KNOWING AND LIVING (IN) THE CITY – DIFFERENTLY!

The DAAD-funded Partnership ‘Urban Transformation and Placemaking: Learning from cities in South Asia and Germany’ organized an international workshop in Heidelberg between the 2^nd and the 8^th of July 2023. Over 20 students from participating schools shared a week of field visits, joint fieldwork and discussions with professors, experts and stakeholders of knowledge and experience in and of the city. An interdisciplinary faculty and student group researched in disciplines such as urban geography, art and architectural history, urban planning, art, and visual and media anthropology. Questions motivating in the workshop included: What new ways of seeing are allowed by looking into the past of the city from perspectives that challenge its mainstream historic discourses? How to make cultural diversity in the city visible?  What does regarding Heidelberg as a “sustainable city of knowledge” mean? And, is urban commoning possible? 

Three geographical areas of the city allowed us to approach the research lines for the workshop: the Altstadt, or Historic District, was a place to question the ways in which we understand the past as a maker of the city, and how cultural diversity is allowed or restricted within it. The Bahnstadt and Patrick Henry Village, in the south, exposed the concerns, policies and priorities with which large “new” developments of the city are being constituted, claiming agencies of sustainability and the building of a city of knowledge. Residential associations and initiatives in the west presented possibilities of “commoning”: groups of people deciding to live together in community structures that defy traditional notions of property or real estate dynamics. Reflection spaces before, during, and after field visits were a space to entangle lived experience, share the sensorial impressions of the outings and propose relations, ideas and further questions. An interesting parallel workshop was held by a small student collective within the excursion, aiming to seek possible answers to the question: how does language impact the way in which we study and research urban transformation? As a result of the workshop, historical, temporal, spatial and discursive layers of the university city were excavated, which allowed to enrichen the student´s understanding of it and pose an array of new questions surrounding it. 

The focus for joint fieldwork and teaching was on the way communities can claim, retain and make places of belonging in a rapidly changing city. In most traditional settlement fabrics, the ‘street’ has remained the social space of community life for centuries, where the private worlds of families gave way to the public sphere of the community. The collective association and connected meanings of spaces of dwelling intertwined with the dynamic public life of sur­rounding urbanity become the foundation of community belongingness and social cohesion. This forms the connective thread weaving the social and physical fabrics of our cities. However, over time, the processes that determined the making of physical environments, for example, the joint family as the primary social unit, have either eroded or been replaced with emerging patterns of change. New populations, speculative real estate pressures, commercialization of residential areas, dying industries, and gentrification have added to alterations and transfor­mations to older neighborhoods. Such juxtapositions of the old and new in terms of social flows and urban form result in a condition of mix and increasing heterogeneity in an already diverse scenario. Whom do these places now belong to? How does placemaking happen in a mixed multi-faceted group of urban dwellers? Who is included and who is excluded in the occu­pation and use of spaces with the altered complexion of social structure? How is the ‘new’ neighbourhood defined now?

The key area where students will be trained and the joint module tested is the 15th-century Mughal city of Old Delhi, and in particular, Dherampura Gali. Known as Shahjahanabad, this was a city of havelis (man­sions), katras (housing clusters), kuchas (residential alleys), galis (lanes), and mohallas(neigh­bourhoods) to be seen as the physical counterparts of the social content of the city. From the idyllic walled city for a flourishing empire of the past to one of the largest centres of commerce in the Asian sub-continent, comparable to Kathmandu, Old Delhi encapsulates ur­ban transformative forces that mega-cities in this part of the world have confronted and offers invaluable lessons of change and adaptation. It is important to re-visit such local urban refer­ences to study and learn for future habitations, to re-orient educational perspectives towards these enriching sources of knowledge systems that are today more relevant than ever before. The second field site was a main road in the urban village of Kishangarh, South Delhi. Here, the idea of the village is challenged because though certain ‘village types’ might be retained (e.g., farming, cattle-breeding), the urbanization is in full swing, the most recent transformations being introduced by the construction of a metro stop.

More than 20 students participated and worked in interdisciplinary, international teams. The faculty comprised of all three partnering institutions, including urban geography, art history and architecture.