Assembling the multitude: questions about agency in the urban environment

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.In recent years, urban history has witnessed an expansion of actors. Historians have substantially and continuously extended their perspectives when it comes to examining the forces that drive urban developments. This expansion to an ever-broader range of human and increasingly also non-human actors (e.g. animals, technological systems and resources such as water) has opened up many new venues for investigations. It has also raised new questions about the role of cities in the history of social change. One of the most provocative ideas involves the claim that cities themselves should be considered agents and proprietors of change. Such notions of urban agency are premised on the assumption that, on the whole, cities are more than the sum of their parts. In this context, urbanization is not just viewed as the outcome of other determining societal forces, most notably capitalism. Instead, cities themselves are understood as determining entities and powerful enablers or preventers of material transformations. The investigative potential of such a perspective is tremendous, but the possible pitfalls should also not be underestimated. Exploring the explanatory prospects of urban agency requires, first of all, a critical engagement with both of the terms ‘agency’ and ‘the urban’. In my brief contribution to this roundtable, I would like to offer two points to the discussion: the first centres on the relationship between agency and intentionality/responsibilities, which is ultimately a political concern; the second aims to differentiate between the city as an entity and the urban as a process. Such a distinction, in turn, poses conceptual as well as methodological questions regarding the efficacy of agency as an urban concept

Atelier Paris-Berlin : Grand Berlin, écriture de l’histoireet politiques urbaines. Temps de discussion

https://www.inventerlegrandparis.fr/link/?id=1063Corinne Jaquand I’m wondering about the number of projects who were not realized in Berlin. This collection of master plans with or without continuity are part of the history of the city. Our researches should take very much these unbuilt plans into account. And then, there is also the topic of destruction. Of course, we are all aware of the destructions uttered by the bombings. Markus has showed that destruction was something connected also with waves of modernization. Harald, you seem to have a mixed opinion on the “Zweckverband Groß Berlin”, whereas in France at the same period we've had..

Ideje a praxe zelených ploch v evropských městech

Již téměř dvě století jsou zelené plochy v evropských městech přehodnocovány a tvořeny na základě měnících se idejí a praktických postupů týkajících se významu přírody ve městech. I když jsou v dnešních evropských městech velké rozdíly v kvantitě a kvalitě zelených ploch, myšlenky a postupy, které stojí za jejich tvorbou nebo zánikem, jsou na celém kontinentu vcelku podobné. Od poloviny devatenáctého století začali představitelé evropských měst vnášet přírodu zpět do města, aby čelili negativním dopadům industrializace. Později začali modernističtí architekti a projektanti používat vědecké metody a populistické ideje přírody ve snaze vytvořit dostupné zdravé bydlení pro rychle se rozvíjející městskou průmyslovou pracovní sílu. Nejnověji evropská města přijímají jako hlavní ideu udržitelnost, což je někdy protichůdné úsilí o rovnováhu mezi neoliberální komodifikací přírody a vědecky legitimními přínosy pro kvalitu života.For almost two centuries, green spaces in European cities have been rethought and built based on the shifting ideas and practices about the role of nature in cities. Although there is a great diversity in the quantity and quality of green spaces in European cities today, the ideas and practices behind their creation and destruction are quite common across the continent. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, European city leaders started bringing nature back into the city to counter the negative effects of industrialization. Later, modernist architects and planners began using cientific methods and populist ideas of nature in an attempt to create accessible healthy quality living for a rapidly expanding urban industrial workforce. Most recently, European cities are embracing sustainability, a sometimes contradictory effort to balance neoliberal commodification of nature with its scientifically legitimated quality of life benefits