Imaginations of the street
European Capital of Culture events and the right to the city

Workshop, 3-4 May 2012

Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Organized by Dr. Derya Özkan, Vildan Seçkiner (M.A.)

This workshop is organized as part of the Emmy Noether Research Project 
“Changing Imaginations of Istanbul: From Oriental to the 'Cool' City”, 
and will focus on the role of the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of 
Culture (ECoC) Project in the consolidation of the imagination of “cool 
Istanbul.”

The main purpose of this workshop is to discuss how cities are imagined 
in European Capital of Culture events and to what extent and in what 
ways that interacts with the daily life of people in these cities. The 
concept of “the right to the city” elaborated by Henri Lefebvre and 
later developed, criticized and revised by other urban theorists will be 
at the center of the workshop discussion. The concepts of 'the police', 
politics, and 'the political' by Jacques Ranciere and the discussion on 
‘street politics’ by Asef Bayat may also provide a fruitful basis for 
discussion in this workshop – along with other approaches, theories and 
conceptualizations.

The workshop seeks to develop a terminology on the production of urban 
public space in terms of the right to the city, which can be used to 
critically investigate international mega city events such as ECoC from 
an interdisciplinary perspective. The workshop aims to bring together 
international scholars from different disciplines and research areas, to 
combine diverse theoretical approaches and various case studies, working 
on ECoC or similar mega city events and elaborating on the concept of 
“the right to the city”.

The workshop will include four sessions. The first three sessions will 
be devoted to case studies and will include two presentations each. In 
these three sessions, ECoC events will be discussed in terms of the 
right to the city.  The fourth session will include an overall 
discussion that will allow the workshop participants to elaborate on all 
the foregoing presentations and discussions. There will not be any 
presentations in the fourth session.

European Capital of Culture Events and the Right to the City

Propounded at the beginning as a “concept of generating a greater 
knowledge of European cultures within the member nations of the European 
community” (ECoC Final Report 2000), in order to take culture into 
account as much as trade and economy in local governance policies, since 
1985 the ECoC events intended to fulfil the goal of the European Council 
to comprise a ‘European identity’ as a representation of the cultural 
diversity in European cities. While the amount of the subsidy for the 
ECoC cities rose, the event worked for local authorities as a means of 
implementing culture-led regeneration policies.

Glasgow 1990 stands out in ECoC history in terms of generating cultural 
capital out of a city which was not recognized for its cultural and 
artistic life earlier. ECoC in Glasgow in 1990 later became a model for 
promoting the consumption of cultural capital in order to improve the 
local economies of ECoC cities in times of transition from production 
based economies to consumption based economies. Accordingly, the main 
purpose of ECoC events evolved to become the marketing of cultural 
consumption in cities.

This was exciting for the local governments that wanted to ‘sell’ their 
cities in a global arena. Thus, art and culture played an important role 
to package the marketing image of cities in the guise of composing a 
European identity through the slogan of ‘Unity in Diversity’. After all, 
ECoC turned out to be an opportunity to activate the potential cultural 
and artistic diversity of cities and to turn them into marketable items. 
To make cultural diversity visible, marginalized identities were brought 
to the fore as cultural values such as the Roma in Avignon or in 
Istanbul. While trying to implement the goal of ‘uniting in diversity’, 
and promoting the cultural capital to attract cross-border investors and 
visitors, in many cases ECoC events failed to communicate with the 
people and take into consideration the needs and desires of urban 
inhabitants.

SESSION 1 (3 May, 10:00-13:00) : “The production of the street as a 
political space and the space of politics”

The ECoC events attracted a substantial amount of investment in projects 
involving the regeneration of urban public space. Accordingly, the 
imagination of the street was considered an important element of city 
marketing. It is evident in the programs and final reports of examples 
such as Glasgow, Liverpool and Istanbul ECoC events that street life was 
instrumentalized to attract visitors; and it was turned into a means for 
the promotion of a city image.

