CONFERENCE: Middle Class Urbanism: New Aesthetics of Difference and Detachment in Cities of the Global South. Online, 9-11 June 2021
The “Middle Class Urbanism” research project invites you to a 3-day online conference hosted by the National Museum of Denmark. During the last couple of decades, the urban middle class has been consistently mobilized as the harbinger of viable futures for the cities of the Global South. Today practitioners, researchers and analysts are less upbeat in their predictions about the prospective role of the urban middle class. In many cities of the Global South macro-economic growth has not materialized and it is doubtful whether an expanding middle class does, in fact, lead to the expected outcomes.
Still, while the urban middle classes may have failed to bring about radical improvements of socio-political and economic conditions, imageries and expectations associated with ‘middle classness’ continue to reverberate across the urban landscapes of many cities today.
With this international conference, conference organizers want to gauge the importance of the urban middle class for exploring contemporary processes of urbanization in the Global South. They pose the following questions:
- How do transnational flows and geopolitical aesthetics affect middle class articulations in cities of the Global South?
- How are existing patterns of urban governance and land administration interwoven with new dynamics of middle class urbanism?
- How do urbanites use middle class aesthetics as a driver for urban citizenship?
The conference, which takes place between 9-11 June 2021, is open to the public. You can register online.