Experimenting with experimental urbanism: navigating between neoliberal fix and urban glitch

Abstract

This article takes up Henri Lefebvre’s description of experimental utopia as “the exploration of the possible” beyond its current usage in smart urban experimentalism bound to technological innovation and thus foreclosing fundamental change. Inspired by Russel’s utopian experimentalism of glitch feminism it considers “failure” to be an essential and more-than-contingent element for transformation. This is discussed by employing a critical case study of an ongoing project related to urban sustainability experimentalism in Graz (Austria) and focusing particularly on the initiative’s potential for challenging smart experimental urbanism through “glitches.” We describe two periods of this project—the proposal-writing phase and the implementation phase—in which glitches were exploited and turned into strategies that modified agential, discursive, and technological selectivities of project structures and their wider institutional network. The analysis is framed by tying the concept of the glitch to a strategic-relational understanding of social practices and structures in order to reinterpret “failure” and to rethink urban experimentalism in view of transformative strategies.