2nd Seminar in the "Where is Urban Politics?" Series: Political Contestation & The Potential of Urban Politics
Join us on Wednesday 30 September for a lecture by Verena Frick of Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany, as part of the second season of the Where is Urban Politics? seminar series. This seminar is jointly hosted by the PPE Centre.
Details of her talk are as follows:
Public space and the city. Why democrats should worry about urban public space
The paper assesses the publicness of urban public space and its inherent democratic normativity, conceptualising it not as a neutral stage for political action but as a generative political site. Linking the structural qualities of city life to the forms of sociability that public space enables, it argues that urban public space sustains a distinctive democratic normativity through its openness to the enactment of citizenship. Building on John Dewey’s account of the public as a medium of cooperative problem-solving, the paper develops the notion of a seismographic function: the capacity of urban public space to register emerging problems, conflicts, and political claims through both heroic moments of collective action and everyday encounters with difference. By reconstructing associative and agonistic approaches to public space, the paper demonstrates that, despite divergent ontological and normative presuppositions, both converge on this transformative function. The analysis concludes by outlining the contours of a democratic politics of urban public space that defends its openness, resists commercialisation and commodification, and challenges exclusionary forms of governance, thereby sustaining the conditions for the continual performative renewal of democracy.
Verena's talk will be followed by a response from Thijs Lijster, as well as reflections and an introduction by Marian Counihan and Christian Lamker. There will also be time for questions and discussion.
Venue:
Faculty of Philosophy
Omega Room
University of Groningen
View the location on the RUG map
The event can also be joined online.
More information about this and upcoming seminars can be found on the Where is Urban Politics? website.