Author: Errata Date: To: l38squatter CC: badgirlz-list Subject: [Badgirlz-list] FW: Conference: The Right to the City // 6.-8.11.
// Berlin
> *The Right to the City*
> *Prospects for Critical Urban Theory and Practice*
>
> Berlin, November 6-8, 2008
> Organizers: Margit Mayer, Neil Brenner and Peter Marcuse
> in cooperation with the Center for Metropolitan Studies, TU Berlin
>
>
> The conference will focus on the meaning of the "right to the city" in
> the context of neoliberal urban restructuring. While the notion of "the
> right to the city" was popularized by Henri Lefebvre in the late 1960s,
> it has become something of a keyword among contemporary critical urban
> theorists for analyzing struggles to reappropriate urban space towards
> collective social uses under circumstances in which private capital and
> state institutions are dominating the urban process. It thus provides a
> focus for reflecting on the legacies and contemporary possibilities of
> critical urban theory, and exploring its relation to practice, in the
> context of early 21st century transformations and struggles.
>
> Specifically, the conference aims to investigate the evolution of
> critical urban theory since its consolidation over three decades ago,
> and the changing relation of critical urban theories to ongoing
> struggles over the form and pathway of urban development (often seeing
> "urban" as a crystallization of the societal). Inquiry into this
> relationship entails an analysis of a number of key theoretical,
> empirical and political issues, including (a) the changing global and
> national parameters for urban development under post-1980s capitalism;
> (b) supranational, national and subnational political strategies to
> influence the trajectory of urbanization; and, against this background,
> (c) the proliferation of popular initiatives to reshape cities towards
> progressive or radical-democratic political ends, such as enhanced
> social and spatial justice, greater equality and socio-ecological
> sustainability; and (d) the alternatives available for action to produce
> desired changes in the constitution of urban life today.
>
> The contributors will grapple with the following issues, which have been
> proposed for debate and discussion at the conference by Peter Marcuse,
> whose oeuvre will be central to this conference:
>
> • How best to capture the transformation of cities under contemporary
> capitalism? To what extent can such transformations be understood
> through notions of neo-capitalism, neoliberalism or globalization?
> • What is “critical” about critical urban and social theory today? Is
> the Frankfurt School still relevant?
> • How does “space” structure and result from forms of inequality, and
> how has this role changed in both historical and contemporary contexts?
> • Is another type of city—and society—possible? Are there lessons to be
> drawn from earlier 20th century experiments, or those of the GDR?
> • What are the possibilities and limits of “urban planning”?
> • Oppositional movements yesterday and today: in what ways can which of
> them be actors for social change?
>
>
> The conference is made possible by the support of the Deutsche
> Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Center for Metropolitan Studies and the
> Transatlantisches Graduiertenkolleg Berlin-New York, and the
> Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation.
>
> The full program will be available on the CMS-website:
> www.metropolitanstudies.de >
> The event on Thursday evening "Critical Urban Theory and Practice Today"
> with the keynote address by Peter Marcuse is open to all. Participation
> in the workshop part of the conference on Friday and Saturday requires
> *registration by October 15*.
> Please register at RttC-conference@???
>
> *Locations*
> Public Event November 6: tba
> Conference November 7/8: Center for Metropolitan Studies,
> Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, TEL 3-0, 10587 Berlin
>
>
>
> *Program Outline*
>
>
> Keynote: Peter Marcuse, Responses Bruno Flierl and Jacqueline Leavitt
>
> Speakers: David Harvey, Roger Keil, Kanishka Goonewardena, Roland Roth,
> Heinz Steinert, Neil Brenner, Neil Smith, Jamie Peck/Nik Theodore,
> Christian Schmid, Tom Slater, Andrej Holm/Matthias Bernt, Stefan Krätke,
> Susan Fainstein, Oren Yiftachel, Katharine Rankin, Jacqueline Leavitt,
> Albert Scharenberg, Chester Hartman, Margit Mayer, Julie-Anne Boudreau,
> Jon Liss, Gihan Perera
>
> Thursday, November 6, 6.30pm
>
> *Evening Plenary Session*: Critical Urban Theory and Practice Today
> • Keynote lecture by Peter Marcuse
> • Responses by Bruno Flierl and Jacqueline Leavitt
>
> Friday, November 7, 9:30am – 6pm
>
> Morning (A)
> *Panel I*: Critical urban theory: legacies and possibilities
> What is “critical” about critical urban theory, both historically and
> today? What are its key concepts, methods and challenges in the current
> conjuncture? In what ways, if at all, does critical urban theory need
> to be reinvented or reinvigorated to confront the challenges of
> contemporary urban restructuring?
