Author: Louise

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

Cities in the BRICS: What are we comparing

Speakers:

Yan Yang and Philip Harrison (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)

Discussant:

Fulong Wu (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL)

The term BRIC was used initially in an analytical sense to refer to a grouping of countries beyond the West with the potential to reconfigure the geography of the global economy. After 2009 however it referred to a political alliance with geopolitical intentions (with BRIC becoming BRICS when South Africa joined in 2010). The construct is under pressure in terms of its analytical and political use as BRICS economies have become increasingly differentiated in terms of economic performance and as severe diplomatic tensions have emerged within the alliance.

In this seminar we discuss ongoing comparative work on cities in the BRICS, a grouping of countries that account for nearly 40% of the world’s total urban population. With the enormous diversity of the BRICS in almost all categories – including scale, economic performance, levels and rates of urbanisation, income and governance – questions arise over the meaning and purpose of comparison. We discuss the challenge of comparison but nevertheless show how very different places can be drawn into a meaningful comparative conversation. There is however a significant point of commonality. All countries in the BRICS have experienced far-reaching political and/or economic transformations over the past few decades in a way that the global West has not.

In the presentation we show how these macro changes have been translated into urban change, but also show how differences in the national and local management of these processes account in part for significant differences (and similarities) across the BRICS in terms of urban outcomes. We use the different trajectories of metropolitan governance as an illustrative case. 

No booking required, just turn up. For further information, contact Jenny Robinson.

In Defense of Housing

Speakers:

Dr David MaddenProfessor Peter Marcuse (via Skype)

Discussants:

Dr Melissa Fernandez Arrigoitia, Dr Suzanne Hall, Dr Paul Watt

Chair:

Dr Hyun Bang Shin

Housing is one of the most pressing urban issues of our time. In this event marking the publication of their book In Defense of Housing, Peter Marcuse and David Madden explore the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. They argue that the housing crisis has deep political, social, and economic roots and will not be solved by minor policy shifts. As a critical response, they explore the potential of a radical right to housing.

David Madden (@davidjmadden) is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Cities Programme at the LSE.

Peter Marcuse is Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University.

Melissa Fernandez Arrigoitia is Lecturer in Urban Futures at Lancaster University.

Suzanne Hall (@SuzanneHall12) is an urban ethnographer and Director of the LSE Cities Programme.

Paul Watt is Reader in Urban Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.

Hyun Bang Shin (@urbancommune) is Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the LSE and an organising member of the Urban Salon.

Book launch: Moth

Inspired by the plants and animals found in marginal spaces and wastelands, Matthew Gandy has written a new book, Moth. This book forms part of the Reaktion Animal series which weaves together aspects of science with cultural history.  Labelled as “wonderfully idiosyncratic” by The New York Times, the Animal series offers a novel approach to exploring the historical significance of various animals. Matthew’s book focuses on the moth: long associated with darkness and the gothic imagination, yet significant in a myriad of other ways, from silk production to sensitive indicators of environmental change.

“The rich history of vernacular names speaks to the significant place of moths in early cultures of nature: names such as the Merveille du Jour, the Green-brindled Crescent and the Clifden Nonpareil evoke a sense of wonder that connects disparate fields such as folklore, the history of place and early scientific texts, ” Matthew writes.

Manufacturing Gesellschaft: Urbanized Nature and the Green Screen 

Dr Hillary Angelo, University of California, Santa Cruz

This talk offers a sociological account of urban greening: the normative practice of using nature to fix problems with urbanism. Through a historical comparison of greening practices at three moments of major urban restructuring in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, I find that urbanization made nature into a tool for manufacturing Gesellschaft, or ideal urban society, and that a social imaginary of nature as a vehicle for social goods, which I call urbanized nature, makes greening practices possible. In addition, the comparison reveals that greening operates with characteristic social logics. While spatializing very particular ideals of bourgeois urban publics, nature’s “green screen” allows protagonists to carry out greening projects as universally beneficial investments in the public good, and conditions audiences to respond in kind.

Dr. Hillary Angelo is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Her work explores the relationship between ideas about nature and urbanization processes from historical, theoretical, and ethnographic perspectives. She is currently preparing a book on urban “greening” in Germany’s Ruhr region, and is at work on two new projects: one on infrastructure and sociology (with Craig Calhoun), and the other on equity in urban sustainability planning. Recent publications include “From the city lens toward urbanisation as a way of seeing: Country/city binaries on an urbanising planet” (Urban Studies 2016) and “Urbanizing urban political ecology: A critique of methodological cityism” (IJURR 2015, with David Wachsmuth).