Mapping Vilnius. Transitions of Post-Socialist Urban Spaces

This book is the first volume documenting an ongoing research on participatory approaches towards urban spaces in changing societies.

It pursues a tenet of the Laboratory of Critical Urbanism that the contemporary moment is one marked by an ongoing reconfiguration of the local, regional, national and global scales at which societies are organised. In this context, urbanism, or the practices shaping the every¬day life of cities, is no longer primarily an effect of decisions made by state run planning bodies, but rather is a dynamic and heterogeneous process that needs to be critically rethought from various angles. It is on the basis of an analysis of the changing context in which cities function that this research project frames the question of inhabitant participation. Firstly, the project asks how this changed context produces new barriers to, and possibilities of, social in¬clusion. Secondly, it aims to explore how, in this context, academic research can serve to facil¬itate the inclusion of citizens in the processes of transforming urban spaces. And finally, it also seeks to develop methods to include these citizens into the research design not as objects, but as subjects.