**This course will be offered by Visiting Professor in Urban Studies 2021 Dr. Marie Glaser and by Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein, with guest lecture inputs by Visiting Professor in Urban Studies 2020 Dr. Kim Trogal and University Assistant Angelika Gabauer**
For more information on Visiting Professor in Urban Studies 2021 Dr. Marie Glaser visit: https://skuor.tuwien.ac.at/professors/covvps/marie-glaser
Intensive Teaching Block I (ITB I) – 19 - 23 October 2020
Lecture Unit 0 – Urban Generations, Ageing Society and New Health Conditions (Introduction and Kick-Off)
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein
The lecture focuses on the interface between housing studies and public space research. We conceive of this interface through the concept of lived space which comprises all spatial dimensions of urban everyday life. Our particular emphasis in this lecture is the focus on urban generations in the context of an ageing society with the aim of reflecting, analyzing and critically reflecting questions of inequalities and exclusion, of resistance and emancipation, access to urban public life, access to housing and social and health care, and forms of social participation for older people. It approaches from an urban studies perspective with an ethnographic urban research focus issues of intergenerational living, ageing and urban everyday life: This choice
(1) reflects the complexity of demographic change, with the emergence of a wide spectrum of lifestyles, ways of living and needs among different cohorts in the 50-plus age group (socio-demographic perspective);
(2) raises awareness of the importance of the diverse practices of how different generations and particularly groups of ageing inhabitants participate in urban public life (socio-cultural perspective);
(3) formulates an interest to understand the policies and regulatory frameworks that foster or hinder intergenerational living and respected housing and public space schemes (socio-political perspective);
(4) seeks to understand the particular impact of the material environment in maintaining the quality of intergenerational life of (elderly) people (socio-economic perspective)
(5) explores the formal and the informal settings of community care and neighborhood support at the intersection of public and private life. Of particular interest will the multiple everyday care practices and how they are embedded in new ways of (neoliberal) governmentality, planning and biopolitics.
Different lecture units will take up these crucial aspects, whereas both the introductory and the closing unit will help to create linkages between these different threads.
Lecture Unit 1 – Urban Generations and Ageing Society
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser
This lecture introduces primarily to the current situation of western ageing societies with its dynamic social changes due to societal developments and the effects of globalization, urban migration as well as new health conditions. We will discuss contemporary theoretical approaches and concepts of age, ageing, ageism, age segregation, exclusion and intergenerational relations from a sociology, gerontology, human geography perspective and undertake a critical review of dominant public discourses of “active ageing” and images of mostly white wealthy babyboomer seniors, that are being stressed by recent global health policy programmes, like the issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2007.
We will develop a detailed picture of diversified family patterns, increasing geographic mobility of individuals, diversifying cultural patterns of family systems, differentiated lifestyles and intergenerational relations. Which are the socio-spatial effects of this development? Diversity of household sizes, increase of single person households (high share female households). Geographic distance between generations of family networks – transforming the traditional family support network – making support exchange more problematic. Growing social divisions between groups of elderly and urban neighborhoods.
Bibliography:
- Hopkins, Peter and Pain, Rachel (2007). “Geographies of Age: Thinking Relationally”, Area, Vol. 39, No. 3: 287-294
- Schwanen, Tim, Irene Hardill and Susan Lucas (2012). “Spatialities of Ageing: The Co-Construction and Co-Evolution of Old Age and Space”, Geoforum 43: 1291-1295.
Lecture Unit 2 – Everyday Life and the Public City
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein
Contemporary cities are changing rapidly due to processes of de-industrialization, sociocultural integration, climate change and economic globalization. Within those cities public spaces are the meeting place of politics and culture, social and individual territories, instrumental and expressive concerns. This lecture explores public spaces and other spaces of urban everyday life. It introduces distinctions between public space and the public sphere, as well as between public life and public opinion formation and thus provides basics to understand the everchanging nature of spatial patterns and routines of urban everyday life for different age groups.
Bibliography
- Madanipour, A (2010) Whose Public Space. International Case Studies in Urban Design and Development. Introduction. New York/London. Routledge, pp. 1-16.
- Low, S (2015) Public Space and the Public Sphere. The Legacy of Neil Smith. Antipode Vol. 00 No. 0 2015 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1–18.
