Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses whether reuse of former industrial sites as new cultural arenas can provide alternative physical places of social encounter and public spaces that can enhance social and ethnic inclusion. It questions whether a correlation exists between paramount municipal policy and practical results.

Paper long abstract:

Many post-industrial sites have gradually become integrated in the larger urban fabric and have ended up being centrally located. Urban densification and the demand for development and building sites increase the attractiveness of these areas and instigated private-public partnership in planning. The cultural/creative sector view such sites as inspiring environments for creative activities. This paper will direct special attention to the potential which reuse of old industrial buildings hold as a contributing source to people's health and wellbeing. Some Norwegian urban municipalities use cultural policy as a strategic means in their welfare policy - an instrument for ensuring inclusion across social, economic and ethnic boundaries. Establishing alternative cultural arenas is one such instrument. Young people need ways to express their identity and to stimulate their artistic creativity. Despite the initial language problems experienced by some of the users, such cultural arenas enable many to use and share their practical and tacit knowledge brought from their homelands (through handicraft, art, music, dance, cookery). Personal interaction across ethnic and national borders can contribute to remove potential scepticism between people who belong to different nationalities. Through creativity, inventiveness and limited resources new user groups often manage to rejuvenate these premises, hereby turning them into interesting places to visit. Based on a closer examination of two Norwegian cases, the paper will discuss the degree of correlation between paramount municipal policy and practical results. The results will be viewed in light of a broader discussion of what signifies the qualifying elements in public space.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is based on research about ongoing debates around the future of a cultural center in Stuttgart, Germany. It analyses the different perceptions the involved parties have about the role of arts and culture in the city.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1990s, the area called "Wagenhallen" around the northern railway station in Stuttgart has been rented to several artists and cultural workers. Four years ago, they were asked to leave the area because of the project "Stuttgart 21," an overall reconstruction of the main railway station that involves the demolition of the northern station and the construction of a modern housing complex in its place. But the "Wagenhallen" still exist. This is the result of long and persistent negotiations between the artists and cultural workers, politicians and the corporation "Deutsche Bahn". Through these negotiations, politicians have discovered the value of a subcultural scene as a special attraction in the city and have included the center into their urban planning concept. Still, the concrete use and funding of the area and its buildings is controversial. The artists have to prove the profitability of their ideas about creative space and compete against other more commercially targeted projects in favor of a large concert hall. The competitive negotiations about the future appearance and role of the cultural center and especially the strategies of the artists and cultural workers in reaction to the commodification of their creative space are central in the analyses presented.

Paper short abstract:

In the interwar period members of the Youth- and Homeland-Movement ‚invented' and practised (especially in Vienna) THE folk culture by mixing elements of Viennese popular cultures with rural heritage. This genuine urban culture sought public attention as well as ideological and cultural supremacy.

Paper long abstract:

This proposed paper analyses the special urban setting in Vienna in the 1930ies. It presents the players, networks and especially the practices of the circles which dealt and argued with folk culture. Their main venue was the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna, their elite consisted of young ‚Volkskunde' scholars, who were also part of the Youth Movement. They met at the museum and conceptualised the emotional, practical and theoretical superstructure of ‚folk' and ‚homeland' (‚Volkstum' and ‚Heimat') in Austrias capital and evolved the Museum into a ‚trading zone' for various folkish influences and practices. They combined popular entertainment and scientific knowledge with the goal of a standardised and national homogenised folk culture. Folk culture seemed to be primarily oriented towards a better past, to tradition and national heritage but in fact it was a very present concept. It was an urban utopia, that intended to reconcile social and national differences by standing up for a harmonising and paradoxically combative folk culture.

On the basis of a "competitive" folkdance festival in 1934, that took place in Vienna's public sphere (in front of town hall, the Ringstraße,…), the paper illustrates specific strategies and objectives that were connected to the popularisation of folk cultural formats and compares them to other urban dance cultures as well as to other European folk cultures. It shows the interconnectedness of Viennas folk culture-propagandists to ideological and pragmatic players in Austrias cultural policy in the transitional period from democratic to totalitarian systems.

Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates on the practices of designers, which fill the gap between economical and political driven „top-up“ activities and „bottom-up“ movements. The work therefore, illustrates how the design community with their special perspective and practices develops urban spaces.

Paper long abstract:

Cities in times of neoliberalism show a wide disparity between different ways of developing urban space. On the hand "top-down" processes of political intervention position the city as a "brand" within the competition of cities with a strong ideology based on economical thinking.

This development activated "bottom up" activities, for example the "right to the city" movement that empowers local citizens to act against the dominant forces with creative protest and the termination of urban development projects.

In this "contested space" of power configuration a third way of structural urban development projects occurs. In this regards, the paper investigates in the topic with an example of the city of Hamburg. It focuses with an ethnographic example on the practices, which fill the gap between economical and political driven "top-up" activities and "bottom-up" movements. The work therefore, illustrates how the design community with their special perspective, formats and practices develops urban spaces in the shadow of the dominant movements and with a diverse conglomerate of knowledge as a reaction of the decreased public funding.

They paper explores to understand how this initiatives remain capable of acting in highly contested and politicized urban spaces without a large public funding. Design students use alternative techniques to transform urban spaces and social contexts. They formulate micro urban projects together with inhabit and call into question the commodification of urban development. The paper wants to give an insight in the oppositional perspective designers use to develop urban spaces and how this effects established planning activities.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of the paper is to represent and discuss different utopian projects and visions for change of “Studentski grad” to ideal city. I depend on qualitative research with participant observation, analysis of documents and materials and semi-structured interviews.

Paper long abstract:

In 1975 was built as object of national importance "Studentski grad" - complex with university buildings, hostels, sport halls, swimming pools and green spaces. Nearly 30 000 students from different universities was accommodated in the place. In 2000 after law changes hundred state properties become private. For few years almost 150 clubs, pubs, restaurant and bars arise. Soon "Studentski grad" renamed to "Sin City". The town gained popularity not as place to educated, but as place to entertain. Everything was so far so good until group of non-student men killed one student on front of night club "Amnesia". The murdered was the spark which provoked national student protest, which the main slogan was "Student town for the students!"

From 2008 to 2015 many students create utopian ideas for turning the town into more educational, cultural and ecological place. For seven years different grass-root initiatives made projects for reconstruction playgrounds or has built Student center as public space. On the one hand "Situation is the same", on the other: "Little change can make a big difference".