Author: Louise

Leverhulme Public Lecture – The crisis in urban studies: revolution, reform and reconstruction

Speaker

Sue Parnell (African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town and Leverhulme Visiting Professor, UCL)

Discussant(s)

Fulong Wu (Bartlett School of Planning)

Abstract: Working from the position that the crisis in urban studies is well understood and that the logjam is both a product of changing global urban demographics and the distorted nature of academic representations of urban problems, the paper sets a way forward in the construction of an alternative practice of urban theorization based on the interrelated practices of revolution, reform and reconstruction.  In seeking a more inclusive engagement with cities (in the way that authors such as Robinson, Roy and Watson have called for) it is not necessary to reject “Northern” theory outright. But, a quiet revolution that provincialises dominant theoretical narratives such as competitiveness, gentrification or neo-liberalism is imperative. When the empirical reference points for theory formation are shifted and the politics of local urban citizens are taken seriously there will be an inevitable reform of the urban studies cannon. The power of a revisionist process in reorienting the values and focus of urban studies is illustrated here through a discussion of the role modernity in urban Africa that challenges Northern, largely liberal interpretations that reinforce differential values of urban governance regimes for Northern and Southern cities. Finally, the paper suggests that advancing the reformulation of the urban cannon will also be advanced through the simple recognition of exiting largely Southern research that is currently locked in the ghettos of development studies and policy circuits. By illustration I revisit major advances in thinking about gender and the city from the 1980s and 1990s and position the emerging urban welfare debate as critical informants for the reconstruction of urban studies in our time. 

Landscapes of Postmodernity: Changes in the Fabric of Belgrade and Sofia since 1990

Speaker
Sonia Hirt (School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech)

Discussant(s)
Dr Charlotte Lemanski (UCL Geography)

International circulation and social construction of urban policy models: The case of City Improvement Districts in Johannesburg

Speaker
Elisabeth Peyroux (National Centre for Scientific Research, Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Studies (LISST-Cieu), University of Toulouse II)

Discussant(s)
Dr Murray Low, LSE Geography

Abstract: The international circulation of ‘models’ is at the heart of many theoretical and methodological debates raised by the literature on ‘urban policy mobility’. Based on the example of the North American model of Business Improvement District and the case study of Johannesburg, this presentation draws on this literature to investigate the ways in which the BID model is socially constructed through its international circulation and its local embeddedness. Using discourse analysis as a complementary approach it throws light on the ways in which this model is reinterpreted at a local scale, in particular through processes of decontextualisation and recontextualisation, as part of various entrepreneurial strategies. 

Inaugural lecture – Cities in a world of cities: traces of elsewhere in the making of city futures

Professor Jenny Robinson

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ah/ah-events-publication/jennifer-robinson

Book launch: Urban constellations

Panel:

 Johan Andersson

Iain Borden

Claire Thomson

Karen Till

Cities are an unprecedented focus of attention: over half the world now lives in them, culture and politics are significantly shaped by them, and they are also focal points for new relationships between nature, technology and the human body. This essay collection brings together a range of cutting-edge international scholarship on cities, urbanization and urban culture. The format is a series of small essays in the spirit of Benjamin, Kracauer, and other innovative forms of writing and observation. The contributions explore themes such as new forms of political mobilization, the effects of economic instability, the political ecology of urban nature, and the presence of collective memory. Cultural aspects of urban change are also considered including the work of artists, filmmakers and others who have sought to critically engage with processes of urban change. The global scope of the collection includes essays on Berlin, Chicago, and London, as well as less extensively studied cities such as Chennai, Jakarta, and Lagos.

