WiSe 2016.17: Whose right to the city: urban citizenship theory and practice

Bachelor- und Masterseminar
Fran Meissner

The saying goes: people make cities but cities make citizens. This seminar will provide an introduction to some key readings in the (urban) citizenship literature and how the term is differently conceptualised and applied. We will draw on recent studies and projects to get a tangible idea of this theoretically challenging notion and how it is relevant for understanding development in contemporary cities.

Urban citizenship broadly refers to forms of participation in urban social and political structures that complement or even go beyond the rights and obligations of national citizenship. Urban citizenship is mostly celebrated as offering a new perspective on the participation and inclusion of minority and disadvantaged groups. How urban residents claim their ‘right to the city’ and how the city grants but also restraints rights is crucially important for trajectories of urban development. A primarily positive undertone of participatory citizenship however is also challenged as research shows that a diversification of urban populations goes hand in hand with a fragmentation of social groupings engaged in different practices of urban citizenship.

For this seminar we will critically discuss assigned readings to learn about how the idea of citizenship is linked to the rise of cities, how (urban) citizenship can be mobilised both as a control mechanism linked to increased inequalities but how it is also an important opportunity to foster new ways of resident engagement. The seminar will also foster practical competences and we will trace the steps of developing and designing a small research project – exploring the importance of formulating a research question and how to identify appropriate research methods.