Urban Social Hauntings: Disappearing Gravestone Murals in Gentrifying Brooklyn

This article concerns the disappearance of gravestone (or “rest in peace”) murals in gentrifying Brooklyn, New York. Social hauntings reveal the unresolved violence of Black disposability and dispossession, as it manifests in the urban landscape in periods of urban decline and gentrification; gravestone murals are forms of “wake work” that attend to social haunting, accounting for Black life and death in urban place. This article first considers the wake work of gravestone murals, that they are memorials, archives of collective memory, spaces of worldmaking, and resistance to anti-Black violence. Because gravestone murals illustrate how Black people produce meaning in the urban landscape, they are also forms of Black spatial production. The article then explores the emergence of newer, stylized murals as aesthetic commodities that bring social and economic value to urban space, while commodifying Black life and death. The disappearance of gravestone murals, a visual record of the urban crisis, indicates the transformation of Black urban space in the 21st century.

“Place Making” and “Place Attachment” as Key Concepts in Understanding and Confronting Contemporary Urban Evictions: The Case of Givat-Amal, Tel Aviv

This article expands on the usability of the concepts of “place making” and “place attachment” as recently developed in urban studies research in the context of housing insecurity of marginalized communities in today’s neo-liberal city. Particularly, against the growing threat of urban evictions, the article utilizes a transdisciplinary approach, showing the relevance of both concepts for (a) a better understanding of bottom-up processes of spatial production and attempts to create a sense of place on the part of such communities, and (b) offering an innovative legal strategy for doing justice to these communities in terms of their compensation rights, especially where a title to land has not been registered on a private basis. These issues are critically examined on the site-related case of the Givat-Amal quarter in Tel Aviv, Israel. This district is now under actual final threat of forced evictions following seven conflicted decades with the state, municipal authorities and private entrepreneurs. Our transdisciplinary study is based on qualitative methodologies in human geography such as fieldwork, visual evidence, and interviews, with a glimpse into philosophy. It is equally based on revisiting “traditional” legal property rights through the lens of post-liberal human rights analysis. The argument can apply to many situations of forced evictions across Africa, Latin America, and the West itself.

Territori e paesaggio: l’integrazione attraverso gli Osservatori

The essay examines the relations between landscape, communities, and territories from the perspective of the 2000 Landscape Convention. It assumes that, within the processes of spatial production, territories, communities, and the area perceived by people as landscape are mutually co-constitutive. The essay then focuses on the legal devices whereby landscape is integrated into territorial public policies through the technical and administrative services which are the regional and landscape observatories.

Placing the Nation: The Politics of Spatial Production at Auckland Airport and Wellington Airport

<p>The airport is a site that blurs spatial boundaries. While primarily functioning to move aircraft and passengers between land and air, the airport is simultaneously a complex social institution that mediates the relationship between the local and global, the public and private, and national and international space. This thesis discusses the changing nature of Auckland International Airport and Wellington International Airport as spaces that are produced through a number of historical, economic and political contexts. Using spatial, cultural and critical theory along with concepts from human geography and mobilities research, this study examines each airport as a dynamic, ongoing process of spatial relations. Central to this analysis is the understanding that space, subjectivity and technologies of power produce and reproduce each other on different scales. Drawing upon news stories, promotional material, institutional representations and popular representations of Auckland and Wellington airports, the following thesis will explore the ways in which their spaces have been imagined, produced and used over time.</p>

Placing the Nation: The Politics of Spatial Production at Auckland Airport and Wellington Airport

<p>The airport is a site that blurs spatial boundaries. While primarily functioning to move aircraft and passengers between land and air, the airport is simultaneously a complex social institution that mediates the relationship between the local and global, the public and private, and national and international space. This thesis discusses the changing nature of Auckland International Airport and Wellington International Airport as spaces that are produced through a number of historical, economic and political contexts. Using spatial, cultural and critical theory along with concepts from human geography and mobilities research, this study examines each airport as a dynamic, ongoing process of spatial relations. Central to this analysis is the understanding that space, subjectivity and technologies of power produce and reproduce each other on different scales. Drawing upon news stories, promotional material, institutional representations and popular representations of Auckland and Wellington airports, the following thesis will explore the ways in which their spaces have been imagined, produced and used over time.</p>

