URBAN – Journal – Polytechnic University of Madrid / School of Architecture

In Madrid I was able to talk with Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago — who runs the multipliciudades blog [for readers of Spanish] and is also editor of the journal “Urban” [web site in Spanish and English here]. Urban has recently published a number of interesting pieces, here is the list of the last four issues in the ‘new series’ of Urban [which was originally launched in 1997]–note the special issue on Henri Lefebvre…

urban NS04
Doreen Massey / Carlos Jiménez Romera, Jorge Leon Casero, María Mercedes di Virgilio & María Soledad Arqueros Méjica & Tomás Guevara, Jesús Leal & Miguel Martínez & Antonio Echaves & Enrique García / Alexandre le Maître / Estíbaliz López de Munain & Leire Romero & Victoria Vázquez
September 2012

urban NS03
Los conflictos de la ciudad contemporánea / Conflicts of contemporary cities
Don Mitchell / Alain Bertho, Fabrizio Bottini & María Cristina Gibelli, Cristina Fernández Ramírez & Fernando Roch Peña, Imanol Zubero, Luis Miguel Valenzuela Montes & Julio Alberto Soria Lara, Clara Irazábal & Gabriel Fumero
March 2012

urban NS02
Espectros de Lefebvre / Spectres of Lefebvre
Grégory Busquet / Jean-Pierre Garnier, Laurence Costes, Cynthia Ghorra-Gobin, Kanishka Goonewardena, Peter Marcuse, Andy Merrifield, Thierry Paquot, Claire Revol, Carlos Sánchez-Casas, Łukasz Stanek / Christian Schmid 
September 2011

urban NS01
Los futuros de la planificación / Planning Futures
John Friedmann / Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck & Nik Theodore / Erik Swyngedouw / Frank Eckardt / Jordi Borja / Stuart Elden & Derek Gregory 
March 2011

Toward an Urban Cultural Studies [video posted online]

For anyone interested in watching it here is a link to the lecture–or rather to the exercise in organized rambling–I gave at the University of Kentucky, now on UK vimeo:

“Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre, Space and the Culture(s) of Cities”

To watch video, click above or go here: http://vimeo.com/50215247

Thanks again to the Department of Hispanic Studies there. The prezi itself can be seen in the background on the screen, but as announced before can also be viewed here. See also this previous post for more general information about the talk.

Doreen Massey in Madrid

[This is my own English translation of the post at the multipliciudades blog found here in Spanish (forgive my errors)–note the event has passed, but still a great post].

The event of the month, without any doubt: Doreen Massey visits Madrid for the presentation of the book that geographers Abel Albet and Núria Benach have written on her, Doreen Massey. Un sentido global del lugar [Doreen Massey: A Global Sense of Place] recently published by Icaria Editorial. The event will be this Thursday the 7th at 19:00 in the Traficantes de Sueños bookstore (35 Embajadores street, #6), which with [its support of] this type of encounter once more affirms its vanguard positioning beyond the borders of conventional academia.

Those who follow the Mulitpliciudades.org blog are familiar with the devotion that I [Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago] profess for Massey, who seems to me to be a key thinker for understanding not only Feminist geography but also the critical geography developed over the past thirty years more generally. That being said, you can’t risk missing her talk. Below is the text advertising the event:

DOREEN MASSEY: Espacio, lugar y política en el momento actual [The current state of space, place and politics]

How do we employ space in making politics? How do we employ politics in making space? With a long career as both intellectual and professor and characterized by a strong voice that is always present in political debates, Doreen Massey (Professor Emerita of the Open University, UK) is a central figure of the critical work on space. She has made key contributions to the concepts of space and place, to the relationships between space and power, to the connections between the local and the global, and regarding the responsibility of certain centers of power in relation to other spaces. These are matters of theoretical importance that await the remarkable talent for contemplation exercised by Massey, who uses everyday examples and clear words to imbue them with greater relevance and utility.