On Friday, 7 June 2024 at 5 pm, the 10th Right to the City Forum will begin — for the first time in Berlin. It will take place at the so-called Dragonerareal (“dragoon area”) in the heart of Kreuzberg, a place which has also been contested for a decade, where the Rathausblock model project is currently being developed. Here, activists will meet, exchange ideas, get to know each other, inspire and engage in strategic debate over a total of three days.
How should the urban social movements continue? How can we expand our understanding of the Right to the City in order to involve more people, grow stronger and win struggles together?
After a panel discussion on Friday evening on the topic “Next level Right to the City — of local struggles, nationwide campaigns and global challenges”, the workshops will begin on Saturday, 8 June 2024, from 9:30 am, and again on Sunday, 9 June, from 10 am. We have divided the almost 30 workshops into the following thematic strands:
Most workshops will be held in German, however, we are going to commonly facilitate participation of non-German-speakers by providing whisper translation. The bold workshops are held in English.
Thematic strands
Feminism
A city for all can only be a feminist city in which our relationships of care, our self-empowerment are at the centre and appropriate spaces are available for this. The following workshops belong to this thematic strand:
- Let it glitter, let it proliferate — (eco)feminist impulses and utopias in the more-than-city,
- Empowerment through embodiment: methods for overcoming powerlessness
- Building the caring, queer-feminist city from the bottom up and
- How do we socialise a shopping centre in a feminist way?
Climate
The right to the city is being severely jeopardised by the climate crisis. Heatwaves, storms, the threat of entire regions becoming uninhabitable and the resulting refugee movements are already characterising our everyday lives. How can urban (social) and climate movements work together to push for climate-friendly cities? The workshops Climate and tenants’ movement for a social heating transition (soziale Wärmewende), Preventing demolition and Right to urban nature are part of this thematic strand.
Organizing
The grassroots organisation of tenants and neighbours was already the focus of last year’s Right to the City Forum in Oberhausen. We are continuing the debate. The following workshops are part of this thematic strand:
- Revolutionary, transformative or emancipatory? Neighbourhood work (Stadtteilarbeit) between utopia and reality,
- Tenants‘ protest or revolutionary neighbourhood work? How we organise solidarity on the ground,
- Exchange of experiences: Organising against high operating and heating costs at Vonovia & Co,
- In which direction do we organise? Between tenants’ association, tenants’ union and corporate networking and
- Networking of tenants against the Heimstaden housing group.
Socialisation
The Berlin Senate has been delaying the socialisation of large housing companies for almost three years. A referendum in Hamburg has also been put on hold. How can we return housing, which is treated as a financial market asset rather than a home, to public, social ownership? The following workshops are part of this topic:
- Nationwide expropriation! But how? – Supra-regional perspectives with and without a Socialisation Act,
- The Kiez team structure of the Expropriate DW & Co. campaign: Investigation of a supra-district (urban) political form of organisation and
- Land, a special commodity: analysis and critique of the economic significance of land in the city.
Mobility
Mobility is one of the fundamental questions of the Right to the City: how we move through the city, for whom the streets are built and intended, and for whom they are not. Public space instead of parking spaces, affordable or free local transport instead of a car-friendly city, neighbourhood blocks instead of motorways. The workshops Using law against the solid line of cars and Starting and ending campaigns: How do I strengthen my political position through allyship? by activists from the 9-Euro-Fonds are part of this thematic strand.
Housing & Rents
Even after more than 15 years of the Right to the City movement in Germany, gentrification, high rents and access to decent housing are still at the centre of the struggles for the right to the city. The following workshops belong to this thematic strand:
- Leben statt Leerstand,
- Einstürzenden Neubauten (“collapsing new buildings”): What opportunities could the construction crisis offer and what answers are provided by left-wing housing policy?,
- Enforcing social housing policy at federal level — how do we build up the necessary pressure?
- Forced loss of housing: analysis, fields of action and exchange by and for activists in the field of (preventing) forced evictions,
- Small syndicates and new cooperatives — new possibilities to withdraw houses and flats from the market and
- Putting the brakes on rent together! A proposal for a campaign and practice on rent control.
In addition to these main topics, there will be workshops on migrant perspectives on the right to the city, on the debt brake and financing public infrastructure, on the smart city, on campaigning and media work, on drugs and the right to the streets, on playing in public spaces and much more.
The programme will be framed by a series of art & creative workshops including screen printing, writing texts, dance and music, activist art, a screening of the great (anti-)gentrification opera ”Lauratibor” on Saturday evening and the Right to the City party in the Südblock (U Kottbusser Tor) afterwards, as well as a series of excursions on Sunday afternoon.
At the end, on Sunday afternoon, we will take up the questions from the beginning and the threads from the workshops again. We will discuss together in a final assembly until around 1.30 pm how we can succeed in involving more people, becoming stronger and winning struggles.
