Cities of Refuge, Rebel Cities, and the City to Come

2019 ◽  
pp. 253-271
Author(s):  
Giovanna Borradori
Keyword(s):  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
The Core ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

As the processes of globalization transform cities into nodes of accumulation of financial and symbolic capital, it is fair to assume that urban contexts have never been more vulnerable to the systemic imperatives of the market. It is thus surprising that cities continue to be the site where the deepest social and political transformations come to the surface. What, then, preserves the city as a space of dissent? The claim of this chapter is that a critical reflection on the political agency of Northern and Southern cities has to start from asking what it means today to occupy the pavement of their streets. The argument explored here is that, in this age of molecular neoliberal encroachment and restructuring, it is a certain experience of dispossession, rather than the quest for identification and recognition, that makes the city the core of a shared experience of refuge and resistance.

scholarly journals What Was It? (Preliminary Reflection on Khabarovsk Rallies)

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (99) ◽  
pp. 108-136
Author(s):  
L.E. Bliakher ◽  
A.V. Kovalevsky
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Information Space ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Agent ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
Good Leader

The Khabarovsk protest has been going on for months: first, it suddenly made headlines of the world media and then it was pushed to the periphery of the information space. The predictions about the protest fading away stubbornly refuse to come true. Maybe not tens of thousands as it was earlier, but thousands of city residents still take to the streets. Moreover, tension, uncertainty, and discontent persist in the air. Dozens of articles and many reports have been written about Khabarovsk, and even a full-length docu mentary has been released. Nevertheless, the question remains: why did the population of the city, who for decades preferred to distance themselves from any government’s initiatives, all of a sudden switched to a strategy of protest? What part of this situation is unique to Khabarovsk, and where do we observe more general patterns? This article is devoted to finding answers to these questions. Having examined the main facets of the events unfolding in Khabarovsk, L.Bliakher and A.Kovalevsky come to the conclusion that these events are about the most important political phenomenon — formation of the political agency of the population that for many years has been reduced to the position of an object. In the case of Khabarovsk, residents started to perceive themselves as a political agent after the 2018 protest voting. In this situation, people began to view the ex-governor of the Khabarovsk region not so much as a good — or not very good — leader, but rather as a symbol of acquiring political agency, which became a key element of regional identification, formation of the local community. That is why his arrest was perceived by the residents of the region as a personal insult. And it is their identity that they defend on the streets of Khabarovsk.

scholarly journals Berlin Mitte: Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstaße: Urban and historical images

Spatium ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 51-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biljana Arandjelovic
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Center ◽  
The Core ◽  
Historical Images ◽  
Urban Patterns ◽  
Historical Image ◽  
International Investors ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City

Berlin Mitte is one of the most interesting parts of the city, located in the core of Berlin where every corner and stone can tell a story. Mitte, the cultural center of Berlin is also known as the political and economic hub of Berlin. This paper explores the urban and historical image of two important parts of Berlin Mitte district: Alexanderplatz and Friedrichsta?e. Friedrichstra?e, as the main shopping and business street in this area, was planned with great attention by Prussian authorities, while the area around Alexanderplatz grew up randomly and its streets did not follow any special urban patterns. All potential international investors wanted to come to Friedrichstra?e after the fall of the Wall, while Alexanderplatz was not so attractive to them. Many famous architects took part in numerous competitions regarding urban planning reconstructions of the famous Alex throughout the 20th century. These two areas of the Mitte district, Alexanderplatz and Friedrichsta?e, are very important for contemporary Berlin and both areas have different problems.

scholarly journals [a] Project for the Sub-Centre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grace Helen Salisbury Mills
Keyword(s):  
City Centre ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Specific Design ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

<p>In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, a state of polycentric urbanity was thrust upon New Zealand’s second largest city. As the city-centre lay in disrepair, smaller centres started to materialise elsewhere, out of necessity. Transforming former urban peripheries and within existing suburbs into a collective, dispersed alternative to the city centre, these sub-centres prompted a range of morphological, socio-cultural and political transformations, and begged multiple questions: how to imbue these new sub-centres with gravity? How to render them a genuine alternative to the CBD? How do they operate within the wider city? How to cope with the physical and cultural transformations of this shifting urbanscape and prevent them occurring ad lib? Indeed, the success and functioning of the larger urban structure hinges upon a critical, informed response to these sub-centre urban contexts. Yet, with an unrelenting focus on the CBD rebuild - effectively a polycentric denial - little such attention has been granted.  Taking this urban condition as its premise and its provocation, this thesis investigates architecture’s role in the emergent sub-centre. It asks: what can architecture do in these urban contexts; how can architecture act upon the emergent sub-centre in a critical, catalytic fashion? Identifying this volatile condition as both an opportunity for architectural experimentation and a need for critical architectural engagement, this thesis seeks to explore the sub-centre (as an idea and actual urban context) as architecture’s project: its raison d’etre, impetus and aspiration.  These inquiries are tested through design-led research: an initial design question provoking further, broader discursive research (and indeed, seeking broader implications). The first section is a site-specific, design for Sumner, Christchurch. Titled ‘An Agora Anew’; this project - both in conception and outcome - is a speculative response to a specific sub-centre condition. The second section ‘The Sub-centre as Architecture’s Project’ explores the ideas provoked by the design project within a discursive framework. Firstly it identifies the sub-centre as a context in desperate need of architectural attention (why architecture?); secondly, it negotiates a possible agenda for architecture in this context through terms of engagement that are formal, critical and opportunistic (how architecture?): enabling it to take a position on and in the sub-centre. Lastly, a critical exegesis positions the design in regards to the broader discursive debate: critiquing it an architectural project predicated upon the idea of the sub-centre.  The implications of this design-led thesis are twofold: firstly, for architecture’s role in the sub-centre (especially to Christchurch); secondly for the possibilities of architecture’s productive engagement with the city (largely through architectural form), more generally. In a century where radical, new urban contexts (of which the sub-centre is just one) are commonplace, this type of thinking – what can architecture do in the city? - is imperative.</p>

