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Talks and Poster Presentations (without Proceedings-Entry):

T. Viderman:
"Mental production of meaning stirring the production of space in Vienna";
Talk: Art in Public Space: Interdisciplinary Cooperation, Budapest, Hungary; 2013-11-14 - 2013-11-16.



English abstract:
A city´s spaces are embodiments of society´s imaginaries and material culture; they are bonded through multiple dimensions of everyday life. A particular challenge set by this project is its aim to depict a genesis of the production of meaningful places, consisting of strategic endeavours towards shaping certain urbanities and of meanings produced through everyday practices. This genesis receives major attention in the post-Fordist city, which relies on its social and cultural capital for economically supporting itself. As the actual manufacturing of material products takes place elsewhere, city's stakeholders rely on a city´s social and cultural capital n order to compete with other cities in gaining more investments, tourists and residents.

This research will be empirically supported by the investigation of everyday life and cultural practices related to social innovation in Vienna´s neighbourhoods, discussing and re-conceptualising spatial relations between spaces of everyday life and the strategic construction of meaning as a means of producing added value to space. It is exactly the main hypothesis of this project, that these strategic efforts are closely linked to the growing importance of social and cultural capital in the making of the contemporary city. The production of meaningful places is challenged by new rationales that abandon old imaginaries and strategically try to enhance the multiple immaterial layers of public spaces in the course of postFordist transformations. Planners´ substantial interest in the mental production of meaning has up to now been considered as exclusively manipulating urban imagery and enhancing place identity, with the aim of promoting a city´s competitiveness, mostly on behalf of the elites in power.

A holistic absolute exploration of urban realities as ever-changing social processes is not possible and not worth pursuing. This paper hence aims to revise to what extent those approaches have actually influenced the shaping of a city´s social space (stakeholders), urban cultures (primarily how a city´s space has been perceived and used, often including informal patterns of use) and how they are consequently manifested in the physical space. By studying these approaches and practices as an integral part of urban cultures, the paper portrays how they have brought to the stage previously unconsidered partners in planning, as the governing elites have been impelled to share some of their power with other stakeholders and parts of the civil society that have been considered to be an important part of the urban imagery of a city, thus generating new assemblages of partners in planning and opening new niches of development that were previously unconsidered, aiming at promoting social creativity, innovation and culture.

Keywords:
mental space, social space, place, meaningful place, everyday life, artistic practices

Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.