Open City

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Overview

The three-year project, funded by the ESRC, looks at the social and political life of the city to test whether the utopian ideal of the Open City exists in real life, and explore issues of race, migration, mobility and living with diversity. It explores how the city accommodates new forms of urban life, through the social configuration of its spaces and places, and looks at the ways urban government at the city-wide and borough scales reflect, promote or limit the idea of the Open City.

The research focuses on London and explores the dynamics of London life at the city wide, borough and street / housing block level. At each of these three scales we conduct the research on four main strands:

• City histories – using archives we explore histories and patterns of welcoming of and hostility to ethnic, racial, and migratory politics in London.
• City movement – using data sets for population churn at various scales within London, we combine quantitative and qualitative data to understand patterns of mobility and what we call permeability at estate, neighbourhood and borough and city scales.
• City geographies – using maps and qualitative research we explore the ways that people’s geographical relationships influence, or not, their experiences of city life.
• City politics – using mixed methods we look at how practices and policies of urban government at the city-wide and borough scales reflect, promote or circumscribe the idea of the open city through campaigns and policies.

Aims

The concept of the Open City has been developed by architects, planners and theorists to describe a place of social integration, cultural diversity and collective identity, where different cultures and lifestyles co-exist and interaction leads to enrichment. It contrasts with urban spaces where commercial malls, gated communities and poor transport networks drive increased fragmentation and new diversities are characterised by dynamics of intolerance and antagonism.

The project investigates the assumption that the open city is the good city, or not, by examining the real lived experienced of the open and closed dimensions of city life.

Timescale

Principal Investigator

John Solomos

Michael Keith

Karim Murji

Steve Pile

 

Researchers

Eda Yazici

Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum

Funding

UKRI Economic and Social Research Council

Below is a description of the research objectives for the Open City project. For academic articles in press, please follow the link here.

The Open City is a utopian ideal, one that is arguably under explored empirically. The Open City is incomplete, errant, conflictual, and non-linear. A closed city is full of metaphorical and literal boundaries and walls. This project explores these dimensions of city life by asking how the city can be both open and closed. The open and closed city is not seen as a dichotomy, but as a series of lived problematics, both social and political. The central research question asks: what are the limits of the open city? This prompts specific issues such as how open has the city been? How do people negotiate the open and closed aspects of their lives? What are the politics of living with others in the city?

To explore these questions, we look at the ways that the turbulent micro- and macro-politics of city life enable people to live together. The project explores older questions of social cohesion and newer questions of neighbourliness by considering the ways that people move back and forward between everyday civility or indifference to forms of hospitality and community as well as the everyday issues that make a difference to patterns of co-existence and dwelling in the city.

We focus on London because its constant change at a time of heightened pressures on public services and resources in housing, education, employment and the cost of living means that those who dwell there make different temporal and spatial claims over belonging to the city while also providing many everyday and structural sites of friction. This is arguably unique, yet London is comprised of ordinary places and ways of living, situated in unexceptional wider social and spatial arrangements, that enable wider lessons to be drawn.

The project looks at four key issues that we synthesise at different intersecting scales. These are:

• How the city enables or circumscribes practices of welcoming, generosity and solidarity over time
• How urban dwelling is shaped at a time of rapid social change
• How people navigate the variable geographies of settlement and mobility in their everyday lives
• How old and new social cleavages play out in the city and are managed by city government and other civic actors

Three scales

The Open City project works collaboratively with a range of partners to generate research findings, share our learning, and build links with communities that we work with. Collaborations include work with charities, local government, artists, and a museum.

Artist Collaborations

Dana Olărescu: The Most Inclusive Place

Natasha Davis: Cycling Visibilities

Natalia Orendain: Estate Anatomies

Partner Collaborations

Local partners

Camden

London-wide partners

Publications

2026 Looking for London: Finding the City Michael Keith, Steve Pile, John Solomos, Edanur Yazici and Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum. London and Berlin: De Gruyter

2025 ‘Uncovering the Colonial Histories of Three North London Housing Estates’ (Edanur Yazici, Steve Pile, Michael Keith, Karim Murji, John Solomos, and Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum) The London Journal

2025 ‘Entanglements of Race and Migration in the (Open) City: Analytical and Normative Tensions of the Sociological Imagination’ (Michael Keith, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Karim Murji, Steve Pile, John Solomos, Edanur Yazici, Ying Wang) Sociological Review 71, 1: 3-23

2024‘Representing London: Making and Claiming the City’ (Karim Murji, Michael Keith, Steve Pile, John Solomos, Edanur Yazici and Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum) City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action 28, 5-6: 793-811

2023‘Politicization, Postpolitics and the Politics of the Open City: Openness, Closedness and the Spatialisation of the Political’ (Steve Pile, Michael Keith, Edanur Yazici, Karim Murji, John Solomos, Eda Yazici, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum) Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 41, 6: 1075–1093

2023 ‘A Progressive Sense of Place and the Open City: Micro-Spatialities and Micro-Conflicts on a London Council Estate’ (Steve Pile, Michael Keith, Karim Murji, Edanur Yazici and Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum, John Solomos) Geoforum 144, 1-11

2023 ‘ “London is Avocado on Toast”: The Urban Imaginaries of the #LondonIsOpen Campaign’ (Edanur Yazici, Karim Murji, Michael Keith, Steve Pile, John Solomos, Ying Wang) Urban Studies 60, 12: 2418-2435

The Open City project has new and upcoming research publications and reports; proceedings from conferences and workshops; artistic outputs from work in communities; and co-produced work with third and public sector organisations. For a full list of outputs please see: https://opencitywarwick.co.uk/home-2/open-impact/

Academic Publications

The Open City project will publish a total of 12 academic articles across the four project work packages and one co-authored book. As the project draws to a close in late 2023, this page will be updated with our latest outputs.