Culture and Sustainable Development in the City: Urban Spaces of Possibilities

This book exposes the potential to advance a cultural approach to sustainable urban development. It explores urban ＂spaces of possibilities＂ and links them to the seized or missed opportunities for innovative forms of transversal partnerships throughout the city and of culturally sensitive urban policies.

The call for sustainability brings with it challenges for which, in view of the urgency of social transformation, institutional innovations are necessary. Sustainable urban development will only succeed through creative impulses, experiments, trying out innovative ideas, and making alternatives visible, in particular through locally rooted urban initiatives, artistic actions, and social movements. Discussing many concrete examples from several years of empirical research in the cities of Hanover and Hamburg (Germany), Baltimore and Chicago (USA), Bangalore (India), St. Petersburg (Russia), Singapore, and Vancouver (Canada), the book connects urban spaces and their actors; looks at their guiding principles, strategies, and concrete practices; and identifies new levers, networks, and alliances. Readers will find in this book not only inspiring examples of culture in everyday life in the city but also explanations about the qualities that make local cultural initiatives especially full of potentials, and how they may translate into city-wide changes, engaging with the whole City as Space of Possibilities.

The book will interest researchers and advanced students in the interdisciplinary fields of urban studies, sustainability science/sustainability research, cultural sciences, urban sociology, and sociology of the arts/cultural sociology; and those interested in the transdisciplinary collaborations between the arts, academia, and civil society.

Sacha Kagan is a ’Privatdozent’ (habilitated external lecturer) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany), where he worked as research associate from 2005 to 2018. He was coordinator of Cultura21 International from 2007 to 2016, and a board member of the Research Network Sociology of the Arts at the European Sociological Association (ESA) from 2011 to 2019 (coordinator 2015-2017). In 2018, he received the Basarab Nicolescu Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering Award. He authored over 70 publications, directed 3 documentary films, and contributed in various roles to a dozen arts projects.