- Development Planning Unit
University College London
34 Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9EZ, U.K.
Camillo Boano
University College London, Development Planning Unit, Faculty Member
- Political Science, Architecture, Geography, International Studies, Culture, Development Studies, and 88 moreDevelopment planning, Sustainable Development, Political Theory, Aesthetics, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, Post Disaster Reconstruction, Post Disaster, Favelas, Slums, Informal, Urban Think Tank, Education, Social Sciences, History, Philosophy, Sociology, International Relations, Environmental Sustainability, Urban Studies, Political Philosophy, Cambodia, Urban And Regional Planning, Human Geography, Urbanism, Henri Lefebvre, Urban Design, Natural Disasters, Urban Planning, Philosophy of Art, Cultural Theory, City politics, Social and Political Philosophy, Urban Politics, Architectural Theory, Design, Spatial Practices, Massimo Cacciari, Italian Theory, Contemporary French Philosophy, Insurgent Urbanism, Politics And Planning In African Cities, Urban morphology, Urban theory, Autonomia, Michael Hardt, Humanitarian Intervention, Philosophy of the City, Latin American Philosophy, Filosofía Latinoamericana, Philosophy of Culture, Biopolitics, Philosophy of History, Risk and Vulnerability, Comparative Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, Italian Studies, Italian Cultural Studies, Roberto Esposito, Critical and Cultural Theory, Critical Legal Theory, Marxism, History of Philosophy, Critical International Relations Theory, Poltiical Theory, Cultural Studies, Urban Geography, French Literature, Critical Thinking, Urban Sociology, History of architecture, Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Paolo Virno, Disaster risk reduction, Disaster Studies, Resilience, Refugee Camps, Displaced Persons Camps, Gianni Vattimo, Migration Studies, Refugee Studies, Humanitarianism, Housing, Social Theory, Ontology, Housing Policy, Social Ontology, and Housing Policies(Development planning, Sustainable Development, Political Theory, Aesthetics, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, Post Disaster Reconstruction, Post Disaster, Favelas, Slums, Informal, Urban Think Tank, Education, Social Sciences, History, Philosophy, Sociology, International Relations, Environmental Sustainability, Urban Studies, Political Philosophy, Cambodia, Urban And Regional Planning, Human Geography, Urbanism, Henri Lefebvre, Urban Design, Natural Disasters, Urban Planning, Philosophy of Art, Cultural Theory, City politics, Social and Political Philosophy, Urban Politics, Architectural Theory, Design, Spatial Practices, Massimo Cacciari, Italian Theory, Contemporary French Philosophy, Insurgent Urbanism, Politics And Planning In African Cities, Urban morphology, Urban theory, Autonomia, Michael Hardt, Humanitarian Intervention, Philosophy of the City, Latin American Philosophy, Filosofía Latinoamericana, Philosophy of Culture, Biopolitics, Philosophy of History, Risk and Vulnerability, Comparative Literature, Media and Cultural Studies, Italian Studies, Italian Cultural Studies, Roberto Esposito, Critical and Cultural Theory, Critical Legal Theory, Marxism, History of Philosophy, Critical International Relations Theory, Poltiical Theory, Cultural Studies, Urban Geography, French Literature, Critical Thinking, Urban Sociology, History of architecture, Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Paolo Virno, Disaster risk reduction, Disaster Studies, Resilience, Refugee Camps, Displaced Persons Camps, Gianni Vattimo, Migration Studies, Refugee Studies, Humanitarianism, Housing, Social Theory, Ontology, Housing Policy, Social Ontology, and Housing Policies)edit
This introduction to the special section explores geopolitical dimensions of conflict and violence in cities, pointing at the need to continue learning from marginal urban settings. It broadens the scope across differentiated approaches,... more
This introduction to the special section explores geopolitical dimensions of conflict and violence in cities, pointing at the need to continue learning from marginal urban settings. It broadens the scope across differentiated approaches, such as the francophone and anglophone urban geopolitical traditions. By opening up a wider perspective, the emphasis is not on cities as part of a matrix of global hierarchies of geographical power but on the multiscalar relational significance of urban geopolitical inquiry. The introduction positions the special section articles within a wider review of urban geopolitical provocations outlining a new political vocabulary of urban conflict and violence. It concludes with a general call for a methodological and empirical broadening of the field of urban geopolitics as part of a broader de-colonial social and spatial science research agenda bridging the disciplines of political geography, urban studies, architecture and planning.
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Currently, there appears to be an unhealthy disjunction between grand expectations and acknowledged reality in the face of urban transformations underway throughout the world. Drawing on the “right to the city” discourses, adopting a... more
Currently, there appears to be an unhealthy disjunction between grand expectations and acknowledged reality in the face of urban transformations underway throughout the world. Drawing on the “right to the city” discourses, adopting a Lefebvrian approach to the production of space, and a critical regionalist approach to housing and the built environment, the article explores the conceptual analytical neologism of contested urbanism, where the struggle for bottom-up, inclusive development processes push against political hand market pressures towards becoming a world-class city. Dharavi, at the heart of Mumbai, India, is at the frontline of oppositional practices confronting neoliberal, futuristic Dubai-style mega-projects focused on capital accumulation, elite consumption, slum clearance, and deregulated real-estate speculation. Building upon a three-week academic studio exercise in situ, the confrontational power dynamics that shape people's access to housing and redevelopment a...
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ABSTRACT A special kind of infrastructure has emerged around the West Bank, which lays bare Israel's capacity to spatialise its colonial power and to constantly solidify its presence. Reading these spatial devices through... more
ABSTRACT A special kind of infrastructure has emerged around the West Bank, which lays bare Israel's capacity to spatialise its colonial power and to constantly solidify its presence. Reading these spatial devices through Agamben's work, this paper proposes a reflective attempt to read this site of contemporary occupation through a “resistant” lens as a novel take on Agamben's spatial topology and political aesthetics. The paper offers preliminary remarks on the search for alternative theoretical construction of Agamben “potentialities”. The paper allow speculations on the heterotopian nature of Israeli produced infrastructures, perceived at once as actualised potentials in space, and spaces of potential.