>
> • Welcome remarks & introduction by Margit Mayer and Neil Brenner
> • David Harvey
> • Roger Keil
> • Kanishka Goonewardena
>
> Morning (B)
> *Panel II*: Critical (urban) theory: from the Frankfurt School via
> Lefebvre to P. Marcuse
> Critical approaches to urban theory emerged in the late 1960s and early
> 1970s, but built strongly upon various legacies of radical social
> theory, particularly those of Marx, western Marxism and the Frankfurt
> School. This panel explores the relevance of such critical intellectual
> legacies for contemporary urban theories, while also outlining some of
> the major intellectual and political challenges facing critical urban
> theory today.
>
> • Roland Roth
> • Heinz Steinert
> • Neil Brenner
>
> [Lunch break]
>
> Afternoon (A)
> *Panel III*: The new urbanization: macrotheoretical perspectives
> How to characterize contemporary processes of urban restructuring? This
> panel explores recent debates on capitalist restructuring and the
> emergence of “after-Fordist,” globalized and neoliberalized formations
> of urbanization. It considers various ways of conceptualizing
> contemporary macrohistorical and macrospatial transformations, and the
> implications of such conceptualizations for both critical urban theory
> and practice.
>
> • Neil Smith
> • Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore
> • Christian Schmid
>
> Afternoon (B)
> *Panel IV*: New spatial formations of inequality and injustice
> It is widely recognized that contemporary processes of geoeconomic
> restructuring and state reorganization have intensified social and
> territorial inequalities at various spatial scales. But there is much
> disagreement about the sources, expressions and consequences of such
> inequalities, not least within different types of cities. Contributors
> to this panel offer various “mappings” of the new spatial inequalities
> with reference to large-scale processes (e.g. gentrification) as well as
> emergent political strategies (e.g., “urban entrepreneurialism” or
> “creative cities”). The panel thus offers a fine-grained account of
> some key aspects of contemporary urban spatial change, and a critical
> assessment of major efforts to decipher the latter.
>
> • Tom Slater
> • Andrej Holm/Matthias Bernt
> • Stefan Krätke
> • Justus Uitermark
>
> Saturday, November 8, 10am – 6pm
>
> Morning (A)
> *Panel V*: The politics of urban planning—the limits of applied critical
> theory?
> What is the role of urban planning—and urban planners—in the ongoing
> remaking of urban space? Is urban planning, as Henri Lefebvre once
> argued, merely a tool of domination by state institutions and capitalist
> elites, a means for imposing the “pulverization” of space into an
> abstract, quantifiable grid? Or, alternatively, can the process of
> urban planning be harnessed towards more progressive ends, such as
> social justice, radical democracy or ecological sustainability? This
> panel explores these questions in relation to contemporary institutional
> transformations and political struggles in several major global urban
> regions.
>
> • Susan Fainstein
> • Oren Yiftachel
> • Katharine Rankin
>
> Morning (B)
> *Panel VI*: Theory and Practice: contemporary urban contestation and the
> role of intellectual critique
> The theory-practice divide is as old as social theory itself, but it
> assumes a particular urgency within the tradition of critical social
> theory, which is explicitly oriented towards promoting progressive
> social and political transformations. This panel considers various
> sites and dynamics of urban struggle and protest under contemporary
> capitalism. A key question is what, if any, role critical perspectives
> on urban restructuring can, do, or should play in such dynamics of
> contestation.
>
> • Jacqueline Leavitt
> • Albert Scharenberg
> • Chester Hartman
>
> [Lunch break]
>
> Afternoon (A)
> *Panel VII*: Social movements and the politics of resistance
> This panel turns to the investigation of ongoing forms of struggle and
> resistance to processes of urban restructuring in contemporary cities.
> While this theme will have been broached in the previous panels as well,
> the contributors to this session confront it directly, both with
> reference to macro-trends (e..g, the transformation of social movement
> milieux) and more localized, conjunctural strategies and struggles.
>
> • Margit Mayer
> • Julie-Anne Boudreau
> • Jon Liss
> • Gihan Perera
>
> Afternoon (B)
> *Final roundtable*: Is another (urban) society possible?
> In this roundtable discussion, Ph.D. students from the Berlin and New
> York branches of the Center for Metropolitan Studies reflect on the
> previous days’ discussions with particular reference to any missing
> links or open questions. The day concludes with an open-ended
> discussion among the conference participants about key themes and points
> of debate. A key issue here will be to discuss desirable priorities for
> future work.
>
> • Contributions by Ph.D. students from NYC and from Berlin
> • Comments by David Harvey, Chester Hartman
> • Moderated by Margit Mayer & Neil Brenner
>
>
>