scholarly journals No One is Illegal Between City and Nation

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Nyers
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Community Belonging ◽  
The City

By challenging the state's prerogative to distinguish between insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens, political movements by and in support of migrants and refugees are forcing questions about what criteria, if any, can and should be used to determine who can claim membership in the political community. To illustrate the complexity of this politics this article analyzes the major demand that underscores every campaign undertaken by non-status refugees and migrants in Canada: a program that would allow them to "regularize" their status. Notably, these campaigns are being directed at both the state and city levels of governance. Together, these are two sites in which claims and counter-claims about community, belonging, and citizenship are being made by, for, and against non-status immigrants. In each case, migrant political agency is asserted in places meant to deny, limit, or repress it. The article argues that the significance of these sites is that they allow for non-status refugees and migrants themselves to act as mediators or translators between the city and nation, between polis and cosmopolis.

‘Overflown bodies’ as critical-political transformations

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-481
Author(s):  
Begonya Enguix Grau
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Gendered Bodies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Complex Relationships

In order to explore the political and transformative potential of bodies in relation to gender and affects, I discuss how bodies, gender and politics are entangled through the figuration of ‘overflown bodies’. Departing from a material-discursive feminist conceptualisation of bodies, ‘overflown bodies’ are assemblages embedded in complex relationships of matter, discourse, emotions, affects, ideologies, protest, norms, values, relations, practices, expectations and other possibilities of (for) social and political action. Three ethnographic cases illustrate how ‘overflown bodies’ assemble matter and discourse, and how matter, bodies and gender matter. They are used to explore the political possibilities of gendered bodies and show how matter is entangled, embedded and assembled with our politics of being. The three cases interrogate the limits and boundaries of bodies and the modes and modalities of (political) agency. Finally, the article argues that it is through visibility and recognition that ‘overflown bodies’ become critically and creatively transforming, which can be useful for addressing issues related to exclusion, domination, political emancipation and social transformation.

scholarly journals The City of Alexandria: Its Identity and Environment in the works of Alexandria’s Pioneer Painters

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Laila Abu El Seoud Mohamed Fadl
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Global Features ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
The Core ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Alexandria City ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Human Component

The unique location of Alexandria city in the Mediterranean Basin has attracted several artistic civilizations ever since the time of Ptolemy. This has been the case during the Roman era, and the subsequent eras throughout which Alexandria remained the window of Egypt and most of the Middle East to the European cultures and arts. As a result, Alexandria has witnessed the cultural and artistic renaissance during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, since "Muhammad Ali" –and his family–permitted the foreign delegations to come and form colonies fused with the human component of Alexandria that had a unique character. Consequently, the foreign artists’ rooms were widely spread and the Alexandrian pioneers of painting art, of the first and second generations, studied under their supervision. Despite being trained by foreigners, their sense of belonging to the Egyptian identity or their participation in laying groundwork for a national art project deeply rooted in the heritage of the nation wasn’t affected. However, they were receptive to maturely cope with the modernity of the western schools of arts. Mahmoud Said, a painter, after completing the art foundation phase, employed his art to portray the modern Egyptian man as a national hero. This portrayal was possible through his use of environmental elements and characters. Seif Wanli was one of the most receptive Egyptian painters to the modern and contemporary western schools of art. He was allegedly known to be unconcerned with the issue of national identity; however, Alexandria kept its high rank in his art despite being characterized by global features. Adham Wanli remained loyal to his impressive and symbolic realism as Alexandria, with all its components, was the core of his artistic creativity. Hamid Aweys left his hometown and went to Alexandria and spent most of his age therein. His belonging to the identity and environment of that ancient coastal city was the same as that of the previously mentioned artists. He was inspired by the city’s environmental and cultural elements in a distinctive way.

Northern Italy in the Central Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Gamberini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Cultures ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
To Come ◽  
Communal Institutions ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on the political change that took place in the post-Carolingian age, when the collapse of empire encouraged the jurisdictional separation of cities and countryside, until then subject to the same authorities and to the same destiny. Thus, while in the city the community of cives gathered first around their bishop and then around the new communal institutions, the countryside saw the beginning of a proliferation of lords of castles and manorial lords. The result was the development of very different political cultures that were destined to come into conflict with each other as, starting from the 12th century, the citizens of the commune began their political expansion into the surrounding countryside.

