After successful completion of the course, students are able to

• explore and theorise the publicness of urban spaces by focusing on the interplay of the materialities, spatial practices, shared meanings and discourses of the lived experiences and embodied interactions that take place in these spaces. 
• reflect on how practices and lived experiences challenge the binary between public and private spaces and understand how materialities of space challenge, reinforce or transcend the public-private binary
• understand and discuss concepts related to the appropriation of public space, and recognize the interrelationships of embodied practices and processes of space appropriation.
• discuss and critically reflect on care debates and their relevance to the fields of urban developments, planning and architecture, with a particular focus on housing and public space.
• identify research problems, frame research questions, and present and discuss developed research projects and results in the course of a final presentation to an international audience and in form of a written report.

**This course will mainly take place as an excursion to Thessaloniki (Greece) with partners and students from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, Department of Urban & Regional Planning and Development, Research Unit for South European Cities.**

**In accordance with further pandemic developments, teaching will be either offered as presence teaching in Vienna and Thessaloniki (excursion) or in a distance learning format.**

Main part of this course will take place in the framework of the international Urban Research Intensive Workshop: Researching Publicness at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece from Sunday 17 to Thursday 21 October 2021. Aim of this international exchange is to establish an intensive workshop atmosphere where we jointly with colleagues and students of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki investigate transformations of housing and public. We seek to explore the complex, unstable and messy urban practices and lived experiences that give form to everyday urban environments. Our endeavour is to reflect on the well-established binary between the private and the public (geographies, spaces, lives, experiences, etc.), and develop critical perspectives on existing perceived boundaries and dichotomies.

We propose to study the continuous interplay between public and private spaces through the concept of publicness. Publicness is not a static condition. Rather, it is a dynamic process that is linked to issues of ownership and control, accessibility, lived experiences and perceptions, everyday relations and feelings. It is embodied and it is materialised through complex relationships developed between humans, humans and places, as well as humans and non-humans. It is sustained and build in different scales from the private yards and homes to the streets, the neighbourhood and the city. Overall, publicness is related to issues of democracy and inclusion. Yet publicness may also reside in things, and may also be virtual.

Indicative research questions that will be explored in the context of the course are organized intro three thematic fields and are as follows:

1. How do everyday practices and lived experiences challenge the binary between public and private spaces? How do the materialities of space challenge, reinforce or transcend the public-private binary? [Preliminary Topic 1]
2. What are the ways through which urban dwellers appropriate urban public spaces? What is the relation between embodied and affective practices and the (re-)appropriation of public spaces? [Preliminary Topic 2]
3. How do people from different subject positions (age, gender, race, education, socio-economic status, etc) meet in and produce public space in relation to housing on the level of practices of care? [Preliminary Topic 3]

The course consists of an excursion to Thessaloniki (Greece) and preparation and follow-up meetings in Vienna. It includes seminars and lectures on housing and public space from a variety of disciplines related to the study of urban space, as well as introductory lectures on innovative and participatory urban action research methodologies.

Students will be invited to work on particular neighbourhood spaces of Thessaloniki by employing mixed research methods. On the final day of the workshop in Thessaloniki, student presentations will be discussed with a panel comprised of the organisers, invited keynote speakers and members of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). The workshop content and fieldwork in Thessaloniki may vary according to COVID-19 restrictions.

***Update course format 24.11.2021: Due to the lockdown the course will take place online until further notice (presumably until the end of the year 2021)***

Die LVA ist den folgenden Wahlmodulen zugeordnet:

• Wahlmodul 5: Gesellschaft, Alltag und Raum
• Wahlmodul 1: Global Development of Cities and Regions
  

The courses mainly address master students from planning and architecture. We explicitly welcome students coming from other Viennese universities in disciplines relating to urban studies such as educational studies, migration studies, urban design, geography, (work, urban) sociology, political science, landscape architecture, cultural studies (‘Mitbeleger’ at TU Wien). The course language is English. We support students’ active participation in debates and interactive teaching formats. We encourage students to bring in and develop their own ideas and critical perspectives. We seek to create an international level of debate and exchange and welcome students from all countries and cultures. Just contact us (info@skuor.tuwien.ac.at).

Bibliography

Topic 1

• Athanassiou, E., Karagianni, M., Kapsali, M., & Christodoulou, C. (2018). Hybridising ownership of public space: Framings of urban emancipation in crisis-ridden Thessaloniki. In S. Knierbein & T. Viderman (Eds.), Public Space Unbound - Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition (pp. 251-266). London/New York: Routledge.
• Friedmann, J. (1999). The City of Everyday Life. disP - The Planning Review, 35(136-137), 4-11. doi:10.1080/02513625.1999.10556693
• Highmore, B. (2002). Introduction: Questioning the Everyday. In B. Highmore (Ed.), The Everyday Life Reader (pp. 1-34). New York: Routledge
• Madanipour, A (2003) Public and Private Spaces of the City. Introduction. London, Routledge. Pp. xx-xx.

