Manifesto for the Just City
A recurring online lecture and writing programme in which student teams from partner universities around the world draft a short manifesto setting out their vision of a just city.
What the programme does
Four lectures, one debate series, and a short text that students have to fight for, together.
The Manifesto for the Just City began as a question addressed to students rather than to experts: what would a fair, sustainable and inclusive city look like, if you had to put it into writing and defend it in front of strangers? Run by the Centre for the Just City at TU Delft together with a rotating group of partner universities, the programme has so far brought together students from institutions including IHS Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Illinois, Winston-Salem State University, Morgan State University and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and has run with the support of Pakhuis de Zwijger, the independent cultural platform in Amsterdam.
Justice sits at the centre of the brief, not as decoration but as the organising question: how should the benefits and burdens of urban life be distributed, and what arrangements allow a city’s inhabitants to flourish, govern themselves and exercise a genuine right to the city. The programme treats this as a problem that planning has to keep answering rather than one it has already solved, and it asks students to argue a position rather than describe a consensus.
- Register your interest through the call for participation (see below for the current enrolment page).
- Form a group of three to six students, from one university or several, from any discipline.
- Take part in a four-part online lecture and debate series with academics and practitioners working on urban theory, planning and spatial justice.
- Draft a manifesto of no more than 1,000 words with your group, in any language, provided an English translation is supplied; original illustrations produced by the group are welcome.
- Submit the manifesto by the deadline set for that year’s edition.
Participants who submit a manifesto and attend at least two of the four sessions receive a certificate of participation from Delft University of Technology. Selected manifestos are published in A Manifesto for the Just City, an open-access book series issued by TU Delft Open, now running to four volumes.
- TU Delft – Centre for the Just City
- IHS Erasmus University Rotterdam
- University of Illinois
- Winston-Salem State University
- Morgan State University
- Cape Peninsula University of Technology
- Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam (supporting partner)
How to enrol
Dates, themes and the registration link change with each edition. For the current call for participation, session dates and the live registration form, visit the Centre for the Just City’s programme page.
Enrol via the Centre for the Just CityRead past manifestos (open access)
For questions about the programme, write to r.c.rocco@tudelft.nl.