Cracks in the Creative City: The Contradictions of Community Arts Practice

The recent flurry of research about arts‐led regeneration initiatives illuminates how contemporary arts festivals can become complicit in the production of urban inequality. But researchers rarely engage with detailed empirical examples that shed light on the contradictory role that artists sometimes play within these spectacularized events. Similar research in performance studies connects the political limits and potential of social practice arts — interventions that encourage artists and non‐artists to co‐produce work — as civic boosters strive to stage cities in order to attract investment. In this article, I explore the case study of Streetscape: Living Space at Regent Park, a participatory artistic intervention programmed in a public housing neighbourhood that is undergoing redevelopment in Toronto, Canada. Streetscape was part of the Luminato festival, an elite booster coalition‐led festival of ‘creativity’. I refer to these arts interventions to demonstrate how artists engaging in social practice arts can become complicit in naturalizing colonial gentrification processes at multiple scales. But I also reveal how artists can leverage heterogeneous arts‐led regeneration strategies to make space for ‘radical social praxis’ (Kwon, 2004), interventions that challenge hegemonic regimes. I conclude by interrogating the effectiveness of place‐based efforts in unsettling the ‘creative city’.     

Desegregation and Integration as Linked or Distinct? Evidence from a Previously ‘White’ Suburb in Post‐apartheid Cape Town

This article analyses whether the physical desegregation of a residential neighbourhood ultimately facilitates the social integration of its residents. Desegregation is measured quantitatively (i.e. using census data for a suburb in which no single race comprises more than 50% and at least one other racial group comprises 25%), and social integration is assessed qualitatively using indicators such as friendship, common local identity, sharing local facilities and involvement in local institutions. Essentially this research is concerned with whether labelling a suburb ‘desegregated’ is a superficial term that whilst implying racial mixing actually masks social segregation; and also whether assumptions that urban policies of desegregation ultimately facilitate social integration are accurate. This desegregation/integration nexus is explored by examining the lives of residents of a desegregated Cape Town neighbourhood. South Africa provides a timely context because the legacy of apartheid’s spatial and social design continues to dominate the urban scene despite policy efforts to promote both desegregation and integration.     

Spaces of the Expelled as Spaces of the Urban Commons? Analysing the Re‐emergence of Squatting Initiatives in Rome

Asserting the need to acknowledge the role of the current crisis and austerity politics in fostering the re‐emergence of squatting initiatives in Rome, this article brings together the literature on squatting as an urban social movement, notably Martínez López's holistic approach, with a political economy perspective analysing the current stage of ‘late neoliberalism’. In so doing, I use the conceptualization of ‘expulsions’ developed by Sassen to show how emerging squatting initiatives in Rome represent the ‘spaces of the expelled’. Focusing on the case of Communia in San Lorenzo neighbourhood, the article shows how Martínez López's approach is able to account for the rapid success and support enjoyed by Communia, going as it does beyond the ‘single‐issue’ perspective that has dominated much of the squatting literature. Indeed, the main claims addressed by Communia activists concern a plurality of issues grouped around the concept of urban commons, as both a practice and a goal. Methodologically, the article is the result of 18 months of fieldwork based on an activist/participatory action research (PAR) approach, comprising participant observation/observant participation, in‐depth interviews and questionnaires.     

地方理论:城市空间发展的再生理论

地方理论(Sense of Place)在城市与景观空间规划与发展领域中,代表着对环境研究的一种新角度和新方法,代表着当代城市与景观规划与设计研究的新视野。地方理论强调人与环境之间的感知、认知和记忆关联,是一种空间的再生产策略和方法。本文以地方理论为本体,探讨地方理论的本质内涵、构成体系及解构城市空间再生的方法论维度,如地方实践模式、地方再现模式、再现地方模式以及地方理论在城市规划与设计中的区位活化观、设计活化观、遗产活化观、形态活化观、产业活化观等再生设计策略,从而丰富和完善地方理论体系及城市规划与景观规划设计理论体系。     

