A program is provided below. You can also find our press kit here.
June 25 - Welcome to Luxembourg
Venue: Youth Hostel Conference Room, Main floor
Meeting point: Luxembourg City Youth Hostel Terrace
Full of surprises and paradoxes, participants of INURA 2022 can look forward to tours of Luxembourg City that aim to show the range of challenges and contradictions that constitute this urban space—a small state, city-state, multilingual sovereign nation, European capital, financial capital, international business hub, and cross-border (sub)urban region. Both tours entail up to 5 km of walking.
Tour 1: Whose City? Our City?
with: Constance Carr, Karinne Madron and Eis Stad
The capital of the Grand Duchy is Luxembourg City where the alliance of land and money breeds profit, undisturbed - or even mastered - by politics and planning. This, in the context of a nation that, following the Global Financial Centers Index 2021, is Europe's 4th most important financial sector, and 3rd in its business environment development (3rd and 2nd, respectively, if we account for Brexit). Luxembourg is particularly competitive in the areas of investment management, finance and insurance and government and regulation. In this context, real-estate developers extract value by transforming and trading urban properties. What is this urban space and how are planning decisions made? Who benefits? This tour introduces to two major projects under way in Luxembourg City (Stärplatz and Stade Josy Barthel) meeting with activists from Eis Stad who demand more engagement with local citizens.
Tour 2: The Kirchberg Syndrome
with: Markus Hesse
June 26 - Anniversary Event, Part I
15:00 Movements and Marxism - strategies of transformation, organization, social movements
17:00 From Melancholy to Rage: The conflicted landscapes and ambiguities produced by modern authoritarianism
Kirchberg Plateau was once a field on the outskirts of the (old) City of Luxembourg. Today, it is one of the central axes of the city, sitting between Findel Airport, the old city, and the central train station. It was conceived in the 1950s as a place to house the institutions of the European Union as both a post-war peace project, as well as an opportunity for the Grand Duchy to secure its place in that international network; Luxembourg pre-emptively acquired the land, built Red Bridge, as well as the A1 highway to this end. Today, it is home banks and investment funds. Slowly retrofitted--with mixed reviews about the success of this endeavour--the Kirchberg can be conceived as the Duchy’s first attempt to drive a large-scale project to satisfy and secure the national interests of the small Grand Duchy. That this planning style would later be replicated in Belval (in the south) and arguably again in Cloche D’Or, Kirchberg has become a symbol for the planning policy in the country known as the Kirchberg Syndrome.
19:00 Evening welcome
Venue: Youth Hostel Conference Room, Main floor
19:30 Dinner at Youth Hostel
June 26 - Anniversary Event, Part I
Venue: Youth Hostel Conference Room, Main floor
2022 is a special anniversary year of INURA, celebrating 30 years of meeting and 32 years research and action. For this, we invite you to join us for two-day Anniversary Event full of lively discussions addressing urgent urban issues as social spatial injustice and inequality, infectious disease, climate crisis, housing exclusion, perpetual uncertainty, and authoritarian aggression.
09:00 Introduction to and history of INURA
Ute Lehrer (Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University) and Tino Buchholz (Institute of Urban Planning and Design, University of Stuttgart)09:30 Global urbanisms under conditions of crisis and uncertainty: A conversation across continents
For a long time, scholarly debates on “the urban question” mainly focused on large metropolises in North America and Western Europe. Most other places remained “off the map” of urban studies. To this day, Western cities continue to be the primary site of production of apparently unlocated urban theory, and dominate the understandings, problematics, concepts and vocabularies – not only in theory, but also in practice. This changed in the last twenty years, when new postcolonial approaches proposed to look at cities and urbanisation from a decentred perspective. In this panel, participants focus on experiences of urban change and politics in Latin America, Asia and Africa and discuss their engagements in places that have long seen very different patterns and pathways of urbanisation, and where conditions of uncertainty and crisis are persistent. At the same time, they are each also looking at urban developments in the “West” from their specific experiences and perspectives. Jorge Peña Diaz (Urban Research and Action Group, Technological University of Habana), Jennifer Robinson (Department of Geography, University College of London), Tammy Wong (Sociology, ETH Zürich), with discussant, Angela Stienen (PHBern)
11:30 Climate crisis, social justice and patterns of urbanization - How to organize a radical protest
As we all know, the world is facing today a climate crisis, accompanied by related food and biodiversity crises. The massive and uncoordinated expansion of urban areas plays a key role in these crises. While calls and recipes for sustainable planning, green cities, and low carbon design abound, the trajectory of environmental demise continues. This panel discusses how changing patterns of urbanization make it difficult to address the core problems of these crises and why UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda is not fully challenging these problems. Finally, and most importantly, we discuss how environmental protest can keep pace with these rapidly changing urban conditions at multiple scales. Nitin Bathla (Sociology, ETH Zürich), Camilla Perrone (Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Florence), Marit Rosol (Department of Geography, University of Calgary), with discussant, Christian Schmid (D-ARCH, ETH Zürich)
14:00 Urbanization of Disaster
It’s summer 2022 and INURA can meet for the first time since the pandemic hit. As tempting as it is to be optimistic and believe that we are through the worst of it, the fact is we do not know if the pandemic is over and what is to come. What’s worse, Europe is now at war. These crises continue to reveal their effects - What we have now is just a Momentaufnahme, a snapshot of a future that has not yet been revealed. But we also need to account for the permanent disaster urban life represents for many in today’s cities, not just as moments of fires, droughts, wars, and economic uncertainty. How can we understand this condition of recurring disaster? How can cities prepare? What can urban life offer to building resistant structures of defense that protect people from the vulnerabilities and risks in a world of upheaval. Laura Colini (Tesserae Urban Social Research) and Roger Keil (Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change, York University)
15:00 Movements and Marxism - strategies of transformation, organization, social movements
In a context of new and old social and environmental injustices, Marxism can offer methods of analysis of contemporary conditions and strategies for social transformation that are founded on actual contradictions and crisis. In this panel, we will debate about how interrelations between movements and Marxism can develop a deep understanding of the contemporary social spatial-temporal processes, in their totality and specificity, as historically and territorially specific social practices and relations. And furthermore we will deal with how this knowledge can be used to outline effective strategies to appropriate space and time and gain the realm of freedom that begins when the realm of necessity is left behind. Marvi Maggio (Confederation of Grassroots Committees, Region of Tuscany), Bernd Belina (Institute of Human Geography, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main), Kike España (School of Architecture, University of Málaga), with discussant, Fred Robinson (Durham University)
Authoritarian regimes have been taking ever more space over the last decade. Now the war in Ukraine reveals the devastation that modern authoritarianism wreaks, damage control is needed, which comes with manifold forms of urban solidarity. Panelists discuss how the war has affected their lives and work, coming to terms with the defeat of state-socialism, continuous shock, no therapy, and a desire for revived democracy along the pitfalls of ‘westsplaining'. Tino Buchholz (Institute of Urban Planning and Design, University of Stuttgart), Kacper Pobłocki (University of Warsaw), Mariia Prystupa (V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University), with discussant, Philipp Klaus (INURA Common Office)
June 27 - Anniversary Event, Part II
Venue: Youth Hostel Conference Room, Main floor
9:00 Welcome from Claude Turmes, Minister of Energy and Spatial Planning, Luxembourg
9:15 Financial markets, housing, urban development: How are cities and people affected and what can we do about it?
