Urban PlanningPub Date : 2024-01-04DOI: 10.17645/up.6974
Harshavardhan Jatkar
{"title":"Subaltern Politics at Urban Borderlands","authors":"Harshavardhan Jatkar","doi":"10.17645/up.6974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.6974","url":null,"abstract":"Cities around the world are developed through modern/colonial boundaries between the formal/informal, private/public, vehicular/pedestrian, secular/religious, human/nonhuman, or new/old. Postcolonial and decolonial theorists have demonstrated how borders have served the colonial control of the city through the state apparatus, where differences have reinforced inequalities rather than engendering an open city. While politics between the two sides of the border is often explored, this article draws attention to the rather underacknowledged role of material assemblages at urban borderlands in making room for subaltern agencies to come into being. To do so, I first demonstrate the bordering effects of modern planning practices through an example of real-estate advertisements. Later, I focus on four urban borderlands, namely walls, mandals (socio-religious organisations), hillslopes and rivulet banks, and alleyways. Through ethnographic research on two slum rehabilitation projects in Pune, India, I show that the spatiality and temporality produced by these borderlands transcend modern boundaries while making room for subaltern agencies. Walls are used for bending the fixed spatiality of modern apartment buildings; mandals engender a spatiotemporal structure that straddles the religious/secular boundary; hillslopes and rivulet banks support the permanent temporariness of the self-built neighbourhoods; and alleyways allow the public and the private to flow into one another. Here, subaltern agencies effectively transgress modern borders, not by rejecting them but by inhabiting them to make an alternative and open city possible. In effect, this article argues that urban borderlands make visible subaltern agencies that have the potential to dislodge urban theory and practice from their colonial modernist legacy.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139384997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-26DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i4.7967
Nadine Appelhans, Sophie Schramm
{"title":"Between the “Structural” and the “Everyday”: Bridging Macro and Micro Perspectives in Comparative Urban Research","authors":"Nadine Appelhans, Sophie Schramm","doi":"10.17645/up.v8i4.7967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v8i4.7967","url":null,"abstract":"The discussion around placing cities within a larger network of cities and the criteria by which they are assessed has recently gained new momentum. Consideration of Southern, disadvantaged, or “peripheral” geographies previously neglected in comparative approaches are now being considered and have opened up new perspectives on the wider urban context. This thematic issue, thereby, explores the practical challenges of how comparative urbanism across a broadening range of dissimilar places across the globe is handled. The collection of empirical studies presented will lay out the challenges and insights gained into applying comparative methodologies to the real-world context, thereby contributing to the advancement of empirical tools for complex and multi-scalar research environments.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139157122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-20DOI: 10.17645/up.6972
Maria Eidenskog, Wiktoria Glad
{"title":"Bordering Practices in a Sustainability-Profiled Neighbourhood: Studying Inclusion and Exclusion Through Fluid and Fire Space","authors":"Maria Eidenskog, Wiktoria Glad","doi":"10.17645/up.6972","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.6972","url":null,"abstract":"Borders are essential in the current planning of cities since new forms of social relations are needed to support more sustainable ways of life. In this article, we present a case study of a sustainability-profiled new neighbourhood, Vallastaden in Sweden. We focus on how sustainability is enacted in different socio-material versions, which often include defusing borders between private and shared spaces. Shared space in Vallastaden includes spaces to facilitate meetings, such as felleshus (built as semi-communal, ground-level buildings, semi-indoor spaces, and greenhouses), winter gardens (built as rooftop, semi-private, semi-indoor, and social spaces), and the shared brook-park Broparken and farm-park Paradiset with rental allotments and communal gardens. Analysing how bordering practices create inclusion and exclusion, we study their consequences for the everyday lives of humans and non-humans in Vallastaden. We conceptualise these dynamics as fluid and fire space in order to make the ontological politics of bordering visible. Our study shows that the borders in the planned shared spaces are dynamic and create both fluid and fire space, depending on their socio-material relations. The research shows that planners need to take these heterogeneous socio-material relations into account when creating borders because, otherwise, they risk creating unfair exclusions.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139170668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-07DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i4.7264
Margot Rubin, Lindsay Blair Howe, Sarah Charlton, Muhammed Suleman, Anselmo Cani, Lesego Tshuwa, Alexandra Parker
