Cultures of Assembly launches The Esch Clinics

Cultures of Assembly launches their most important project to date: The Esch Clinics. The Esch Clinics is an urban research project promoted by the Chair of The City of Esch at the University of Luxembourg. The project will accompany The City of Esch in its regeneration process from an economy founded on the extractive steel industry in Central Europe to one based on knowledge and services. We understand regeneration as an everyday reality which is always in the making, and that it is the result of processes of continual friction and negotiations. This process first and foremost considers the social and environmental dimension of the city.

The Esch Clinics focuses on the reproductive activities of the city and the support structures that, despite often being hidden, make a city function. We try to understand this by attending to specific social relations and urban care actions. We also question the paradigm of growth that has guided the development of our cities—and that has been made possible by extractive capitalist practices.

Within The Esch Clinics, we are investigating different forms of urban commoning and political collaboration in a context of just socio-economic transition towards carbon neutrality. Over the next two years, we will run a series of approximately 60 investigative formats (workshops, public discussions, assemblies, research residencies) that will support our central ambition: to read and understand the urban commons in Esch and promote spatial politics of the commons.

The term “clinic” is borrowed from the field of law. “Law clinics” are a non-commercial support structure, a public think tank that helps to ask questions in a non-partisan and open-minded way. The Esch Clinics are producing a bridge between theory and practice, understanding that public authorities – including public decision-makers—can support and be supported by political action emerging from civic collective knowledge.

With this project, it is our aim to perform what academics might call a transmutation: a productive bridge from research to impact driven agency. We understand ourselves as “proximity agents”—field workers, who investigate, digest, and pass on information, and propose alternatives. We understand our work as a form of embedded critical practice.

This project is working towards formulating a set of policy recommendations that will be handed over to politicians at local, regional, and national levels in Luxembourg and the Greater Region. A public campaign, which we are devising and designing alongside this investigative project, will prepare the handover of these recommendations.

Research residencies
The research residencies with local, regional, and international experts will be our main format of intervention along a two-year timeline. Whereas most residencies will last 1–4 weeks, we will also be working with some individuals and collectives for more substantial periods of engagement. One major protagonist within this investigation is DemocracyNext, an international platform for democratic innovation. With them, the work in Esch started on July 1, 2024—and will eventually lead to the country’s first genuine Citizens’ Assembly.

Our first round of research contributors include 2001, Aline Hernández, Anna Puigjaner, Carole Lorang, Caroline Genz, Céline Zimmer & Carine Oberweis, Chrissie Muhr, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Cristina Gamboa & Carles Baiges, CSAM, David Madden, Denis Scuto, Eleni Katrini, Endboss, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Fabian Bechtle & Leon Kahane, Ferro Forum, Finn Williams, Frank Wies, Franziska Aigner, Gabu Heindl, Gustav Eden, Jean Goedert, Jesko Fezer, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrüggge, Josep Maria Montaner, Josephine Michau, LNCL, Marianna Takou, Marina Weisband, Matylda Krzykowski & Felix Ganzer, Meriem Chabani, Mogwai / Stuart Braithwaite, Mohammed Zanboa, Neeraj Bhatia, Norry Schneider, Pelin Tan, Plan Comun, Rahel Süß, René Penning, Sandy Kaltenborn, Social Services of the City of Esch, Studio SNCDA, Thanos Zartaloudis, Tom Becker, Tommy Jack, Valentin Bansac.

From research to political action
The Esch Clinics understands the need to care for the urban commons and to give space to under-represented voices that are often left out of urban policy decision-making. We believe that the political dimension of urban practices must go beyond the refined intellectual discourse of academia and the technical language of city administration. We want to support the ability to read and communicate with the complex mesh of social realities that interact in the city and the diversity of communities they represent.

Trough social and spatial contextual research, we want to work with the everyday realities, frictions, challenges, and aspirations that coexist in cities. Equipped with this knowledge, we will digest, develop and present a set of urban governance protocols that reflect this complexity. Posed as hands-on policies, they can then be practically and strategically applied by politicians and decision-makers. We attempt to devise a counterbalance to the economic forces that have traditionally influenced the city’s development.

The Esch Clinics seeks to listen and understand, and to extent the circle of political decision-making beyond the elected representatives: to include everyday voices and under-represented groups in the challenge of building the city together.

Project team: Markus Miessen (PI), César Reyes Nájera, Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen, Kristina Shatokina.

Cultures of Assembly—Chair of the City of Esch
Prof. Dr. Markus Miessen, Professor or Urban Regeneration, Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Humanities, Social and Educational Sciences (FHSE), University of Luxembourg.

culturesofassembly.org / masterarchitecture.lu