Cities and urban centres are unique human habits where strangers living side, by side are confronted with decisions about how to collectively organise daily life. Cities are also centres of accumulation, where access to ‘things’ is constantly negotiated. Yet who and what gets to flourish in cities, is continually contested. Compounding such complexities, the infrastructural layers that govern cities are often rendered invisible, or abstracted. Such abstractions can lead to detachment, or a sense of disempowerment. So how do we practice the art of engaging in, the togetherness that is required, to co-produce collective urban futures?
This question sits at the heart of Urban Hosts and is rooted in the lived experience of working with others on such messy realities.
The proposal put forward through Urban Hosts, is that a habitual and intentional dialogical practice is required, that is continually and regularly repeated. This is activated in Urban Host through the design of salon style events, With the intimacy of the salon format providing a level of scaffold, support and welcoming, through which the cultivation of a conversation around what it means to live in cities is fostered.
Topics covered to date have focused on how artists, scholars, designers, concerned citizens, activists and public governing bodies approach urban commoning, spatial design, resource sharing, transport, food security, algorithmic governance, housing, ritual, communal practices, repair and care, species welfare and rights, data rights, privacy, surveillance, the right to the city, urban infrastructural histories, urban sound, noise and folklores.
