- Student Projects
- Atlas
- April 11, 2025
Dirt Cheap. Atlas 2024/25
Finally, there: The Atlas “Dirt Cheap! - Urban Everyday Life in the Convenient City“ is the result of the first semester students work in UDP1:
"Approaching everyday practices in the convenient city, as a starting point for grasping the imperial mode of living, we were led to six products that are embedded in the networks behind Dirt Cheap. (...)
The banana marks our first chapter leading us into the historical structures and inequalities that form the fruit selection at our supermarkets until today. Secondly, we regard exploitative activities towards human actors and non-human actants, through the lens of the B*Shelf at one of the most popular furniture companies in Western society. The dive into a company, which is pervaded with mechanisms to maximize profit, is enabled through a deeper insight into the burger. (...) Chapter four opens up the power relations and cultural systems behind a product, which is unavoidable when thinking about contemporary urban culture, coffee. Not less recognizable for the convenient city of today is the e-scooter, which provides us a deeper look into the conditions behind an innovative mobility service. Chapter six reveals the often invisible service of cleaning as a product, which tells us much about the cultural dimensions as well as the working conditions the cleaners are embedded into."
"With these six products we want to make visible what lies behind the cheapness of nature, work, care, food, energy, money and lives (Patel and Moore 2017, p. 3), and its interwovenness in every- day life in the convenient city. For a more theoretical approach, we provide you with an additional “Manual for Cheapness – How to Keep Things Dirty”, that includes the dominant mechanisms to create cheapness and dirtiness."
Thank you to Helmut Völter for the great support on bookmaking!
This project was developed as part of the UDP1_Dirt Cheap!: Urban Everyday Life in the Convenient City.
All images: Jaana Aalto, Ines bigdeli Issazadeh, Anna Blume, Nele Chrubassik, Michelle da Silva Guedelha, Daria Josephine Dobeslaw, Meret Dorner, Mara Fathy, Carla Geiser, Timur Hering, Berit Jagels, Anna-Lena Jung, Luise Kempf, Finnja Korn, Nina Müllen, Vodalus Parameswara, Hanbaek Park, Susan Peetz, Tabea Schamp, Hanna Shi, Valerie Steinhausen, Lea Struckmeyer
contributors
Prof. Dr. Hanna Göbel
Professor, Methods of Urban Practice
Prof. Dr. Monika Grubbauer
Professor, History and Theory of the City
Prof. Dipl. Ing. Bernd Kniess
Professor, Urban Design
M.A. Anna Hentschel
Academic Staff, Ph.D. Candidate
Dr. Nina Schuster
Acting Professor, Urban and Regional Sociology
Amy Gabriela Cimerman
Tutor
Hanna Shi
Tutor
Jaana Aalto
Anna Blume
Nele Chrubassik
Michelle da Silva Guedelha
Daria Josephine Dobeslaw
Meret Dorner
Mara Fathy
Carla Geiser
Timur Hering
Berit Jagels
Luise Kempf
Finnja Korn
Nina Müllen
Vodalus Parameswara
Hanbaek Park
Susan Peetz
Tabea Schamp
Valerie Steinhausen
Lea Struckmeyer
Anna-Lena Jung
Helmut Völter
Lecturer
2024/2025
Current annual theme
Dirt Cheap!

A common thread in the analysis of the multiple crises that urban societies face at present is that of rising costs, everything seems to be more and more expensive: prices of land and housing in urban areas have been skyrocketing for almost two decades now. Most recently, costs of construction, prizes for various products, resources and raw materials, as well as costs of living have risen …