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What remains of friendship when we can no longer meet? How to make that physical distance that the pandemic imposed on us productive? This text was prepared in confinement as an exercise in collective, distant writing, raising a... more
What remains of friendship when we can
no longer meet? How to make that physical
distance that the pandemic imposed on
us productive? This text was prepared in
confinement as an exercise in collective,
distant writing, raising a reflection on the
type of city and life that arises from isolation.
Because, after all, what is common when we
are all in isolation?
no longer meet? How to make that physical
distance that the pandemic imposed on
us productive? This text was prepared in
confinement as an exercise in collective,
distant writing, raising a reflection on the
type of city and life that arises from isolation.
Because, after all, what is common when we
are all in isolation?
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Is there space for an ontological urban design? Or better still, following the words of Elisabeth Grosz, is there space for an “ontoethics” of the urban? While contributing to the reflection on the role of ethics as a relational practice,... more
Is there space for an ontological urban design? Or better still, following the words of Elisabeth Grosz, is there space for an “ontoethics” of the urban? While contributing to the reflection on the role of ethics as a relational practice, this paper is digging back into the notion of forms-of-life in Giorgio Agamben’s political reflections, aiming to foreground a possible ethics of the city. This aims to highlight the implications that ontology and ethics have in constructing a politics of life as they bring differences in how we live, act, what we value and how we produce and design. Particularly, to substantiate such ethics, three key characteristics of an affirmative life are put forward: the capacity to care and to connect; the capacity to repair, endure and hold together; as well as to imagine and experiment alternative life-forces to oppose politics of oppression and capitalist extraction of values.
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Resumen Este artículo presenta un conjunto de antecedentes para producir el concepto de derecho a la ciudad financierizada: la aplicación de la agenda emancipadora del derecho a la ciudad sobre los procesos de producción de ciudad en la... more
Resumen
Este artículo presenta un conjunto de antecedentes para producir el concepto de derecho a la ciudad financierizada: la aplicación de la agenda emancipadora del derecho a la ciudad sobre los procesos de producción de ciudad en la era de la financierización, con especial énfasis en la vivienda y tomando como referencia el caso de Chile. A modo de ensayo crítico, se recoge evidencia empírica que expone cómo ocurre la financierización de la vivienda, para culminar presentando una reflexión que aplica los principios del derecho a la ciudad a estos modos de producción urbana.
Abstract
This article presents a set of reflections to elaborate the concept of the right to the financialised city, based on the application of the emancipatory agenda of the right to the city over the processes of city production in the era of financialization. The reflections are grounded in the housing market of Chile. As a critical essay, empirical evidence is collected to expose how financialization occurs in housing. As outcome, the paper presents an application of the principles of the right to the city to the financialised urban production.
Resumo
Este artigo apresenta um conjunto de antecedentes para produzir o conceito de direito à cidade financiada: a aplicação da agenda emancipatória do direito à cidade nos processos de produção da cidade na era da financeirização, com ênfase especial na habitação e tomando como referência o caso do Chile. Como ensaio crítico, são coletadas evidências empíricas que expõem como ocorre a financeirização da habitação, culminando apresentando uma reflexão que aplica os princípios do direito à cidade a esses modos de produção urbana.
Resumé
Cet article présente un ensemble de réflexions visant à élaborer le concept du droit à la ville financiarisée, basé sur l'application de l'agenda émancipateur du droit à la ville sur les processus de production de la ville à l'ère de la financiarisation. Les réflexions sont ancrées dans le marché du logement au Chili. En tant qu'essai critique, des preuves empiriques sont rassemblées pour montrer comment se passe la financiarisation dans le logement. En conclusion, le document présente une application des principes du droit à la ville à la production urbaine financiarisée.
Este artículo presenta un conjunto de antecedentes para producir el concepto de derecho a la ciudad financierizada: la aplicación de la agenda emancipadora del derecho a la ciudad sobre los procesos de producción de ciudad en la era de la financierización, con especial énfasis en la vivienda y tomando como referencia el caso de Chile. A modo de ensayo crítico, se recoge evidencia empírica que expone cómo ocurre la financierización de la vivienda, para culminar presentando una reflexión que aplica los principios del derecho a la ciudad a estos modos de producción urbana.
Abstract
This article presents a set of reflections to elaborate the concept of the right to the financialised city, based on the application of the emancipatory agenda of the right to the city over the processes of city production in the era of financialization. The reflections are grounded in the housing market of Chile. As a critical essay, empirical evidence is collected to expose how financialization occurs in housing. As outcome, the paper presents an application of the principles of the right to the city to the financialised urban production.
Resumo
Este artigo apresenta um conjunto de antecedentes para produzir o conceito de direito à cidade financiada: a aplicação da agenda emancipatória do direito à cidade nos processos de produção da cidade na era da financeirização, com ênfase especial na habitação e tomando como referência o caso do Chile. Como ensaio crítico, são coletadas evidências empíricas que expõem como ocorre a financeirização da habitação, culminando apresentando uma reflexão que aplica os princípios do direito à cidade a esses modos de produção urbana.
Resumé
Cet article présente un ensemble de réflexions visant à élaborer le concept du droit à la ville financiarisée, basé sur l'application de l'agenda émancipateur du droit à la ville sur les processus de production de la ville à l'ère de la financiarisation. Les réflexions sont ancrées dans le marché du logement au Chili. En tant qu'essai critique, des preuves empiriques sont rassemblées pour montrer comment se passe la financiarisation dans le logement. En conclusion, le document présente une application des principes du droit à la ville à la production urbaine financiarisée.
