Summary
An increasing amount of scholarship (Robinson 2006, Roy 2011) has
emerged as a critique of the ways in which cities in the global South have been
studied. This session aims to discuss cities in ways that respond to this
post-colonial questioning of urban theory. How can concepts that emerged in the
South, such as informality, be used in cities of the global North? How can
empirical studies of cities beyond the West inform urban theory in general? How
do concepts such as neo-liberalism or gentrification, change when examined in a
non-Western context? The session is interested in theoretical approaches as
well as methods of thinking 'comparatively' through both multi- and single case
studies.
Key Words: Post-colonial theory, comparative urbanism, sub-altern theory
Chairs: Hanna Hilbrandt, Susana Neves Alves, Tauri Tuvikene
Papers
Tauri Tuvikene, UCL Department of Geography (Year 3)
Abstract
title: Thinking about ‘post-socialist cities’: beyond
regionally bounded understandings
This paper will investigate the complexities of
understanding formerly socialist cities in the perspective of comparative
urbanism and post-colonial theory. Whereas it is already popular in urban
studies to think cities comparatively drawing together multiple urban
experiences, much more attention in literature is given to ‘the global South’
than to another ‘beyond the West’ context—post-socialist world. Despite this
lack of consideration there exists significant amount of literature on ‘post-socialist
cities’ discussing their historical and contemporary processes. However, this
literature has had an unfortunate tendency to perceive its subject matter by relegating
post-socialist cities to a spatial and temporal category of post-1991 East and Central Europe. Therefore, drawing from the experience of
comparative urban studies the paper proposes alternative ways in which
post-socialist cities can be understood by, first, suggesting that the concept
‘post-socialism’ be extended to include other geographical areas; and, second, arguing
to discontinue the use of ‘post-socialism’ and apply other terms for discussing
those cities, like neo-liberalism or post-colonialism. Finally, and the point
which the paper wants to stress the most, it will be recommended that new
theoretical and empirical ways of understanding post-socialism be developed.
Drawing from my research on urban mobility debates in the city of Tallinn, Estonia, the suggestion here is that post-socialism could be
thought in line with actor-network thinking where various entities bring
together different locations and times. These entities might exhibit
characteristics of “persisting socialism” or might be something completely
different, either more universal or historical. The challenge for empirical
research, then, is to think how something could be thought as “post-socialist”
and what would it analytically give for the understanding of particular urban
constellations.
Oren
Shlomo, Department
of Politics and Government, Ben
Gurion
University
of the Negev (Year
3)
Sovereign
practices, urban informal authorities: Towards urban sovereignty arrangements?
A Study of population and space management in East Jerusalem
Jerusalem
is mainly known as an ethno-national Divided
City.
But the lines which separates Jewish from Palestinian neighborhoods also
distinguishes between "modern" and "non-modern", formal and
informal, and "northern" and "southern" urbanity. Jerusalem
can therefore be a fertile ground for researching the encounter of modern state
mechanisms with a colonial urban space characterized by alternative urban
authority systems and practices.
The
study deals with the effective aspects of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem's
Palestinian neighborhoods, focusing on population and space management forms
and practices which enable the containment of population and space into the
state's administrative and symbolic operation.
The
paper will focus on the state's and municipal practices used to regulate about
2000 informal public transportation vehicles in Eastern
Jerusalem. Furthermore, the paper will
examine the practices used by the state and local actors regarding the
competition over the management of the local education
system. Those practices and rationales of action contribute to the
understanding of urban sovereignty arrangements. This refers to various
ways in which the state and the municipality act in an urban environment which
is partially included in the national and municipal order. I suggest that in
such informal and adversarial urban environment, the production of space and
the management of populations occur in a dual manner. On the one hand, the
state acknowledges its limitations in use of power against local alternatives,
and on the other hand, a pragmatic, wary collaboration between various local
actors and the state.
Rosalina Babourkova, UCL
Development Planning Unit (Year 3)
Abstract title: Ethnicity,
Informality and Illegality in the (post-colonial) Eastern European city
Post-socialism
is increasingly seen as “transformation” rather than “transition”, with the
former constituting complex and contested change that is uneven and spatially
differentiated (Smith and Swain, 1998; Pavlínek,
2003). Specific
urban manifestations of such spatially differentiated transformation have been
not only the growth of informal settlements on public and private land, but
also their increased ethnicisation. The growth of existing and the rise of new mahalas inhabited by people of Romani
origin, Europe’s largest ethnic minority, point to a distinct ethnic dimension
of urban informality in Eastern Europe. Although post-colonial theory is
increasingly being applied to, on the one hand, the post socialist city
(Lisiak, 2010), and on the other hand, to the Roma people as post-colonial
subjects (Ashton-Smith, 2010; Trehan and Kóczé, 2009), the rise of informal
settlements in the region (Tsenkova, 2010) and their ethnicisation have not
been discussed in such terms.
