Georg-Simmel Center for Urban Studies

Property, The City and The Law

  • When Nov 11, 2019 from 06:00 to 08:00
  • Where Universitätsstraße 3b; 10117 Berlin; R002
  • Attendees Adolfo Estalella, Complutense University of Madrid (Chair) Prof. Ignacio Farías, Humboldt University
  • iCal

Title: Property, The City and The Law

Speaker: Adolfo Estalella, Complutense Universtiy of Madrid

(Abstract below)

ENGLISH
The Think and Drink Series is presented by the Georg-Simmel-Center for Metropolitan Studies @ HU Berlin
-> on Mondays 6pm ct Room 002 (Ground Floor)
-> Universitätsstraße 3b / 10117 Berlin
-> Free & open to anyone interested in Urban Sociology, no prior registration needed
-> Talks and discussions take place in English language (with few exceptions)


More info:
https://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/de/lehrbereiche/stadtsoz/think_drink

ABSTRACT
Property is under dispute in the city. Institutions with a long history in certain countries like tenants unions or housing cooperatives based on the right to occupy have been extended to new geographies while urban commons are emerging all around the world. In all these initiatives, urban dwellers are defying Western conventional property relations (in all its expressions: private, public, and collective). Participants in these processes learn the technicalities of the law, produce material arrangements and explore social relations to produce novel arrangements of property relations. This talk pays attention to the subversion of urban property in the city to tentatively propose a program aimed at exploring the deep relation between the law and the city: How the law shapes the city? Could the city be described as a legal landscape? If the emergence of the modern citizen is tied to the creation of public institutions (like libraries, schools, etc.), we could ask what kind of political subject is brought into the city by new forms of property relations.