Research Interests: Housing, Chile, Financialization, Derecho a la Ciudad, Right to the city, and 12 moreVivienda, Chili, Production of Urban Public Space, Logement Social, Droit à La Ville, Financiarisation, Direito à Cidade, Produção Urbana, Financeirização, Financierización, Producción urbana, and production urbaine
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Hospitality has become a dominant notion in relation to asylum and immigration. Not only is it oft en used in public and state discourses, it is also prevalent in social analysis, in its ambivalent relationship with hostility and the... more
Hospitality has become a dominant notion in relation to asylum and immigration. Not only is it oft en used in public and state discourses, it is also prevalent in social analysis, in its ambivalent relationship with hostility and the control and management of population. Grounded in the Derridean suggestion of hospitality as "giving place" (2000: 25), we off er a refl ection on hospitality centered around the notion of inhabitation. Framing hospitality as inhabitation helps to move away from problematic asymmetrical and colonial approaches to migration toward acknowledging the mul-tiplicity of transformative experiences embedded in the city. It also enhances a more nuanced understanding of the complex entanglements of humanitarian dilemmas, ref-ugees' struggle for recognition and their desire for "opacity. " Th is article draws on five years of teaching-based engagement with the reality of refugees and asylum seekers hosted in the Sistema di Protezione Richiedenti Asilo e Rifugiati in Brescia, Italy.
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The establishment of effective linkages between institutional urban planning and disaster risk strategies remains a challenge for formal governance structures. For governments at all administrative scales, disaster resilience planning has... more
The establishment of effective linkages between institutional urban planning and disaster risk strategies remains a challenge for formal governance structures. For governments at all administrative scales, disaster resilience planning has required systemic capacities that rely on structures of governance, humanitarian frameworks, and budgetary capaci ties. However, with growing urbanization trends, humanitarian responses and Disaster Risk Management (DRM) frameworks have had to adapt their operations in contexts with high population density, complex infrastructure systems, informal dynamics, and a broad er range of actors. Urban areas concentrate an array of different groups with the capabil ity of contributing to urban responses and strategies to cope with disaster effects, includ ing community groups, government agencies, international organizations and humanitari an practitioners. In addition, cities have running planning structures that support their administration and spatial organization, with instruments that supply constant informa tion about population characteristics, infrastructure capacity and potential weaknesses. Processes and data ascribed to urban planning can provide vital knowledge to natural hazard governance frameworks, from technical resources to conceptual approaches to wards spatial analysis. Authorities managing risk could improve their strategic objectives if they could access and integrate urban planning information. Furthermore, a collabora tive hazard governance can provide equity to multiple urban actors that are usually left out of institutional DRM, including nongovernmental organizations, academia, and com munity groups. Traditional top-down models can operate in parallel with horizontal arrangements, giving voice to groups with limited access to political platforms but who are knowledgeable on urban space and social codes. Their still limited recognition is evi dence that there is still a disconnect between the intentions of global frameworks for in clusive governance, and the co-production of an urban planning designed for inclusive re silience.
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This paper presents a renewed critical reflection of the position and role of architecture in the current social turn of the practice. By thinking through a ‘resistant’ lens, taken from Giorgio Agamben’s spatial political aesthetics, this... more
This paper presents a renewed critical reflection of the position and role of architecture in the
current social turn of the practice. By thinking through a ‘resistant’ lens, taken from Giorgio
Agamben’s spatial political aesthetics, this paper proposes that architectural design practice
can reclaim its social agency. These reflections are grounded in the practice of community
architecture as it has recently emerged out of the intensifying experience of informality
and associated slum settlements in the rapidly growing cities of South-East Asia. Born out
of the decade-long experience of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, the Community
Architects Network (CAN) was founded in 2010 and now connects practitioners in 19
countries. Based on a five-year-long engagement between the authors and CAN, the
paper reflects on the critical possibilities of CAN’s practice, discussing propositions,
ambitions, challenges, and opportunities, and the political potential of architecture.
Additionally, it presents its limitations, questioning to what extent such practices can be
considered a kind of ‘negligence’, that is, a resistance against the status quo as a way of
effectively strengthening new subjectivities and voices.
current social turn of the practice. By thinking through a ‘resistant’ lens, taken from Giorgio
Agamben’s spatial political aesthetics, this paper proposes that architectural design practice
can reclaim its social agency. These reflections are grounded in the practice of community
architecture as it has recently emerged out of the intensifying experience of informality
and associated slum settlements in the rapidly growing cities of South-East Asia. Born out
of the decade-long experience of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, the Community
Architects Network (CAN) was founded in 2010 and now connects practitioners in 19
countries. Based on a five-year-long engagement between the authors and CAN, the
paper reflects on the critical possibilities of CAN’s practice, discussing propositions,
ambitions, challenges, and opportunities, and the political potential of architecture.
Additionally, it presents its limitations, questioning to what extent such practices can be
considered a kind of ‘negligence’, that is, a resistance against the status quo as a way of
effectively strengthening new subjectivities and voices.
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Spaces of refuge represent the paradoxical encounters between a series of governmental forces, disciplinary knowledge, aesthetic regimes and spatial conditions that tend to arrest, fix in time and space forms of lives. Considering the... more
Spaces of refuge represent the paradoxical encounters between a series of governmental forces, disciplinary knowledge, aesthetic regimes and spatial conditions that tend to arrest, fix in time and space forms of lives. Considering the fact that camps are meant to be the materialisation of a temporal status, spatial and political, the proposition posed by Benjamin Gray's Citizenship as Barrier and Opportunity for Ancient Greek and Modern Refugees, to look at "citizenship-in-exile" practices in ancient Greece and their forms of "improvised quasi-civic communities", is welcome as it is refreshing. This short response engages with Gray's text, addressing two different but interconnected points: in one respect, I hope to rescue Agamben's work from its linear reading by commenting on the depoliticization of the camp and the critique of its exceptionalism; and, in another, I wish to provoke reflection around the universalising claim of hospitality and full assimilation, by introducing the disruptive terminology of inhabitation. This critical insertion aims to redefine an ethical relationship with the space, as a space of and for life, that Agamben sees as the basis for a new ethics, reversing its status as a productive and active force where the camp, in its paradigmatic reading, and the form of life it generates, helps to think beside the exceptional and move to inhabit such indistinctions.
