The Open City
Professor Richard Sennett is to be appointed Honorary Doctor at the University of Bergen (UiB). All those interested are invited to attend his lecture on Wednesday, 20 May, the day before the appointment.
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The Open City
The cities everyone wants to live in should be clean and safe, possess efficient public services, be supported by a dynamic economy, and provide cultural stimulation. They should address society's divisions of race, class, and ethnicity. These are not the cities we live in.
Cities fail on all these counts due to government policy, irreparable social ills, or economic forces beyond local control. The modern city is not its own master. Still, something has gone wrong, radically wrong, in our conception of what a city itself should be. In this talk, Dr. Richard Sennett will explore a more positive idea of the city, and how this ideal can actually be built.
Urban development has been a recurring theme in Richard Sennett’s body of work, most recently in the book
Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City (2020).”
The lecture is open to all interested parties. Coffee and tea will be served. Welcome.
Dr. Richard Sennett (born 1943), professor at the London School of Economics and New York University, is one of the world`s most renowned public intellectuals. Over five decades, he has contributed to the understanding of social inequality, the public sphere, work, and urban life. A central theme has been how social and practical skills, as well as the capacity for cooperation and listening, develop over time within communities. He is particularly known for his analyses of how city life, inequality and the new world of work shape social relations, in his books The Hidden Injuries of Class, The Fall of Public Man, The Corrosion of Character and The Craftsman. Sennett combines theoretical depth with a broad public reach. He began his career as a cellist before an injury led him into academia.