Cities to be Tamed? Spatial Investigations across the Urban South
Cities to be Tamed? Spatial Investigations across the Urban South

Author: Beatrice De Carli

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-07-08

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 144386367X

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Across the global South, the rapid urbanisation and uneven development that have occurred over the past few decades have brought to the surface a tight connection between social conflicts and urban space. Indeed, the physical conformation of urban space is one of the primary factors that trigger social tensions, with repercussions at the metropolitan, regional and national scales. Such tensions are related to the conditions of social and spatial inequality which characterise many urban areas across the South; they can also be connected to contingent political and institutional orders which find in the materiality of space both the means and the cause of conflicts among different groups, amidst diverging territorial demands and the overlapping of competing struggles for power. At the same time, new possibilities arise in the concreteness of space, including innovative forms of local activism, adapting strategies of self-organisation, and unconventional relations between the ‘formal’ and the ‘informal’ city. On acknowledging the multifaceted nature of the urban space, there arises a question which constitutes the core problem addressed by the book: are cities to be tamed? This volume gathers a series of cross-disciplinary contributions on these topics, spanning from architecture and urban design, to planning, social theory and geography. These contributions revolve around two core themes. The first concerns the agency of design in contexts of ‘informality’ and centres on the missing/unexpected/pursued exchange between projects and realities. The second concerns the complex relationship between spatial planning, politics, and conflicts in contexts characterised by marked ethnic, political, and social tensions. Contributors: Alessandro Balducci, Scott A. Bollens, Jeffrey Chan Kok Hui, Francesco Chiodelli, Laure Criqui, Viviana d’Auria, Beatrice De Carli, Bruno De Meulder, Annalies De Nijs, Maddalena Falletti, Nabeel Hamdi, Joud M.I. Khasawneh, Hamed Khosravi, Olivier Legrand, Colin Marx, Carmen Mendoza-Arroyo, Lina Scavuzzo, Erez Tzfadia, Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, Faith Wong and Oren Yiftachel.

Urban Commons
Urban Commons

Author: Mary Dellenbaugh

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2015-06-16

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 3038214957

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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.

Shaping Jerusalem
Shaping Jerusalem

Author: Francesco Chiodelli

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-10-14

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1317289099

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Shaping Jerusalem: Spatial planning, politics and the conflict focuses on a hidden facet of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the relentless reshaping of the Holy City by the Israeli authorities through urban policies, spatial plans, infrastructural and architectural projects, land use and building regulations. From a political point of view, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may appear to be at an impasse; however, it is precisely by looking at the city’s physical space that one can perceive that a war of cement and stone is under way. Many books have been written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem; some of them have focused on the urban fabric; Shaping Jerusalem uniquely discusses the role of Israeli spatial actions within the conflict. It argues that Israel’s main political objective – control over the whole city – is ordinarily and silently pursued through physical devices which permanently modify the territory and the urban fabric. Relying on strong empirical evidence and data through the analysis of statistical data, official policies, urban projects, and laws, author Francesco Chiodelli substantiates the political discussion with facts and figures about the current territorial situation of the city, and about the Israeli policies implemented in the city in the past six decades.

Beyond Houses
Beyond Houses

Author: A. Nuno Martins

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3031614038

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This book delves into the complexities of urban crises, focusing on the efforts of researchers and practitioners who confront precarious housing and forced displacement. Originating from the 8th International Conference on Building Resilience (convened in November 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal), this book examines challenges across diverse contexts and geographies, including Chile, India, Kenya, Mexico, Portugal, and Syria. Structured in three parts, the book's 12 chapters address disaster prevention and recovery, humanitarian architecture, and issues related to housing, migration, and urban forced displacement. The narratives emphasize vulnerabilities, community-driven design, and cross-cultural perspectives, comprehensively reviewing global urban planning, slum upgrading, and incremental housing strategies. The contributions engage readers with practical insights for mitigating urban vulnerability and intellectual analyses that consider the complexities of life amid systemic injustices. Ultimately, the authors suggest integrating architectural practice with social work within communities to address intricate urban housing challenges.

Social Housing in the Middle East
Social Housing in the Middle East

Author: Kivanç Kilinç

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-03-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 025303986X

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Essays on architecture in Kuwait, Iran, Israel, and other nations in the region, and how it can and must address the needs of local residents. As oil-rich countries in the Middle East are increasingly associated with soaring skyscrapers and modern architecture, attention is being diverted away from the pervasive struggles of social housing in those same urban settings. Social Housing in the Middle East traces the history of social housing—both gleaming postmodern projects and bare-bones urban housing structures—in an effort to provide a wider understanding of marginalized spaces and their impact on identities, communities, and class. While architects may have envisioned utopian or futuristic experiments, these buildings were often constructed with the knowledge and skill sets of local workers, and the housing was in turn adapted to suit the modern needs of residents. This tension between local needs and national aspirations are linked to issues of global importance, including security, migration, and refugee resettlement. The essays collected here consider how culture, faith, and politics influenced the solutions offered by social housing; they provide an insightful look at how social housing has evolved since the nineteenth century and how it will need to adapt to suit the twenty-first. “Essential reading . . . for architectural and social historians, planners, and policy makers.” —CAA Reviews

The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization
The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization

