INURA
The International Network for Urban Research and Action INURA is a network of people involved in action and research in localities and cities. The Network consists of activists and researchers from community and environmental groups, universities, and local administrations, who wish to share experiences and to participate in common research. Examples of the issues that Network members are involved in include: major urban renewal projects, the urban periphery, community-led environmental schemes, urban traffic and transport, inner city labour markets, do-it-yourself culture, and social housing provision. In each case, the research is closely tied to, and is a product of, local action and initiative.
INURA is a network with a self-organizing, non-hierarchical, decentralized structure. INURA was founded in 1991 in Salecina, Switzerland.
The Chair of Sociology is part of INURA and participated in several conferences and also research activities.
The New Metropolitan Mainstream
The term “new metropolitan mainstream” was developed to decipher a broad range of phenomena that have emerged in cities around the world with important impacts on urban development and everyday life. Under the conditions of planetary urbanisation, cities have become strategic nodes of the global economy and of social life. Increased competition between cities leads to similar strategies for attracting capital investment and highly qualified labour, and similar standards and processes for urban planning and design. A prestigious blend of cultural amenities and offerings for luxury consumption is today part of the standard policy repertoire. Many contemporary cities both in the global North and in the global South are confronted with gentrification and urban regeneration, and have been equipped with skyscrapers, flagship projects, and “star” architecture. The new metropolitan mainstream has multiple faces and exists in many different versions.
Christian Schmid and Daniel Weiss: The New Metropolitan Mainstream (2004)
In: INURA, R. Palosicia: The Contested Metropolis. Six Cities at the Beginning of the 21st Century. Birkhäuser, Basel / Boston / Berlin 2004, 252–260.
Christian Schmid: Henri Lefebvre, the right to the city, and the new metropolitan mainstream (2012)
In: N. Brenner, P. Marcuse and M. Mayer (eds.): Cities for people, not for profit: critical urban theory and the right to the city. Routledge, New York, 2012, 42–62.
A research, exhibition and publication project
The New Metropolitan Mainstream was a project launched by INURA in 2008. The Chair of Sociology supported this project and took part on the development of the theoretical concept and the research. Analytical categories and standard framework settings were developed in a collective process during several meetings. 36 local teams designed maps and posters of their cities using the collectively developed indicators and criteria. Maps and posters were presented in a public exhibition at the 20th INURA conference 2010 in the Rote Fabrik in Zurich. They were subsequently revised and published on the INURA website in October 2011. It was the aim of this project to analyse and compare this diversity.
INURA New Metropolitan Mainstream
The Right to the Planet: Reconsider the Urban Question
Since 2010, when the 20th INURA Conference was organised in Zurich with the topic “New Metropolitan Mainstream”, the planetary crises have deepened. In 2023, when INURA meets again in Zurich, there are many reactions to these crises that crosscut old habits for urban living and ineffective spatial practices such as commodification, gentrification, exclusion, evictions, extended urbanization, and many more. In some cases, their associated challenges are overcome, however, through collective civic practices that are capable of reversing the course of destruction.
Guests from India, China, Australia, African, Latin and North American countries, and from various European countries will be joined by local activists and scholars, to explore critical topics related to housing and the social question, to developments beyond the inner city, and to current crises and urban actions. From the city of Zurich, past the cantonal borders, and all the way to the Alpine region of Maloja, the conference participants will immerse themselves in present Swiss realities. These intense exchanges and synergies created during the conference will expand in future visions, projects, conferences and publications, a practice of the INURA network proved throughout its last three decades of existence.