Lecture Unit 3 – An Alternative Picture of Age-Friendly Cities
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser
This lecture provides a critical appraisal of what has been termed the development of “age-friendly cities and communities” following the World Health Organization (WHO) program of 2007. In the context of an ageing population, growing life expectancy and with it a larger share of very old persons among the overall urban population in general, this program has become a central policy strategy of many cities worldwide. With this, ‘aging in place’ has turned into a dominant element in cities’ planning and health policy, aiming at facilitating the possibility for older people to remain in their homes and communities as long as possible.
The lecture introduces pioneering urban concepts of intergenerational space (Mumford) and discusses the emerging conceptual debates around age-friendly and healthy aging urban environments and their possible characteristics. It takes into consideration the idealized preconception of equal access to public life and space of cities for all people and the real effective urban life of social division, patterns of spatial inequality and lines exclusion in later life, in regard to age, but also to gender, class, social capital, ethnicity, etc. It introduces the concepts of liveable cities for all ages (van Vliet 2011) and of lifetime neighborhoods, linking different parts of the urban system for an effective support for older people within neighborhoods (Buffel and Phillipson, 2015) and stresses the important role of “agency” of old people.
Bibliography:
- Buffel, T., Phillipson, C., & Scharf, T. (2012). Ageing in urban environments: Developing age-friendly cities. Critical Social Policy, 32(4), 597–617.
- Fran Tonkiss (2005), The politics of space, chapter 3, in: Space, the City and Social Theory, Cambridge, polity press, p.59-79.
Intensive Teaching Block II (ITB II) – 18 November & 30 November - 4 December 2020
Lecture Unit 4 – Geographies of Encounter and The Ordinary City
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein
This lecture situates the field of public space research in the wider field of Internationale Urbanistik (urban studies) while taking up the post-colonial perspective on global urbanization which emphasizes the ordinariness of all cities, while analyzing urban inhabitants’ everyday settings and routines (Robinson 2006). This thread is (1) introduced through Crawford’s focus on everyday urbanism to fetch architecture and planning students from design approaches embracing ordinary cities and everyday life, (2) explores Robinson’s conceptual take on ordinary cities and her critique on global or world city concepts, and (3) links to more specific analytical dimensions of urban everyday spaces as geographies of encounter based on social, political and cultural difference (Valentine 2008).
Bibliography
- Highmore, B (2002) The Everyday Life Reader. London, New York: Routledge. Pp. 1-34
- Robinson, J (2006) Introduction. Postcolonising Urban Studies. In: Robinson, J (ed) Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. Psychology Press. Place. Pp. 1-12.
Lecture Unit 5 – On Geographies of Age
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser
This lecture introduces the context and preliminary findings of a research project entitled “Geographies of Age. Older people’s access to housing and urban life”, conducted by a team of KTH Stockholm, TU Wien and ETH Zurich CASE. The project aimed at exploring social and spatial dimensions of age-appropriate living environments from different local perspectives. Answers have been woven into policy recommendations to municipal decision makers (for the case of Zurich). How do older people experience daily life in cities? How do the elderly utilise and benefit from their urban environment? In what way are their experiences affected by differential access to resources? The goal was to propose options for public policies as well as actors on the housing market in the three growing cities to enhance age-appropriate urban environments and to prevent loneliness and social exclusion among the elderly. The cities show all scenarios of growth of inhabitants and workplaces, though they differ in housing policies and welfare systems, with different effects on housing markets and the housing situation of the elderly. Using a mixed-methods approach, a detailed picture of the interrelation between economic conditions, policies, everyday practices of social life and the built environment was obtained. The lecture introduces the projects basic analytical concept following Gardner’s (2011) analytical spatial categories (1) third spaces, (2) transitory zones and (3) thresholds. Contrasting older people’s access to housing and urban life in different geographical urban settings has proven fruitful in order to shed light on the complex issue of age-appropriate living environments.
Bibliography:
- Gardner, P. J. (2011) Natural neighborhood networks. Important social networks in the lives of older adults aging in place, Journal of Aging Studies, 25 (2011), pp. 263-271.
- Buffel, T., Verté, D., de Donder, L., de Witte, N., Dury, S., Vanwing, T., and Bolsenbroek, A. (2012) Theorising the relationship between older people and their immediate social living environment. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 31(1), pp. 13-32.
Lecture Unit 6 – Lived Space and the Embodied City
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein
The lecture will (1) offer an understanding of embodied protest as an affective form of staging dissent and thereby shaping ‘the political’ in the city. By taking on a particular perspective from the field of anthropology on the embodied dimension of urban life and protest, different examples of bodily protest in public spaces will be explored and discussed. In a successive part this lecture unit (2) deals with the concept of ‘politics of affect’: How does embodied action, or, as Setha Low coins it: embodied space, relate to an (analytical, interpretative) understanding of the relevance of experience and affect that is very much inscribed in contemporary feminist political theory. Finally, (3) a transfer will be established between considerations linking embodied space conceptions, politics of affect and concrete spatial practices by architects, planners and designers which can be framed as performative planning, performative urbanism or as a wider performative turn in the social sciences and the spatial arts.
