5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Everyday knowledge of the urban condition can be learning by socialization or learning by experience. How to learn by experience in increasingly socially segregated cities? Ideals of an urban public have long incorporated the thought that somehow, 'good' public spaces help citizens live well together in a web of mutuality and trust. Patterns of urban seclusion of middle classes in cities across the globe (sometimes builiding on long historic patterns of segregation reaching back to the colonial city, sometimes the product of less clear structuring conditions of exploitation and opportunity hoarding), pose a challenge to the idea that public space - easily accessible streets, squares and other urban landscapes - can be sites of 'throwntogetherness', as defined by Doreen Massey.

This session invites paper proposals that address the question of 'urban throwntogetherness' and public space from a comparative urbanism perspective. This can include questions such as: what patterns of social segregation, in contrast to only residential segregation, and middle class seclusion can be observed in public space? What do these patterns mean for learning processes of what it means to be urban citizens in the cities of today? What remains of the role of public space in days of middle class seclusion? Or: to what extent was the idea of the public space as the site of a productive throwntogetherness a typical Global North, if not European idea in the first place - and is it time to rethink it altogether?