Journals: 50 years of Urban Studies – free articles!

UTS Urban Forum

The Editors of Urban Studies have decided to mark the journal’s 50th birthday by putting together a virtual special issue showcasing the full extent of Urban Studies’ output over the past 50 years. The issue combines the five most cited Urban Studies articles, the five most downloaded, and the five most important published prior to 1990 (as collectively decided by the Editors). 

You can access these articles for free until 31st December 2013 by visiting the 50th Anniversary Virtual Issue site. Simply click here 

Vote for your Favourite Three

After enjoying your free access, you can vote for your three favourite articles by completing this voting form. The results of the voting will be announced at the end of the year, to coincide with the beginning of Urban Studies’ next 50 years!

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Small Stories to rethink Large Issues

Small Stories to rethink Large Issues

The RC21 urban studies conference in Berlin triggered participants to rethink the resourcefulness of cities in today’s urbanized world. A wide variety of papers turned on sociologist’s fancy for topics ranging from gentrification, to conflict, to geography, and back to gentrification. The visitors displayed a vast amount of urban dwelling in the way they presented their papers. Urban dwelling, however, seemed in slight contrast to the plenary sessions that were mostly in search of ‘a new theory to understand the changing nature of the urban environment’.

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Bradley Garrett and Urban Exploration in The Guardian

Progressive Geographies

good story about Bradley Garrett in The Guardian – advance publicity for his excellent book Explore Everything

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UCS 007 Jefferson on Walcott’s Poetics of Caribbean Colonial Modernity (Castries / Port of Spain)

UCS 007 Jefferson on Walcott’s Poetics of Caribbean Colonial Modernity (Castries / Port of Spain) (15 September 2013)  Conversational interview inspired by scholar Ben Jefferson’s article “New Jerusalems: Derek Walcott’s poetics of the Caribbean city,” published in the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies (1.2, 2014). Topics range from readings/analyses of specific excerpts of poems written by celebrated poet Walcott (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1992) to the ideas of Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Henri Lefebvre, V. S. Naipaul, North American and European city planning traditions and the relationship between rural and urban space specific to Caribbean modernity. [LINK TO ORIGINAL PUBLISHER]

Gezi Park Events: Various Shades of the Opposition against the Authoritarian Rule

I dedicate this piece to those who lost their lives, limbs and loved ones during the Gezi Uprising in Turkey…

     Turkey was in the frontline of news in June 2013, due to a series of unpredicted events, in a country with a tradition of obedience culture, summarised by the well-known proverb “Let the snake that doesn´t touch me live a thousand years”. The events started with a very naïve sit-in in the GeziPark, a public park in the midst of Istanbul nearby Taksim Square, where large left-wing demonstrations were held during the 1970s. The sit-in was organised through Facebook and Twitter to invite people to gather and camp there. The sit-in aimed at protecting the park from being regenerated, one of the few green areas of Istanbul covered with grown trees, which later transformed into large-scale street demonstrations aiming at freedom and equality.

Taksim and Beyoglu: The Western Face of Istanbul

        Before I explain how we came to this point, I will provide the reader with a sense of the spaces which will be mentioned in this piece, being GeziPark, Beyoglu, and Taksim Square, all located in the largest city of the country, Istanbul. Until the June 2013 uprising, Gezi Park, instead of a place of destination, was a neglected and in-between place connecting work and education amenities. Its neglect was also fuelled by the proximity of Beyoglu, Cihangir, and Galata, old neighbourhoods with a cosmopolitan city life, including night clubs, cafes, restaurants, exhibition and art centres. Istanbul has always been a city of neighbourhoods segregated on the basis of a particular identity and way of life. In this respect, Taksim and the main district to which it belongs, Beyoglu, have been known for centuries as the western face of Istanbul, due to the non-Muslim and Levantine populations who lived in the area involved with trade and especially banking during the Ottoman Empire. These people were early adopters of a bourgeoisie lifestyle in the Ottoman Empire who brought a westernised way of life with particular consumption habits. Beyoglu has various non-Muslim places of worship (synagogues and churches) and is characterized by a built environment reflecting a European taste. After Non-Muslim populations gradually left Turkey during the Republican Era, Taksim and Beyoglu experienced periods of neglect, leading to the inflow of migrants from Anatolia. However, the area is still dominated by beautiful buildings and a mixed population of tourists, locals and passers-by, becoming more popular due to its gradual renewal and gentrification since the 1980. Similarly, Galata and Cihangir also experienced gentrification, and are preferred as a place of residence especially by artists, intellectuals and academics, being two neighbourhoods famous for their night life, arts and cultural events, cosmopolitan way of life, and old built environment. During the Republican period, the secular nation builders were clever to transform Taksim Square into a symbol of modern Istanbul. Taksim Square, where GeziPark is located, is also home to the AtaturkMonument, erected in 1928 to commemorate the Independence War and its heroes, including Ataturk, the founder of the TurkishRepublic. Since then, it has become the symbol of secularism and later of socialism during the 1970s, hosting large left-wing demonstrations, to commemorate 1^st of May, Workers’ Day. The area was closed off to the public for left-wing demonstrations by the 1980 coup d’etat starting a neoliberal period of oppression. The Square’s modern identity was complemented by the Ataturk Cultural Centre, built in 1969 and then rebuilt in 1977 after to a fire, as the main centre for classical music concerts, opera and ballet performances until its closure in 2008, all of which make Taksim Square the “door to the modern Istanbul”.

