Our starting point was to ask questions about care in urban spaces, and to use these questions to inform each other about strategies, mindsets, and methodologies that we have either experienced or encountered in our work.
Let’s start with our questions:
- How can urban space be used to raise awareness about care?
- What is a care city?
- Why are care places are becoming good business models?
- How to fight the privatization of care?
- How to secure urban spaces for children & the youth?
- Have you ever participated in a care strike?
- How do we care for the oppressor when we do emancipatory care for the oppressed community?
- How do we transform our modes of attention – structured by cities in very specific ways – to transform the city?
- What are we blind to? Do we suffer from nature/ plant blindness?
- Have you ever thought about how much care work in the world is poorly paid or unpaid?
- How can we protect the basic rights of care workers from abroad?
- Who and what are we willing to take care for?
- Have you ever thought about what your life would be like if you could share care time with others?
- How can we use / share our privileges to help and support people / more-than-human forms who don’t have them?
Strategies and references:
Greek Solidarity Clinics
Solidarity clinics provide free medical assistance, particularly in times of crises.
GeKo Neukölln
Your community health care center in Berlin-Neukölln
Melissa Network of Migrant Women in Greece
Example of a care organisation that promotes empowerment and active citizenship.
Parkcenter Treptow
An abandoned shopping center in Berlin which turned into a site for urban care.
Zusammenkunft Berlin/ Haus der Statistik
An example of public-common-partnersgip to provide workspaces for artists and activists in Berlin.
Embros – Self Managed Theatre in Greece
Autonomous governance-model
SuperCoop eG in Berlin
A cooperative supermarket that is entirely run by its 1.600 members.
Neruda Popular Space
A housing squat of social movements AND homeless racialized movements.
Care Revolution Network
Network of more than 80 groups in individuals in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Labsus
Labsus working on regulation of civic use
Non Una di Meno
Lotto marzo strike from productive and reproductive work
Lago exSnia
Ex Snia and the lake that fights in Rome
Care Card
Care Card – giving value to care work, appreciation
ExAsilo Filangeri common good
As a “common good” with social use destination the building was de facto subtracted from the estate market and speculation mechanisms dominating the city
Reclaiming Public Urban Common Space
Campaigning for urban commons, municipalization – the case of Can Battló (factory occupied and then municipalized in Barcelona):
- Spain’s Insurgent Social Centers
- DSpace
- Paper: Collaborative governance under austerity in Barcelona: a comparison between evictions and empty urban space management
- Paper: BUILDING ALTERNATIVES TO THE CREATIVE TURN IN BARCELONA: THE CASE OF THE SOCIO-CULTURAL CENTRE CAN BATLLÓ
- Video of the communcal occupation
Public-Commons Partnerships (Can Battló)
- CAN BATLLÓ, A PILOT ON THE COMMONS
- What is “Political” in Commons-Public Partnership? The Italian Cases of Bologna and Naples
- Towards Democratisation of Public Administration: Public-Commons Partnerships in Barcelona
Youth in Urban Spaces Project
- Youth in Urban Space: youth work and its role in urban developments
- Paper: Youth in Urban Space
- Radio Pata ghetto radio in Cluj/ Romania
- Navarino Park
- Self-organized park in Athens
- Video
COUNTERMAPPING
This is not an Atlas (website&book about Countermapping) https://notanatlas.org/
Manual of Collective Mapping (Iconoclasistas) https://www.academia.edu/28625755/Manual_of_Collective_Mapping_Critical_cartographic_resources_for_territorial_processes_of_collaborative_creation_2016_
European Capital of Care 2025 –> to replace the European Cultural Capital
Credits
This project was conceived at the Berliner Gazette’s annual conference 2024 entitled KIN CITY.
The ‘Caring Urban Ecologies’ workshop was facilitated by Ela Kagel. Particpants were: Sabrina Apitz, Cléo Mieulet, Paula Mikat, Ela Kagel, Nelli Kambouri,Tania Orbova, Cecilia Pasini, Veronika Petrova, István Szakáts, Manuela Zechner.
All text and images: Creative Commons License 4.0 (CC-BY 4.0). All images were taken at the KIN CITY conference.