Events

Ceren Sezer will deliver a public lecture on “The Demise of a Just City? The Urban Transformation of Amsterdam”, as part of the project “Tbilisi as an urban intersection” funded by the Rustaveli National Science Foundation and the research seminar of the doctoral program in Anthropology, on December 14, at 19:00.

A brief overview of the topic

The city of Amsterdam has long been known as “the just city” and is characterized in academic circles as an egalitarian, diverse and tolerant city. However, over time, Amsterdam emerged as an international attraction – an economically unequal and politically tense space with gentrified regions.

Ceren Sezer will talk about the processes of urban transformation in Amsterdam and their impact on the cultural landscape of immigrant neighborhoods. Specifically examines how conditions of immigrants are changing with overall transformation by discussing/analyzing examples of shops, restaurants, and religious sites. The speaker argues that changes in the conditions of immigrants raise issues related to democratic public spaces and urban justice.

City government, professionals of urban design and urban planning should be informed and take these issues into account in city development policies and strategies.

About the speaker

Ceren Sezer is a Research Associate at RWTH Aachen University, Chair of Urban Design. She holds a PhD and an MSc in Urbanism from Delft University of Technology and a BArch in Architecture from Istanbul Technical University. Her research interest includes liveability and sustainability of public spaces, urban form and social life of the public realm, and spatial justice. She is the author of Visibility, democratic public space and socially inclusive cities (2020) and co-editor of several special issues and books including, Marketplaces as Urban Development Strategy, Public Space and Urban Justice, Spatial Justice in Urban Studies and Planning education (forthcoming), Marketplaces: movement, representation and practices and The Design of the Public Realm - Emerging Theories and Practices (forthcoming).

Before academia, Ceren practiced as an architect and urban designer in Turkey, Cyprus and the Netherlands. In 2010, she co-founded the working group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures under the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP). She coordinated the Group's meetings and workshops in Helsinki, Vienna, Ankara, Bucharest, Istanbul, Utrecht, Glasgow, Ljubljana, Lisbon, Beirut, Nicosia and Amsterdam. Besides her academic work, Ceren worked as an expert and curator for the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI), International Rotterdam Biennale of Architecture and Public Space Biennale in Roma. She has been invited speaker to the National University of Singapore, ETH Future Cities Laboratory, Cardiff University, Luzern University Applied Science and Arts, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Working language: English

Time: December 14, 19:00

Format: remote, in Zoom format: https://bit.ly/3ULqtRp

Meeting ID:  833 262 9803 

Attendance is free.

 2022