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Social Infrastructure in the (Post-)Covid City (Metrolab Brussels)
Social infrastructures are conceived as built spaces and facilities hosting the community life and the public experience of the city, while offering a specific type of social good (education, culture, leisure, food, sport, empowerment, etc.). Whatever their main function (community centre, public library, covered market, swimming pool, etc.), they are places where values of openness, such as social inclusion and urban hospitality, take on a concrete and practical meaning, which makes them also an important vector of democracy.
The current health crisis, and the fear of close contact in indoor spaces that it entails, presents a major challenge for these places. What are and what will be its practical consequences on existing and future social infrastructures, on the publics that they host, on the policies that promote them and the fundings that support them? Does the COVID-19 pandemic herald a crisis of local community spaces and social facilities, or even of our larger « public interiors »?
Or does it call for a reconsideration of their function, use, design, layout? If these places are indeed of « infrastructural » importance for an urban society, what other indirect consequences can be feared and foreseen? Can the social infrastructure reinvent itself in the face of the pandemic, through technology-, design-, management- or behavior-based solutions, or through the use of online virtual spaces?
The purpose of this webinar is to explore these issues from different disciplinary angles and with the help of the best specialists, in order to identify policy-oriented solutions.
It consists of 6 sessions held from November 17 to January 19 on Tuesday afternoons (4:30-6:30PM), starting with a lecture (EN/FR) and followed by a discussion with Metrolab researchers.
Please find the detailed programme in the poster above and visit the « Social Infrastructure in The (Post-)Covid City » page on our website for a full presentation of the webinar.
The sessions will be recorded and uploaded (later on) on Metrolab Brussels’ Youtube channel.
For each session, you will receive an invitation with a link to the webinar room.
For the first session, we will hear Prof. Eric Klinenberg, sociologist at New York University and author of Palaces for the People, with a presentation entitled:
« Social Infrastructure and the Future of Civic Life »
17 November at 4:30 PM
