City and Power – Postmodern Urban Spaces in Contemporary Poland (Warsaw Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences)

This book is an empirical study of a central European city focused on the political process. The authors use the example of the city of Wroclaw to present a condition of the urban public sphere in the context of local governance. Contemporary specificity of the public sphere is a result of a long process of system transformation in this part of Europe as well as of the impact new global challenges have had on the political process in self-governmental institutions. The book presents the practice of governance as a form of the political in both institutional and civic spheres of the city. The cases provided (related to politics of memory, the symbolic, sports, subcultures and urban movements) show how circulations of governance practices are created and how they influence the institutional borders of the political. Cover Contents Preface: Wrocław, a City of Success? (Katarzyna Kajdanek / Jacek Pluta / Igor Pietraszewski) The Power over Collective Memory (Barbara Pabjan) To Leave a Trace on Urban Walls: Youth Cultures in the Third Circulation of Memory in the City (Grzegorz Kozdraś) Transformation of Architectural Space in Wrocław (Iwona Borowik) Bike Power: Emergence of the Cycling Movement in the Urban Public Sphere (Katarzyna Kajdanek / Jacek Pluta) Artists and Power in the Field of (Subsidized) Urban Culture (Igor Pietraszewski) The Football Paradigm in Wrocław Urban Policy: the Municipalisation of Śląsk Wrocław (Mateusz Błaszczyk) Bibliography This book is an empirical study of a central European city focused on the political process. The book aims at presenting political practices as a form of the political in the institutional and civic sphere of the city. The cases provided focus on the issues of the urban symbolic sphere, architecture, sports, subcultures and urban movements.