Author: Louise

Urban green space: reflections on ecological design 

Panel

Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge)

Ingo Kowarik (TU Berlin)

Bianca Maria Rinaldi (Politecnico di Torino)

Henriette Steiner (University of Copenhagen)

Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin

UK premiere of Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin (72 mins), directed by Matthew Gandy, at the London International Documentary Festival (LIDF)

In Natura Urbana the changing vegetation of Berlin serves as a parallel history to war-time destruction, geo-political division, and the newest phase of urban transformation. Natura Urbana takes us on a unique journey through Berlin ranging from the botanical microcosm of cracked paving stones to elaborate attempts to map the entire city in terms of its distinctive ecological zones.

Tickets can be purchased from the LIDF website from 15th: http://www.lidf.co.uk/lidf1415/

Watch the trailer on the film’s website.

Urban Geopolitics book launch: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities

Urban Salon hosts the book launch of Urban Geopolitics: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities (Routledge, 2018) edited by Jonathan Rokem and Camillo Boano.

Moving away from loosely defined urban theories and contexts, this book argues it is time to start learning from and compare across different “contested cities”. It questions the long-standing Euro-centric academic knowledge production that is prevalent in urban studies and planning research. Urban Geopolitics: Rethinking Planning in Contested Cities brings together a diverse range of international case studies from Latin America, South and South East Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East to offer an in-depth understanding of the worldwide contested nature of cities in a wide range of local contexts. It suggests an urban ontology that moves beyond the urban “West” and “North” as well as adding a comparative-relational understanding of the contested nature that “Southern” cities are developing.

In this event the editors and some of the chapter authors will present the books overarching themes and engage with selected cities.

Programme:

18.00 Welcome and introduction

Jonathan Rokem (UCL Geography) and Camillo Boano (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit / UCL Urban Laboratory)

18.15 Book chapter presentations

Sadaf Sultan Khan, Kayvan Karimi and Laura Vaughan (UCL)

The tale of ethno-political and spatial claims in a contested city: the Muhajir community in Karachi

Pawda F Tjoa (Cambridge)

The Embodiment of the Ideology of “Development” in the Practice of Marketplace Coordination in Jakarta

Moriel Ram (SOAS)
The Camp vs the Campus: Revisiting the contested landscapes of an urban Mediterranean encampment in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus

Catalina Ortiz and Camillo Boano (UCL)

The Medellín’s Shifting Geopolitics of Informality: The Encircled Garden as a Dispositive of Civil Disenfranchisement?

19.00 Discussants

Matthew Gandy (Cambridge) 
Sara Fregonese (Birmingham)
Sobia Ahmad Kaker (Goldsmiths)

Followed by a Q&A with the audience and a drinks reception.

The event is hosted in collaboration with UCL Urban Laboratory and The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL.

No booking required.

Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle

Urban Salon are supporting the screening of the film Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle as a fundraiser for the Aylesbury leaseholders legal expenses for the upcoming public inquiry on compulsory purchase.

Speakers include Beverley Robinson (Aylesbury Leaseholders Action Group), Anna Minton (author, journalist and lecturer), Loretta Lees (urbanist and expert on gentrification, University of Leicester; co-organiser, Urban Salon), Uzoamaka Okafor (Chair, Regenter Myatts Field North Community), Jerry Flynn (35% Campaign), Gerlinda Gniewosz (Cressingham Gardens), Paul Sng (Director), Luke Doonan (Executive Producer).

All donation proceeds go to the Aylesbury Leaseholders legal expenses fund set up by the 35% Campaign. You can directly support the campaign on its GoFundMe page.

Mega-Urbanization in the Global South

With contributions from an international range of established and emerging scholars drawing upon real-world examples, Mega-Urbanization in the Global South is the first to use the lens of speed to examine the postcolonial “urban revolution”. From the mega-urbanization of Lusaka, to the production of satellite cities in Jakarta, to new cities built from scratch in Masdar, Songdo and Rajarhat, this book argues that speed is now the persistent feature of a range of utopian visions that seek to expedite the production of new cities.

Programme:
18.00 Phil Hubbard (KCL) to introduce
18.10 Ayona Datta (KCL) introduction to the themes and debates of the book
18.25 Hyun Bang Shin (LSE) reflect upon your chapter in the context of the themes and debates of the book
18.35 Commentary from Catalina Ortiz (DPU, UCL)
18.50 Commentary from KCL PhD student Liu Dong (KCL)
19.00 Open discussion and Q&A
19.30 Drinks and nibbles

Sensory Cities: New Methods and Approaches for Research, Planning, Design and Curation

Urban Salon is a co-supporter of this international conference bringing together academics and urban professionals, from museum curators to architects and urban planners, to discuss how to research, create and represent sensory urban experiences.

As cities are not only driving economic forces in Europe but crucial entities for providing a sense of place in a globalising world, it is important to examine the role of the senses in place-making and attachments. This final conference of the AHRC funded international research network “Sensory Cities: researching, representing and curating sensory-emotional landscapes of urban environments” (2015-2017) shares our key findings from the project, drawing on the experience of three cities that are exemplar for different forms of urban regeneration: London, Cologne and Barcelona.

