Queer Urban Futures

Queer Urban Futures: Anticipatory Space-Making Practices and Affective Infrastructure in Berlin 

Dissent has long shaped Berlin’s urban life, expanding the possibilities of how space is claimed, imagined, and governed. This presentation situates Berlin as a historical and ongoing site of queer struggle where feminist, lesbian, Afro-German, and trans-led movements have reshaped the meaning of urban change itself. The German acronym FLINTA (Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, Agender) serves as an entry point into these genealogies, linking the FrauenLesben squats of the 1980s to contemporary FLINTA-led collectives that continue to fight for equality, freedom, and self-determination. While the term opens new political and spatial possibilities within longer gender genealogies, it also complicates the relationship between exclusion and minoritarian futures—an ambiguity central to this research. By examining affective infrastructures that sustain dissent and belonging, the project reframes urban transformation through the ongoing struggles of dissident groups to claim, contest, and sustain space in the city. 

Held by: 

Carolina Sepulveda (Harvard GSD)