Hostility and hospitality as a challenge for urban age: exploring dichotomies in the legal and political dimensions of cities

The topic will be explored through a critical understanding of the idea of dichotomies used in different fields such as law, politics and urban studies. To do so I will engage with the approach proposed by Norberto Bobbio who explored it in relation to the fundamental distinction between public/private law. Building on Bobbio’s distinction I will add the enemy/friend opposition by Carl Schmitt (1932) as well as Richard Sennett's (2018) contrast between ville and cité as well as between building and dwelling as fundamental tools for developing an ethics of the city. I will further elaborate on how these authors understood the heuristic value of dichotomies, arguing for their usefulness to shed light on the idea of a hostile city and its hospital/friendly counterpart.