12/11/2024
The TG PSUC is currently involved in the 2024-2026 organization of the next meetings, focused on the theme of hope. Proposals are invited for meetings/workshops/conferences or other formats, bringing together participants from academia (universities and research institutes), civil society, urban policy and practice as well as urban arts and activism, among others. Proposals should indicate what kind of contributions and formats of exchange will engage with the call’s theme, to arrive at tangible, synergetic outputs on the potentialities and different roles that the analytical and speculative prism of hope could cast on public spaces and urban cultures. The Institute for research on innovation and services for development (Cnr Iriss) has been collaborating with TG PSUC since its foundation in the persons of Gabriella Esposito De Vita (Main Coordinator 2017-2019) and Stefania Ragozino (Main Coordinator 2021-2023), currently members of the Core Working Group and the Advisor Board.
Why hope as a theme?
As today’s societies confront multiple challenges, weaving hope into public space and urban cultures debates offers a chance to envision and set pathways for regeneration, rebuilding, reassessment, and reconstruction towards more inclusive shared futures. A prevailing agreement in urban studies is that political, social, and cultural forces, in particular in light of growing environmental and geopolitical risks, often fragment the urban fabric, accelerate commodification, and reinforce asymmetries in power structures, often disproportionately affecting the most disadvantaged social groups. This dynamics exacerbates social inequalities and deepens divides, both within and across borders. Against this backdrop, hope offers an opportunity to extend critical insights into the urban condition—from analysing life as being under constant strain to engaging with the contingent nature of urban space that reveals moments of anticipation and intent. In this sense, hope is where material practices, lived experiences, cultural expressions, and imagined and symbolic spaces converge. It is not merely about individual desires for change, but about collective endeavours to influence the material, imagined, and sensed dynamics that shape urban realities. As an analytical prism, hope also allows us to envision better urban futures, from the micro-scale of often invisible struggles within homes to the global scale of planetary urbanization, from the inventiveness and immediacy of everyday life towards long-term plans and strategies.
Within this thematic framework, the AESOP TG asks:
How do public spaces and urban cultures inspire, nurture, enact, shape, curb, or even extinguish hope?
How do public spaces and urban cultures enable individuals and groups to actively hope—to reimagine and transform their realities through immediate, tangible actions?
How can hope be used to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, and capacities of public spaces and urban cultures in creating fair and just places?
By embracing the complex interplay between hope as a unifying, positive force and the risks of its instrumentalisation, the aim is to better understand the transformative possibilities of public spaces and urban cultures. Hope is not meant as a static condition but is lived in everyday life, constantly redefined through the use of public spaces and urban cultures, as collective actions of individuals and groups strive to shape better urban futures.
Addressing the call for proposals
The AESOP Thematic Group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures invites proposals that explore the material, social, cultural, political, ecological, economic, symbolic, imagined, and discursive manifestations of hope in public spaces and urban cultures across different scales and disciplines. This call is open to a broad range of debates, approaches, and perspectives on urban issues, from both contemporary and historical viewpoints. The goal is to examine how diverse fields of knowledge and positionalities manifest and become embedded in public spaces and urban cultures by evoking hope (hope as an idea), by evolving through hopeful thinking (hope as a concept) or by enacting hopeful action (hope as a framework for action) or by caring forms of embodied hope (hope as a bodily sensation).
For questions regarding the organization of the meetings please send an email to: psucnetwork@gmail.com
Schedule
Call launched in October 2024
Submission of expression of interest: by 9 December 2024 to psucnetwork@gmail.com
Joint Online Meeting for development of full proposal: 16 December 2024
Submission of full proposals: by 20 January 2025
Expression of Interest: This is a brief outline, up to one page in length, including the working title, host, organizers, a brief description of the theme/ issues to be tackled (300 words), anticipated format, and potential synergies with ongoing research projects or other events.
Full Proposal: This will be prepared following the joint online meeting in coordination with the thematic group. It should include the title, host, organizers, scientific committee, venue, duration, format, anticipated number of participants, an extended description of the topic, a draft of agenda, participant recruitment (including a draft of an open call, if applicable), and funding.
Procedure: Interested parties who have submitted an expression of interest to host a TG event will be invited to a joint online meeting with the TG coordination team. After this meeting, the host institution will prepare the full proposal. The host institution then prepares the event in close collaboration with two TG representatives, who will assist the local organizers in developing the event's theme and agenda. The hosting institution will also invite the two TG representatives to join the event’s scientific committee. Once the open call or other event format details are finalized, they will be shared on the TG homepage and disseminated through local and TG networks, as well as on social media.
The format of the event is open: The events are mostly held in the format of two- days workshops/seminars/conferences that often include a field trip. During these events, participants are encouraged to give presentations about their research and design projects on the relevant topic. TG’s policy is that all its events are free of cost to its members, and that at least keynote lectures are open to the public without any costs (in place, and/or virtually through livestream). Participants usually cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.
Per informazioni:
Stefania Ragozino
Cnr - Istituto di Ricerca su Innovazione e Servizi per lo Sviluppo
s.ragozino@iriss.cnr.it
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