The making of cities: power and contestation
The city is the subject of constant, sometimes violent, debate. How have forms of power over land ownership and public spaces changed? How have the levels of public decision-making and management of the city changed? How were residents' aspirations expressed? How did protest and citizen action emerge, and how did they play a part in the debate on the city's development?
Moderator: Clarissa Yang (University of Geneva)
Free, no registration required
Subject to availability
Program in partnership with the Haute école de musique, whose students offer a musical welcome at 6 p.m.
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Ongoing construction sites, estate extensions: the spatial hold of the urban seems insatiable. Voltaire's countryside, Les Délices, bears witness to this: this unspoilt islet is now encircled and absorbed into urban space.
Today, in the face of environmental and demographic upheaval, the management of flows, the demands of habitat and the space left to nature are fuelling both political and civic debate. However, cities - like Geneva, Switzerland's most densely populated municipality - are also matrices of sociability and interaction with a long history.
The Rencontres des Délices series will explore several facets of this urban history. It will be an opportunity to better understand the vicissitudes of a way of thinking about the common good, to better situate the ways of resolving conflicts as well as the social, economic and political dynamics that underpin urbanity.