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The ambivalent status of urban space in terms of emancipation, democratisation, justice and citizenship is central to recent work in urban geography. Through exploration of the tensions and possibilities between freedoms and constraints offered by the city, the authors build on current perspectives to present an analysis of urban experience.
′The Emancipatory City is a wonderful addition to a growing literature on the public culture of the city. In these spaces, tolerance and intolerance, difference and indifference, transgressions, resistances, and playful spontaneity erupt to give texture to urban life. The book broadens our gaze and deepens our understanding of how cities enable people to express themselves and be free′ - Robert A Beauregard, New School University, New York Who are cities for? What kinds of societies might they most democratically embody? And, how can cities be emancipatory sites? The ambivalent status of urban space in terms of emancipation, democratisation, justice and citizenship is central to recent work in urban geography, `new′ cultural geography, critical geography and postmodern planning, as well as literature on urban social justice, public space and the politics of identity. Seeking alternative and progressive visions of the emancipatory city through an exploration of the tensions and possibilities between the freedoms and constraints offered by the city, the authors of The Emancipatory City? build on this wealth of current perspectives to present an critical analysis of urban experience.
Through an exploration of emancipation in recent processes of capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice rather than an abstract professional field organized by institutions, politicians and movements. Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and circumstances in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory practices relate with public space under ‘post-political conditions’? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopias are in crisis, we argue that productive emancipatory claims already exist in the lived space of everyday life rather than in the expectation of urban revolution and future progress.
There is a growing discussion on the cultural meaning and politics of urban commons, and Stavrides uses examples from Europe and Latin America to support the view that a world of mutual support and urban solidarity emerges today in, against, and beyond existing societies of inequality.
Urban space is a commons: simultaneously a sphere of human cooperation and negotiation and its product. Understanding urban space as a commons means that the much sought-after productivity of the city precedes rather than results from strategies of the state and capital. This approach challenges assumptions of urbanization as capital-driven, an idea which resonates with a range of recent urban social movements, from the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement to the “Right to the City” alliance. However commons exist in a tense relationship with state and market, both of which continually seek to exploit and control them. Initiatives to create “commons” are welcomed and even facilitated by governments in order to (re-)valorize urban space and lessen the impacts of economic restructuring, while, at the same time, the creative and reproductive potential of the urban commons is undermined by continuing attempts to commodify them. This volume examines these topics theoretically and empirically through a wide spectrum of international case studies providing perspectives from a variety of cities as diverse as Berlin, Hyderabad and Seoul. A wider discussion of commons in current scientific and activist literature from housing, public space, to urban infrastructure, is explored through the lens of the urban condition.
In recent years, urban uprisings, insurrections, riots, and occupations have been an expression of the rage and desperation of our time. So too have they expressed the joy of reclaiming collective life and a different way of composing a common world. At the root of these rebellious moments lies thresholds'the spaces to be crossed from cities of domination and exploitation to a common world of liberation. Towards the City of Thresholdsis a pioneering and ingenious study of these new forms of socialization and uses of space'self-managed and communal'that passionately revealscities as the sites of manifest social antagonism as well as spatialities of emancipation. Activist and architect Stavros Stavrides describes the powerful reinvention of politics and socialrelations stirring everywhere in our urban world and analyzes the theoretical underpinnings present in these metropolitan spaces and how they might be bridged to expand the commons. What is the emancipatory potential of the city in a time of crisis' What thresholds must be crossed for us to realize this potential' To answer these questions, Stavrides drawspenetrating insight from the critical philosophies of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, and Henri Lefebvre'among others'to challenge the despotism of the political and urban crises ofour times and reveal the heterotopias immanent within them.
Doing Cultural Geography is an introduction to cultural geography that integrates theoretical discussion with applied examples. The emphasis throughout is on doing. Recognising that many undergraduates have difficulty with both theory and methods courses, the text demystifies the ′theory′ informing cultural geography and encourages students to engage directly with theory in practice. It emphasises what can be done with humanist, Marxist, post-structuralist, feminist, and post-colonial theory, demonstrating that this is the best way to prompt students to engage with the otherwise daunting theoretical literature. Twenty short chapters are grouped into five sections on Theory, Topic Selection, Methodology, Interpretation and Presentation. The main text is intercut with questions, suggestions for activities and short sample extracts from scholarly texts, chosen to exemplify the subject of the chapter and to stimulate further reading. Chapters conclude with glossaries and suggestions for further reading. Doing Cultural Geography will facilitate project work from small, classroom-based activities to the planning stages of undergraduate research projects. It will be essential reading for students in modules in cultural geography and foundation courses in human geography and theory and methods.
Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene: Interruptions and Possibilities centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism. Across its theoretical and empirical chapters, written by leading scholars from anthropology, geography, urban studies, and political science, the book explores new political possibilities that are opening up in an age marked by proliferating contestations, sharpening socio-ecological inequalities, and planetary processes of urbanization and environmental change. A deepened conversation between urban environmental studies and political theory is mobilized to chart a radically new direction for the field of urban political ecology and cognate disciplines: What could emancipatory politics be about in our time? What does a return of the political under the aegis of equality and freedom signal today in theory and in practice? How do political movements emerge that could re-invent equality and freedom as actually existing socio-ecological practices? The hope is to contribute discussions that can expand and rearrange critical environmental studies to remain relevant in a time of deepening depoliticization and the rise of post-truth politics. Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-obscene will be of interest to postgraduates, established scholars, and upper level undergraduates from any discipline or field with an interest in the interface between the urban, the environment, and the political, including: geography, urban studies, environmental studies, and political science.
What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics? City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions, and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They explore the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), Researchers for Fair Policing (New York), Urban Movement Congress (Poland), urban activism (Berlin), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope and protests against Academic Ball in Vienna (Austria). By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy.