Learning the City ― Cultural Approaches to Civic Learning in Urban Spaces

This publication elaborates a cultural perspective on the city and explore how it might improve our understanding of civic learning as an essential component of the city. A cultural understanding of civic learning, central in this publication, will focus on citizens’ assemblage of the social, the material and the symbolic, as a kind of wayfinding in society.

To further explore this cultural approach to civic learning in urban spaces, this book focuses on the shift from a socio-spatial towards a cultural understanding of the urban and argues that it opens up our understanding of civic learning from a mere social towards a more political and a cultural practice. By discussing civic learning as being a cultural practice that co-produces the city, this book addresses civic learning as a way of dwelling with the city, through which citizens find their way in a constantly evolving society. It will unfold intricacies about the contested position of citizens as producers of the city by exploring three questions addressing the relation between culture, learning and the city.

1: How does civic learning appear in urban spaces?

2: How does civic learning take place through urban spaces?

3: How are urban spaces created as a result of civic learning?