Author: Roberto Rocco

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-01-02

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1317292324

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The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanization investigates the mutual relationship between the struggle for political inclusion and processes of informal urbanization in different socio-political and cultural settings. It seeks a middle ground between two opposing perspectives on the political meaning of urban informality. The first, the ‘emancipatory perspective’, frames urban informality as a practice that fosters autonomy, entrepreneurship and social mobility. The other perspective, more critical, sees informality predominantly as a result of political exclusion, inequality, and poverty. Do we see urban informality as a fertile breeding ground for bottom-up democracy and more political participation? Or is urban informality indeed merely the result of a democratic deficit caused by governing autocratic elites and ineffective bureaucracies? This book displays a wide variety of political practices and narratives around these positions based on narratives conceived upon specific case cities. It investigates how processes of urbanization are politicized in countries in the Global South and in transition economies. The handbook explores 24 cities in the Global South, as well as examples from Eastern Europe and East Asia, with contributions written by a global group of scholars familiar with the cases (often local scholars working in the cities analyzed) who offer unique insight on how informal urbanization can be interpreted in different contexts. These contributions engage the extreme urban environments under scrutiny which are likely to be the new laboratories of 21st-century democracy. It is vital reading for scholars, practitioners, and activists engaged in informal urbanization.

Normalizing Occupation
Normalizing Occupation

Author: Marco Allegra

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-01-09

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0253025052

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Essays that analyze the integration and segregation processes that are an integral part of the broader historical trends shaping Israel/Palestine. Controversy surrounds Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the radical national and religious agendas at play there have come to define the area in the minds of many. This study, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding the process of “normalization” in the life of Jewish residents. Considering a wider range of historical and structural factors in which the colonization of the West Bank developed, it allows placing its origins and everyday reality into a wider perspective. The works collected consider the transformation of the landscape, the patterns of relationships shared by the region’s residents, Palestinian and Jewish alike, and the lasting effects of Israel’s settlement policy. Stressed in particular are such factors as urban planning, rising inequality and the retreat of the welfare state, and the changing political economy of industry and employment. Contributions by Lee Cahaner, Honaida Ghanim, Ruthie Ginsburg, Daniel Gutwien, Assaf Harel, Miki Kratsman, David Newman, Amir Paz-Fuchs, Wendy Pullan, Yael Ronen, Erez Tzfadia, Hadas Weiss and Haim Yacobi “The settlements are studied in their full diversity and heterogeneity, shattering a common prejudice to look mainly at the religious-nationalist, ideologically driven among them. The authors show in detail how the colonization project involves communities and agents coming from all sectors of Israeli society.” —Ariella Azoulay, author of Potential History

Under Jerusalem
Under Jerusalem

Author: Andrew Lawler

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2023-09-26

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 0593311760

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A spellbinding history of the hidden world below the Holy City—a saga of biblical treasures, intrepid explorers, and political upheaval “A sweeping tale of archaeological exploits and their cultural and political consequences told with a historian’s penchant for detail and a journalist’s flair for narration.” —Washington Post In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied past. In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city’s streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem’s history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements. It has served as a cudgel, a way to stake a claim to the most contested city on the planet. Today, the earth below Jerusalem remains a battleground in the struggle to control the city above. Under Jerusalem takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist.

Rethinking Global Modernism
Rethinking Global Modernism

Author: Vikramaditya Prakash

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1000471632

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This anthology collects developing scholarship that outlines a new decentred history of global modernism in architecture using postcolonial and other related theoretical frameworks. By both revisiting the canons of modernism and seeking to decolonize and globalize those canons, the volume explores what a genuinely "global" history of architectural modernism might begin to look like. Its chapters explore the historiography and weaknesses of modernism's normative interpretations and propose alternatives to them. The collection offers essays that interrogate transnationalism in new ways, reconsiders the agency of the subaltern and the roles played by infrastructures, materials, and global institutions in propagating a diversity of modernisms internationally. Issues such as colonial modernism, architectural pedagogy, cultural imperialism, and spirituality are engaged. With essays from both established scholars and up-and-coming researchers, this is an important reference for a new understanding of this crucial and developing topic.

In the Land of the Patriarchs
In the Land of the Patriarchs

Author: Noam Shoked

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 147732786X

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An on-the-ground account of the design and evolution of West Bank settlements, showing how one of the world’s most contested landscapes was produced by unexpected conflicts and collaborations among widely divergent actors. Since capturing the West Bank in 1967, Israel has overseen the construction of scores of settlements across the territory’s rocky hilltops. The settlements are part of a fierce political conflict. But they are not just hotly contested political ventures. They are also something more everyday: residential architectural projects. In the Land of the Patriarchsis an on-the-ground account of the design and evolution of West Bank settlements. Noam Shoked shows how settlements have been shaped not only by the decisions of military generals, high-profile politicians, and prominent architects but also by a wide range of actors, including real estate developers, environmental consultants, amateur archeologists, and Israelis who feel unserved by the country’s housing system. The patterns of design and construction they have inspired reflect competing worldviews and aesthetic visions, as well as everyday practices not typically associated with the politics of the Israeli occupation. Revealing the pragmatic choices and contingent circumstances that drive what appears to be a deliberately ideological landscape, Shoked demonstrates how unpredictable the transformation of political passion into brick and mortar can be.