Event: Antje Steinmuller Lecture
Date: Tuesday, March 08, 7:30 pm
Location: The Red Victorian, 1665 Haight St. San Francisco
Info: http://www.immanent-urbanisms.com/

About the Series:
Immanent Urbanism(s) – A series of discussions and talks about how bottom-up urbanism is
remaking the landscapes of design, power and economy in the 21st century
Immanent Urbanism(s) considers the ways in which everyday people are shaping the modern
city according to their own needs and specifications. The twentieth century witnessed a massive
consolidation of control over the form and intended usage patterns of urban space. Today, the
same established interests remain the dominant shapers of cities, shaping both the form of the
metropolis, and coding the citys spaces as parts within a larger economic engine composed of
workplaces for production, commercial centers for consumption, homes for family life, and
circulatory spaces for facilitating movement between these. Yet below the surface of the
apparently well-behaved city is an intransigent and multitudinous universe of people making
what they will of the urban situation that they have inherited. Many unauthorized, creative,
immanent urban practices have challenged the prevailing urban coding and authorship of
planned urban development, leading to new meanings, cultures and life modes. To complicate
matters, state and market forces have caught on to these activities, and many top-down
organizations seeking new audiences and new channels of influence are hatching their own
seemingly bottom-up cultural movements and co-opting existing movements. What is the
status of these immanent urbanisms today? What are the diverse motivations behind these
immanent practices? How have they been shaped by historical precedents? How are they
changing and challenging more dominant structures and paradigms? How are institutions
responding? We invite you to come and explore this world of counter-urbanisms, from historical
movements like the Situationist International, to cultural ubiquities such as graffiti and street
skateboarding, to the informal settlements that have long been a fixture in developing countries,
and the many instances of DIY urbanism and a Tactical Urbanism that have actually become
tactics of larger cultural and economic forces.