Creative Cities,Graffiti and Culture-Led Development in South Africa: Dlala Indima (‘Play Your Part’)

Creative cities and culture-led development discourses have come under increasing scrutiny as elite-centric economic development agendas tend to trump ‘civic creativity’ ideals as imagined by Charles Landry. In South Africa, culture-led development and cultural policy tends to primarily mimic that of the global North, largely focusing on culture as a catalyst for economic and property development. Public art commissioning processes tend to focus on decorative projects as part of urban upgrading, which are often associated with ensuing gentrification and displacement of the urban poor. In contrast to focusing on these kinds of regeneration strategies, this article investigates Dlala Indima, a hip-hop-led graffiti project in a rural township in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This article situates graffiti as a critical social and spatial practice to argue that this case challenges normative cultural planning paradigms. Dlala Indima's work is an alternative approach to cultural development by and for young people who are usually marginalized by the mainstream practice of culture-led economic development. The project challenges dominant creative cities and culture-led development discourses in three ways: first, it challenges the normative processes of regeneration; secondly, it grounds participatory practice; and finally, it shifts participation from ‘tyranny to transformation’ through the ubuntu of hip-hop, the notion of ubuntu being based on the communitarian notion of ‘ubuntu, ngubuntu ngabantu’—‘I am because you are’.     

加强城市规划设计中城市景观功能的研究——景观都市主义思想在当前城市设计中的实践

本文通过在设计实践的基础上,基于景观都市主义的理论思想,对于在城市设计的实践中如何作为一种理念和手段,来解决城市的客体和城市的主体之间的种种问题,提出了一些思路和方法,以大景观的设计概念来考虑城市空间的整体形态。     

运用QTVR全景技术建立城市3D模型的城市规划模式

本文详细论述了应用QTVR技术来建立三维数字模型来对案例地区的行人对街道景观设计的喜好分析的方法,并通过QTVR全景技术来探讨三维虚拟实景如何表现特定环境空间的特性,并依照空间秩序与居民及游客的需求来构建空间结构。本文通过建立案例地区的虚拟模型与实际环境信息的比较反馈来进行系统可行性论证。结论表明该系统建立的三维数位城市模型与互动式视觉模拟系统来虚拟街道模型可以表现城市意像,并可较真实地依据环境心理学表现景观环境规划设计的各项需求,同时这种模式可以大大缩短和降低研究调查各项成本。通过验证表明该系统可以帮助景观规划师和研究者利用电脑的运作作出与传统不同的评估方式,并可作为城市规划设计的辅助工具。     

城市滨海区游憩空间优化设计研究——以青岛市为例

借鉴控规五线,结合滨海区独特的地域性,将城市滨海区游憩空间景观进行了色彩分层,分为蓝、黄、绿、灰、紫五带。以青岛为例,通过色彩分层解析,探讨了城市滨海游憩空间景观的设计方法。     

浅析城市道路绿化设计

道路是城市中具有重要地位的空间环境,人们对城市最直接最经常的感受来自于街道,因此道路的景观构成对城市形象具有很大的影响力,本文试图从我国城市道路的现状,城市道路绿化的功能、作用和原则,以及道路绿化存在的问题和未来的发展趋势等几方面来展开,强调了园林式小游园的道路绿化是衡量现代化城市精神文明水平的重要的标志。     

试论城市用地发展的可持续性——以南京市为例

本文首先论述了南京城市用地的扩张过程,及其伴随城市快速扩张而来的城市物质和社会空间结构的重组,在此背景下提出了土地利用不经济、社会空间分化、城市文化景观变异等问题,最后根据土地与环境问题以及社会问题的矛盾,对城市如何步入可持续的良性发展轨道的问题进行了探讨。     

Understanding Urban Processes in Flint,Michigan: Approaching ‘Subaltern Urbanism’ Inductively

