Urban infrastructure is increasingly used by services that benefit the individual at the cost of the commons, social and ecological resources. Delivery services satisfy almost every individual need and block the roads for public transportation. ‘Spätis’, Amazon Hubs, cafés, super markets, kebab stands and shopping centers are open for increasing hours to immediately and constantly cater to whatever desire urban inhabitants might have. They characterize our cityscape while places for communal exchange, living, or culture are dwindling. In the commodified city, we are surrounded by an urban bling-bling that conceals the reality of its modes of production and its exploitation of planetary and human resources.

Dirt cheap is a global phenomenon; however, it connects each individual with the underlying mechanisms that make it possible. UDP 1 turns to the Everyday Life in cities as a starting point. We will observe city inhabitants as users. Question the scheme of work, sleep, eat, and shop. Explore sites of convenience and exploitation. Examine the urban backstage of production. Find institutional frameworks and map networks of actors that keep the urban running and the surface smooth, as well as those that seek to disrupt. We will focus on sites of convenience across commerce, recreation, production, and innovation. This encompasses places such as malls, markets, and restaurants, euro shops, ‘Spätis’, and delivery warehouses of fast serving industries; factories and data centres, co-working places, service agencies and think tanks.

How do these sites relate to the everyday urban life in Hamburg, and what meaning do they have globally? Who are the actors that initiate, and shape them, and who keeps them going? What political, spatial, and temporal tensions arise at these sites and elsewhere, and how are they noticed, voiced and addressed? Where does the “imperial mode of living” become visible in the urban and through what kind of built infrastructures and environments? These are the key questions that will guide our research.