“Politics and the City”

The year 2016 marks the 10-year anniversary of Washington University’s City Seminar, a forum that brings together scholars from the St. Louis region across disciplines to share research methods, theories, and emerging projects on cities, urbanization and urban issues.

To commemorate the series — in an important election year — the fall 2016 program will comprise a roundtable discussion that takes stock of the contemporary city as a space where citizenship matters and rights can be constructed (Harvey). Some might argue, despite a polarizing presidential campaign at the federal level, party divisions remain blurred in cities. In many places, ideological debates over citizenship and what rights or responsibilities citizenship confers, or who is excluded from those rights, are brisk and hard-fought. In other places, privatization of services and urban spaces, as well as expanding or contracting housing and labor markets, have obscured or sidelined political debates. The City Seminar hopes to spur a new conversation about the relationship between cities—or the imagined urban—and politics.

The City Seminar roundtable will convene a cross-disciplinary panel to discuss the status of the city in the new millennium: Citizenship, policy, markets, and the roles, scales and potentials of the public sector, urban spaces and built environments. 

CONTACT: Tila Neguse, tneguse@wustl.edu