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El artículo construye una agenda política de transgresión disciplinar contra el capitalismo a partir de las razones que valieron para Alejandro Aravena un Premio Pritzker y la curatoría de la Bienal de Venecia 2016. En ambos casos, las... more
El artículo construye una agenda política de transgresión disciplinar contra el capitalismo a partir de las razones que valieron para Alejandro Aravena un Premio Pritzker y la curatoría de la Bienal de Venecia 2016. En ambos casos, las instituciones patrocinantes han informado que se reconoce el rol de Aravena como arquitecto social con una agenda orientada a ayudar a las personas de escasos recursos. A lo largo del artículo se expone la naturaleza ideológica de estas nominaciones y se expone la necesidad de emancipar la arquitectura de la subyugación a los objetivos de la rentabilidad, acumulación de capital y reproducción de ciclos de poder. Se argumenta que este sometimiento al capital ha destruido la naturaleza creativa de la disciplina generando una crisis cuya salida puede darse con más teorización, organización colectiva y explorando nuevos modos de producción. Se convoca a salir de la zona de confort y abrazar la crítica como un camino posible hacia la liberación disciplinar.
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A reflection around Alejandro Aravena social housing, Pritzker Price and the social turn in architecture.
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This paper aims at deconstructing the nature of crisis. It goes beyond the widespread negative understanding of the concept as a trauma and reveals its limitless transformative potential, while elaborating on its spatio-political... more
This paper aims at deconstructing the nature of crisis. It goes beyond the widespread
negative understanding of the concept as a trauma and reveals its limitless
transformative potential, while elaborating on its spatio-political dimension.
Crisis is fundamentally interrelated with productions of knowledge, “normalities,”
“rationalities,” “truths,” subject formation, and government á la Foucault. Thus,
the lens of crisis is used to analyze and question the current urban transformations
in Athens: the nature of the production and management of the city and its
space. We wished to narrate the story of Athens differently than the dominant
rhetoric and to show how similar values that gave birth to the crisis before the official
“crisis” in 2008, are not only still considered “truths” but have also worked
as the basis upon which new rationalities have emerged. Our narratives aimed to
provide evidence of the components that emerged from deconstructing the crisis,
as well as the effects of those components on social and political structures. “Crisis”
gradually educates us to live with the loss of the city’s contested nature, thus
creating a new social imaginary.
negative understanding of the concept as a trauma and reveals its limitless
transformative potential, while elaborating on its spatio-political dimension.
Crisis is fundamentally interrelated with productions of knowledge, “normalities,”
“rationalities,” “truths,” subject formation, and government á la Foucault. Thus,
the lens of crisis is used to analyze and question the current urban transformations
in Athens: the nature of the production and management of the city and its
space. We wished to narrate the story of Athens differently than the dominant
rhetoric and to show how similar values that gave birth to the crisis before the official
“crisis” in 2008, are not only still considered “truths” but have also worked
as the basis upon which new rationalities have emerged. Our narratives aimed to
provide evidence of the components that emerged from deconstructing the crisis,
as well as the effects of those components on social and political structures. “Crisis”
gradually educates us to live with the loss of the city’s contested nature, thus
creating a new social imaginary.
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Book Review
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The paper aims to search for an alternate narrative of urban design within the complexities and the contradictions of the current production of urban spaces. In doing so it adopts a broader conception of design and position the reflection... more
The paper aims to search for an alternate narrative of urban design within the complexities and the contradictions of the current production of urban spaces. In doing so it adopts a broader conception of design and position the reflection along the thematic context of the informal squat-occupation urban realities. It presents a conceptual elaboration around Giorgio Agamben's ontology and political aesthetics as an aggregate source toward a possible (re)calibration of the approach to urban design research and practice. Playing with the topos and the gesture of neoliberal urban design, and framing it into the wider background of the current trends of gated urbanisms and hyper symbolic urban regeneration, the paper explores the notion of profanation as act capable to unlock and enhance new modes of politics. The centrality of the act of profanation is seen - through the lenses of a design research initiative in Rome - not simply as a productive antidote to the 'sacred' phen...
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Considering inclusivity and architecture as “notions in struggle”, as they continually operate in a series of tensions and reconfiguration, this short reflection, reclaims the political emancipatory project of architecture, against a... more
Considering inclusivity and architecture as “notions in struggle”, as they continually operate in a series of tensions and reconfiguration, this short reflection, reclaims the political emancipatory project of architecture, against a technocratic, biopolitical and arrogant one. This suggests architecture should “practice dissensus”, meaning it should develop strategies and interventions that require political thinking and speech to activate new ideas of order, new subjectivities and “becoming inoperative”, meaning acting in neutralising its ordering forces and making it available for fr ee uses. With an explicit, although incomplete, reference to Jaques Rancière and Giorgio Agamben’s political reflections my aim here is to sketch out the potentiality within Rancière and Agamben’s politics, which can affect change today in architectural discourse; especially around the possibility for a radical inclusive ar chitecture.
