Welcome to the Re-City Conference! (30-31 October 2025, Tampere)

Re-City logo

The theme of the 3rd International Re-City Conference is Urban Democracy and Radical Care. It is organized as part of the wider Radical Care for the City theme week at Tampere University in October 2025.

Re-City Conference 2025 – Urban Democracy and Radical Care

In the Re-City Conference 2025, we focus on the questions of radical care, justice, democracy, and the city. For us, radical care means recognizing urban vulnerabilities and carrying collective responsibility with and for our cities by adopting caring and critical approaches and practices. We link care with democracy to highlight how care is crucial for everyday democratic action and vice versa, if we want to create cities that are inclusive and care-full.

We divide our approach into four partly overlapping themes of 1) the theory and ethics of care in the city 2) urban transformation, 3) social and spatial justice, and 4) urban democracy and activism. During the conference and through these four themes, we ask important questions such as:

  • What does radicalness of care mean in particular? Do we need new conceptualizations and practices of radical care in cities?
  • Can urban change be made in a caring manner, or does it lead to gentrification, housing violence, biodiversity loss, or other urban problems and challenges? 
  • What kinds of inequalities and vulnerabilities are involved in the transformation of urban environments? How can they be approached in a caring manner?
  • What kind of political questions are related to urban care and democracy? How does democratic crisis affect urban care? 
  • How can citizens become caregivers of their cities? What kinds of radical care practices there exist and what is their relation to urban democracy?

Have a look on the full list of our themes here and join in by submitting your own abstract to one of them by 25 April 2025. The abstract submission opens here on 3 March 2025.

The keynote speakers of the Re-City Conference will be announced here soon. Before that, you can already mark the dates in your calendar!

The Re-City Conference is organized by TURNS Research Platform, Democracy Research Network and JUSTSPACES Research Network at Tampere University, in collaboration with the Research Group ASUTUT and Architecture Unit.