THE RAIN MIRACLE OF MARCUS AURELIUS: (RE-)CONSTRUCTION OF CONSENSUS

2008 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
IDO ISRAELOWICH
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
The Political ◽  
Roman Army ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
The City ◽  
Great Danger

IntroductionThe reign of Marcus Aurelius, although he was acclaimed by ancient and modern commentators as an exemplary ruler, saw many calamities. Marcus was preoccupied with wars for the better part of his reign; the pestilence brought back to Rome from the east by Verus and the Roman army remained endemic in the city for many years to come, and the German wars from the late 160s well into the next decade posed great danger to Rome and caused great anxiety. In addition, a coup was executed. The usurper, Avidius Cassius, was the ruler of the Roman East for three months, enjoying support amongst the local population. After Verus’ death, the emperor embarked on war against the German tribes, but not before summoning priests and magicians from all over the world to help him, many of whom came from provinces far and wide. This attentiveness of Marcus Aurelius to religious issues (the representation of religious themes on his coins and monuments and his religious policy as a whole) introduced some changes to the Roman imperial tradition. Moreover his adaptation of policies that reflected new beliefs and the abandonment of old ones, was indicative of the political, social, and cultural developments during his reign. The desperation of the emperor is made most visible in the pages of Lucian’s Alexander.

scholarly journals [a] Project for the Sub-Centre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Grace Helen Salisbury Mills
Keyword(s):  
City Centre ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Specific Design ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

<p>In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, a state of polycentric urbanity was thrust upon New Zealand’s second largest city. As the city-centre lay in disrepair, smaller centres started to materialise elsewhere, out of necessity. Transforming former urban peripheries and within existing suburbs into a collective, dispersed alternative to the city centre, these sub-centres prompted a range of morphological, socio-cultural and political transformations, and begged multiple questions: how to imbue these new sub-centres with gravity? How to render them a genuine alternative to the CBD? How do they operate within the wider city? How to cope with the physical and cultural transformations of this shifting urbanscape and prevent them occurring ad lib? Indeed, the success and functioning of the larger urban structure hinges upon a critical, informed response to these sub-centre urban contexts. Yet, with an unrelenting focus on the CBD rebuild - effectively a polycentric denial - little such attention has been granted.  Taking this urban condition as its premise and its provocation, this thesis investigates architecture’s role in the emergent sub-centre. It asks: what can architecture do in these urban contexts; how can architecture act upon the emergent sub-centre in a critical, catalytic fashion? Identifying this volatile condition as both an opportunity for architectural experimentation and a need for critical architectural engagement, this thesis seeks to explore the sub-centre (as an idea and actual urban context) as architecture’s project: its raison d’etre, impetus and aspiration.  These inquiries are tested through design-led research: an initial design question provoking further, broader discursive research (and indeed, seeking broader implications). The first section is a site-specific, design for Sumner, Christchurch. Titled ‘An Agora Anew’; this project - both in conception and outcome - is a speculative response to a specific sub-centre condition. The second section ‘The Sub-centre as Architecture’s Project’ explores the ideas provoked by the design project within a discursive framework. Firstly it identifies the sub-centre as a context in desperate need of architectural attention (why architecture?); secondly, it negotiates a possible agenda for architecture in this context through terms of engagement that are formal, critical and opportunistic (how architecture?): enabling it to take a position on and in the sub-centre. Lastly, a critical exegesis positions the design in regards to the broader discursive debate: critiquing it an architectural project predicated upon the idea of the sub-centre.  The implications of this design-led thesis are twofold: firstly, for architecture’s role in the sub-centre (especially to Christchurch); secondly for the possibilities of architecture’s productive engagement with the city (largely through architectural form), more generally. In a century where radical, new urban contexts (of which the sub-centre is just one) are commonplace, this type of thinking – what can architecture do in the city? - is imperative.</p>

scholarly journals Ancient Greek and Byzantine Political Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 249-258
Author(s):  
Michail Mantzanas
Keyword(s):  
Political Community ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City

The political morality that Plato and Aristotle supported was governed by various anthropological and social determinants, which means that they focused on man understood as a citizen and interpreted through the dialectic as well as through the prospects of the city’s happiness, since for both of them man was a social animal. The political ethics of Plato and Aristotle does not endanger the political community with political bankruptcy. This political morality does not start from intransigent principles to reach a compromise that has already been surpassed by the previous negative dynamics. The Byzantine political morality oscillates between the individual and the totality. It is not governed by individualism but rather by communitarianism, which entails that it confirms the dynamics of unity within the city. The Byzantine political morals is imbued with an anticipation of the political crisis, it seeks to identify any negative developments and strives to avoid the political marginalization of the citizens who are likely to rebel against any autocratic government. The Byzantine political morality is, thus, not an idle and selfish political introversion, concerned merely with political crises, conflict scenarios and conspiracy theories, as it strives to come up with various solutions that should guarantee political balance.

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