Working the City— Labour, Resources and the Urban Commons
Technical University Lübeck, Summer Semester 2026, Seminar 

Lecturer
Cities do not operate on their own. They are continuously maintained, supplied, cleaned, organized, and repaired. At the same time, the resources that sustain urban life—space, time, energy, infrastructure, data, and care—are unevenly distributed and politically structured.

Urban space is thus not only planned, but constantly produced through work: visible and invisible, formal and informal, paid and unpaid. Some forms of labour stabilize the city and are recognized as such; others remain unnoticed, despite being essential to its functioning.

The seminar approaches Lübeck as a site of production. It asks: Where does work take place? Which resources enable it? How is value assigned—and to whom? And how do these processes materialize spatially?

Each student selects a specific site within the city—such as a street, a workplace, a logistics node, a care facility, or a public space—and examines it over four consecutive days from different perspectives: labour, resources, value, and recomposition. The focus lies on identifying spatial patterns, temporal rhythms, and forms of organization that structure everyday urban life.

The analytical work is translated into a four-part leporello, which develops a coherent reading of the chosen site. Through diagrams, mappings, and short textual statements, the seminar constructs a series of situated observations that reveal how urban systems are maintained, negotiated, and potentially reconfigured.

The seminar concludes with a collective reflection on Lübeck as a network of interdependent practices, in which work, care, and infrastructure form the conditions of urban life.

 TH Lübeck


Literature selection

Federici, Silvia (1975/2012): Wages Against Housework.
Fraser, Nancy (2016): Contradictions of Capital and Care.
Tronto, Joan (1993): Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care.
Sharma, Sarah (2014): In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics.
Srnicek, Nick (2017): Platform Capitalism.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt (2015): The Mushroom at the End of the World.
Ostrom, Elinor (1990): Governing the Commons.
Bollier, David / Helfrich, Silke (2019): Free, Fair and Alive.
Paech, Niko (2012): Liberation from Excess.
Welzer, Harald (2019): Everything Could Be Different.
Simone, AbdouMaliq (2004): People as Infrastructure.
Pugliana, Anna (ETH Zürich): Research on urban production, everyday economies and commons practices.







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