Contributors to the book include: Lara Almarcegui; Johan Andersson; Pushpa Arabindoo; Karen Bakker; Stephen Barber; Sarah Bell; Iain Borden; Neil Brenner; Ben Campkin; Mustafa Dikeç; Ger Duijzings; Michael Edwards; Matthew Gandy; David Gissen; Stephen Graham; Maren Harnack; Andrew Harris; Sandra Jasper; Roger Keil; Karolina Kendall-Bush; Köbberling & Kaltwasser; Martin Kohler; Patrick Le Galès; Lucrezia Lennert; Noam Leshem; Leandro Minuchin; Ulrike Mohr; Louis Moreno; Laura Oldfield Ford; Giles Omezi; Jane Rendell; Jennifer Robinson; Rebecca Ross; Joachim Schlör; Christian Schmid; Hyun Bang Shin; AbdouMaliq Simone; Erik Swyngedouw;Mark Tewdwr-Jones; C. Claire Thomson; Karen E. Till; Meike Wolf; and Benedikte Zitouni.

Sample pages:

http://www.jovis.de/index.php?lang=2&idcatside=3144&lang=2

Just Space Network conference – The next steps for community groups in influencing London Planning

This year over 50 community organisations played an unprecedented role in challenging the strategic plans for London, encouraged and supported by the Just Space Network. One aspect of this work has been to enlist
support from the academic and research communities in London. This has connected with debates about the role of academics outside the academy

Aims of the Conference:
1. For community groups to evaluate and reflect upon:
– the Examination in Public (EiP) of the London Plan;
– what has been achieved – especially in light of the EiP Panel Report published in early May;
– what the prospects/challenges now are, including London Plan implementation.

2. For the academic community to reflect upon:-
– the support given by students and staff during the EiP process;
– the research they are engaging in now which can add weight to arguments being made by community groups;
– future research to make an impact on the ground and to underpin greater democracy in London planning.

3. To consider next steps, for example:-
– developing alternative plans and policies;
– making an impact on the public debate;
– further collaborations between community groups and academics;
– finding resources for all this.

Morning Plenary – Taking Stock:
Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL) “Alternative agendas and futures for Planning in London”.

Community speakers will reflect on the London Plan EiP experience and summarise what happened on key issues.

Afternoon Plenary – Next Steps:
What we are engaging in now and what is needed in the future.

Presentation from Just Space Network on neighbourhood planning.

Researchers will speak on how collaboration with community organisations informs their work.

Afternoon Workshops:
Regeneration outcomes, Economic agendas, the Environment, London’s Transport, Housing crises, Participation and Justice.

To be led by a community speaker, alongside a researcher active in the field. The main purpose of the workshops is to consider next steps – how do we challenge current agendas and what forward strategies can community groups adopt?

Closing Plenary:
Consideration of specific proposals for next steps.
Community speakers will include: Friends of the Earth, Friends of Queen’s Market, Haringey Federation of Residents Associations, Hayes
and Harlington Community Forum, London Forum of Civic and Amenity Societies, London Gypsy and Traveller Unit, London Tenants Federation, Regents Network, Spitalfields Community Association, Wards Corner Community Coalition.

The New Ruins

Speaker
Owen Hatherley

Chair
Matthew Gandy

Owen will talk about urbanism in the Blair/Brown era and the attempt at
achieving social democratic goals using quasi-Thatcherite means. Public
building increased, but tied to PFI and PPP; much housing was built, but in a radically circumscribed and architecturally dubious manner. The curious neoliberal dirigisme of New Labour, its fetish for the grand scheme, meant that the crash left several pet projects – Pathfinder housing ‘renewal’, inner city retail schemes – unfinished or cancelled, leaving huge swathes of dereliction across British cities. In a context where even these measures are considered overly profligate, ‘statist’ and left-wing by the coalition government, is there anything to be salvaged from New Labour urbanism?’

Owen Hatherley is a journalist and researcher in Political Aesthetics at
Birkbeck College, London. He has written for Architecture Today, Building Design, Cabinet, Frieze, Icon, the Guardian, the New Statesman and The Wire, and has had academic articles published in Collapse, Historical Materialism, the New Left Review and Radical Philosophy. His work appears in the edited anthologies Mark E Smith and The Fall – Art, Music and Politics and The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson. He is the author of Militant Modernism (Zero, 2009), A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (Verso, 2010) and the forthcoming Uncommon – An Essay on Pulp (Zero, 2011).