                        

The Taksim  Square: AtaturkMonument is located in the round area, with GeziPark in the upper right of the picture, the green area. The large block to the right is the Ataturk Cultural Centre, closed to the public since 2008. The Square is in the middle of the picture which became the site for left-wing demonstrations during the 1970s. The picture is taken from Google Earth.

Justice and Development Party: From Aspiration to the EU into a Society of Fear

         Here a couple of sentences are needed on the Justice and Development Party, the ruling party of Turkey since 2002 which adopts neoliberal economic policies but uses populist and conservative discourses to win over the masses, discussed also in recent blogs written by Taskale (2013) and Dikec (2013). The party can be regarded as the melting pot of different right-wing ideologies and is supported by the Islamic capital and denominations (Tanulku, 2012a).  Its main supporters are the immigrant masses living in large cities lacking in cultural capital, and unconcerned about the arts/culture (high culture) and the protection of heritage and environment. The Justice and Development Party’s populist discourses identify with the masses, who felt isolated and exploited, economically and socio-culturally in the face of an established secular urban culture. The party also

Trouble at t’Mall

RICHARD J WILLIAMS

Something’s up with cities, as recent articles in The Economist and the FT attest. In the rich world, for decades we’ve held the notion of cities as basket cases to be endured rather than enjoyed. Few really believed in regeneration, if pushed: tidying up old docks and factories was, most of us believed, a cosmetic exercise. Our future was inexorably suburban. That set of beliefs held true until about a decade ago, underlined by relentlessly gloomy demographics, nlot just for celebrated basket cases like Detroit (61% population loss), but otherwise wealthy and successful places like London (-25% from its peak). We read Joel Garreau on the exurbs and imagined, mostly with trepidation, a Californian future. Cities were what the  developing world did – they weren’t for us.

Well, all that seems to have changed. The last set of population statistics for the UK were remarkable for what they said about…

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Marshall Berman Dies at 72

This just in via Susan Larson via the NYT:

Marshall Berman, Philosopher Who Praised Marx and Modernism, Dies at 72

By WILLIAM YARDLEY

Published: September 15, 2013

Marshall Berman, an author, academic, philosopher and lyrical defender of modernism, Karl Marx and his native New York City, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 72…

[READ THE NY TIMES ARTICLE HERE]

Stephen Vilaseca’s Barcelonan Okupas [new book just published]

Barcelonan Okupas: Squatter Power! is the first book to combine close-readings of the representations of Spanish squatters known as okupas with the study of everyday life, built environment, and city planning in Barcelona. Stephen Vilaseca broadens the scope of Spanish cultural studies by integrating into it notions of embodied cognition and affect that respond to the city before and against the fixed relations of capitalism. Social transformation, as demonstrated by the okupas, is possible when city and art interrelate, not through capital or the urbanization of consciousness, but through bodily thought. The okupas reconfigure the way thoughts, words, images and bodily responses are linked by evoking and communicating the idea of free exchange and openness through art (poetry, music, performance art, the plastic arts, graffiti, urban art and cinema); and by acting out and rehearsing these ideas in the practice of squatting. The okupas challenge society to differentiate the images and representations instituted by state domination or capitalist exploitation from the subversive potential of imagination. The okupas unify theory and practice, word and body, in pursuit of a positive, social vision that might serve humanity and lead the way out of the current problems caused by capitalism.

[Click here to listen to a podcast interview with Stephen Vilaseca]

[Click here to go to the book’s Amazon page]

CFP: ‘Understanding Island Cities’: Special issue of Island Studies Journal and Island Dynamics

Despite the great progress made in the fields of island studies and urban studies over recent decades, little attention has been paid to island cities per se. Indeed, some may consider island studies and urban studies to be mutually exclusive areas of inquiry. Nevertheless, there is a strong correlation between islandness and urbanity: Over the course of human history, many important regional, global, and capital cities have developed wholly or partially on small islands or archipelagos and are almost invariably coastal (located near seas or along rivers). Physical separation from the mainland and spatial limitations along with a maritime tradition can encourage the transport of products and ideas, improved defence infrastructure, construction of social capital, consolidation of political power, formation of vibrant cultures, and concentration of population. Examples of cities that are largely contiguous with small islands include Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, New York, St Petersburg, Singapore, and Venice.

Another kind of island city is represented by the capital city or major population centre of larger, primarily rural islands or archipelagos. Each of these cities is affected not just by the dynamics at work in urban areas in general, but also by the special functions it gains from acting as a metropolis that provides goods and services to rural island hinterlands. Examples of this kind of city include Havana, Manila, Palermo, Reykjavik, and Taipei.

Island Studies Journal (ISJ) (http://www.islandstudies.ca/journal) and Island Dynamics (http://www.islanddynamics.org) invite submissions to a special joint publication on ‘Understanding Island Cities’. Selected peer-reviewed papers will be published in a

City Nature

Digital Humanities for Public Historians

Nature is unevenly distributed in and across cities despite the fact that much else about cities scales with population. The City Nature project combines spatial analysis of parks and other natural areas in cities with text mining of planning documents and published historical narratives to explore why.

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