Segregation, Seclusion and Trust in Urban Public Space (Part II)

Friday, 11 July 2025: 15:00-16:45
Location: ASJE015 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
RC21 Regional and Urban Development (host committee)

Language: English

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?

Session Organizers:
Talja BLOKLAND, Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany and Vojin SERBEDZIJA, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Oral Presentations
Gated Peace: Governance through Segregation in Ahmedabad's Urban Landscape
Aditi PRADHAN, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Designing for New Publicness: Learning from Tokyo and St. Petersburg.
Olga SEZNEVA, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands; Enric MASSIP-BOSCH, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Beyond Residential Fragmentation: (dis)Encounters in the New Metropolitan Peripheries
Agustina FRISCH, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Transformation of Public Space As a Controversy: The Case of Opening the Black Box of Social Conflicts in Vilnius, Lithuania
Dalia CIUPAILAITE VISNEVSKA, Lithuania; Karolis JONUTIS, Vilnius University, Lithuania; Veronika URBONAITE-BARKAUSKIENE, Vilnius University, Lithuania
The “Lame” Pendulum of Urban Justice: The Struggle for Our Yerevan
Aram VARTIKYAN, Yerevan State University, Armenia; Harutyun VERMISHYAN, Yerevan State University, Armenia
Togetherness or Antagonism? the Experience of Urban Public Space in ‘Porous’ Naples
Mario TRIFUOGGI, University of Naples Federico II, Italy; Jonathan PRATSCHKE, University of Naples Federico II, Italy