The economic growth of many cities has pushed the housing prices to a level that has become unaffordable for lower and middle income wage earners. It drives to new forms of occupancy and provokes further social inequality – young people staying at home longer, people accepting smaller dwellings, having less to spend on food, or leaving the city altogether and tolerating longer commutes (in Luxembourg, it means emigrating). The further financialisation of the housing sector, led by big investment funds means that financial return reigns over the solving of the housing needs. This panel discusses recent findings, implications for people and reflects on strategies of intervention. Ute Lehrer (Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change, York University), João Tonucci (Center for Development and Regional Planning, Federal University of Minas Gerais), Arie van Wijngaarden (fmr City of Amsterdam, Housing, Urban Planning and Infrastructure), with discussant, Markus Hesse (Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg)
11:00 Urban political Protests & (big) politics: What is the role of big politics, left politics, activists and local governments?
In the 30 years INURA has existed, some of its members have been elected or appointed to positions of political power and administrative responsibility. They carried into these positions the principles and mandates of the social movements that supported them in the first place. City administrators, managers, governing officials are charged with dealing with a multitude of urban social spatial problems, changing patterns of urbanization, shifting priorities, and ever changing institutional settings. Such situations have been made more acute in times of the climate emergency, pandemic disease and increasing economic crisis. This panel discusses the challenges of governing the city, the possibilities and limitations of the current palette of available points of intervention and the opportunities and politics that an urban lens affords. Philippe Koch (Zürcher Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaften), Vedran Horvat (Institute for Political Ecology, Zagreb), Richard Wolff (Former Vice-mayor, City of Zurich), with discussant, Bob Colenutt (Northampton Institute for Urban Affairs)
14:00 Many perspectives on possible urban worlds
Cities are the most relevant ‘environment’ where we explore the ability of human beings to build a positive relationship between them and with nature. They are the theaters of social actions and webs of life (according to some famous definitions). INURA has a long tradition of critically analyzing, reflecting and standing up against the development and transformation of urban life affecting the values described in its founding principles. At the same time, INURA members have been part of movements and proposals aimed to build alternatives. In this round, participants present some of the projects that they are/were involved in, trying to mitigate urban pressures - such as alternative housing, participatory planning methods, protest interventions and means of engaging one’s voice to raise awareness. Not utopist theories but practical suggestions for possible urban worlds. Jens Brandt (School of Architecture, Tampere University), Philipp Klaus (INURA Zurich), Faiq Mari (History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich), Louanne and Chris Tranchell (INURA London), with discussant, Iacopo Zetti Department of Architecture, University of Florence).
16:00 Many perspectives on research and action
Wrapping up two days of lively discussion, scholars and activists reflect on how these issues surface in their own work, what the aims and values are that guide their own research and action, and what they see as urgent topics that need attention in order to counteract the forces that produce inequality and social injustice. Yiqiu Liu (ETH Zurich), Monika Streule (London School of Economics and Political Science), Panagiota (Penny) Koutrolikou (School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens), with discussant Roger Keil (York University).
18:30 Bus to Vianden
20:00 “How Poles Became White” TUNi Productions & Discussion
Luxembourg premier of 'How Poles Became White' (TUNi Productions) with discussion afterwards with Tino Buchholz and Kacper Pobłocki at Ancien Cinéma Café Club, in Vianden (Monday, June 27, after dinner). The evening will open with a short film, “Museu da Mare” from Tesserae/Ogino Knauss Productions. Busses (leaving 18:30) will take take participants from the Youth Hostel to Vianden and back.
June 28 - INURA Retreat
Venue: Youth Hostel Conference Rooms
The
Retreat is mainly for INURA members. These days are reserved for INURA
matters, discussions, exchange, common INURA research projects, and the
INURA AGM. Participants staying for the INURA Retreat are also invited
to present their work. Get in contact with us, luxembourg2022@inura.org,
if you would like to propose a contribution.
All day
June 29 - INURA Retreat
Venue: Youth Hostel Conference Rooms
09:00 - 12:00
Information about how to renew or join the INURA membership is available at the INURA Common Office. See here