Ananya Roy introduces the concept ‘subaltern urbanism’ in her 2011 article ‘Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism’. She challenges researchers to move beyond existing epistemological and methodological limits, and offers four concepts which, taken together, serve as a useful starting point for understanding and representing subaltern urban space. In this article I argue that instead of a deductive approach that begins with an a priori identification of slums as subaltern urban space, an inductive approach of identifying subaltern urban space would expand the concept and show that subaltern urbanism exists in the global North. I present original research to show that Flint, Michigan, can be considered subaltern urban space. In the final section of the article I argue that this inductive approach to subaltern urbanism can foster comparative research across the North‐South divide, and generate the transfer of knowledge from South to North.     

记忆·融合·创新——昆明城市景观格局研究

城市的形成与发展依托于其特有的自然山水地貌,城市的山水格局演变对城市的持续发展及延续城市特色创新有着重要作用。以昆明的自然环境山水格局及其历史景观格局变化为例,探讨城市自然山水格局形成具有地域特色的城市空间发展基础。     

Be Berlin! Governing the City through Freedom

In this article, I examine how contemporary Berlin is governed, with a particular focus on the production of urban space. My points of reference are the term ‘government’ (as employed by Foucault) and the field of governmentality studies (where it is applied empirically). Based on a critical discourse and dispositive analysis of the city's current urban development policy, I propose that urban governance in Berlin may be analysed through the lens of three central dispositives: the dispositive of governing through citizenship; the dispositive of the creative city; and the dispositive of the social city. I discuss the characteristics of these dispositives of urban governance, drawing on a number of examples taken from the discipline of urban space production in order to look specifically at the aims and objectives of governance, its subjects and the ways it manifests itself. In conclusion, I suggest that the new forms of governance based on empowerment and cooperation have by no means replaced disciplinary technologies of governance, but are rather embedded within them.     

Forefronts of the Sharing Economy: Uber in Cape Town

The sharing economy, often phrased as ‘platform capitalism’, enables firms such as Uber and Airbnb to monetize, through specific technologies of mediation, the networks, the assets and the precarious labour of those who are described as ‘the entrepreneurs of sharing’. This article explores the urban geographies of ride‐sharing in the marketization of Uber in Cape Town, South Africa. I use empirical evidence collected during the first phase of its operations in the city, between 2013 and 2015, to show how Uber relied upon the developmental entrepreneurialism of Cape Town to embed its ride‐sharing market locally, and how the drivers enacted multiple technical, economic and ethical regimes within and without the constraints of the software platform. The research presented in this article thus contributes to understanding how the discourses of millennial development, with its promises of entrepreneurial empowerment, are adopted by global sharing‐economy firms to enact their markets in the global South. It also reveals how a different genealogy of Uber's urban transactions offers an alternative perspective on the normative rationalities of the sharing economy and on the diverse economies that exist in relation to platform capitalism in the global South.     

THE POWER OF IMPENDING ZONING: Governance through Inaction in a Secondary City in Burkina Faso

A comprehensive zoning plan has been under way for more than a decade for an urban informal settlement in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. In this article I explore the narratives and strategies of its residents in response to the impending restructuring, suggesting that the continual postponements of the zoning plan's implementation may be understood as constituting an elusive form of urban governance that relegates strategies of both resistance and accommodation to formal governance to the sphere of micro-politics at the level of the neighbourhood. Urban governance is thus approached here neither as a set of formal policies nor through the day-to-day workings of the state bureaucracy, but as a much less tangible form of urban governance that is best studied through its perceivable effects instead of its stated intentions or institutionalized techniques. In the relative absence of the state in the everyday lives of urban residents, the main effects of the workings of the state bureaucracy in this context seem to be to discourage citizen involvement and to slow official procedures to a halt. I argue that the force with which impending evictions and yet-to-be-implemented urban zoning shape residents’ outlook and opportunities for negotiation and mobilization constitutes a form of governance through inaction.     

