urbanism Archives

Invisible Reconstruction

What does it really mean to reconstruct a city after a natural, biological or man-made disaster? Is the repair and reinstatement of buildings and infrastructure sufficient without the mending of social fabric? The authors of this volume believe that the true measure of success should be societal. After all, a city without people is no city at all.
Invisible Reconstruction takes the view that effective disaster mitigation and recovery require interdisciplinary tactics. Historian Lucia Patrizio Gunning and urbanist Paola Rizzi expand beyond the confines of individual disciplines or disaster studies to bring together academics and practitioners from a wide variety of disciplines, comparing strategies and outcomes in different scenarios and cultures from South America, Europe and Asia.

From cultural heritage and public space to education and participation, contributors reflect on the interconnection of people, culture and environment and on constructive approaches to strengthening the intangible ties to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability.

By bringing practical examples of how communities and individuals have reacted to or prepared for disaster, the publication proposes a shift in public policy to ensure that essential physical reinforcement and rebuilding are matched by attention to societal needs. Invisible Reconstruction is essential reading for policymakers, academics and practitioners working to reduce the impact of natural, biological and man-made disaster or to improve post-disaster recovery.

Practising Ethics

Grappling with ethics can disorientate and disturb your peace of mind in the small hours of the night. Practising Ethics transforms ethics from an obstacle to an opportunity by offering a poethic infrastructure to guide the development of ethical practice in architectural and urban research.

Practising Ethics bridges the gap between research volume and textbook. The book’s two-part structure creates a dialogue between ethical concepts derived from decolonial, ecological, feminist and queer theory, and lived ethical experiences that are explored through specific situations. A series of opening essays present hotspots, touchstones, keystones, blindspots, moonshots and milestones as different ethical orientations in a six-point methodology. This is followed by six case studies in which practitioners and researchers navigate these orientations through narrative figurations that describe ethical deliberations arising from social science, humanities, practice-led and participatory art and architectural design research in El Salvador, India, Nigeria, Peru and the United Kingdom.

The book acts as a companion to an award-winning online toolkit and is illustrated by Judit Ferencz who offers creative exercises for readers to develop their own poethic infrastructures.

Urban Displacement and Trade in a Senegalese Market

The Malian market at the railway terminus in Dakar was bulldozed in 2009 and, following privatisation of the railway, passenger services in Senegal soon ceased altogether. The consequences were felt especially by women traders who had travelled the line since its inauguration, making the terminus in Dakar the centre of a thriving network of traders and migrants. To examine the fates of those whose livelihoods were destroyed or disrupted, Gunvor Jónsson spent a year with the women evicted from the terminus.

Urban Displacement and Trade in a Senegalese Market explores what happens at ‘the end’ of urban displacement, when it is all over, so to speak – when the dust has settled and people find themselves scattered in sometimes unfamiliar surroundings, trying to pick up the pieces and create something meaningful.

This book argues that rupture and ensuing displacement do not produce a clean slate where identities, networks and histories must be produced from scratch. Traders and their markets do not simply vanish into thin air when they are evicted. The book examines not only what is lost but what emerges when a dense node, such as the terminus, is dissolved and fragmented. The ethnography of the traders reveals that the aftermath of eviction in cities may lead to diasporic forms of consciousness and identity formations. Displacement, whether on a local or global scale, demands difficult adjustments and people’s capacities to adapt to new circumstances and environments vary. This book uncovers some of these different capacities and variations in traders’ reactions to displacement.

Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia

What can the generative processes of dynamic ownership reveal about how the urban is experienced, understood and made in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia? Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia provides an ethnography of actions, strategies and techniques that form part of how residents precede and underwrite the owning of real estate property – including apartments and land – in a rapidly changing city. In doing so, it charts the types of visions of the future and perceptions of the urban form that are emerging within Ulaanbaatar following a period of investment, urban growth and subsequent economic fluctuation in Mongolia’s extractive economy since the late 2000s.

Following the way that people discuss the ethics of urban change, emerging urban political subjectivities and the seeking of ‘quality’, Plueckhahn explores how conceptualisations of growth, multiplication, and the portioning of wholes influence residents’ interactions with Ulaanbaatar’s urban landscape. Shaping Urban Futures in Mongolia combines a study of changing postsocialist forms of ownership with a study of the lived experience of recent investment-fuelled urban growth within the Asia region. Examining ownership in Mongolia’s capital reveals how residents attempt to understand and make visible the hidden intricacies of this changing landscape.

Post-war Architecture between Italy and the UK

Italy and the UK experienced a radical re-organisation of urban space following the devastation of many towns and cities in the Second World War. The need to rebuild led to an intellectual and cultural exchange between a wave of talented architects, urbanists and architectural historians in the two countries. Post-war Architecture between Italy and the UK studies this exchange, exploring how the connections and mutual influences contributed to the formation of a distinctive stance towards Internationalism, notwithstanding the countries’ contrasting geographic and climatic conditions, levels of economic and industrial development, and social structures.

Topics discussed in the volume include the influence of Italian historic town centres on British modernist and Brutalist architectural approaches to the design of housing and university campuses as public spaces; post-war planning concepts such as the precinct; the tensions between British critics and Italian architects that paved the way for British postmodernism; and the role of architectural education as a melting pot of mutual influence. It draws on a wealth of archival and original materials to present insights into the personal relationships, publications, exhibitions and events that provided the crucible for the dissemination of ideas and typologies across cultural borders.

Offering new insights into the transcultural aspects of European architectural history in the post-war years, and its legacy, this volume is vital reading for architectural and urban historians, planners and students, as well as social historians of the European post-war period.

Creating Chinese Urbanism

Creating Chinese Urbanism describes the landscape of urbanisation in China, revealing the profound impacts of marketisation on Chinese society and the consequential governance changes at the grassroots level.
During the imperial and socialist periods, state and society were embedded. However, as China has been becoming urban, the territorial foundation of ‘earth-bound’ society has been dismantled. This metaphorically started an urban revolution, which has transformed the social order derived from the ‘state in society’. The state has thus become more visible in Chinese urban life.
Besides witnessing the breaking down of socially integrated neighbourhoods, Fulong Wu explains the urban roots of a rising state in China. Instead of governing through autonomous stakeholders, state-sponsored strategic intentions remain. In the urban realm, the desire for greater residential privacy does not foster collectivism. State-led rebuilding of residential communities has sped up the demise of traditionalism and given birth to a new China with greater urbanism and state-centred governance.
Taking the vantage point of concrete residential neighbourhoods, Creating Chinese Urbanism offers a cutting-edge analysis of how China is becoming urban and grounds the changing state governance in the process of urbanization. Its original and material interpretation of the changing role of the state in China makes it suitable reading for researchers and students in the fields of urban studies, geography, planning and the built environment.