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Forced evictions are commonplace in the developing world, mainly due to the need to repurpose land for allegedly higher order enterprises. In this post, Camillo Boano and Giorgio Talocci discuss their research with two relocation sites... more
Forced evictions are commonplace in the developing world, mainly due to the need to repurpose land for allegedly higher order enterprises. In this post, Camillo Boano and Giorgio Talocci discuss their research with two relocation sites that originated from the same eviction in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. By looking at these cases, they show how newly-formed settlements can follow diametrically different paths: whereas one conforms to the current model of social development, the other one contests this model through home-grown urbanity practices. A longer version of this post appeared in Pacific Geographies (2015), 43(1), 15-20.
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Research Interests: Urban Geography, Architecture, Colombia, Urban Studies, Urbanism, and 2 moreUrban Design and Beirut(Urban Design and Beirut)
(Urban Design and Beirut)
The commentary is about the Italian debate over 'peripheries' that recently gained renewed centrality in the political discourse, due to an initiative of the architect Renzo Piano, the eruption of protest and disorders in Rome between... more
The commentary is about the Italian debate over 'peripheries' that recently gained renewed centrality in the political discourse, due to an initiative of the architect Renzo Piano, the eruption of protest and disorders in Rome between residents and migrants, and the Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's populism. One year ago the star architect Renzo Piano funded an initiative to stimulate urban regeneration and employment of young Italian designers. Although neither the projects, nor the approach are a novelty, the initiative gained great visibility and culminated last 6th December with the Italian government decision to allocate 200 million euro for the regeneration of peripheries. Beyond the many self-evident qualities, the successful initiative deserves some further speculations, especially in relation to the rhetoric of 'mending the peripheries' - a motto that suddenly became an architectural manifesto, stimulating a broader reflection on the role, the potential and the discourse of architecture and design, both in academia and outside. From our perspective, the idea to reconnect the periphery with the urban exceeds in architectural determinism and complies with a certain vision of design as thaumaturgic practice, that well fits the superhuman ego of the Italian prime Minister and its discursive practice. Rather than claim the political project of the city, the initiative, despite its good intentions, results as another attempt to reduce political instance to a mere spatial one, because it is easy to find spatial solutions. The commentary therefore seeks to look into this debate, ultimately willing to exonerate architecture from too many alleged 'failures'.
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This paper discusses single-scale studies on disaster risk and vulnerability – i.e. urban risk and physical vulnerability – by formulating the progression of vulnerability proposed in the Pressure and Release Model (PAR) as a... more
This paper discusses single-scale studies on disaster risk and vulnerability – i.e. urban
risk and physical vulnerability – by formulating the progression of vulnerability proposed in the
Pressure and Release Model (PAR) as a multi-scalar phenomenon. Disaster and vulnerability studies
are often conceived within single-scale units, self-enclosed and delimited into specific spatial foci –
urban studies, regional studies – hence, studies tend to neglect the geographical complexity of
socio-economic and political processes involved in the production of vulnerability and risk at
multiple scales. Attempts for integrating multi-scalar factors and processes – such as the effects of
policies or institutional forms – into risk and vulnerability studies are rare, possibly due to the
aforementioned complexities. Nevertheless, the implication of macro-processes – e.g. economic
models or political regimes – on the causation of disasters is hardly questioned. So, this paper
employs recent findings on studies of scale in order to better understand vulnerability as a process
produced throughout varied scales. The case of Chaiten, a remote Volcano eruption’s disaster in
southern Chile in 2008, is devised in order to illustrate how specific multi-scalar processes, such as
institutional forms for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM), are
unfolded from major to minor geographical scales. The actions and inactions of national, regional
and local officials, as related to DRR and DRM during 2008 and 2013, have largely contributed to
the current situation of Chaiten. The unforeseen effects of policies that are unjustly distributed and
the population’s uneven exposure to hazards have split the city in two. In summary, this paper
seeks to discuss that although hazards, vulnerability and risk are often evident at minor geographical
scales – e.g. physical vulnerability, hazard mapping – the causation of disaster and risk production
should no be longer considered as single-scale phenomenon, but rather as multi-scalar.
risk and physical vulnerability – by formulating the progression of vulnerability proposed in the
Pressure and Release Model (PAR) as a multi-scalar phenomenon. Disaster and vulnerability studies
are often conceived within single-scale units, self-enclosed and delimited into specific spatial foci –
urban studies, regional studies – hence, studies tend to neglect the geographical complexity of
socio-economic and political processes involved in the production of vulnerability and risk at
multiple scales. Attempts for integrating multi-scalar factors and processes – such as the effects of
policies or institutional forms – into risk and vulnerability studies are rare, possibly due to the
aforementioned complexities. Nevertheless, the implication of macro-processes – e.g. economic
models or political regimes – on the causation of disasters is hardly questioned. So, this paper
employs recent findings on studies of scale in order to better understand vulnerability as a process
produced throughout varied scales. The case of Chaiten, a remote Volcano eruption’s disaster in
southern Chile in 2008, is devised in order to illustrate how specific multi-scalar processes, such as
institutional forms for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM), are
unfolded from major to minor geographical scales. The actions and inactions of national, regional
and local officials, as related to DRR and DRM during 2008 and 2013, have largely contributed to
the current situation of Chaiten. The unforeseen effects of policies that are unjustly distributed and
the population’s uneven exposure to hazards have split the city in two. In summary, this paper
seeks to discuss that although hazards, vulnerability and risk are often evident at minor geographical
scales – e.g. physical vulnerability, hazard mapping – the causation of disaster and risk production
should no be longer considered as single-scale phenomenon, but rather as multi-scalar.
