8 -10 pm
»Urban Movements between Neoliberalism and New Governance«
What are the Responses of Progressive Local Initiatives
to the Challenges of Competitive City-Systems and Globalization?
Up to the present and in contrast to wide spread promises by most governments and international organizations, the ongoing restructuring of the world economy has not resulted in greater prosperity and peace nor in more social rights and democracy for the majority of the people; neither in rich capitalist industrial nations nor in the so called underdeveloped countries of the South. More and more cities are now joining corporations and nation states in their plight to compete with each other in an increasingly merciless and deregulated world market. With varying degrees and consequences for urban development schemes, this competition usually involves a direct attack on alternative lifestyles, deep cuts in social expenditures, socio-spatial polarization, rising poverty, and the submission of both cultural and social achievements under the dominant market forces. On the other hand, various processes of globalization, crossing and dissolving traditional boundaries, also produce new political and social spaces for co-operation and resistance as well as a growing demand by the local state for new forms of regulation of social injustice and precarious modes of production and reproduction.
How do progressive urban social movements and local initiatives respond to the dominant challenges in globally competing cities? What about their chances – in terms of door-to-door canvassing, civil disobedience, and militant street protests – to influence the political agenda and the development of their respective cities without being incorporated into new strategies of poverty management and neoliberal deregulation? What sorts of new progressive alliances and networks are formed in, between, and across different cities? Finally, how do concepts for more direct democracy, social justice, and solidarity look like at the beginning of the 21st century?
At our public event, we will discuss those and more questions with representatives of different organizations and movements from Berlin, Toronto, Florence, Capetown, and Paris.