Prefigurative Placemaking as a Strategy of Transformative City-Making

Abstract

This working paper focuses on urban places of change that render alternative futures already tangible and localised. In the face of climate change, expansive urbanisation, gentrification, rising socio-economic inequality and political polarisation, novel forms of collective city-making are emerging, with citizens working ‘bottom-up’ to realise their visions for a more just, sustainable and inclusive society.

The initial hypothesis is that alternative, at times seemingly utopian, visions of city are materialised through collective, prefigurative political practice, scribing a possible path towards social-ecological transformation. This is amalgamated in the concept of prefigurative placemaking, the intersection of prefigurative political action and the processual, collective and intentional making of place.

“UTOPOLIS – Transformation in der Neustadt”, a project transforming a former supermarket in a post-migrant neighbourhood of Flensburg, Germany, into an inclusive space for assembly, exhibitions and events through sociocultural community work, serves as an empirical case study. Through participatory observation and guided interviews, the perspectives and experiences of local actors were captured. The data was evaluated using qualitative content analysis to identify key themes, dynamics and contradictions. These are critically discussed in the context of the theoretical framework.

This working paper contributes to debates on approaches to, and drivers of, urban and social transformation. Prefigurative placemaking, inspired by utopian visions and ideals, constitutes a resistant practice of opening: it critically questions the status quo, affirms the supposedly “impossible”, sharpens the eye for what is not yet, but could be, and opens spaces of possibility for different experiences, practices and future developments. In this way, the practice creates concrete, locally situated starting points for change.