Author: Louise

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.

Organising in Hard Times: Urban Informality and the Promise of Transnational Labor Activism

Speaker
Nik Theodore, University of Illinois at Chicago

Discussant(s)
Jane Wills (QMUL) and Debby Potts (KCL).

Chair
Jenny Robinson (UCL)

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Abstract

One of the perplexing aspects of the current period ofeconomic restructuring in U.S.cities has been the re-emergence and extension of forms of labor relations werethought to have been sharply curtailed, if not completely eliminated. Day labor organized through informal hiringsites located in public spaces is one example of these developments.  Elsewhere, I argue that the re-emergence of day labor is a predictable outcome of the offensive that has been launchedagainst policies and institutions that place a floor under competition in thelabor market (Theodore 2007). In the name of greater labor market flexibility, the neoliberal project has sought todismantle labor market insurance programs and job protection legislation, andto undermine trade unionism and other forms of worker collective action. Unregulated work and labor market informalityhave flourished in the economic spaces of deregulation that have been clearedby this neoliberal offensive.

But this is not the end of the story. Day laborers and workers rights organizations are actively contesting conditions in contingent labor markets through a combination of organizing, policy advocacy and the establishment of alternative labor market  institutions. This paper examines an important aspect of this politicization of contingent work: the evolution of grassroots organizing strategies by day laborers, an allegedly ‘unorganizable’ class of contingent workers.  More specifically, I focus on the ways in which repertoires of contestation – based in a philosophy of social transformation through radical democracy and popular education – have defused from mass-movement social struggles in Latin America in the 1980s to street corner organizing in U.S.cities today. Through a series of in-depth interviews with day labor organizers, the paper explores how organizing approaches from the global South have been adapted and recombined to meet the challenges presented by day labor markets in the U.S. which are characterized by substandard employment conditions and violations of core labor laws

A cultural political economy of a Global City Region: The Competitiveness-Integration Order in the Pearl River Delta

Speaker
Ngai-Ling Sum, Dept. of Politics and International Relations; Cultural Political Economy Research Centre, Lancaster University

Discussant(s)

Nancy Holman, Dept. of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics

Chair
Hyun Shin, Dept. of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics

Abstract

This paper adopts a cultural political economy (CPE) approach to examine the role of knowledge brands (e.g., Porter’s competitive advantage diamond; Lundvall’s national innovation system approach) in mediating regional planning and economic restructuring. In the case of the Pearl River Delta (PRD), these brands have been recontextualized and hybridized on the discursive level that informs various spatial imaginaries (e.g., Greater PRD, Regional Powerhouse, Pan PRD, Mega Metropolitan Area). With the onset of the current crisis since mid-2007, the project of making of this global city region was reinforced by calls to ‘strengthen regional cooperation to build the momentum for growth’, to upgrade infrastructure as well as release a major plan —  the Outline of the Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River

Delta 2008-2020. Focusing on the Outline as a technology of power, this paper examines, in a neo-Foucauldian sense, the pastoral and governmental power that  helps to constitute the competitiveness-integration order in the region. A CPE approach would also argue that this neo-Foucauldian focus on the micro-technologies of power should be complemented by an understanding of the macro-structural and agential selectivities involved in socio-economic change. The second part of the paper concentrates on the Outline’s call for cooperation among ‘service industries’ in the region. Such “servicization” of the region is far from being ‘win-win’ once one considers the embedded materiality of the region. Drawing from this case, the paper concludes with a CPE interpretation of planning and economic restructuring in general.

Battersea Power Station: Raising the roof

Speaker
Mark Saunders

In response to the current planning applications for the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station this session will concentrate on the sad past and even gloomier future of London’s best known and loved riverside landmark.

Outdoor Advertising As Urban Vernacular: Perceiving Change in Manchester and Detroit

Speaker
Anne Cronin Sociology Dept, Lancaster University

Discussant(s)
Dr. Scott Rodgers, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck

This paper draws on ethnographic material from a study of the outdoor advertising industry in the UK and its relationship to urban space. It also uses material from photographic case studies of Manchester, UK, and Detroit, USA. I explore how advertising has a spatial relationship to certain sites in cities – areas of dereliction or areas undergoing regeneration – as the industry can most easily secure permission to construct billboards there. This articulates one form of advertising’s temporal relationship to cities as these temporary billboards are tied to the duration of the rebuilding work or the time that those areas are left in dereliction. I analyse how these spatio-temporalities provide forms of ‘urban vernacular’ that articulate in visual and material form capitalist processes and make particular understandings of these processes available to people.