VIENNA SUMMER SCHOOL IN URBAN STUDIES
"Right to the City:
Appropriations of Public Spaces
in Transition"

Vienna, Austria
APPLICATION DEADLINE CLOSED
• Department of Geography and Regional Research, University of Vienna
• Graduate Center at the City University New York, New York

The Summer School will be held at the Department of Geography and Regional Research at the University of Vienna.

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

GENERAL INFORMATION
The summer school is open to Master and PhD students from disciplines such as geography, sociology, anthropology, history, architecture, landscape architecture, and media & arts, who are interested in the topic of public space focusing on the production and consumption perspective within this research field. Participants will receive a certificate from the University of Vienna that confirms 5 ECTS points as eqivalent to the amount of work at the Summer School.
Participants will gain a comprehensive and multifaceted understanding of public spaces in transition and the actors involved in transitional processes. The Vienna Summer School in Urban Studies aims to involve students by going beyond common modes of interaction. The courses consist of a well-balanced mix of lectures, visits, and fieldwork in which students contribute actively to the academic discourse. An application-oriented studio plays an integral role by allowing students to work independently on selected research questions and develop solution strategies.

TOPIC
Urban public spaces are constantly changing and highly contested territories. The fields of action that have to be considered when analysing urban public spaces range from the impact of global trends like neoliberalism on new urban policies, to everyday appropriations at the local level. The relationship between macro trends and micro scale actions manifests itself in ongoing transition processes, located in urban public spaces which are both spaces of differences and arenas of interaction.
The guiding questions are:
1) Who has a right to the city and the production and consumption of its public spaces?
2) Who is excluded from this right?

TOPICS AND LECTURERS
Opening talks
• Why Interdisciplinary Comparative Urban Research?
Heinz Fassmann, University of Vienna, Austria
• Creating New Spaces for the Public
John Mollenkopf, City University New York, United States
• Public Spaces in Transition. What's going on in Vienna?

Public talks
• Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe
Sabine Knierbein, Technical University Vienna, Austria
• Vienna as the City of Music: The Stagnating and Developing Images of a City
Susana Zapke, Konservatorium Wien, City of Vienna University
• Official, Informal, Insurgent: Creative Approaches to Public Space
Joseph Heathcott, New School New York, United States
• Marginalized memories:The Exclusion of Migration History from Urban Public Spaces
Christiane Hintermann, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
• Exclusionary or Inclusionary Urban Spaces through Gentrification?
Yvonne Franz, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
• Memory, Public Space and the Right to the City. Looking back and looking forward
Claire Levy-Vroelant, University of Paris 8 Saint-Denis, France

Closed sessions
• Going Public. The Issues of Time-Specificity
Elke Krasny, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria
• Methods in a Critical Urban Practice
Joseph Heathcott, New School New York, United States
• Streets: The Meaning and Making of Contested Urban Public Spaces
Joshua Grigsby, University of Vienna, Austria
• Public Space as an Area of Written Places
Ingo H. Warnke, University of Bremen, Germany
• "Möglichkeitsraum Gaswerk!" - A Different Reading of Transdanubia?
Markus Vogl, University of Stuttgart, Germany

ORGANIZERS
• Prof. Dr. Heinz Fassmann, University of Vienna
• Prof. Dr. John Mollenkopf, City University New York
• Dr. Yvonne Franz, Austrian Academy of Science
• Dr. Christiane Hintermann, Austrian Academy of Science

APPLICATIONS AND FEES
Applicants are asked to submit their motivation letter (max. 2 pages) and CV (max. 2 pages) in English. Please send your application to info@urbanstudiessummerschool.com. The application deadline is April 30^th, 2014. The evaluation will be based on how well applications correspond with the topics of the Summer School. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by May 10^th, 2014. The summer school fee is EUR 100, including reader and reception.