Life in contemporary cities unfolds as a constant negotiation around problems of value. From the daily improvisation of urban dwellers to the financial flows driving planetary urbanisation, nearly every facet of urban existence can be said to depend, implicitly or explicitly, on valuation – that is, on assigning, defining or betting on how much things, movement, space, time and experience are worth it. From real estate speculations to reputation economy, from platform urbanism to urban branding, from grassroot collectives to quality-of-life policing, from cultural policies to ecosystem services – urban worlds are incessantly made and unmade by processes, imaginaries and practices of value creation, appropriation, extraction and destruction across different domains, scales, and rhythms.
Cities have long been tied to the pursuit of a better life, from utopian visions to the contemporary promise of a freer, wealthier, and more meaningful life. Regardless of the inequality, precariousness, stress, and violence that often characterise urban existence, cities keep holding this promise, translated in a widening array of imaginaries (smart, safe, healthy, green, beautiful, creative, resilient, etc.) that feed urban policies, aesthetics and politics. Cities, however, are also quintessential sites of extraction, where this promise is constantly bent to the logics of capital, and where the value that human and nonhuman life incessantly generates is economised and sequestered through violent processes of gentrification, securitisation, touristification, or financialisation. New technologies amplify these dynamics, dramatically expanding the frontiers of value extraction while entrenching surveillance, precarious labour, and dispossession.
The complexity of this process is only partially captured by this drama of creation and dispossession, however. Before being extracted, value must be defined and measured, depending on moral ideals of what is good; cultural images of what is meaningful; ecological metrics of what is sustainable; economic imperatives of what is worth it. A wide array of indicators like liveability indexes, for instance, organise cities and neighbourhoods in simplified hierarchies that determine which spaces and lives are worth living, and which aren’t. Besides the inherent inequalities and structural blindness these charts betray, much of the value that urban dwellers daily produce fall under the radar of such institutional and epistemological regimes, with often dramatic consequences. At its core, of course, this is a question of power: who defines what counts as valuable, and who benefits from these definitions? Understanding how urban value is generated, defined, extracted or erased, therefore, is an urgent epistemological and political matter.
How do contemporary processes of valuation and valorisation shape notions of urban worth, and what practices or forms of value are overlooked or excluded in these processes? How do grassroots collectives, experimental practices, and alternative valuation systems challenge or queer dominant frameworks of urban value? And, what can they reveal about overlooked economic, social, or political worth? In what ways can we speculatively reimagine urban value beyond taken-for-granted notions of liveability and habitability, while avoiding the mere romanticisation of alternatives? What methodological innovations or experimentations are needed to capture and attend to diverse forms of urban value, including non-human ones, and how might these methods resist or repurpose dominant forms of valuation? What is the urban worth, and how might we reimagine the value of urban life to support emancipatory urban futures?
These are just some among the many questions the workshop invites to engage with, encouraging participants to reflect on the role of value in shaping urban life. Open to the widest possible variety of topics or themes, we invite participants to explore the question of value conceptually, epistemologically, methodologically or politically, through the interdisciplinary lenses of urban studies, geography, spatial policy and planning, political ecology, sociology, architecture, anthropology, and beyond. We are eager to engage with projects and papers that delve into the concept of value —broadly understood—by exploring the way in which its politics, economy and aesthetics shape the contemporary urban condition.
Workshop activities include:
- Plenary keynote sessions.
- Breakout parallel sessions – divided in groups, participants will present their paper and receive comments by a mentor and other participants.
- Wrap-up session with discussion on lessons learned.
- Q&A session on “academic survival” (strategies and tips for academic publishing, and post-PhD challenges).
Who can attend the workshop:
The workshop is open to PhD students and early-career scholars in the fields of urban studies, planning and geography, and all the social sciences and humanities with an interest on space.
Some 30 participants will have the opportunity to present and discuss their research projects and/or findings during a 3-days event organised as a space of exchange, debate and learning.
