Public Space Unbound: Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition

Through an exploration of emancipation in recent processes of capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice rather than an abstract professional field organized by institutions, politicians and movements.

Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and circumstances in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory practices relate with public space under 'post-political conditions'? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopias are in crisis, we argue that productive emancipatory claims already exist in the lived space of everyday life rather than in the expectation of urban revolution and future progress.

Sabine Knierbein is Associate Professor for Urban Culture and Public Space and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, TU Wien, Austria. Her research foci are theory of urbanization, critique of everyday life, planning theory and civic innovation. She is the editor of Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe (2014), Public Space and Relational Perspectives (2015) and City Unsilenced (2017).

Tihomir Viderman is an architect and planner, affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space of TU Wien, Austria. For a number of years, he has been engaged in interdisciplinary research and teaching, focusing on culturally inclusive and locally embedded approaches. He is particularly interested in how the expression of cultural difference is modulated by professionals in lived space.