By looking at the city of Sofia and the historical development of its largest Romani
settlement, Fakulteta, this thesis chapter seeks to understand the intersection
of ethnicity and urban informality in the Eastern European city through the
lens of post-colonial studies. The research to date has found that discourses
on informal Roma settlements in Sofia emphasise above all their illegal nature, normalising conditions of illegality for Romani residents
and preventing creative
approaches to the physical upgrading of settlements and improved access to
basic services.
Hanna Hilbrandt, Department
of Geography, Open University (Year 1)
Abstract title: “The gutters
are filled with gold”: On Berlin's Geographies of Informality
Recent scholarship on cities in
the Global South (Roy 2009, Robinson 2011, Watson 2009) has criticized
prevalent “distinctions between the West and the rest” (Pile 2006). This
perspective, it is argued, has produced theories with limited validities;
categorized knowledge according to Western visions of modernity and ignored
strategies of resistance that have emerged in large parts of the world. Recurrent
calls to challenge these ‘developmentalist’ readings of the South demand to
post-colonize theory and overcome ‘binary entrapments’.
Following this theoretical turn, this paper re-examines Berlin through ‘Southern Theory’. Can
concepts deriving from this literature help explain cities beyond the South? My
testing ground will be the governance of informality. Increasingly Berlin is marked by fiscal crises,
entrepreneurial urbanism and social inequality. As welfare reforms have slimmed
down benefits, those, who live precarious lives at the periphery of society,
have adopted diverse responses to the insecurities they are faced with. Often
they bypass formal regulations. This project explores such informalities from a
twofold perspective: as a practice of resistance and appropriation and as a
potential resource for structural transformation and political change. To inform
an understanding of the effects of growing inequalities as well as notions of
political agency in Berlin, I review and discuss concepts of informality (Roy
2009) as well as the tactics of resistance (Bayat 2000, Benjamin 2008) that
authors have traced in the Global South.
To illustrate this discussion, I present research on the informal
practices of poor Berliners who collect refundable bottles in public spaces to
raise their pensions or state-benefits and make ends meet. This study
identifies the particularities of informality in comparatively privileged
settings and illustrates a context of increasing social divide in which people
negotiate their relationships with the state through informal appropriations
and insurgent claims.
Bianca Maria Nardella, UCL
Development Planning Unit (Year 3)
Interrogating communities of expertise on
urban conservation and development for the old city of Tunis: an
interpretive methodology
My research interrogates how knowledge
practices adopted by communities of expertise in urban conservation (based both
in Western and Arab-Islamic milieus) articulate meanings for spatial
transformations of ‘public and open spaces’ in historic cities of the Southern
Mediterranean, cities currently placed on the ‘development’ side of the urban
scholarship divide (Robinson 2006).
The urban conservation and development
agenda for the old city of Tunis
is explored by questioning how experts both in Tunisian institutions and key
programs of international agencies (Aga Khan Trust for Culture, European Union,
UNESCO, World Bank) frame categories of intervention for safeguarding ‘public
and open spaces’. The thesis traces (dis)continuities in how expert communities
seek to dis-embed their knowledge practices from Modern, Eurocentric epistemologies
of cultural heritage and urban planning that, from the time of French colonisation,
have displaced a rich Arab-Islamic tradition of urban living.
I would like to present my methodology: a
constructivist, qualitative, framework adopting multi-sited ethnography (Marcus
1995,1999) and interpretive policy analysis (Yanow 1999; Yanow and
Schwartz-Shea 2006) approaches to disentangle overlapping constructions of
meaning, and trace how they circulate / translate in ‘interpretive communities’
linked to multiple loci of knowledge production. What can we learn by analysing
i) how do policies designed in the West (to address problems of historic cities
in the South) mean in the context of Tunis; and ii) how do Tunisian
experts make sense of international funding opportunities, by appropriation
and/or criticism of proposed practices?
The aim being to trace where fractures
become explicit in the apparent order of a dominant ‘cultural heritage conservation
and urban development’ paradigm, and how they materialise.