A minimum of 8 seats will be reserved to members of the AESOP Young Academics, please mention in your motivation letter whether you are a member.
Application and registration:
Applications open from February 26th to April 15th, 2025.
Send an abstract for your presentation (max 500 words) and a short letter of motivation to lavinia.pereira@ics.ulisboa.pt and andrea.pavoni@iscte-iul.pt
Decisions will be sent by May 15th, 2025.
Registration by June 30th, 2025.
Submission of long abstract or short paper (max 3,000 words, to be distributed among participants) by September 15th, 2025.
Registration fee: 200€.
We will be able to offer at least two fee waivers and two scholarships of €500. Thus, if you have no research funds and are interested in applying for a fee waiver or a bursary, please mention this in your motivation letter, briefly explaining the reasons why (priority will be given to scholars from low-income countries and/or from research institutions with little or no research funds).
Organising committee:
- Lavínia Pereira (coordinator, ICS-ULisboa)
- Andrea Pavoni (coordinator, DINAMIA’CET, ISCTE)
- Marco Allegra (ICS-ULisboa)
- Luisa Rossini (ICS-ULisboa)
- Simone Tulumello (ICS-ULisboa)
Mentors:
- Maan Barua (University of Cambridge, UK)
- Andrea Mubi Brighenti (University of Trento, Italy)
- Lavínia Pereira (ICS-ULisboa)
- Andrea Pavoni (DINAMIA’CET, ISCTE)
- Marco Allegra (ICS-ULisboa)
- Luisa Rossini (ICS-ULisboa)
- Simone Tulumello (ICS-ULisboa)
Keynote speakers’ short bio:
Maan Barua’s work is concerned with the politics, ontologies and economies of the living and material world. He is currently working on a book titled An Amphibious Urbanism, which aims to conceptualize urbanicity from wetness rather than dry ground. Maan is the author of Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) and Plantation Worlds (Duke University Press, 2024). His other ongoing interests pertain to metabolic urbanization, developed through an ERC Horizon 2020 Starting Grant on Urban Ecologies. Maan is a University Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Cambridge.
Andrea Mubi Brighenti‘s research covers broadly space-power-and-society issues. One main thread includes visibility and visual culture; a second thread covers the territoriology and atmospherology of public space; a third thread focuses on the practices of governance, resistance, and inspiration. His most recent monographs are A New Index for Public Space (Routledge 2025, with Tali Hatuka); Elias Canetti and Social Theory. The Bond of Creation (Bloomsbury, 2023); and Animated Lands. Studies in Territoriology (University of Nebraska Press, 2020, with Mattias Kärrholm). Mubi is Professor of Social Theory and Space & Culture at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy.
5th edition, November 26-28th 2025, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa)
Organisation:
What’s the urban worth? Revaluing the value of urban life
Keynote speakers:
- Maan Barua (University of Cambridge, UK)
- Andrea Mubi Brighenti (University of Trento, Italy)
Support:
References:
AbdouMaliq Simone. 2016. The uninhabitable? In between collapsed yet still rigid distinctions. Cultural Politics, 12(2): 135-154.
Andrea Mubi Brighenti. 2018. The social life of measures: conceptualizing measure–value environments. Theory, Culture & Society, 35(1).
Brian Massumi. 2018. 99 theses on the revaluation of value: A postcapitalist manifesto. University of Minnesota Press.
Friedrich Nietzsche. 1990[1889]. Twilight of the Idols. Penguin Classics.
Didier Fassin. 2009. Another politics of life is possible. Theory, culture & society, 26(5), pp.44-60.
Harm Kaal. 2011. A conceptual history of livability. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 15:5, 532-547.
Liliana Doganova. 2024. Discounting the future: The ascendancy of a political technology. Princeton University Press.
Maan Barua. 2023. Lively cities: Reconfiguring urban ecology. University of Minnesota Press.
Michel Foucault. 2010[2004]. The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1989. Palgrave Macmillan.
Neferti XM Tadiar. 2022. Remaindered life. Duke University Press.
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