From time to time we like to share some of the knowledge made available to our students throughout our course in the form of recommended readings from our guest professors, especially when those readings are essential for any urban practitioner and are readily available online. So, here’s a list of 12 must-reads recommended by professor Kathrin Golda-Pongratz in our recent workshop on participation and urban memory, an understanding of which is fundamental for intervening in cities in ways that preserve their cultural heritage and civic character in an age of globalization and privatization.
“We need an urbanism that acknowledges and preserves the many layers of a city and prioritizes the coexistence of those layers, allowing for different uses and multiple identities. One that serves to organize but rather than imposing, inspires and facilitates collective life,” explains Golda-Pongratz.
Examining the role of public space in cities and identifying contemporary discourse on appropriation, participation and urban memory, the course—titled Strategies of appropriation, participation and manifestation of urban memory in public space—focused on ad-hoc actions, community network organizations, informal and subversive strategies of civic involvement and acts of resistance towards imposed rituals and cultural codes, as well as strategic institutional, planning and architectural approaches to challenge and enhance collective and participative initiatives.
Kathryn Golda-Pongratz is an architect, urban planner and urban researcher, and is the author of the book Landscapes of Pressure and Palimpsests, inscriptions, inlays: sketching urban identities. In: City on (Re)construction, also available online.
Just click on the links to download the pdf:
1. A Ladder of Citizen Participation (1969) by Sherry R Arnstein
2. A Pattern Language (1977) by Christopher Alexander, et al.
3. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980) by William Whyte
4. The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) by Michel De Certeau
5. Micropolítica. Cartografías del deseo (2006) by Feliz Guattari and Suely Rolnik
6. The structural transformation of the public sphere (1989) by Jürgen Habermas
7. Present Pasts. Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory (2003) by Andreas Huyssen
8. Reconstruction of the Past, On collective memory (1992) by Maurice Halbwachs
9. Urban landscape history: The sense of place and the politics of space, The power of place. Urban landscapes as public history (1995) by Dolores Hayden
10. Warped space. Art, architecture and anxiety in modern culture (2000) by Anthony Vidler 
11. Spaces of Identity (1996) Kevin Robins and David Morley
12. The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) by Michel Foucault
__
If you liked this, make sure to check out our post 23 (Free) Landmark Books About Cities Every Architect Should Read for more downloadable must-reads.
Top image via