Public space design and governance have been gearing increasingly towards privatization and exclusive management in many European cities. This iteration of BAUTOPIA proposes, through theoretical frameworks and examples of specific practices, different ways of imagining and constructing the everyday culture and our spatial surroundings.
In BAUTOPIA 2, a European Creative Hubs Network publication that brings together newly commissioned and existing writing, we propose bold and compassionate practices for creating new kinds of spaces, designed along with the place and its human and non-human users, in a sustainable and long-term way. While some of these initiatives are externally funded, others are sustained by voluntary work and direct action. They are all ignited by the persuasion that different modes of space-making can and do exist beyond the current and dominant institutions and policies, actively involving the agency of the people and their participation in both the design and use of public space.
BAUTOPIA 2 raises questions about whether such initiatives inadvertently reinforce the very system they seek to challenge and the role of community in such endeavors, where each individual’s actions contribute to the collective outcome. The publication looks at spaces that are in constant transformation by the agency of those who live, move, work, and act in them, through examples of different forms of organization, interaction, and communication.
