Learning Urban Activism : A Retrospective Look at How to Engage Students

Sustainable urban transformations require positive imaginations of alternative urban futures. Critical urban researchers have increasingly emphasised the active role of academics in recouping such alternatives. The shared interest in activist scholarship and the forms of insurgent and alternative spatial practices brought the authors together and resulted in an interdisciplinary course called Urban Activism. The course was organised by the School of Architecture and the Research Group of Politics of Nature and the Environment (PONTE) at Tampere University in spring 2021. The Urban Activism course aimed to stimulate critical analysis of the sustainable transformation of urban space, as well as creativity and multiple forms of political agency in these transformations. By being grounded in the empirical realities of the urban world and actors making the change, we witnessed how the socio-spatial transformations, even if small, often unleash other processes with implications beyond their sites and affect people beyond their locale. In this paper, we reflect upon the Urban Activism course in relation to critical-democratic engagement, which has emerged as an alternative to traditional forms of engagement. The conceptualisations of critical-democratic engagement helped us address how students learned critical thinking through urban activism, and became aware of social and political processes in urban transformations. Finally, it helped us witness the engagement of students, activist communities and teachers.