How can we take better care of our cities, each other, our environment, and the planet?
Radical Care for the City
ATUT Symposium / 27 – 28 October 2025
Open Day & PhD Seminar / 29 October 2025
Re-City Conference / 30 – 31 October 2025
Tampere University, Finland
Climate change, biodiversity loss, the dismantling of the welfare state, and democracy crisis affect the everyday lives of city residents and the existence of other urban species. During the Radical Care for the City theme week on 27 – 31 October 2025, we ask how – instead of continuous growth on the one hand and demolition and destruction on the other – we can nurture and cherish our built, social, and ecological urban environments. In the current world situation, this question is radical, as it sets empathy before hate and collective responsibility before profit. Hence, we need a radical shift in the way we care for our cities.
Care refers to “an activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Fisher & Tronto, 1990). In this vein, we do not limit care to care labor but expand it to wider relations between humans, non-humans, and cities. Care is as much a value and a practice, meaning that changes are required in the ways we think of and act for our cities and their futures.
During the Radical Care for the City week, there will be a series of conferences and other events, all focusing on the questions of care and the city. The week starts with the Architectural Research Symposium (ATUT) that explores the promotion of resilience in the built environment through a radical care approach. An Open Day with various program such as a multidisciplinary PhD Seminar, open lecture, and excursions will give a pause in the middle of the week. In the end of the week, the Re-City Conference discusses the issues of urban transformation, social sustainability, justice and democracy in cities.
Together, the events during the Radical Care for the City week complement each other and offer a broad vision of urban care and activities that nurture our built, social and ecological environments. We want to see cities not only as objects of care but as enablers and sources of caring actions. For us, care-full cities enable a better world.