The Disturbances in Brazil

Reblogged from Richard J Williams:

The protests that have flared in Brazil in response to a 20-centavo rise in urban bus fares have produced some spectacular - and familiar - scenes. Brazil's cities are no strangers to disorder, of both the licensed kind (Rio's annual carnival) or the wildly unlicensed. For the latter, you only have to think back to the extraordinary events of May 2006 when a criminal gang, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) briefly took over the entire city of São Paulo.

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Some context on a fast-moving situation. Partial and incomplete, but some commentary was needed.

Opportunity - Post-doc offered by the Urban Studies Foundation

Reblogged from UTS Urban Forum:

The Urban Studies Foundation, based in Glasgow, is offering an exciting 3 years post-doc opportunity.

Applications are invited for an early career Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to undertake up to 3 years dedicated Urban Studies research, following a programme of research designed and executed by the Fellow at any eligible institution of higher education across the globe.  This programme would be expected to involve original empirical inquiry, methodological rigour and conceptual innovation, set within a detailed knowledge of relevant existing research and scholarship. 

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Reclaiming the Precarious City

Reblogged from Experimental Geographies:

I've been so busy over the past couple of weeks with exam marking that I never got a chance to post details of a piece that I did for the Cities in Conflict Series on Open Democracy. The piece examines the enduring significance of squatting to the development of alternative ways of thinking about and inhabiting the city.

The FT on the future of the city

Reblogged from Richard J Williams:

Two outstanding pieces of journalism from the Financial Times recently, both on the future of the city (that's 'city', uncapitalised, as it were). First was Edward Luce , 'The future of the American city', on 7 June. (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4e857a96-ce40-11e2-a13e-00144feab7de.html#slide0) His argument, in short, is that after decades of decline, the American city is now in the ascendency. Cities represent poles of economic and population growth, where not so long ago they were basket cases, consuming, rather than producing resources.

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Brief post drawing attention to a couple of excellent articles. Much more to say of course. Market corrections, for example, always happen one way or another. The new problem - or the problem experienced as new - is whether that correction will happen in one's lifetime. City cycles are not human life cycles. But that's another post...

Sex and the 'normal' city

Reblogged from Richard J Williams:

Edinburgh, where I live, has just published some remarkable new statistics. (http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/10548/edinburgh_by_numbers_2013_14) This bastion of social propriety actually isn’t very proper at all. Of all households in this city of half a million measured in the survey, just 3% could be described as a conventional family unit, that is two adults with one or more children. That's right: three percent of the total.

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Blog piece connected with the publication of 'Sex and Buildings'. (http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo15582146.html) The picture is where I live: sandstone tenement housing built 1878.

Review of 'Sex and Buildings' in Architecture Today

Reblogged from Richard J Williams:

My book 'Sex and Buildings' is out in the UK this week; readers in the US will have to wait a little longer (but not much). Here's a very elegant review by the novelist Philippa Stockley.

My book 'Sex and Buildings' is out in the UK this week; readers in the US will have to wait a little longer (but not much). Here's a very elegant review by the novelist Philippa Stockley.

mapping the mobi

Reblogged from the urban geographer:

It's my pleasure to share with you an animated map I created for the Mobiation Project.

The map charts the Mobi-01's nomadic travels through Amsterdam -- from its first semi-built incarnations at the Fiction Factory, Friekens and NDSM in Amsterdam Noord, its official launch at the 2012 Magneet Festival on Zeeburg Eiland, it's short stint as an art piece at…

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The Creative City. It's War.

Reblogged from Richard J Williams:

Second recent piece on the 'creative city'. Highly speculative at this stage, but I'd be interested to develop the idea of warfare. Any suggestions welcome.

Planning for exclusion in Abuja

Reblogged from Progressive Geographies:

At Open Democracy, an interesting piece on the Nigerian capital of Abuja.

Nigeria, a nation deeply scarred by colonialism and years of civil war, took the decision in 1991 to build a new capital city at the country's centre.

In an 1983 interview, the Minister of the Federal Capital Development Authority, Alhaji Iro Dan Musa claimed that the government wanted a capital city which “belonged to all Nigerians” best achieved by “starting afresh in Abuja".

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Peter Marcuse - The Right to the Creative City

Reblogged from Yield then:

After hearing Peter Marcuse speak at the New School's Social Justice and The City event, I thought it would be good to post this talk of his on The Right to the Creative City...