Für eine anthropologie des urbanismus: Ethnographisch städte bauen

This article is an invitation to practice the anthropological study of cities as the ethnographic deconstruction and reconstruction of urbanism understood as both, the modern project of city-building and the manifold modes in which cities are built and rebuilt. Such an anthropology of urbanism has been implicitly in the making in the last decade, as anthropologists have begun to study ethnographically the sociopo-litical life of urban infrastructures, follow architects, planners and residents governing and designing the city, as well as listen attentively to the stories nonhumans tell about urbanization. I offer an overview of current developments in the anthropology of urbanism and delineate a research program centered around the notion of Städtebau. By looking at three case studies concerning an urban natural disaster, a smart city project and the future of urban squares in the Anthropocene, I propose a conceptual language to problematize everyday urban practices as intrinsically con-cerned with the building and rebuilding of urban worlds. Such a building perspective, I conclude, invites us to reimagine and experimentally repurpose urban ethnography as an urbanistic practice aimed at the collaborative and speculative reconstruction of urban practices and worlds.