Kurser

Der sogenannte Öffentliche Raum | Hermannplatz Neukölln II

B1-4 Projektseminar Wintersemester 2023/24

Der sogenannte Öffentliche Raum | Hermannplatz Neukölln

Öffentlicher Raum erfüllt sehr unterschiedliche Aspekte und Funktionen: Er dient dem Verkehr, dem Kommerz oder dem Konsum. Er ist Raum für Veranstaltungen, Sport, Erholung oder Freizeit. Und vor allem ist er Ort des politischen Protests, der kulturellen Begegnung, des kollektiven Erinnerns und des sozialen Lebens. Entlang dieser Dimensionen werden unterschiedliche Ansprüche gestellt, folglich ist der Öffentliche Raum, vor allem im innerstädtischen Bereich, durch permanente Nutzungs- und Interessenkonflikte gekennzeichnet.

Ziel des Projekts "Der sogenannte öffentliche Raum | Hermannplatz Neukölln" ist es, die skizzierte Komplexität öffentlicher Räume aufzudecken, um aktuelle Probleme und Herausforderungen innerhalb der einzelnen Schichten sowie in deren Überschneidungen zu untersuchen. Mit Hilfe dieser Querschnittsbetrachtung sollen Ursachen vertieft analysiert, Erfahrungen im Umgang mit Herausforderungen ermittelt und potenzielle Handlungsbereiche diskutiert werden. Als Untersuchungsgebiet dient der Hermannplatz in Berlin-Neukölln. Die im Projekt zu erarbeitende multiperspektivische Analyse der spezifischen Funktionsweise des Hermannplatz als Öffentliche Raum soll dazu beitragen, seine Bedeutung für den Kiez und die Stadtgesellschaft herauszustellen.

In einem ersten Schritt wird in Anlehnung an den experimentellen Ansatz von Georges Perec (1974) eine Langzeitbeobachtung unternommen, um das "Infra-Ordinäre" des Hermannplatzes Neukölln zu erfassen. Die ersten Befunde werden dann in einer tiefergehenden Untersuchung von Themenbereichen des Hermannplatzes als öffentlichem Raum ausgearbeitet und in theoretische Debatten eingebettet. Die Ergebnisse werden in Form von Infografiken und Kurzberichten aufbereitet. Im Sommersemester werden - in Kooperation mit der Politecnico di Milano - die bisher gewonnenen Erkenntnisse durch einen Vergleich mit einem Platz in Mailand erweitert. Die Exkursion vor Ort wird genutzt, um die Daten für eine vergleichende Studie zu erheben und die Ergebnisse in die Gesamtanalyse der Perspektive öffentlicher Räume in Städten einzubeziehen.


[SoSe 2024] M4-B/M9.2 Critical Urban Policy Studies: The politics of experimental urban transformation: Urban space as a ‘living lab’

The politics of experimental urban transformation:

Urban space as a ‘living lab’


Tuesdays, 16-19 h, room EB 133c
Prof. Dr. Enrico Gualini

This year’s seminar is devoted to exploring the current policy trend towards new experimental practices and formats for urban transformation.

This trend is connected with significant theoretical developments which are strongly characterized by approaching issues of urban transformation as ‘theory in practice’. They combine therefore theoretical advancements with a commitment to experimentation and actionable research in concrete urban contexts and in relation to emerging urban issues.
 
In general terms, these approaches can be seen as combining the following:
 a. a focus on urban policy issues identified as potentially ‘transitional’;
 b. a critical attitude towards ‘normal’ urban policy and planning practices in dealing with such issues;
 c. a normative orientation towards promoting sustainable transformation through situated experimental practices;
 d. an interest in policy learning and transfer.

The seminar starts with a critical examination of three areas of theorizing and of related key concepts, with a focus on their applications to urban policy. Besides a general focus on trans-disciplinarity, the main areas of theorizing and related key concepts of the seminar are:
 - social innovation;
 - transdisciplinarity;
 - co-production and co-creation.

Based on a critical analysis and discussion of contributions from the literature, the seminar then moves on to an exploration of practices and formats for their experimental application in urban contexts. A key focus is on so-called ‘Urban Living Labs’ (ULLs). A case-study based analysis of current practices offers opportunities to learn from experiments with ULLs as well as to raise critical questions such as (among others):
 - which urban policy areas and issues are emerging as objects of experimental practice;
 - in how far can these be defined as ‘transitional’ and potentially ‘innovative’;
 - what (if any) are the theoretically defined features and requirements of experimental practices;
 - under what conditions are theoretical requirements met in the design and conduct of experimental practices;
 - under what conditions are goals such as sustainability, learning, transfer met in experimental practices;
 - how far do experimental practices become part of institutionally promoted and/or supported policies;
 - how effectively and innovatively do experimental practices deal with ‘classic’ policy challenges such as (among others) inclusion, participation, recognition, equity, conflict.