Further Readings:

• Knierbein, S (2021) Alltagstheoretische Wendungen im Feld der Internationalen Urbanistik. In: Kogler/Hamedinger (Hrsg.) Interdisziplinäre Stadtforschung, S. 165-187

Topic 2

• Iliopoulos, S and Lisardaki, LL (2020) Pocket parks as spaces of “Re-public”: the experience of the Alexandrou Svolou initiative. The Urban Transcripts Journal, 3(1). Available at: http://journal.urbantranscripts.org/article/pocket-parks-as-spaces-of-re-public-the-experience-of-the-alexandrou-svolou-initiative-spilios-iliopoulos-michaela-loukia-litsardaki/ [28 September 2021]
• Kaika, M and Karaliotas, L (2017) Athen’s Syntagma Square Reloaded: From Staging Disagreement Towards Instituting Democratic Spaces. 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. 121-132.
• Low, SM (2003): Embodied Space(s). Anthropological Theories of Body, Space, and Culture. Space and Culture, Vol. 6 (1), S. 9-18.
• Papatzani, E and Knappers, L (2020) Negotiations of Socio-Spatial Coexistence through Everyday Encounters in Central Athens, Greece. Urban Planning, 5(3), pp. 150-162. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/43772709/Negotiations_of_Socio_Spatial_Coexistence_through_Everyday_Encounters_in_Central_Athens_Greece_Urban_Planning_ [Accessed 28 September 2021]

Further Readings:

• Arampatzi, A (2017) Contentious spatialities in an era of austerity: Everyday politics and ‘struggle communities’ in Athens, Greece. Political Geography, 60, pp. 47-56. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629816301895 [Accessed 28 September 2021]
• Chatzinakos, G (2020) Urban Experiments in Times of Crisis: From Cultural Production to Neighbourhood Commoning. In: Lekakis, S (ed) Cultural Heritage in the Realm of the Commons: Conservations on the Case of Greece, pp. 183-212. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/44234713/Urban_Experiments_in_Times_of_Crisis_From_Cultural_Production_to_Neighbourhood_Commoning_Introducing_the_Context [Accessed 28 September 2021]
• Schurr, Carolin; Strüver, Anke (2016): „The Rest”: Geographien des Alltäglichen zwischen Affekt, Emotion und Repräsentation. In: Geographica Helvetica 71, S. 87-97. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302595819_The_Rest_Geographien_des_Alltaglichen_zwischen_Affekt_Emotion_und_Reprasentation [Accessed 28 September 2021]
• Stroux, S (2010) Contesting Nodes of Migration and Trade in Public Space: Thessaloniki's Bazaar Economy. In: Kokot, W, Gandelsman-Trier, M, Wildner, K and Wonneberger, A (eds) Port Cities as Areas of Transition. Ethnographic Perspectives. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 145-168. Available at: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-89942-949-7/port-cities-as-areas-of-transition/ [Accessed 28 September 2021]
• Tsavdaroglou, C and Kaika, M (2021) The refugees' right to the centre of the city: City branding versus city commoning in Athens. Urban Studies Journal. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/45633950/The_refugees_right_to_the_centre_of_the_city_City_branding_versus_city_commoning_in_Athens [Accessed 28 September 2021]

Topic 3

• Isabel Sánchez Gutiérrez (2021, forthcoming) Infrastructures from Below: Self-Reproduction and Common Struggle in and Beyond Athens in Crisis. In A. Gabauer. S. Knierbein, N. Cohen, H. Lebuhn, K. Trogal, T. Viderman and T. Haas (eds.) Care and the City: Encounters with Urban Studies, chapter 15.
• Dowling, Emma (2021) The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It? Chapter 1: What Is Care? Pp. 16-26.
• Milligan, C. and Wiles, J. (2010) Landscapes of Care. Progress in Human Geography 34(6): 736–754.
• Fitz, A. and Krasny, E. (2019) Introduction: Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet. In A. Fitz, E. Krasny and Architekturzentrum Wien (eds) Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet. MIT Press

Further Readings:

• Milligan, C. (2014) Geographies of Care. In W.C. Cockerham, R. Dingwall and S.R. Quah (eds.) The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 1–3.
• Ruddick, S. (1998) Care as Labor and Relationship. In J.G. Haber and M.S. Halfon (eds.) Norms and Values: Essays on the Work of Virginia Held. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 3–25.
• Lawson, V. (2007) Geographies of Care and Responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(1): 1–11.
• Conradson, D. (2003) Geographies of Care: Spaces, Practices and Experiences. Social and Cultural Geography 4(4): 451–454.
• Bowlby, S. (2012) Recognising the Time–Space Dimensions of Care: Caringscapes and Carescapes. Environment and Planning A 44(9): 2101–2118.
• Power, E.R. and Williams, M.J. (2020) Cities of Care: A Platform for Urban Geographical Care Research. Geography Compass 14(1). https://doi .org /10 .1111 /gec3 .12474.

The assessment is based on (1) the reading and preparation of the compulsory literature and (2) a group-based research project that explores the publicness of (a) selected site(s) in Thessaloniki. (3) Part of the assessment are the final presentations of the results with subsequent discussions and (4) a written documentation in form of a joint reader. 

The fulfillment of both criteria as well as 80% attendance are required for positive completion