Brussels Center For Urban Studies‘ yearly conference cycle StadsSalonsUrbains is back! This year, we ask ourselves: What do citizens need to live the lives they desire? And does the city still provide the required welfare infrastructures for all?
These seemingly mundane questions cut to the core of what urban environments mean for people in their daily lives. Classic approaches to welfare would see decent living as a matter of income, social security, and access to good quality public services like education and care.
But welfare also involves support systems of a different kind. Beyond the hard wiring and plumbing of energy grids, water, and sewerage systems, living a fulfilling life requires access to social infrastructure or community spaces that are essential to socialize, relax, play, discuss, politicize, organize, share, learn, and so much more.
The restructuring of contemporary cities shows that such welfare infrastructures cannot be taken for granted (if they ever could). Pressure on land markets, the creeping privatization of public space, the state’s retreat under permanent austerity, and the shifting legitimacy of civil society have put these infrastructures under severe pressure.
At the same time, cities are also places of great experimentation, both organizationally and spatially. Community-based initiatives have emerged to reclaim buildings and sites, experimenting with site-specific infrastructures of care and solidarity to fill the voids left behind by an overstretched public welfare state. While developing mixed and temporary-use strategies, cities manage to provide much-needed access to green spaces and playgrounds in dense neighbourhoods.
Meanwhile, new models of ownership and governance emerge as civic, public, and private parties join forces to provide community spaces in fragmented neighbourhoods. As social infrastructures, these spaces also offer new grounds for progressive political subjectification, collective wellbeing, and social justice.
The 2024-2025 StadsSalonsUrbains International Lecture Series approaches infrastructures of urban welfare from various theoretical angles and offers thematic perspectives on a range of key social infrastructures in contemporary cities.
Dates & Guests
Friday, Mar-7 2025
Silke VON DYK
from University of Jena
Thursday, Mar-13 2025
Isabelle ANGUELOVSKI
from Autonomous University of Barcelona
Friday, Mar-21 2025
Julie FROUD
from University of Manchester
Friday, Mar-28 2025
Lia KARSTEN
from University of Amsterdam
Friday, Apr-4 2025
Stravros STAVRIDES
from National Technical University Athens
A detailled program will follow in the upcoming weeks.
Venue
USquare
Av. de la Couronne 227 / Kroonlaan 227
1050 Ixelles/Elsene