Re-Inventing the Urban

In the long and ongoing process of planetary urbanization, urbanity has appeared as a ubiquitous topic in disciplines ranging from sociology, urban studies, and economics, to literature, design, and contemporary art. As the chosen environment for most of today’s cultural, economic, and academic elites, urban space constitutes an ever-present backdrop for unfolding posthumanity. How to live together in todays’ cities, how to confront challenges together, and how to think about urbanization as a global phenomenon, have become pressing and ongoing questions that stir the curiosity of researchers, artists, politicians, and contemporary urbanites alike. In the face of multiple crises, we are confronted with the cascading effects of climate change, intercontinental migration as well as political and economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, urban centers with their cultural capital, innovative potential, and economic power appear as ideal places to look for inspiration, change, or maybe even revolution. As an approach that takes the ubiquity of the urban into account, the concept of planetary urbanization tries to describe urban existence as interwoven in international networks of production, consumption, and sociocultural interaction that span the entire globe. Hence, the urban is understood as an all-encompassing concept, which holds the potential to change the world and how we experience it.