Sous les Pavés, la Plage…

Itineraries of Urban Social Movements

MARCH 20-22

City Debates 2017 explores the emergence of urban-based political movements in various national contexts where “the city” and/or some of its ingredients (e.g. housing, public space, services, livelihoods) have been serving as the basis for new forms of claims. By documenting comparatively these movements through profiling the actors, strategies, tools, networks of solidarity, forms of lesson sharing, and the frames through which claims have been formulated, the Debates seek to investigate critically and comparatively these new forms of collective action. We ask: Are we indeed witnessing emancipatory political claims or, to the contrary, a reduction of the horizons of the political to the minimal necessities of everyday life? Furthermore, as professionals of the built environment, how do such movements affect our practice? How do they change the premises and assumptions of our profession? On what grounds should we engage such social movements and the spaces they create? What can we learn from their tactics and strategies?

City Debates 2017 is a joint event with the Social Justice and the City Program at IFI. It is a 40th anniversary event for the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.