Bibliography:
- Moore, S (2013) Taking Up Space: Anthropology and Embodied Protest. Radical Anthropology, 7/2013, pp. 6-16. Available online: http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/journal/ra_journal_nov_2013_6-16.pdf (last accessed 16 March 2020)
- Low, S (2003) Embodied Space(s). Anthropological Theories of Body, Space, and Culture. Space and Culture, 6(1), pp. 9-18
Evening Lecture Unit 7 – Care, Urban Generations and the City (working title)
Public Evening Lecture by former Visiting Professor Dr. Kim Trogal, followed by roundtable dialogue or similar organized by Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein and Univ. Ass Angelika Gabauer MA
Guest Lecture Kim Trogal: Care as affective practice
This lecture introduces the concept of ‘care’ and defines it as an affective orientation and practice. It then goes on to explores organisational tools in a variety of different contexts, which each facilitate and support caring relations. The lecture concludes by opening up questions of the possibilities of such tools within spatial practice, architecture and planning.
Bibliography:
- de La Bellacasa, M.P., 2017. Matters of care: Speculative ethics in more than human worlds (Vol. 41). University of Minnesota Press. “Introduction: The disruptive thought of care” Pp. 1-24.
- Gibson-Graham, J.K., 2006. A postcapitalist politics. University of Minnesota Press. “Chapter 1: Affects and Emotions for a postcapitalist politics” pp. 1-21.
Lecture Unit 8 – Formal and Informal Care Practices
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser and Univ. Ass. Angelika Gabauer MA
The lecture unit contributes to the emerging conceptual debates around age-friendly urban environments and addresses ambivalences linked with new arrangements and forms of aging. It aims at enhancing the idea of ‘age-friendly cities’ through including a perspective of care, that goes beyond the formalized urban facilities for older people and that challenges the idea of ‘active aging’. Through shedding light on the ‘hidden’ dimensions of care with its informal settings at the intersection of public and private life, we illustrate the multiple everyday care practices of older people in order to propose a critical concept of age-friendly cities.
Bibliography:
- Gabauer, A., Glaser, M., Christensen, L., Lehner, J. M., Jing, J and Lundberg, S. (2021, forthcoming) Geographies of Aging: Hidden Dimensions of Care in Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich, Routledge.
- Wegleitner, K. and Schuchter, P. (2018) Caring communities as collective learning process: findings and lessons learned from a participatory research project in Austria, Ann Palliat Med, 7(2), pp. 84-98
Lecture Unit 9 – Global Urban Restructuring and the Insurgent City
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein
The lecture will emphasize Asef Bayat’s conception on global restructuring and street politics, and will take it to an urban level of analysis. Recently, the concept of insurgent urbanism has been connected to public space research, stating that the focus on the everyday is an important aspect of community design debates, particularly when ethnic difference or multicultural demands to space are expressed. This lecture unit tackles conceptions of insurgent urbanism, and insurgent planning. While potentially significant in their ability to destabilize the hegemonic hierarchy in the political and institutional systems, everyday insurgencies may not be inherently positive or benevolent. Insurgent acts in themselves do not necessarily result in broader transformative outcomes. Nevertheless, however imperfect or conflict-laden they are, insurgent spatial practices can create conditions for critical reflections and potential social transformation.
Bibliography:
- Bayat, A (2010) Life as Politics. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Available online: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/15229/A.+Bayat+-+Life+as+Politics.pdf?sequence=1 (last accessed 16 March 2020). Chapter 3, pp. 43-65.
- Miraftab, F (2009) Insurgent Planning: Situating Radical Planning in the Global South. Planning Theory, 8(1), pp. 32-50
Intensive Teaching Block III (ITB III) – 18 - 22 January 2021
Lecture Unit 10 – Urban Fabric and Ageing in Vienna (Guest Lecture)
Guest Lecture by Dr. Christiane Feuerstein
The lecture considers the different approaches and resulting concepts in dealing with the needs of older people in the context of the overall urban development and the associated transformation of building structures.