{"title":"The Indifference of Transport: Comparative Research of “Infrastructural Ruins” in the Gauteng City-Region and Greater Maputo","authors":"Margot Rubin, Lindsay Blair Howe, Sarah Charlton, Muhammed Suleman, Anselmo Cani, Lesego Tshuwa, Alexandra Parker","doi":"10.17645/up.v8i4.7264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v8i4.7264","url":null,"abstract":"States in the Global South have consistently invested in large-scale, vanity infrastructure projects, which are often not used by the majority of their residents. Using a mixed-method and comparative approach with findings from Greater Maputo, Mozambique, and the Gauteng City-Region exposes how internationally-supported and expensive transport projects do not meet the needs of lower-income urban residents, and meanwhile, widespread, everyday modes of commuting such as trains, paratransit, and pathways for walking deteriorate. State-led development thus often generates an infrastructural landscape characterised by “ruin” and “indifference.” These choices are anachronistic, steeped in a desire for a modernist-inspired future and in establishing narratives of control. In the cases of Gauteng and Maputo, whether or not the infrastructure is “successfully” implemented, these choices have resulted in a distancing of the state from the majority of urban residents.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138592693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-07DOI: 10.17645/up.7027
Martin Barthel, James W. Scott
{"title":"Conceptualizing Place Borders as Narrative: Observations From Berlin-Wedding, a Neighbourhood in Transformation","authors":"Martin Barthel, James W. Scott","doi":"10.17645/up.7027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7027","url":null,"abstract":"Place is of central significance to urban planning processes that specifically target community involvement and co-ownership of development decisions. Consequently, the intriguing but often daunting task of understanding how a sense of place emerges, develops, and evolves has been a subject of interdisciplinary study that links the social sciences, humanities, and more recently, cognitive sciences. Since Kevin Lynch’s classic study of urban images and mental maps, borders within cities have either directly or indirectly featured as vital meaning-making elements of place identities. However, despite some remarkable precedents, analysis of political and socio-cultural borders has only begun to link place-making and bordering processes in ways that resonate with urban planning studies. In this article, we will suggest that borders emerge in the embodied creation of social space as a means to interpret the environment and stabilise ways of knowing the wider world. Building on our own previous research on participatory place-making initiatives in Berlin, we will indicate how border stories (i.e., the social communication of neighbourhood distinction, relationality, and transformation) represent vital knowledges of place. These knowledges reflect embodied experiences of place as well as contestations and tensions that characterise place development processes. Perhaps most importantly in terms of planning, the salience of urban borders lies in broadening understanding of how and why places function—or fail to function—as communities.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138591760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-07DOI: 10.17645/up.7083
Tim Mavrič, Neža Čebron Lipovec
{"title":"Social Media Groups in Interaction With Contested Urban Narratives: The Case of Koper/Capodistria, Slovenia","authors":"Tim Mavrič, Neža Čebron Lipovec","doi":"10.17645/up.7083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7083","url":null,"abstract":"Social media is arguably the most widespread tool for digital communication in Europe and worldwide, which makes it particularly important to investigate how this type of communication tool affects and reflects the processes that shape the urban physical and socio-cultural environment. Its influence on urban realities may be twofold: On one side we can use it as a reflection (or extension) of the processes that occur on the ground; on the other side, the specific ways in which social media operate might influence processes that shape the urban environment. This interaction between the urban and digital spaces is increasingly influencing how collective memory and related heritage discourses are shaped, transformed, and contested. In this article, we present the case of Koper (Italian: Capodistria), the main seaside harbour town of Slovenia, which faced a deep demographic and socio-cultural transformation in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its historic urban core became a deeply contested urban environment, where a hegemonic historical narrative clashed with several subaltern ones. The dissonance between contested narratives has re-emerged in the digital space through a handful of history-oriented Facebook groups in recent years. We analyse how digital tools have influenced the dynamics between the contested narratives and how these refer to specific locations within the town or to its historic urban core as a whole.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138591413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migrants in the Old Train Wagons Borderland in Thessaloniki: From Abandonment to Infrastructures of Commοning","authors":"Charalampos Tsavdaroglou, Paschalis Arvanitidis, Zacharias Valiantzas","doi":"10.17645/up.6967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.6967","url":null,"abstract":"The article examines the living and infrastructuring practices of homeless newcomer migrants who find shelter in abandoned train wagons in the west end of Thessaloniki, an area described as “one of the biggest train cemeteries in Europe.” Hundreds of train wagons have been abandoned there over the years, especially after the 2010 financial crisis, when the state-owned railway company was faced with significant financial difficulties. These abandoned wagons form an urban borderland and have provided temporary shelter to numerous homeless and unregistered migrants who stop in Thessaloniki on their route to Central and Northern Europe. Although there is a significant number of studies which discuss the formal infrastructures provided by the state and the NGOs, little attention has been given to the various ways by which homeless and unregistered migrants create and self-manage their own infrastructures to meet their needs. The article aims to shed light on this shortage while examining the (re)production of arrival infrastructures by the migrants themselves. In doing so, the article builds upon the concept of abandonment and attempts to enrich it by drawing on the theories of arrival infrastructures and urban commons. It combines spatial analysis and urban ethnography in order to explore how an urban borderland with abandoned infrastructures, like the train wagons, are re-used and transformed into commoning infrastructures, where newcomers and settled migrants join their forces in their attempt to support each other, meet their needs and of “becoming otherwise.”","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138591032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-05DOI: 10.17645/up.7206