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Bernardo Secchi (1934-2014) was an Italian urban theorist, renowned urban planner, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura (IUAV) of Venice and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the... more
Bernardo Secchi (1934-2014) was an Italian urban theorist, renowned urban planner, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura (IUAV) of Venice and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milano. For almost half a century, he was a central figure within European and Italian interdisciplinary debates on the contemporary city and urban design. His research was located within the wider discourses of space and societal transformations, influenced by post-’68 French theorists and nourished specifically by a wide investigation of European urban territories. In his practice, he developed plans and visions for small and large cities in Italy and Europe, including Milano, Jesi, Brescia, Pesaro, Siena, Ascoli Piceno, Bergamo, Prato, Pescara, Lecce, Madrid, Antwerp[1], Bruxelles and Moscow. In 2008 he was amongst the ten architects selected to develop a vision for Grand Paris[2]; his idea of ‘ville poreuse’ focused on the improvement of permeability and accessibility, as a strategy to ensure the fundamental right to the city. As a scholar and intellectual, he was fascinated by the multiple narratives and multidisciplinary nature of urban territories. In the books, Prima lezione di Urbanistica (2007), La città del ventesimo secolo (2008), La città dei ricchi e la città dei poveri (2013), regrettably not yet translated for English speaking scholars, he placed into creative tension the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of urbanism, informed by theoretical insights and underpinned by an engagement with spatial realities and design projects. He treated urban transformations with vivid, lucid and contemporary analyses that utilized theories as productive investigative tools to elucidate society and space rather than as merely self-referential intellectual gestures.
Secchi’s death in September marks a great loss for urbanism. The conversation below is a gesture towards bringing his work to a wider Anglophone audience, since little of his work has been translated into English. It reflects on his legacy by exploring his intellectual production[3], critical pedagogy and practice, with a special focus on the exploration of his idea of a ‘new urban question’ and the formation of his reflexive urban research praxis. The ‘new urban question’ was addressed most concertedly in his last book, and is concerned with the increasing social inequalities and spatial injustice. His urban research praxis, shaped by long-term practice and experience, voracious curiosity and acute observation, aimed to dismantle disciplinary boundaries and conventional scales, focusing on a certain idea of precision, accuracy and patience. We conducted an interview with Paola Pellegrini, urbanist and scholar, and Secchi’s associate for 12 years, and asked her to offer a personal and professional reflection on Secchi’s intellectual legacy.
Secchi’s death in September marks a great loss for urbanism. The conversation below is a gesture towards bringing his work to a wider Anglophone audience, since little of his work has been translated into English. It reflects on his legacy by exploring his intellectual production[3], critical pedagogy and practice, with a special focus on the exploration of his idea of a ‘new urban question’ and the formation of his reflexive urban research praxis. The ‘new urban question’ was addressed most concertedly in his last book, and is concerned with the increasing social inequalities and spatial injustice. His urban research praxis, shaped by long-term practice and experience, voracious curiosity and acute observation, aimed to dismantle disciplinary boundaries and conventional scales, focusing on a certain idea of precision, accuracy and patience. We conducted an interview with Paola Pellegrini, urbanist and scholar, and Secchi’s associate for 12 years, and asked her to offer a personal and professional reflection on Secchi’s intellectual legacy.
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Adopting an impure and contingent conception of urban design as a biopolitical apparatus, along the theme of urban informal squatter-occupied spatialities, this paper searches for an alternative narrative of urban design. It presents a... more
Adopting an impure and contingent conception of urban design as a biopolitical apparatus, along the theme of urban informal squatter-occupied spatialities, this paper searches for an alternative narrative of urban design. It presents a theoretical and analytical framework developed around Michel Foucault's and Giorgio Agamben's spatial ontology and political aesthetics as an aggregate source toward recalibrating the approach to urban design research, pedagogy and practice, integrating the debate around the dispositif and its profanation. Critically engaging with the complexity and contradictions of the current neoliberal urban design practice—articulated as a complex urban apparatus instrumental to regimes of security and control—the paper explores the conceptual tool of profanation as a potential antidote to the sacred production of the neoliberal city. The act of profaning the urban realm, of ‘returning it to the free use of men’, is approached through the lens of a design research initiative in a squatter-occupied space in Rome, Italy. The narrative that emerges from this theoretically inspired action research points to an alternative practice that can be read as a site of resistance in reclaiming the intellectual productivity of urban design theory and research.
Research Interests: Political Philosophy, Architecture, Critical Thinking, Urban Planning, Urbanism, and 8 moreGiorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, Urban And Regional Planning, Social and Political Philosophy, Urban Design (Urban Studies), Urban Design, Arquitetura e Urbanismo, and Teoria História e Crítica da Arquitetura e do Urbanismo
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Progetto Minore riflette intorno alle pratiche ed al pensiero progettuale, richiamando riferimenti e tradizioni che vanno dalla filosofia agli studi culturali, dall'antropologia alla tradizione decoloniale, ponendo al centro l'importanza... more
Progetto Minore riflette intorno alle pratiche ed al pensiero progettuale, richiamando riferimenti e tradizioni che vanno dalla filosofia agli studi culturali, dall'antropologia alla tradizione decoloniale, ponendo al centro l'importanza della "minorità" come possibile statuto del progetto. Il minore non è una minoranza, una riduzione, ma una differenza di statuto e pertanto una intensità. Non è una banale chiamata alle armi, una richiesta di azione e di uno sporcarsi le mani in una nuova funzionale operatività. Al contrario è una proposta destituente. Un nuovo pensiero per pensare il progetto ed il suo farsi nelle crisi, che si sostanzia come inversione del proprio significato, operatrice di critica e di resistenza rispetto ad un orizzonte totalitario, maggiore, dominante: una piccola linea di fuga.
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The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben's political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of... more
The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben's political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben's politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The book investigates the possibility of an inoperative architecture, as an ethical shift for a different practice, just a little bit different, but able to deactivate the sociospatial dispositive and mobilize a new theory and a new project for the urban now to come. This particular reading from Agamben's oeuvre suggests a destituent mode of both thinking and practicing of architecture and urbanism that could possibly redeem them from their social emptiness, cultural irrelevance, economic reductionism and proto-avant-garde extravagance, contributing to a renewed critical 'encounter' with architecture's aesthetic-political function.
