Multiculturalism, gentrification, and Islam in the public space: the case of Baitul Mukarram in Lavapiés

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Óscar Salguero Montaño ◽  
Hutan Hejazi
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
The City

In plural and secular societies today, religious communities understand access to public space as a right to the city. Thisright legitimises their status as social actors and, through various notions linked to modernity and transparency, entitlesthem to have a public life and be recognised by others. By examining the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Lavapiés, oneof Madrid’s multicultural district undergoing intense gentrification and touristification processes, this article analyses theconditions through which this community accesses public space and achieves legitimisation and recognition through different practices and discourses displayed in a variety of events and festivities.

scholarly journals El islam en el espacio público de los barrios multiculturales del sur de Europa: el caso de Lavapiés, Madrid

2020 ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Oscar Salguero Montaño
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Plural Societies ◽  
The City ◽  
Los Grupos

Resumen: En las actuales sociedades plurales no confesionales, los grupos religiosos entienden el acceso al espacio público como un derecho a la ciudad. Este derecho legitima su condición de actores sociales, que traducen como visibilización en el espacio público y participación en la vida política del municipio, a través de diversas nociones vinculadas a la modernidad y la transparencia. Para explorar esta hipótesis, este artículo examina el caso de los musulmanes bangladeshíes del multicultural barrio madrileño de Lavapiés, el cual presenta semejanzas con otros barrios multiculturales de ciudades del sur de Europa como Lisboa o Roma: un barrio afectado por un acelerado proceso de gentrificación y turistificación. Se analizan las circunstancias en las que esta comunidad intenta acceder al espacio público, con el fin de lograr una mayor legitimación y reconocimiento, teniendo en cuenta las diferentes prácticas y discursos que se despliegan en determinados eventos y festividades.Abstract: In current nondenominational plural societies, religious groups understand access to public space as a right to the city. This right legitimizes their status as social actors, who are entitled to have a public life and to be recognized, through various notions linked to modernity and transparency. To explore this hypothesis, this article examines the case of Bangladeshi Muslims in Madrid’s multicultural neighborhood of Lavapiés, which has similarities with other multicultural neighborhoods in southern European cities, which has similarities with other multicultural neighbourhoods in southern European cities, such as Lisbon or Rome: a barrio affected by an accelerated gentrification and touristification process. It analyzes the circumstances through which this community attempts to access public space, in order to achieve further legitimization and recognition, by bringing into account the different practices and discourses displayed in specific events and festivities.

Mocking Parades and the Place of Pagan Statuary in Late Antique Alexandria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-288
Author(s):  
Jonathan Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Visual Contact ◽  
The Public ◽  
Sacred Objects ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

AbstractWith the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.

scholarly journals Where the Sidewalk Ends: Automobility and Shame in Tbilisi, Georgia

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Maxfield Waldman Sherouse
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Urban Public Space ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

In recent years, cars have steadily colonized the sidewalks in downtown Tbilisi. By driving and parking on sidewalks, vehicles have reshaped public space and placed pedestrian life at risk. A variety of social actors coordinate sidewalk affairs in the city, including the local government, a private company called CT Park, and a fleet of self-appointed st’aianshik’ebi (parking attendants) who direct drivers into parking spots for spare change. Pedestrian activists have challenged the automotive conquest of footpaths in innovative ways, including art installations, social media protests, and the fashioning of ad hoc physical barriers. By safeguarding sidewalks against cars, activists assert ideals for public space that are predicated on sharp boundaries between sidewalk and street, pedestrian and machine, citizen and commodity. Politicians and activists alike connect the sharpness of such boundaries to an imagined Europe. Georgia’s parking culture thus reflects not only local configurations of power among the many interests clamoring for the space of the sidewalk, but also global hierarchies of value that form meaningful distinctions and aspirational horizons in debates over urban public space. Against the dismal frictions of an expanding car system, social actors mobilize the idioms of freedom and shame to reinterpret and repartition the public/private distinction.

The Changes in Character of the City Center in Sofia

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Nanitchkova-Ozturk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
City Center ◽  
The Public ◽  
The City

This paper aims to provide insight into the repercussions of the recent changes in power structures and economic system in Bulgaria on the architectural features of public spaces in the city center. Within the general instability and confusion, increasing deterioration of the public domain is observed and this is interpreted as a field of opportunities through which the meaning of architectural environment as support of public life and its social significance could be regained. Whether and how this potential can turn into quality depends on a variety of factors, some of which are suggested as areas of inquiry. These include value systems of the society and the architectural practice respectively and their relationship. The architectural environment cannot fully determine the public life of a city, rather it can support the attainment of the practical and spiritual needs of people, expanding experience while allowing for dwelling. In a general condition of confusion and deterioration observable in almost every aspect of life in Bulgaria resulting from the fragmentation of power, the change of the economic system and the instability of values, the weight of responsibility concerning the qualities of public space tends to shift. It is important to identify the changing features of public space in relation to the forces effecting them. Thus directions of inqulry into conditions promoting positive developments could be recognized in terms of aspects of cultural wealth of the society as well as in terms of reassessing the role of the architect-planner.

