Urban Citizenship: Spaces for Enacting Rights

Abstract

Based on the hypothesis that citizenship is a performative act (Isin 2017:501), I would like to have a closer look at the spatial conditions for acts of citizenship. How and which kinds of urban situations can facilitate or prevent accessibility to the city? Are there possible spaces where citizenship might be provided or invented? How can citizenship as a practice be learned? In order to reflect on some of these questions, I will focus on a certain moment of the “metroZones school for urban action”. At the metroZones school for urban action (2015-2016) a wide range of urban actors, activists and other urban citizens met in Berlin und Hamburg in order to discuss and put into practice a number of conceptual ideas and methodological tools from critical urban studies for the purpose of urban explorations and interventions. How are urban spaces and configurations produced? Which actors and processes affect everyday life? How do individual as well collective perceptions and actions produce the city? What could be the role of the “metroZones school for urban action” in providing space and tools for debates and interventions to politicize the urban? Are there certain strategies and tactics we can learn in a school for urban action in order to be a part of the city: a first step towards [urban] citizenship?