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Research Interests:
Through this argumentative essay, we seek to frame a new status for land. First, with the help of companion intellectuals, we analyze the construction of land as stable property that ultimately became financial security, to the point that... more
Through this argumentative essay, we seek to frame a new status for land. First, with the help of companion intellectuals, we analyze the construction of land as stable property that ultimately became financial security, to the point that nation-states ended up providing the apparatus to secure land property. Then, based on different alternatives of refusal we aim to destabilize the ‘secure’ position of land as property. This opens the space to propose a new status for land: an infrastructure for coexistence, a scarce resource that escapes capture. For if private property is at the root of inequality, then we may start to think of strategies that run away from that condition to ensure the right of future generations to have a place to live with dignity.
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Call for Papers - for the RGS-IBG Conference, London 30 August to 2 September 2016. Comparing Urban Difference Beyond the 'Planning/Politics Nexus' Convened by: Jonathan Rokem, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College... more
Call for Papers - for the RGS-IBG Conference, London 30 August to 2 September 2016.
Comparing Urban Difference Beyond the 'Planning/Politics Nexus'
Convened by:
Jonathan Rokem, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (j.rokem@ucl.ac.uk)
Camillo Boano, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London (c.boano@ucl.ac.uk)
The relation between planning and politics has been central to the debate in urban geography and planning theory for decades (Hillier 2002; Gualini 2015; Metzger et al. 2016; Rokem and Allegra 2016). Broadly speaking, it has been suggested that considering the temporal and spatial context of planning intervention (and, more generally, of urban policies and politics) can blur the differences between dichotomies in understandings of urban democracy and state led planning practices (Silver et al. 2010; Purcell 2016). Within this debate the 'planning/politics nexus' is perceived as non-hierarchical set of interactions, negotiated within a specific historical, geographical, legal and cultural context.
The session’s underling argument is that we need to re-think the contested and conflictive practices of the material and immaterial 'planning/politics nexus' from a comparative perspective. In other words, on the surface different cities share and are developing growing similarities stemming from ethnic, racial and class conflicts revolving around issues of housing, infrastructure, participation and identity, amongst others. Our argument is founded on a joint critical reading of the growing literature on urban planning and politics from different urban settings with the aim of learning through differences, rather than seeking out similarities (Robinson 2011) as part of a general call to investigate difference in comparative urban research (McFarlane and Robinson 2012).
The session main objective is to bring together a selected group of international scholars engaging with comparative urban planning and politics. We are interested to explore the relational and contrastive value of comparisons across 'Northern' and 'Southern' contexts and especially cities from ‘South-Eastern’ non-conventional regions normally excluded from the academic debates, moving beyond the ‘North-Western’ theory producing usual suspects. In doing so, this session seeks to argue that it is timely to start learning from, and compare across different urban contexts to enrich our comparative imagination of the relation between planning and politics in an increasingly fractured global urban reality.
We invite papers that discuss and address (although not limited to) the following broad topics:
• The role of urban politics and planning in different cities and neighbourhoods from a comparative perspective.
• Comparing how spatial policies, urban conflicts and divisions shape the identities and wellbeing of urban residents.
• Comparing planning and its (lack of) promotion of spatial justice under extreme urban political conditions.
• The shifting roles of the neoliberal economy, ethnicity and race in shaping the 'planning/politics nexus' in different cities.
• Learning from comparing urban politics and planning across 'Northern' and 'Southern' cities.
• Comparing planning and politics in cities from ‘South-Eastern’ non-conventional regions normally excluded from academic debates.
The session is convened by: Dr. Jonathan Rokem (The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London) and Dr. Camillo Boano (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London).
Interested session participants should contact Jonathan Rokem (j.rokem@ucl.ac.uk) and Camillo Boano (c.boano@ucl.ac.uk) by 8th February 2016 to indicate their interest in participating in the session.
Please include your affiliation, a proposed title and a 250-word abstract.
All session presenters must register for the conference.
Location: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Imperial College London Dates: 30 August to 2 September 2016. Conference website: http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/An nual+international+conference.htm
References cited
Gualini, E. (2015). Conflict in the City: Democratic, Emancipatory—and Transformative? In Search of the Political in Planning Conflicts. In. Gualini (eds.) Planning and Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Contentious Urban Developments, RTPI Library Series, London and New York, Routledge. pp. 3-36.
Hillier, J. (2002). Direct action and agonism in democratic planning practice. Planning futures: New directions for planning theory, 110-135.
McFarlane, C. and Robinson, J. (2012) Introduction - Experiments in Comparative Urbanism, Urban Geography, 33 (6): 765–773.
Metzger, J. Soneryd, L. & Hallström, K. (2016) ‘Power’ is that which remains to be explained: Dispelling the ominous dark matter of critical planning studies, Planning Theory: Published online before print January 12, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1473095215622502.
Purcell, M. (2016) For democracy: Planning and publics without the state, Planning Theory, Published online before print January 12, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1473095215620827
Robinson J. (2011) Cities in a world of cities: the comparative gesture, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(1): 1-23.
Rokem, J. and Allegra, M. (2016) Planning in Turbulent Times: Exploring Planners’ Agency in Jerusalem. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, (forthcoming).
Silver, H. Scott, A. & Kazepov, Y. (2010). Participation in urban contention and deliberation, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34, 453-477.
Comparing Urban Difference Beyond the 'Planning/Politics Nexus'
Convened by:
Jonathan Rokem, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (j.rokem@ucl.ac.uk)
Camillo Boano, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London (c.boano@ucl.ac.uk)
The relation between planning and politics has been central to the debate in urban geography and planning theory for decades (Hillier 2002; Gualini 2015; Metzger et al. 2016; Rokem and Allegra 2016). Broadly speaking, it has been suggested that considering the temporal and spatial context of planning intervention (and, more generally, of urban policies and politics) can blur the differences between dichotomies in understandings of urban democracy and state led planning practices (Silver et al. 2010; Purcell 2016). Within this debate the 'planning/politics nexus' is perceived as non-hierarchical set of interactions, negotiated within a specific historical, geographical, legal and cultural context.