[SoSe 2024] M4-A Planning as Political Process 2 _ Seminar B: Planning conflicts - and beyond: the constituent power of agonistic urban practices

Planning conflicts - and beyond: 

The constituent power of agonistic urban practices

Tuesdays, 12-14 h, room EB 224
Prof. Dr. Enrico Gualini

The module Planning Theory has since years placed the critical observation of planning conflicts at the center of its attention. Developing a sensibility for conflictual dimension of planning, a capacity to critically analyze and understand the nature of planning conflicts, and approaches to deal constructively with planning conflicts is an important strand of planning theory and still bears an important critical and normative relevance to practice. In this respect, there are plenty of good reasons to keep this as a focus of advanced planning education and as a key issue of planning theory.

However, dealing with conflict as an expression of the irreducible agonistic nature of society and of democratic politics also requires looking beyond binaries and overcoming the essentialist fallacy of 2 dualistic oppositions such as consensus vs. conflict, democracy vs. antagonism, conflict resolution vs. interest-based powerplay, bottom-up vs. top-down, and so on. To the contrary, a critical perspective on democratic politics directs attention to the pervasive nature of agonistic social relations even when conflict and conflict-resolution are not necessarily played out as events and reduced to specific moments in space-time.

In fact, recent developments in many urban contexts show that, while contestation and resistance are relevant as ever, there are several possible opening towards realizing an agonistic interface that has the potential of becoming generative of new power instead of reassessing extant power relations. In this respect, experimenting with new forms of action and relations among actors in an agonistic urban arena appears to amount not only to a way of overcoming the dichotomy between post-politics and antagonistic politics, but also to a way of expressing new forms of constituent power.

Adopting such an heuristic perspective is certainly in part speculative, but does not need to lose a sensibility for realpolitik. It does not amount at neglecting the context-, situation- and path-dependent conditions and constraints under which change might occur: to the contrary, it aims at explore precisely under which conditions agonistic practices may develop a generative and possibly transformative and innovative power.

[SoSe 2024] M4-A Planning as Political Process 2 _ Seminar A: Contested participation: scrutinizing planning practices of citizen involvement in light of critical planning theory

Contested participation:

scrutinizing planning practices of citizen involvement in light of critical planning theory

Tuesdays, 10-12 h, room EB 224
Prof. Dr. Enrico Gualini

The seminar addresses the issue of citizen participation in planning processes in a critical respective. This reflects a concern emerged (among others) from our previous Planning Theory seminar, which can be described as dual: 
- on the one hand, planning theory and the multifarious practices it has inspired have developed over decades a rich framework of ideals, aspirations, criteria and a sophisticated repertoire of modes of action related to the aim of integrating citizens in planning processes - and yet, citizen participation is time and again contested on both theoretical and practical grounds: in other words, the 'promise' of participation almost never really appears to be fulfilled; 
- on the other hand, in face of a rich theoretical and normative discourse, there still seems to be much need for more empirically grounded knowledge about what is actually occurring in what we call citizen participation in planning processes. 

This seminar aims at addressing this dual issue. It does so by taking stock of discussions from our previous Planning Theory seminar and by expanding them in two directions:
 a. defining a theoretically inspired critical framework of criteria for assessing citizen participation; and
 b. applying those criteria to the critical scrutiny of concrete citizen participation processes. 

The seminar's general questions can be formulated as: 
 - what are the distinctive features of citizen participation processes in current practices?
 - and how do they relate to planning theory discourses? 

In addressing these general questions critically, a key concern of the seminar is that of contrasting the normative perspective of planning theory (in a theoretically informed way) with the specific nature of practices (in an empirically informed way). Obviously, such a concern has multiple dimensions, which can be characterized - for the sake of simplicity - as a series of dualisms or dilemmas, as (among others):
 - normativity vs. pragmatics of participation,
 - democratization ideals vs. power relations,
 - integrative aspirations vs. social selectivity,
 - consensus as appeasement vs. agonism as transformation,
 - situatedness and place-boundedness vs. scalar logics.