Practical
Friday, 7 March, 2025
- 09:00 until 12:00
VUB Usquare Campus
Kroonlaan 227
1050 Elsene
Kroonlaan 227
1050 Elsene
What do citizens need to live the lives they desire? And does the city still provide the required welfare infrastructures for all?
These seemingly mundane questions cut to the core of what urban environments mean for people in their daily lives. Classic approaches to welfare would see decent living as a matter of income, social security, and access to good quality public services like education and care.
Welfare also involves support systems of a different kind. Beyond the hard wiring and plumbing of energy grids, water, and sewerage systems, living a fulfilling life requires access to social infrastructure or community spaces that are essential to socialize, relax, play, discuss, politicize, organize, share, learn, and so much more.
The restructuring of contemporary cities shows that such welfare infrastructures cannot be taken for granted (if they ever could). Pressure on land markets, the creeping privatization of public space, the state’s retreat under permanent austerity, and the shifting legitimacy of civil society have put these infrastructures under severe pressure.
At the same time, cities are also places of great experimentation, both organizationally and spatially. Community-based initiatives have emerged to reclaim buildings and sites, experimenting with site-specific infrastructures of care and solidarity to fill the voids left behind by an overstretched public welfare state. While developing mixed and temporary-use strategies, cities manage to provide much-needed access to green spaces and playgrounds in dense neighbourhoods.
Meanwhile, new models of ownership and governance emerge as civic, public, and private parties join forces to provide community spaces in fragmented neighbourhoods. As social infrastructures, these spaces also offer new grounds for progressive political subjectification, collective wellbeing, and social justice.
The 2024-2025 StadsSalonsUrbains International Lecture Series approaches infrastructures of urban welfare from various theoretical angles and offers thematic perspectives on a range of key social infrastructures in contemporary cities.
GUEST
- Silke VON DYK
from University of Jena
About StadsSalonsUrbains
The city is the future? Most definitely! Throughout the last decade many new ideas and insights have been presented in the field of urban studies.
StadsSalonsUrbains is an initiative of VUB's Brussels Center For Urban Studies. Renowned international speakers are invited to present their ideas to a Brussels audience. Lectures take place on Friday evening 17.30-19.30h in the city centre of Brussels. A meeting point for urbanites, just before the weekend starts.
The world needs you
This initiative is part of VUB's public programme: a programme for everyone who believes that scientific knowledge sharing, critical thinking and dialogue are an important first step to create impact in the world.
As an Urban Engaged University, VUB aims to be a driver of change in the world. With our academic edcuational programmes and innovative research, we contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and to making a difference locally and globally.
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