Astrid
Wood, UCL Department of Geography (Year 3)
Methods and
motivations for exploring policy circulation in South Africa
This study of policy circulation focuses empirically on South
African adoption of bus rapid transit (BRT) policies implemented between 2006
and 2012. The BRT model, publicized by Bogota’s successful implementation of TransMilenio, was a critical
influence on South Africa but the process through which BRT circulated through South
African policy actors and adopted locally demands further study. Policy flows
are not “traceable connections” or “physical flows that can be traced on a map”
(Robinson 2011b, p.26) but part of an uneven process of circulation which involves power
and personalities. Circulations are therefore difficult to study especially when
they do not move directly between localities. The South African city provides a
useful context through which to investigate policy circulation because it has
been shaped by a variety of economic, political and social flows facilitated by
colonial and post-colonial relationships. This research tries to overcome the
tendency to focus solely on any particular instance of mobility to transcend
academic understandings of urbanism as located in place, person or policy. What
influences city decisions regarding circulated policy, and how does the study
of city differences along a comparative vein enhance our understanding of
policy circulation? This presentation will address the ontological reasons for
my methodology interrogating the value of interviews and the way in which my
focus across six South African cities contributes towards wider arguments of
urban policy mobility, comparative urbanism and city development strategy.
Marieke
Krijnen, Department
of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent
University
(Year 2)
North/south,
global/local: the implications of studying gentrification and neoliberal
urbanism in Beirut, Lebanon
My
PhD-project focuses on urban transformation in Beirut,
Lebanon,
in relation to neoliberalism and gentrification. Lebanon
has always been an open economy where market forces enjoyed a free reign,
albeit hampered by corruption and political instability. Current market-led
urban transformation in Western Europe
might therefore represent a break from the Fordist/Keynesian past, but for Lebanon,
this is not as obvious.
I
will present the first two sections of my (draft) theoretical
framework-chapter. First, it focuses on the western bias in (urban) theory and
its critiques, general (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011; Connell, 2007) and
specifically urban (Robinson, 2006; Roy, 2011). What do they teach me about
ways of viewing my case study? What can my findings contribute to this debate?
Second, I discuss the relationship between ‘global’ trends (neoliberalism,
gentrification) and ‘local’ specificities and histories, generally (Ferguson,
2006; Tsing, 2005) and specifically urban (Smith, 2001). How ‘local’ was the
city before the ‘lenses’ (Bunnell and Coe, 2005) of globalization and
neoliberalism became conventional ways of looking at urban transformation? Beirut
was practically a ‘global’ city by the end of the 19th century; my findings
show that the government has always facilitated real estate development. Solving
this issue with ‘hybridity’ (Fregonese, 2012) does not work, because
neoliberalism is always hybrid (Robinson and Parnell, 2011) and in many urban
mega-projects in Europe
the overlap of public/private interests, bordering on corruption, have been
well documented (Swyngedouw et al., 2002). I ultimately hope to use my findings
from Beirut
as a mirror for ‘the West’.
Marten
Boekelo, Amsterdam
Institute for Social Science Research, University
of Amsterdam
(Year 4)
Gentrification
– by all means? Redevelopment and urban politics in Beirut
My paper will interrogate the concept of
gentrification as it has been developed in Marxist urban geography through an
examination of an apparent case of gentrification in a centrally located,
working-class neighbourhood in Beirut. Specifically, I will examine the conceptualization
of capital, the role it plays in conditioning the evolution of the urban
ecology, and the implications for our understanding of urban politics.
The neighbourhood in question, Al-Khandaq al-Ghamiq,
sustained substantial damages during the Lebanese (‘civil’) wars (1975-1990)
but was not included in the large-scale redevelopment program that has
benefited the adjacent ‘downtown Beirut’. The relative disinvestment in Khandaq
has produced a striking contrast that recalls what Neil Smith has dubbed
‘Hoyt’s Valley’, including a recent surge of renewed investment under
conditions of a generalized real-estate boom. The resultant hikes in housing
prices threaten the residential security of many of the area’s current
inhabitants.
However, the mechanisms by which this process of
gentrification occurs – warfare, political clashes over post-war ‘normality’,
the haphazard bricolage by local property owners and petty entrepreneurs – do
not line up neatly to the analytics of capital accumulation provided by Marxist
geographers. Particularly significant, urban politics isn’t made of the
face-off between capital and labour (Harvey) or exchange and use value (Logan & Molotch);
rather, the politics of Khandaq residents is one of informal and often illicit
evasion and recourse to clientelist support relations. The paper will argue
that older interests in such informal political networks remain crucial for any
post-colonial understanding of the city today.