Professionalism, volunteerism, and neoliberalism: questions of subjectivity and governmentality in urban China

Speaker
Lisa Hoffman (Urban Studies, University of Washington Tacoma)

Discussant(s)
Wendy Larner (Bristol)

Paper

Abstract
In recent years, centralized planning in China has been roundly critiqued, resulting in the devolution of urban planning, the marketization of labor relations, and the adoption of new mechanisms for generating economic growth and providing public welfare. In the process, new practices and spaces of subject formation have emerged, specifying particular kinds of ‘desirable’ citizens. Based on research in Dalian, a major port city in northeast China, this paper considers two increasingly commonplace subject forms and what their emergence underscores about contemporary urban governmentalities.  First is the urban professional, an ever more familiar identity that appeared with the end of state-directed job assignments for college graduates and an official aim to foster more ‘self-enterprising’ human capital. Second is the individual volunteer who donates time, energy and resources to help solve social problems in the city.  The paper argues that the emergence of professionalism and volunteerism do not represent the ‘end’ of state governance per se, but rather the emergence of new forms of governing in the city. In particular, the paper argues that through the analysis of professionalism, we may identify a ‘late-socialist neoliberalism’ that weds neoliberal techniques of governing with Maoist era politics of building the nation through labor, producing what I have termed ‘patriotic professionalism’.  The discussion of volunteerism also underscores the complex genealogies of such practices, including socialist traditions of serving the people, capitalist practices of donating time and assets through philanthropic acts, and neoliberal practices of shifting responsibilities to individuals and other community groups.  This analysis of professionalism and volunteerism thus also affords us the opportunity to ask how we may make sense of neoliberalism in contemporary modes of governing the city.

Refugee Urbanism: Emerging Geographies of Displacement and Cities

Speaker
Romola Sanyal (Newcastle University)

Discussant(s)
Sharad Chari (LSE)

Paper

Abstract
The 21st century is the urban century with half the world’s population living in cities and more to do so in the years to come. Cities are witnessing unprecedented levels of growth particularly in the global south where increasing numbers of people are moving to cities for a variety of
reasons. Urban theorists have tried to explain the emergence of new kinds of urbanisms and urban politics through a variety of different theoretical models. Among these have been neo-liberalism (Peck and Tickell), informality (AlSayyad and Roy) and ‘ordinary’ (Robinson). Indeed urbanization in this century has been a culmination of a number of different issues, from the spread of neo-liberalism and structural adjustment, to the rise of urban informality and the importance of cities in the global south as being the new models on which urbanity can be
understood. In many ways, these issues are interlinked, as the fates of urban residents particularly the poor, rest on their push and pull influences. Drawing on the work of above-mentioned authors, this paper is an attempt to suggest yet another way of understanding the question of
urbanization. I argue here that perhaps ‘the camp’ or rather ‘refugee urbanism’ can be another lens through which the condition of the city, particularly those parts of the city inhabited by the urban poor can be understood.
I will look at what current theorizations of refugee camps
exist, how refugee camps urbanize, and what dialogues can take place between refugee studies and the urbanization of developing countries.

Governing African Cities

Speaker
Garth Myers (Kansas University)

Discussant(s)
TBC

Download Paper/Chapter

Abstract
In this paper, I discuss governance, service delivery and justice as they have been debated in African cities, examining neoliberal, materialist, and post-structuralist approaches in the literature. I highlight how good governance and social justice concerns play out on the ground in service delivery in several settings, and then in a longer case study on Zanzibar. Ultimately, I am suggesting that we may need to change the map of discussions about governance in urban studies toward nuanced empirical
analysis.