PhD defence S. (Sabrina) Rahmawan-Huizenga

Brief summary:

In recent years, cities have increasingly been portrayed as dynamic centers of experimentation, driven by the need to find creative solutions to complex global challenges in times of increasing uncertainty. Experimentation as a mode of (urban) governance travels around the world and is taken up in myriad ways. This dissertation is about urban experimentation with a focus on the creation of the Healthy City. It analyses how urban health experiments are constructed and enacted as governance arrangements, revealing the political choices and assumptions involved in the construction and practice of the Healthy City and the consequences of these. This dissertation shows that far from being straightforward, the Healthy City and urban health experiments depend on the normative political interpretation given to them and their implementation, and therefore have consequences for how the Healthy City is given shape in practice. Crucially, this means that the Healthy City is plural. This thesis provides an insight into this plurality.