Timeline

Kin City – Reimagining Urban Space within Ecological Limits

Speakers and moderators of the Kin City Talks. Collage by Colnate Group (CC BC NC) based on images provided by the persons depicted. Credits: Leonie Geiger, Norman Posselt, Andi Weiland, Krystian Woznicki (all BG), Lukas Kozmus (gemeinestadt.net).

Conference, artistic interventions, workshops

ZK/U BerlinSiemensstr. 27, 10551, Berlin, Germany

Much of the world’s population now depends on cities as places to live. But for a growing number of people, cities are not safe places. Threats range from massive pollution to heat waves and rising sea levels. Cities are largely responsible for these problems. As ‘engines of growth,’ cities drive colonial capitalist globalization. One consequence of this process: devastated ecosystems return the stress they have been subjected to, for example in the form of the increasing violence of climate change.

How can we politicize the dual role of cities as both drivers and ‘victims’ of the disasters of our time? How can we reclaim and reinvent cities as infrastructures of both human and other-than-human life? How can we connect urban and ecological struggles? The three-day “Kin City” event, organized by Berliner Gazette, aims to explore these questions. With Debora Darabi, Pepe Dayaw, Nelli Kambouri, Constanza Mendoza, Svjetlana Nedimović, Claudia Núñez, Sara Petrolova, Christine Winter, Dzina Zhuk, and many more.

Program Highlights

Keynote: “Urban Planning and ‚Making Kin‘: Reflections on Multispecies Environmental Justice in Spatial Planning” by Sandra Huning (Technical University Dortmund).

Talks: “Climate (In)Justice in the Megacities of the Global South” by Farhana Sultana (Syracuse University). 

Oral storytelling: “VWagner City Edda” by Cata von Noxen, Sara Petrolova, Model Y. Schrottkiste

Admission is free, seats are limited, register by Oct 15 here: https://berlinergazette.de/projects/kin-city

The ZK/U is nearing completion. As part of the final participation process for the development of the new areas and focal points, we warmly invite interested parties, neighbors, friends, and park enthusiasts to actively engage in this process.

Celebrating its jubilee, the “Kin City” festival is organized by BG | berlinergazette.de and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb, and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.