Category: Uncategorised

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).

Urban Development by Project: Comparative Perspectives

Speakers:

• Richard Ballard, Romain Dittgen, Phil Harrison, Mike Makwela, Alison Todes (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg)
• Stan Majoor (University of Amsterdam)
• Gilles Pinson (Sciences Po, Bordeaux)

Discussant:

• Fulong Wu

Chair:

• Jenny Robinson

This seminar is associated with the beginning of a new ESRC Urban Transformations funded comparative study of large scale urban development projects in London, Johannesburg and Shanghai – Governing the Future City.

There will be drinks and snacks after the seminar, to provide an opportunity for informal discussion and networking.

Abstracts:

Conflicting spatial visions: mega projects in Johannesburg, South Africa

Richard Ballard, Romain Dittgen, Philip Harrison, Mike Makwela & Alison Todes (University of the Witwatersrand)

The City of Johannesburg in South Africa is located within a complex set of inter-governmental relations, and also within the temporal framing of declining state coherence and political factionalism. Over the past few years distinctive and competing urban spatial visions have evolved within the Metropolitan City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Provincial Government which governs a city-region which includes Johannesburg. Within the city administration a vision has cohered which draws largely on conceptions of the compact city, urban densification and transit-oriented development. In the provincial government, however, the vision is of large-scale urban expansion, with large new residential investments beyond the existing urban edge, and especially in areas of vulnerable or declining economies. The paper explains the emergence of these competing visions before exploring the ways in which the divide is revealed through large scale mega projects. The first project, Modderfontein, is on the spatial edge of Johannesburg although it is centrally located within the city-region. It is the site of a major private investment by a Shanghai-based developer, Zendai Properties. It has been welcomed enthusiastically by provincial government but has received a more ambiguous reception from city government, which has been involved in complex negotiations with the developers and Zendai’s London-based consultants. The Corridors of Freedom, by contrast, is a flagship initiative of the city government which is viewed warily by provincial government. It is an attempt to stitch together the fragmented apartheid city through densification (mainly) along the routes of the new Bus Rapid Transit System. Both developments reveal an entanglement of competing state and private interests, and both have uncertain futures which relate in part to market conditions but also to a fluid political context.

Urban Megaprojects as journeys in a changing landscape

Dr. Stan Majoor (Professor Coordination of Urban Issues, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences)

Their long trajectory of decision-making and execution makes urban megaprojects particularly prone to the effects of changing political, economic, technical and social conditions. We claim therefore that it is crucial to take a dynamic perspective on urban megaproject delivery, with a focus on how political and economic parameters and actor-constellations evolve over the stages of a project delivery lifecycle. Successful megaprojects have the capacity to use this turbulence in a positive way to change and adapt programmatically and organizationally. This lecture critically analyses three contemporary urban megaprojects, Amsterdam Zuidas (the Netherlands), Copenhagen Ørestad (Denmark) and Melbourne Docklands (Australia) that not only faced extensive turbulence, but also initiated strategies during their delivery phase to change and adapt.

Governing by Project

Gilles Pinson (Sciences Po, Bordeaux)

Abstract to follow

Book launch: Planetary Gentrification

To celebrate the launch of a new book Planetary Gentrification (2016, Polity Press) by Loretta Lees, Hyun Bang Shin and Ernesto Lopez-Morales, join us on the evening of Wednesday 16 March for a special launch event at LSE.

Please register on Eventbrite before 29th February (or until places are filled).

Authors: Loretta Lees (University of Leicester), Hyun Bang Shin (LSE) and Ernesto Lopez-Morales (University of Chile, Santiago)

Discussants: Fulong Wu (UCL), Andrew Harris (UCL) and Alex Loftus (KCL)

Supported by:
Department of Geography and Environment, LSE;
Department of Geography, University of Leicester;
CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action

Book description
This is the first book in Polity’s new ‘Urban Futures’ series.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by ‘gentrification’ today? How can we compare ‘gentrification’ in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.

Drawing on the ‘new’ comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.

Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.

Differentiated Mobilities in Contested Cities: Towards Comparative Approaches

In this workshop, we aim to explore urban contestation in various cities throughthe lens of mobility, and to work towards creating comparative frameworks to study mobilities in contested cities.

Contemporary cities are well understood as places of difference, diversity, and encounter. Whether this difference is a creative force or a potentially destabilizing force is a topic for further discussion. Here, we are concerned with understanding how urban mobilities are structured and experienced in contested cities.

In particular, we are interested in inviting discussion on the ways in which urban difference is made apparent and potentially transformed through patterns of mobility and urban circulations. We would like to explore how governmental policies or planning outcomes that affect patterns of mobility cause further fractures and perpetuate difference in the city but also to reflect on what new kinds of social interactions might emerge. And finally, we will consider how we can compare differentiated mobilities across contested cities, and what lessons we can draw from such comparisons.

Draft programme structure:

13:45: Welcome: Jennifer Robinson (UCL)
13.50: Introduction: Jonathan Rokem (UCL) & Sobia Ahmad Kaker (LSE)
14:00: Session I: What can we learn from mobilities in different contested cities.

Sobia Ahmad Kaker (LSE) – Securitizing Circulation: Porous Borders and Fluid Enclaves in Karachi
Suzanne Hall (LSE) – Elaborating Migration: the co-production ofurban diversity and discrimination

15.00 Coffee Break
15:30 – Session II: Towards comparative approaches.

Jonathan Rokem (UCL) – Contested Mobilities: Learning from Urban Difference in Jerusalem and Stockholm.
Jorge Blanco (University of Buenos Aires) – Uneven Mobilities in Contested Cities: Latin American Cases in Comparative Perspective

16.30: Responses from invited respondents/ Discussion (chaired by Jennifer Robinson) with Laura Vaughan (UCL); Camillo Boano (UCL); Stephan Graham (Newcastle)

17.25: Close and drinks