (2023) and their article “Seeing Democracy like a City” (2023).
Venue:
Learning Landscape
University College, University of Groningen
Hoendiepskade 23/24
Schedule:
14.00 arrival and introduction
14.30 presentation "Seeing Democracy like a city" by Ross Beveridge and Phillipe Koch
15.30 break
15.45 presentation by Darren Sierhuis, followed by discussion.
16.45 closing and drinks.
All guests are invited for drinks afterwards.
Registration:
Please register here.
The event is free of charge.