The Situations of Urban Inquiry: Thinking Problematically about the City

In the context of debates about the epistemological and ontological coherence of concepts of critical urban studies, we argue that urban concepts should be conceptualized problematically. We do so by aligning Michel Foucault's genealogical work on problematization with John Dewey's pragmatist understanding of problem formation and responsiveness. This approach brings into view the degree to which debates about urban futures are shaped by a variety of critical perspectives that extend beyond the academy and activism. We elaborate this argument through examples of global urban policy formation and practices of neighbourhood change. Approaching urban concepts problematically suggests a move away from the idea of critique as a form of scholastic correction towards an appreciation of the contested fields of practice in and through which critical understandings of urban problems emerge.     

From Occupying Plazas to Recuperating Housing: Insurgent Practices in Spain

Urban insurgencies have spread across the globe like wildfire in recent years. The indignado plaza occupations in Spain are often cited as beacons of popular and widespread dissent. This article argues that urban insurgencies with the highest emancipatory potential in Spain today are found in the practices of the housing rights movement—the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, or Platform for Mortgage‐affected People)—that mainly entail blocking evictions and occupying empty bank‐owned housing. I elaborate on the notion of insurgent practice by examining how insurgency has been considered in relationship to citizenship, planning and public space. I propose insurgent practice as a way of articulating how people attempt to enact equality in everyday life and engage explicitly with socio‐spatial and political questions related to an emancipatory democratic politics. Based on a detailed analysis of two of the PAH's insurgent housing practices, I posit that recuperating empty bank‐owned housing with and for evicted families has the highest and most significant emancipatory potential, as it disrupts the core dynamics of urban capital accumulation and enacts equality for evicted households by directly contesting financial rent‐extraction mechanisms at multiple levels. In closing, I outline some conclusions that emerge from the Spanish housing case and from the concept of insurgent practice and urban politicizing practice in general.     

Placing the Urban Village: A Spatial Perspective on the Development Process of Urban Villages in Contemporary China

The rapid urbanization of China since the mid‐1980s has led to the development of a new spatial category, the urban village (chengzhongcun). The dominant neoliberal urban development regime approaches urban villages as a social, spatial, economic and political problem, and as targets for aggressive redevelopment and eradication policies. In this article, I propose a spatial perspective that makes use of several theoretical ‘anchors' to analyze the influence of urban village spatiality on its development process and to explore alternatives to the dominant redevelopment model. I begin by examining the spatial conceptualization of the urban village as a non‐place, arguing that this spatial reading undergirds the redevelopment‐by‐demolition model and tends to obscure alternative conceptualizations. I then move on to propose three alternative readings of urban village space, examining it as an everyday space, a liminal space and a neighborhood. Combining these three readings with the ‘non‐place' conceptualization provides a nuanced understanding of urban villages' unique spatial attributes and social roles, by evoking spatial and social processes that take place in most urban villages across China. Taken together, these spatial readings challenge the social and spatial rigidity of dominant representations of urban villages and supply a much‐needed spatially based conceptual framework that can be used to develop new urban planning models.     

A Study of the Symbolic Aspects of Space Using Nonquantitative Techniques of Analysis

This article has two aims: first, to define and analyse the theoretical implications of the concepts of social urban identity and symbolic urban space (Valera, 1993, 1996, 1997; Valera and Pol, 1994) from within the integrated perspective provided by Environmental Psychology and Social Psychology; and second, to present an empirical study of these concepts based on nonquantitative data collection and analysis. Texts recorded in discussion groups were studied using Contextual Content Analysis (McTavish and Pirro, 1990) to determine the social identity of the inhabitants of a neighbourhood within the city of Barcelona and the meaning given to those spaces which they consider to be symbolic or representative of the neighbourhood. Finally, the results, as well as the advantages of this type of analysis, which are rarely used in Environmental Psychology, are discussed.