A Monument of the City to Build is a socially engaged artistic project, exploring the politics of residentship in the Swedish urban landscape through the notion of the right to the city. In a series of pedagogical events across Botkyrka and Gothenburg, over 200 participants have contributed to the project thus far with their thoughts, reflections and proposals.

The project investigates how successive generations of social, cultural, and financial policies have shaped the development of urban spaces in Sweden, and how this development has in turn affected the relationship between the inhabitants and their city.

Placing an emphasis on intercultural meetings, the project aims to engage culturally diverse groups of children and young adults in the ongoing discussion on the right to the city, to empower them, and to help them see themselves as capable of demanding a better environment to live in. The participants engage in critical discussion in which they are encouraged to share their stories and to reflect on their lived experience in the city, while translating this conversation into a collaborative artwork. Manipulating photographs collected via Google Maps, the participants create their own images and proposals of what they want to change as well as what they already like and feel about the city – creating a monument to the future instead of the past. In parallel, the project is mapping the public perception of the city.

The project draws from a number of theoretical sources, such as the works Henri Lefebvre, Mark Purcell, and David Harvey to synthesise a comprehensive and multifaceted understanding of the right to the city. This understanding forms the basis of the workshops and informs the participants’ discussions. Challenging the neoliberal paradigm, urban space is approached as common space shaped by collective action, rather than the domain of isolated individuals.