Rapid spatial and demographic growth, mass building investment and disappearing centers, administrative withdrawal and poor social infrastructure, frozen democracy and growing isolation, environmental crises and sudden catastrophes – these are some of the issues many large-scale cities face today, whether neoliberal, post-socialist, or part of the Global South and East. Cities are expanding fast, but often in fragmented ways, driven by investment-led urbanism that puts profit before community. Participatory and democratic processes are being eroded, making it all the more urgent to explore alternative, creative ways of reclaiming and reimagining urban space.

Over the past few years, the Center for Social Vision, and since last year the Nine Elephants Festival, both based in Sofia (Bulgaria), have been exploring the contradictions and complexities of urban life – its open structures, informal interactions, and non-discursive relations. Inspired by spontaneous street encounters, informal care networks, everyday activism, and unexpected urban affinities, we support transdisciplinary artistic and curatorial practices that imagine more desirable ways of co-living.