The Politics, Poetics and Performance of Sacred Space: The Sacred Space of Cook Islands Christian Churches

<p>The current literature about sacred space suggests that it is produced through either substantive definitions of space (the poetics of space) or situational definitions of space (the politics of space). I conducted ethnographic research in the Cook Islands to consider how these two constructions of space interact to produce the sacred space of the Cook Islands Christian Church. I have shown that the production of sacred space can be described through three modes of spatial production: the politics of space, the poetics of space and the performance of space. They are enacted through social practices in an inter-related process. Based on these findings I propose a spatial triad model. I suggest that by moving beyond traditional dichotomous constructions of space such a spatial triad model can contribute to new understandings of how sacred and profane space is produced and reproduced.</p>

The Politics, Poetics and Performance of Sacred Space: The Sacred Space of Cook Islands Christian Churches

<p>The current literature about sacred space suggests that it is produced through either substantive definitions of space (the poetics of space) or situational definitions of space (the politics of space). I conducted ethnographic research in the Cook Islands to consider how these two constructions of space interact to produce the sacred space of the Cook Islands Christian Church. I have shown that the production of sacred space can be described through three modes of spatial production: the politics of space, the poetics of space and the performance of space. They are enacted through social practices in an inter-related process. Based on these findings I propose a spatial triad model. I suggest that by moving beyond traditional dichotomous constructions of space such a spatial triad model can contribute to new understandings of how sacred and profane space is produced and reproduced.</p>

TOURISM VERSUS MINING: CONTESTED SPACE IN TANJUNG PUTAT BEACH AND LEPAR BEACH, BELINYU DISTRICT, BANGKA REGENCY

Tourism is one the sustainable income sectors that is predicted as a post-mining sector. Thus, the area of tourism activities, especially beaches are minimized to be damaged, including juxtaposing it with mining. The aim of the research is to ellaborate spatial contestation that occurred at Tanjung Putat Beach and Lepar Beach, Belinyu District, Bangka Regency. The theoretical basis used in this research is using the concept of spatial production from Henri Lefebvre which consists of 3 concepts related to the production of space, namely spatial practice, representational space, and spatial representation. The method of the research research is qualitative with a descriptive method. In collecting the data, in-depth interviews were used to the informants who were closely related to the research being studied. The spatial contestation has indeed occurred in Tanjung Putat Beach and Lepar Beach, Belinyu District, Bangka Regency. However, the impact of mining activities has an impact on tourism in the vicinity, this is reinforced by protests against these mining activities.

TOURISM VERSUS MINING: CONTESTED SPACE IN TANJUNG PUTAT BEACH AND LEPAR BEACH, BELINYU DISTRICT, BANGKA REGENCY

Tourism is one of the sustainable income sectors that is predicted as a post-mining sector. Thus, the area of tourism activities, especially beaches are minimized to be damaged, including juxtaposing it with mining. The research aims to elaborate on spatial contestation that occurred at Tanjung Putat Beach and Lepar Beach, Belinyu District, Bangka Regency. The theoretical basis used in this research is using the concept of spatial production from Henri Lefebvre which consists of 3 concepts related to the production of space, namely spatial practice, representational space, and spatial representation. The method of the research is qualitative with a descriptive method. In collecting the data, in-depth interviews were used with the informants who were closely related to the research being studied. The spatial contestation has indeed occurred in Tanjung Putat Beach and Lepar Beach, Belinyu District, Bangka Regency. However, the impact of mining activities has an impact on tourism in the vicinity, this is reinforced by protests against these mining activities.