On Top of Sustainability Exploring Rooftops as Sites of Urban (Cultural) Sustainability Transformations

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Cover image: aerial view of Barcelona, Spain. Photo by Logan Armstrong on Unsplash
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Published: Dec 31, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32891/jps.v8i2.1658
Keywords:
rooftops cultural sustainability festival public space Rotterdam temporary urbanism urban sustainability transition

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Peter Christian Frandsen
University of Osnabrück
Friederike Landau-Donnelly
Radboud University

Abstract


This article examines the role of cultural events in Rotterdam’s urban sustainability transition by looking at the festival Rotterdamse Dakendagen [Rotterdam’s Rooftop Days]. During this week-long festival, rooftops are used by citizens and cultural groups to activate urban spaces as places of learning, exchange, and DIY urbanism, thus broadening the scope of rooftops as places for cultural sustainability. Drawing on empirical material collected via qualitative interviews, policy document analysis, and five months of participant observation, we identify three aspects that inform urban sustainability transitions via culture: (1) the (re)activation of rooftops via cultural programming, (2) institution-building that is mindful of festivals’ continuously temporary nature, and (3) the limited material, yet wide-ranging immaterial effects of urban cultural festivals that have accelerated the Rotterdam’s urban (cultural) politics of sustainability. In sum, the article argues that culture plays an important role in any investigation of urban sustainability transitions and should be considered with more conceptual nuance in the future.


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How to Cite
Frandsen, P. C. and Landau-Donnelly, F. (2023) “On Top of Sustainability: Exploring Rooftops as Sites of Urban (Cultural) Sustainability Transformations”, The Journal of Public Space, 8(2), pp. 69–86. doi: 10.32891/jps.v8i2.1658.
Issue
Vol. 8 No. 2 (2023): Research Perspectives
Section
Articles
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Author Biographies

Peter Christian Frandsen, University of Osnabrück

Peter Christian Frandsen holds a M.Sc. Human Geography (Radboud University Nijmegen, 2020-2021) and a M.Sc. Global Change Geography (University of Freiburg, 2021-2024). Currently, he is pursuing his Ph.D. at the ECORISK graduate school.

Friederike Landau-Donnelly, Radboud University

Dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly (*1989) is an urban sociologist, political theorist, and cultural geographer. She currently works as Assistant Professor of Cultural Geography at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Her empirically-grounded research interweaves political theories of conflict, power and urban space with literatures on artistic activism, social movements, civic self-organization and care. She co-edited the volume [Un]Grounding – Post-Foundational Geographies (2021) with Lucas Pohl and Nikolai Roskamm, in the quest to advance a conflict-oriented theory of space and spatiality. Her dissertation has been published as Agonistic Articulations in the ‘Creative’ City: On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics, as part of Routledge’s series on political sociology (2019). Friederike has co-authored a number of journal articles on artists’ policy-making interventions in cities, and the development of cultural quarters.

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