Cristina Palmese, José Luis Carles Arribas, Alejandro Rodríguez Antolín
{"title":"The Soundscape and Listening as an Approach to Sensuous Urbanism: The Case of Puerta del Sol (Madrid)","authors":"Cristina Palmese, José Luis Carles Arribas, Alejandro Rodríguez Antolín","doi":"10.17645/up.7206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7206","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the placemaking process and experimental research on the citizens’ assessment of the soundscape in Puerta del Sol in Madrid. Numerous studies conducted in recent decades have shown that sound is a crucial element capable of providing new insights into the relationship between human beings and the environment. Sound possesses physical-sensory-perceptual qualities which connect the emotional and the rational aspects of the experience of the place, overcoming the aesthetic/scientific duality. By default, the soundscape is the result of a collective production. It is the resonant expression of the multiple activities and uses that inhabit a space. The soundscape of everyday life provides a vision of life in a particular place, giving meaning and a singular character to the fact of living there. The concept and methods of the soundscape arise from sensitive experiences of the place in direct relation to a community. This exploratory research focused on in situ methods (soundwalks, improvised interview mappings, sound archives, performances, and collective sound actions) as expressions of collective listening to place. This article also focuses on how to map and share the result of this research, the technology to build a collective digital place as a place of confluence of experiences, citizen knowledge, and reflection on the situated soundscape.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138600376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-12-05DOI: 10.17645/up.7093
Asma Mehan
{"title":"Digital Feminist Placemaking: The Case of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” Movement","authors":"Asma Mehan","doi":"10.17645/up.7093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.7093","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout Iran and various countries, the recent calls of the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (in Persian), “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (in Kurdish), or “Woman, Life, Freedom” (in English) movement call for change to acknowledge the importance of women. While these feminist protests and demonstrations have been met with brutality, systematic oppression, and internet blackouts within Iran, they have captured significant social media attention and coverage outside the country, especially among the Iranian diaspora and various international organizations. This article, grounded in feminist urban theories of the Global South, analyzes the digital feminist placemaking movement in Iran. As the first counter-revolution led by women, the movement utilizes digital art, graffiti, and protest movements to embody women’s solidarity groups and sympathy rallies. Our analysis employs various digital research methods, including social media scrutiny and the study of protest illustrations. Analyzing the digital feminist placemaking in Iran will enable us to compare the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between the minorities and majorities in the world’s countries. The outcomes of this research can help international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women), as well as policymakers, institutions, academics, and NGOs, to highlight the various ways in which broader public participation could be encouraged in the process of digital feminist insurgent placemaking.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138600944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban PlanningPub Date : 2023-11-28DOI: 10.17645/up.v8i4.7832
Aminreza Iranmanesh
{"title":"A Review of The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods","authors":"Aminreza Iranmanesh","doi":"10.17645/up.v8i4.7832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v8i4.7832","url":null,"abstract":"This book review critically examines The Routledge Handbook of Urban Design Research Methods, edited by Hesam Kamalipour, Patricia Aelbrecht, and Nastaran Peimani (2023, 1st edition). The book offers an extensive exploration of urban design research, organized under five thematic parts: “agency,” “affordance,” “place,” “informality,” and “performance.” Each part delves into the complexities and nuances of urban design research, integrating a diverse range of methodologies and case studies from different perspectives. This review explores the book’s comprehensive approach, noting its efforts to combine theoretical frameworks with methodological insights and its inclusion of a wide range of topics while highlighting the book’s strengths in addressing current issues in urban design research. The review maintains a critical approach, providing a balanced overview of the book’s contribution to urban design literature.","PeriodicalId":51735,"journal":{"name":"Urban Planning","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139223049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}