A range of cross-disciplinary, cross-European and cross-professional panels will discuss: What can academics and urban professionals interested in the senses learn from each other’s methodological approaches? How can sensory methods help museums to discuss a city’s past, present and future? How can the senses inform urban design in an ethical way? What structures can enable a participatory approach?

In the evening there will be a launch of the sensory digital think-kit developed through the discussions and experimental methods trialled across three cities to research the sensory geography of place.

Places are free but need to be reserved.

• RSVP on Eventbrite
• Download the programme (pdf)

Imagining infrastructure

The modern usage of the term infrastructure has gone through a series of permutations from early emphasis on logistics, organization, and the expanding scope of technological networks to more recent interest in the intersections with landscape, ecology, and alternative theorisations of urban materiality. In this event we will explore questions relating to the meaning and conceptualisation of urban infrastructures. The question of infrastructure will serve as an entry point for wider reflections on the changing experience of nature, modernity, and urban space.

This event is a collaboration with the British Academy.

Speakers:

Dr Jiat-Hwee Chang, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore

Professor Dr Jochen Monstadt, Chair for Governance of Urban Transitions and Dynamics, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University

Dr Manuel Tironi, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, P. Universidad Católica de Chile

Professor Jane Wolff, Associate Professor, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto

Chair:

Professor Matthew Gandy FBA, Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography, University of Cambridge

FREE. Registration required.

Vertical: The City from Satellites to Tunnels

Urban Salon hosts the book launch of Vertical: The City from Satellites to Tunnels (Verso, 2017), the new publication by Professor Stephen Graham (Newcastle University).

In this event the author will explore the reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet. He examines how the geography 
of urban inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and descending through each vertical layer to the design of sidewalks and underground bunkers.

Discussants:

Professor Phil Hubbard (King’s College London)

Dr Hyun Shin (London School of Economics)

#haters

In collaboration with the UCL Urban Laboratory, and hosted at the Bloomsbury Theatre Studio, we present a production of #haters, a spoken-word narrative-theatre play by Odd Eyes Theatre, looking at how “gentrification” in the name of urban regeneration is changing the cultural landscape of the UK.

The play will be followed by a panel considering the value of performativity in discussing gentrification issues and representation and social class in gentrifying London.

Synopsis

June 2014, London. A stab, a tweet and a social-media storm rip the sultriness of the hottest summer on record since 1976.

Two young heroes, worlds apart, gravitate towards each other against the will of alluring internet chimeras. Two epic journeys set out in the storm of urban regeneration. Will their hands touch?

Inspired by real events #Haters tells about “hipsters”, “roadmen” and social-media chimeras digging out the real people beyond the stereotypes. It’s about opportunities, fate and values told with a good dose of self-irony and with extreme compassion for the characters involved. It’s about the housing crisis and a world that changed suddenly right before your eyes, of which you could only bear witness.

Expect spoken words and live music, beats and outlandish sounds provoked by verbatim social-media text. Expect bitter-sweet humour, tenderness and compassion. Expect to change your mind.

Written and directed by Emilia Teglia. #Haters is funded by Arts Council England.

Ticketing

A small ticketing fee will cover venue costs and avoid no-shows. Donations towards the production will be welcome at the end of the evening.

Further links:

• Bloomsbury Theatre
• Odd Eyes Theatre
• Interview with writer/director Emilia Teglia on the genesis of #Haters

 

Time and space lie at the centre of discussions on urban redevelopment projects. The making of urban space is in many ways a materialisation of the passing of time socially, financially, and politically. Yet, those using the city inhabit and create a diversity of temporalities. Hence, urban change is underpinned by a multiplicity of temporal narratives, practices and ideologies which operate at different speeds and intensities, sometimes converging, other times conflicting, to produce a particular sense of place.

Focusing on two cities that are exemplars of their urban regeneration in recent years: Barcelona and London, this event will bring together urban professionals and academics to reflect, from a long-term perspective, on the role of time in the construction and experience of these two cities. By doing this, we hope to situate questions around temporality at the forefront of the research agenda on urban change.

View the programme here.

Speakers:

• Simone Abram (Anthropology, Durham University): “Anticipation and Apprehension: temporal agency in urban change”
• Mari Paz Balibrea (Department of Cultures and Languages, Birkbeck): “Militant time, leisure time, working time: Reflections on life in the creative city”
• Carme Gual Via (Foment Ciutat Vella, Barcelona City Council): “As time goes by…or how cities reinvent the wheel every term of office”
• Euan Mills (Future Cities Catapult): “How should temporal considerations affect the design of the built environment?”
• Bob Allies (Allies and Morrison Architects): “The urban masterplan: a process not a product”
• Mike Raco (The Bartlett, UCL): “Living in democratic times: Reflections on the transformation of London’s built environment”

This is the first of a two-part conference, with the second taking place at the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona on 12 and 13 December. Both events will be streamed live online and there will be opportunities for those not in attendance to participate in the discussions and pose questions. More information on the live stream soon.

The event is part of Dr. Monica Degen’s research project Timescapes of Urban Change, supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.

RSVP via Eventbrite: urbantimescapes.eventbrite.co.uk