The Behavioral Response to Increased Pedestrian and Staying Activity in Public Space: A Field Experiment

2020 ◽  
pp. 001391652095314
Author(s):  
Oscar Zapata ◽  
Jordi Honey-Rosés
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Behavioral Response ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Pedestrian Movement ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
The City ◽  
Presence Of People

William Whyte originally hypothesized that the presence of people in a public space would attract more people. Contemporary planners now refer to “sticky streets” as places where pedestrians are compelled to linger and enjoy vibrant public life. We test the hypothesis that adding users to a public space will attract more people using an experimental design with confederates to add pedestrian movement and staying activity in a residential street for 45 randomly selected hours. We observed staying behavior by gender with and without our intervention. We find that the addition of public users reduced the total number of people staying in our study area, especially among women. We find that women’s right to the city may be constrained by the mere presence of other individuals, even in safe spaces and during daylight hours. Our findings suggest that Whyte’s claim is not universal, but depends on the conditions of a particular site.

scholarly journals When private property masquerades as public space: the shifting face of publicness in London’s city squares

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-159
Author(s):  
Jessie Martin
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Land ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatial Identity

"Access to space is fundamentally related to social status and power...changing the allocation of space is inherently related to changing society" (Weisman, 1992)   In contemporary London, a pattern has emerged whereby private corporations create and take ownership of public space, but the type of publicness they promote is conditional. In private-public space, private property masquerades as public land with rules of inhabitation often impenetrable, unknowable until they are broken. International owners activate networks of relations beyond the local; I question how private-public space fits with local communities, and how these networks shift notions of authenticity and inauthenticity in relation to public belonging. There is a specific focus on the public square as a form of private-public space, because the city square has a long-established spatial identity that embodies notions of publicity. The public square stimulates and contains public life, and neoliberal dynamics of ownership and management threaten public assemblages. Private-public squares do not fit into the majority of theories that have been developed on place, public space and private dynamics, but they are exemplative of a type of space increasingly prominent in Britain. I focus on four private-public squares in London to examine what can be learnt when a format of space is reproduced under incompatible conditions. How do these spaces work on a quotidian level and how does this intervention in public life shift urban identities and behavioural paradigms? The basis of my research is to examine concepts of publicness and privateness and how they apply to private-public squares in London, whilst utilising the practice of photography, observation and inhabitation to gain empirical ethnographic evidence. My research intends to assemble a toolkit to facilitate understanding about pseudo-public space, rather than ascribe fixed meanings to a subject which requires specificity.

A Prefigurative Politics of Play in Public Places: Children Claim Their Democratic Right to the City Through Play

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Carroll ◽  
Octavia Calder-Dawe ◽  
Karen Witten ◽  
Lanuola Asiasiga
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
The Public ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Child Friendly ◽  
Prefigurative Politics ◽  
The City

Children have as much “right” to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children’s presence and opportunities for play, rendering them out of place in public space. In this context, children’s everyday appropriations of public spaces for their “playful imaginings” can be seen as a reclamation of their democratic right to the city: a prefigurative politics of play enacted by citizen kids. In this article, we draw on data collected with 265 children in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand, to consider how children’s playful practices challenge adult hegemony of the public domain and prefigure the possibilities of a more equal, child-friendly, and playful city.

scholarly journals Begging in Geneva: Which Right to the City?

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annamaria Colombo ◽  
Caroline Reynaud ◽  
Giada de Coulon
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Marginalized Populations ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
The City

Based on a study that we carried out in Geneva between 2013 and 2015, this paper suggests that the anti-begging law adopted by the Geneva High Council in 2007 can be understood a way of managing urban cohabitation with marginalized populations. In response to this “poverty management”, we argue that the continued occupation of the public space by the people wh o practice begging can be understood as them implementing their own “right to the city” anyway, in the subversive sense meant by Lefebvre.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The Media ◽  
The City

As is described in this conclusion, more than the media and culture, Madrid’s public space constituted the primary arena where reactions and attitudes toward social conflict and inequalities were negotiated. Social conflict in the public space found expression through musical performance, as well as through the rise of noise that came with the expansion and modernization of the city. Through their impact on public health and morality, noise and unwelcomed musical practices contributed to the refinement of Madrid’s city code and the modernization of society. The interference of vested political interests, however, made the refining of legislation in these areas particularly difficult. Analysis of three musical practices, namely, flamenco, organilleros, and workhouse bands, has shown how difficult it was to adopt consistent policies and approaches to tackling the forms of social conflict that were associated with musical performance.

Conquering the Public Space

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Public ◽  
San Bernardino ◽  
The City

This chapter presents an account of the San Bernardino band as the public facade of that workhouse. The image of children who had been picked up from the streets, disciplined, and taught to play an instrument as they marched across the city in uniform helped broadcast the message that the municipal institutions of social aid were contributing to the regeneration of society. This image contrasted with the regime of discipline and punishment inside the workhouse and thus helped to legitimize the workhouse’s public image. The privatization of social aid from the 1850s meant that the San Bernardino band engaged with a growing range of institutions and social groups and carried out an equally broad range of social services. It was thus able to serve as the extension through which Madrid’s authorities could gain greater intimacy with certain population sectors, particularly with the working classes.

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