This session will focus on the production of the street and its 
political contents to discuss the approach of the ECoC events to the 
political dynamics of street life. Some questions to explore are the 
following: What is the political on the street? Which terminologies and 
theoretical discussions can lead us towards rethinking and realization 
of the right to the city on the street? What kind of urban public spaces 
are produced by the political actions/moments on the street? What is the 
relationship between the instrumentalization of the street as political 
space by ECoC and similar mega city events and the street as a space of 
political acts that do not necessarily conform to the urban public order?

SESSION 2 (3 May, 14:30-17:30) : "Visibility on the Street"

The purpose of the European Council to achieve a ‘Unity in Diversity’ 
through ECoC events in terms of a European identity resulted in the 
inclusion and exclusion of various acts and identities on the street; 
and this attempt was legitimized with reference to the neoliberal 
discourse of democracy. While the people raising the issue of identity 
politics were in struggle with the state on and off the streets’, the 
issue of visibility was articulated by the ECoC events and by the final 
reports as a matter of social integration.

The second session will discuss issues such as the street as the space 
of identity politics and self-expression, identity politics claiming 
visibility on the street, and the modes and tactics of street politics 
that are outside of the visible part of daily life. What is included and 
excluded by the ECoC events in terms of visibility on the street? In 
what ways are these exclusions and inclusions exercised? In this session 
we will discuss the street not only as the space of visibility for 
politics but also as the space of invisible resistance.

SESSION 3 (4 May, 10:00-13:00): "Resistance through Street Arts: 
performances and public demonstrations"

The ECoC programs encouraged street artists to take part in the ECoC 
program and act as an intensifier of the city marketing image.  In this 
session, we will dwell on issues of the street as a space of free 
expression and resistance against the policies of authorities and their 
attempts to govern public space. The inclusion of such expressions and 
acts of resistance by mega city events to generate an image of the city 
desired by the authorities will be discussed. The discussion will 
develop around the following questions: To what extent and in what ways 
do the governing policies and the market co-opt resistance and free 
expression? To what extent and in what ways is outdoor culture (street 
festivals, etc.) transformed into a commodity by the market and the 
governors? What does “freedom on the street” stand for?

SESSION 4 (4 May, 14:30-16:00):"Governing the street and policy making"

The main argument of ECoC events was putting ‘culture’ on the agenda of 
governance. To this end, in 1997, the Council of Europe put forward a 
model of cultural governance, which described the position of culture 
and art in the urban economy and proposed a monitoring system to promote 
cultural developments according to public financing and investment. 
Although these cultural concerns were pronounced by the Council of 
Europe as a way to invest in the quality of life of the citizens, the 
results of the events revealed that the main purpose had been the 
touristic attraction and competitiveness in city marketing rather than 
facilitating cultural accessibility for the inhabitants.

In this concluding session, the reproduction of the street as a space of 
ongoing resistance, the concept of governance, the policy making 
mechanisms of local governments in terms of the right to the city, and 
the exclusion and inclusion processes in the policy making processes 
will be discussed. The relationship between the state, local 
governments, the market, civil society and everyday life will be dwelled 
upon.  Some questions to draw on will be the following: Can a mode of 
‘participation’ in decision making processes in terms of the liberal 
democratic discourse solely be considered as the realization of the 
right to the city? In what terms can we discuss the case of 
international mega city events in terms of “the right to the city”?

Please send an abstract of max. 300 words (for a twenty-minute 
presentation) by 11 March 2012 to [log in to unmask]

Please mention which of the first three sessions you would like your 
abstract to be considered for.

The Emmy Noether Research Project and LMU Center for Advanced Studies 
will cover the costs of travel and accommodation for the selected 
participants of the workshop.

Institut of European Ethnology
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Oetingenstrasse 67
80538 München

http://www.en.uni-muenchen.de/news/newsarchiv/2011/2011_oezkan.html