Cosmopolitan Habitat is a dialogue for a new paradigm in urbanism between Germany and Southern Europe: conceptual models, urban strategies and spatial practices of the Open and Inclusive City. As international dialogue towards a new urbanistic paradigm and operative actions, the Cosmopolitan Habitat, aims to sharpen our understanding of current innovations in urban policies and urban planning. In the last years, innovative approaches to respond to the challenges of migration, climate change, and of openness in focus on cities have been developed in Southern Europe and in Germany. Combined with the aim to strengthen urban economies and to make cities and their territorial networks again places of shared and com- mon futures, this led to new sorts of urban strategies and new ways to co-create urban change.
Cosmopolitan (from the classic Greek kosmos: world and polis: city) Habitat (from Latin: living space) as international dialogue focuses on the city as laboratory of civilisation. It examines theoretical frameworks, conceptual models, and urban projects for this cosmopolitan turn and asks for their linkages with society and politics.
How can cosmopolitan atmospheres be grasped and triggered, based on the exchange among cultures and communities?
How can abandoned and neglected spaces in cities become cosmopolitan accelerators and place of civilisatory experience?
How can co-design processes for spaces and networks support a culture of cosmopolitan makers?
Thus, the project reflects the impact of current societal challenges in urban planning and design and aims to give back impulses for debates in society and politics.