The session’s underling argument is that we need to re-think the contested and conflictive practices of the material and immaterial 'planning/politics nexus' from a comparative perspective. In other words, on the surface different cities share and are developing growing similarities stemming from ethnic, racial and class conflicts revolving around issues of housing, infrastructure, participation and identity, amongst others. Our argument is founded on a joint critical reading of the growing literature on urban planning and politics from different urban settings with the aim of learning through differences, rather than seeking out similarities (Robinson 2011) as part of a general call to investigate difference in comparative urban research (McFarlane and Robinson 2012).
The session main objective is to bring together a selected group of international scholars engaging with comparative urban planning and politics. We are interested to explore the relational and contrastive value of comparisons across 'Northern' and 'Southern' contexts and especially cities from ‘South-Eastern’ non-conventional regions normally excluded from the academic debates, moving beyond the ‘North-Western’ theory producing usual suspects. In doing so, this session seeks to argue that it is timely to start learning from, and compare across different urban contexts to enrich our comparative imagination of the relation between planning and politics in an increasingly fractured global urban reality.
We invite papers that discuss and address (although not limited to) the following broad topics:
• The role of urban politics and planning in different cities and neighbourhoods from a comparative perspective.
• Comparing how spatial policies, urban conflicts and divisions shape the identities and wellbeing of urban residents.
• Comparing planning and its (lack of) promotion of spatial justice under extreme urban political conditions.
• The shifting roles of the neoliberal economy, ethnicity and race in shaping the 'planning/politics nexus' in different cities.
• Learning from comparing urban politics and planning across 'Northern' and 'Southern' cities.
• Comparing planning and politics in cities from ‘South-Eastern’ non-conventional regions normally excluded from academic debates.
The session is convened by: Dr. Jonathan Rokem (The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London) and Dr. Camillo Boano (The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London).
Interested session participants should contact Jonathan Rokem (j.rokem@ucl.ac.uk) and Camillo Boano (c.boano@ucl.ac.uk) by 8th February 2016 to indicate their interest in participating in the session.
Please include your affiliation, a proposed title and a 250-word abstract.
All session presenters must register for the conference.
Location: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Imperial College London Dates: 30 August to 2 September 2016. Conference website: http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/An nual+international+conference.htm
References cited
Gualini, E. (2015). Conflict in the City: Democratic, Emancipatory—and Transformative? In Search of the Political in Planning Conflicts. In. Gualini (eds.) Planning and Conflict: Critical Perspectives on Contentious Urban Developments, RTPI Library Series, London and New York, Routledge. pp. 3-36.
Hillier, J. (2002). Direct action and agonism in democratic planning practice. Planning futures: New directions for planning theory, 110-135.
McFarlane, C. and Robinson, J. (2012) Introduction - Experiments in Comparative Urbanism, Urban Geography, 33 (6): 765–773.
Metzger, J. Soneryd, L. & Hallström, K. (2016) ‘Power’ is that which remains to be explained: Dispelling the ominous dark matter of critical planning studies, Planning Theory: Published online before print January 12, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1473095215622502.
Purcell, M. (2016) For democracy: Planning and publics without the state, Planning Theory, Published online before print January 12, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1473095215620827
Robinson J. (2011) Cities in a world of cities: the comparative gesture, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(1): 1-23.
Rokem, J. and Allegra, M. (2016) Planning in Turbulent Times: Exploring Planners’ Agency in Jerusalem. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, (forthcoming).
Silver, H. Scott, A. & Kazepov, Y. (2010). Participation in urban contention and deliberation, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34, 453-477.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This paper offers a closer look at the French-Italian border and its violence. The border in the Vallée de la Roya exemplifies a complex set of conditions of rurality, transit, and danger to which migrant bodies are constantly subjected.... more
This paper offers a closer look at the French-Italian border and its violence. The border in the Vallée de la Roya exemplifies a complex set of conditions of rurality, transit, and danger to which migrant bodies are constantly subjected. In this context, different genealogies of displacement, social fabrics and spatial forms are forced to coexist and resist situations of crisis in different ways, contributing to ongoing processes of dematerialisation of the border. The southern French-Italian border and its valley are the stage where new forms of spaces and practices of holding are enacted amid simultaneous and ambivalent conflicts between support and hostility, mobility and immobility, visibility, and invisibility. The growing increase of transit and the subsequent enclosure of the internal borders motivate simultaneous military mobilisations as well as important acts of reception and solidarity. The valley and the experience of Le Camping encompass a new fragment of an infrastructure of solidarity that explains its performativity as a transnational system of protection, by enabling transits through informal, diffuse, and opaque dispositifs of collective resistance.
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Research Interests:
El número de refugiados climáticos en el mundo irá en aumento en las si-guientes décadas debido a los efectos del cambio climático. Por ello, los re-asentamientos poblacionales serán necesarios con mayor frecuencia, siendo urgente revisar... more
El número de refugiados climáticos en el mundo irá en aumento en las si-guientes décadas debido a los efectos del cambio climático. Por ello, los re-asentamientos poblacionales serán necesarios con mayor frecuencia, siendo urgente revisar la metodología empleada para su diseño, implementación y monitoreo para promover su sostenibilidad ambiental, social, económica y política. Se presentan en este documento cuatro factores clave (más no exclu-sivos) a ser tomados en cuenta en los procesos de reasentamiento. Estos son: gobernanza y participación; ubicación, diseño urbano y de viviendas; medios de vida y planificación. Se presentan análisis teóricos de estos factores, cómo se manifiestan en el caso de estudio elegido y algunas recomendaciones he