“CITIES ARE US” is a series of events that constitutes the last step of a two-year collaboration between the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra and the Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights (CISDP) of the international association United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). It is also an opportunity to bring together the work of several thematic working groups, projects and observatories at CES, which often work on overlapping topics.
The “CITIES ARE US” series of events completes the joint CES/UCLG project “Observatory of Inclusive Cities”, which collected a series of innovative practices from around the globe and strives to stimulate an international debate on some of the problematic issues that emerged within the project’s cases. The events aim to create a dialogue among the academic community, social movements and political institutions to help rethink some pivotal concepts related to the emergence of inequalities in the urban territories. The main outcomes of this dialogue will be published in electronic conference proceedings and will also enrich a collective book to be published in the beginning of 2013.