Bibliography:
- Leeb, Franziska (2009): wohnen. pflegen. Leben. Neue Wiener Wohn-und Pflegehäuser. Wien: Bohmann Verlag (dt./engl.)
- «Red Vienna Grey Society», folder, text will be distributed
Lecture Unit 11: How to Encounter Inequalities and Exclusion?
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser
Still the challenges remain in responding to the growth of inequality and the impact of economic austerity on policies targeted to older people. The lecture tries to bring together the concerns of the previous lectures with the aim of sharpening the debate on conventional age-friendly approaches, recognizing the complexity of the global urban environment, the differentiating patterns of urban growth or shrinking. What should be done and what is already practiced in developing age-friendly communities – in housing provision and management, in neighborhood community development, in policy making?
The lecture encourages a debate on the role of research and researchers in the field and their agency towards policy production – their critical social engagement within the communities they live in and within the local urban policies. The extent to which universities can engage local communities in their research can have a direct influence on policy and practices aimed at improving the quality of life in old age. How can we create our research approach in a way that it reflects and de-constructs normative images and preconceptions of age and ageing, of intergenerational relations, of care, of governance? Which are the alternative participatory methods and ways of building up and “doing” expertise / conducting research, co-creating socially inclusive age-friendly design? Where are the limits of participation? Exemplary bottom up participatory processes and citizenship-based policy approaches to ageing will be discussed.
Bibliography:
- Shore, C, Wright, S. (2011). Conceptualising Policy: Technologies of Governance and the Politics of Visibility, Introduction chapter, in: Shore, C. , Wright, S. and Però (eds.) (2011). Policy Worlds. Anthropology and the analysis of contemporary power. Oxford: Berghahn, p.1-25
- Buffel, T., Skyrme, J. and Phillipson, C. (2017). Connecting Research with Social Responsibility: Developing ‘Age-Friendly’ Communities in Manchester, UK. In Shek, Daniel, Hollister, R.(eds.)(2017). University Social Responsibility and Quality of Life. Singapore: Springer, p. 99-120.
Lecture Unit 12 – Urban Resistance and the Neoliberal City
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein
Contemporary processes of capitalist urbanization have affected cities’ everyday life patterns and have brought forward both new emancipations and liberations, yet also a series of backlashes, new authoritarianisms and traumatic features that materialize in the urban public space. By investigating the “dark side of public space,” when it comes to un-democratic appropriations of public space, empirical evidence from Vienna will offer distinctions between anti politics and alter politics of social movements, as well as theoretical innovation towards theorizing everyday life. It has been particularly Sigmund Freud, but also Karl Marx, who have at their time diagnosed that everyday life also features uncanny sides, sometimes brought into present shared lives in public space through past traumas, or fears about a less positive future. Henri Lefebvre has in that sense transferred Marx concept of alienation towards a critique of everyday life in the past century. By using theories from different fields such as international sociology, postcolonial theory, feminist political sciences and cultural studies to inform an analysis of everyday geographies, this critique of everyday life is updated by including positions from Brigitte Bargetz, Asef Bayat, Ben Highmore and Boaventura de Sousa Santos who have all forwarded an analysis of urban public space in relation to theorizing resistance, emancipation, liberation and, first and foremost, everyday life and lived space. The lecture will show if – and if yes, how – the modernist critique of everyday life can be actualized through an empirical analysis of contemporary urban phenomena and more recent ways of theorizing urban life, urban change and urban space. It will end by highlighting the case of the “Omas gegen Rechts” an activist group of mainly ageing women in Austria who have successfully formed a counter public and have transformed cities’ public space into a place of resistance of the elderly, claiming their right to the city and to a different kind of politics.
Bibliography:
- Hou, J and Knierbein, S (2017) Shrinking Democracy and Urban Resistance. Toward An Emancipatory Politics of Public Space. In: Hou, J and Knierbein, S (eds) City Unsilenced. Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy. London, New York: Routledge, pp. 3-16
- Tyler, I (2015) Classificatory Struggles: Class, Culture and Inequality in Neoliberal Times. The Sociological Review, 63(2), pp. 493-511
Lecture Unit 13 - – Urban Generations, Ageing Society and New Health Conditions (Closing and Retrospective)
Visiting Professor Dr. Marie Glaser and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sabine Knierbein with guest lecturer Angelika Gabauer
In a joint trialogue we will create retrospective linkages between the different lecture units and carve out crucial questions which planners, architects and deisgners as well as ethnographers and urban researchers should deal with in the future when integrating aspects of intergenerational living and relational conceptions of age and ageing into their everyday professional praxis.
