Groove the City - Move the Streets

3rd International Conference of the Urban Music Studies Scholars’ Network in cooperation with the Thematic Group for Public Spaces and Urban Cultures of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP TG PSUC)

The field of Urban Music Studies has emerged as a vibrant interdisciplinary arena, exploring the dynamic interplay between music and urban life. At its core, this field recognizes sound as both a reflection and a constitutive element of urban life, deeply embedded in the spatial, social and cultural fabric of cities. Music shapes and is shaped by the rhythms of urban spaces, from bustling streets and quiet courtyards to iconic concert halls and underground clubs. This field draws upon and contributes to diverse academic disciplines. By engaging with a variety of perspectives from across the globe, it challenges dominant narratives and highlights the diverse ways in which music resonates within urban settings.

In the realms of planning, urban design and architecture, the development and envisioning of cultural organizations has traditionally been concerned with grand works of opera houses and theatre buildings. Since the 1970s, however, the focus has shifted towards the inclusion of informal and more circular cultural agencies, many of them linked to relational conceptions of space, or to the further development of immersive and acoustic technologies. Public space researchers have embraced socio-cultural aspects of urban life to cultivate hope, yet have only randomly engaged with the power of urban music subcultures and scenes, and the study thereof, to contribute to neighborhood solidarity, collective work practices when building music spaces, or to the deep democratic aspects of a diversity of music cultures, and the intermezzos and crossovers between them, in the city.

Against this backdrop, the third international conference of the Urban Music Studies Scholars’ Network Groove the City – Move the Streets in combination with the 2024-2026 event series of the Thematic Group for Public Spaces and Urban Cultures of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP TG PSUC), seeks to deepen this research field by examining the manifold mobilities that shape and are shaped by sound in urban contexts. This includes a critical engagement with the concept and materiality of “the street” as a multifaceted and symbolic terrain where social, cultural, and political processes unfold.

Programm

Further infos can be found here.