Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes doing size and doing place in two European middletowns: Wels, Austria and Hildesheim, Germany. We demonstrate the interrelationship between certain urban practices and imaginaries and the symbolic-material positions of these cities.

Paper long abstract:

While in Europe it is often urban transformations in global and world cities like London, Paris, Berlin or Vienna which are the focus of academic, political, and social attention, various urban realities "below" these metropolises are neglected. Many contemporary planners, researchers, and politicians tend to be metrocentric and believe that small cities lack urbanity. Ethnographic case studies in two so-called middletowns ("Mittelstädte"), Wels in Upper Austria and Hildesheim in Lower Saxony, show insights into everyday practices and modes of experiences beyond the big metropolises.

Cities are embedded in relations to other cities and thus are given certain symbolic-material positions. We endeavor to understand how different actors produce these relations and how local residents experience them. We demonstrate the interrelationship between certain urban practices and imaginaries and the symbolic-material positions of these "second cities." Accordingly, we fill a gap in urban studies and investigate doing size and doing place in these cities.

Our proposal is based on the research project "Middletown Urbanities - Ethnographic Urban Studies in Wels and Hildesheim", which is located at the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Vienna. We aim to broaden urban studies with a systematic examination of middletowns and to critically appraise and supplement the conventional categorizations of cities.