David Harvey at LSE Thursday 10th May
Harvey explores the contemporary reality of cities as the arenas for revolutionary politics. To what extent can current movements be described as 'calss struggle'? How do these movements draw on 'right to the city' discourse in thier attempts to tranform societies as well as the streets?
See also
'For Harvey, the left must be modern and urban or it will remain powerless.'
Urbanized is a feature-length documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.
Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren’t created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live. By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities.
October 21
Sheikh Zayed Theatre, London School of Economics
6:30pm. Special Screening and post-film discussion with director Gary Hustwit and cast members Ricky Burdett (LSE Cities/Urban Age), Alejandro Aravena (architect, Elemental) and more TBA.
The EDL: Britain’s Far Right Social Movement
A report from Northampton University's Radicalism and New Media Research Group highlights the factors contributing to the growth of the English Defence League as an increasingly vociferous force on our city streets.
"Without resolving underlying economic and social tensions within areas identified with EDL and new far-right support, it is likely the movement will continue to find fertile conditions in more deprived pockets across the country … to combat this, a more relevant and empowering politics is crucial to tackling support for extreme nationalisms."
The High Line Park in New York has opened a second section using a former elevated railway line to bringing new life and greenery to lower Manhattan.
"Already, the two-year-old southern portion is a riot of vegetation in greens and muted purples. The flourishing of the plant life is like a metaphor for what the High Line has done to the neighbourhood as a whole, which has exploded economically since the park opened."
Jane Jacobs' classic book on urban living is 50 this year. Our current leaders would do well to read it.
"Jacobs was there first, and with a hard-headed, modern understanding of the sort of relationships that are needed in modern life, and the sorts of community that contemporary cities can offer. Her belief that urban planners and architects should not be realising visions, but creating and preserving resilient, inclusive and adaptable neighbourhoods – places which can largely look after themselves – still resonates."
Renowned sociologist Sharon Zukin will discuss her latest book, The Naked City: the death and life of authentic urban places, which explores the gentrification of cities.
LSE Cities and Department of Sociology public lecture
Date: Monday 17 January 2011
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building
Speaker: Professor Sharon Zukin
Chair: Dr Fran Tonkiss
Sharon Zukin is professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and City University Graduate Center.
A lecture by Edward W. Soja, Professor of Urban Planning, School of Public Affairs, University of California Los Angeles Tuesday, 23 November 2010, 6.30pm, Cruciform LT1, Cruciform Building, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Introducing his new book, Seeking Spatial Justice, Edward Soja looks at how explicitly spatial strategies and a new critical spatial consciousness has infiltrated urban social movements and labor-community-university coalition building in Los Angeles. Through such organizations as the Right to the City Alliance, what has been happening in Los Angeles has been spreading to London and other city-regions of the world as a mobilizing force and a more concrete strategy for achieving social justice and fundamental human rights. Soja builds his argument on the so-called spatial turn and new discoveries about urban spatial causality and the stimulus of urban agglomeration; as well as on the reinvigorated rallying power of justice struggles (including workers justice and environmental justice) in the contemporary world.
The lecture is sponsored by the Journal CITY: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action and UCL Urban Laboratory
Rio's slum project comes to the Southbank - via Lambeth
The favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the council estates of south London seem worlds apart, but the construction of a mini-city at the Southbank Centre, built in collaboration with young people from Lambeth, has brought them together to reveal the shared problems and ambitions of young people in both.
Mayra Jucá from Viva Rio, an NGO working with young people to tackle poverty in Brazil, sees this as a successful message of involvement: "If you give young people the tools and space, they can bring surprising projects like Morrinho. It's art, it's politics, it's a way of talking about a sad situation, and it's full of joy and fun. I hope everyone who visits the work in London reflects on giving visibility and respect to young people, especially from poor communities."
Detroit was once the engine of America's automotive industry. Today it is a symbol of urban decay. But a daring bid to return the land to farming is sowing seeds of recovery – and could be a template for cities across the world
Sevelle sees what is happening as a harbinger of urban development for the western world's declining inner cities, with Detroit at the cutting edge of the phenomenon. "I see the entire world looking different. Detroit will be number one in showing people how to pull a city out of a situation like this," she says.
From the slums of Kenya to the Paris banlieues, the guerilla photographer JR aims to put a human face to the most impoverished areas of the world.
"I was interested in women because I realised in the projects I'd done before – most of the time in the kind of places I was going to – it was men on the street, but it's actually the women who are the ones holding the community together."
Manuel Castells: Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age
an exploration of the new forms of social movements and protests that are erupting in the world today, from the Arab uprisings to the indignadas movement in Spain, and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US.
Susanna Snyder: Asylum-seeking, Migration and Church
A ground breaking multidisciplinary study challenging the churches engagement with asylum seekers.
Owen Hatherley: A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain
What happens when ruination overtakes regeneration?
P. D. Smith: City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age
the ultimate handbook for the archetypal city
David Harvey: Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
REBEL CITIES places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles
Marcuse, Brenner & Mayer: Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and the Right to the City
An important volume promoting alternative, radically democratic and sustainable forms of urbanism.
Kunkel & Mayer: Neoliberal Urbanism and its Contestations: Crossing Theoretical Boundaries
This volume brings a plurality of approaches – from political economic/regulationist to Foucauldian governmentality and post-operatist subject theories – to bear on the broad range of contestations around urban neoliberalism.
Neoliberal Urbanism and its Contestations: Crossing Theoretical Boundaries
Matthew Gandy ed.: Urban Constellations
This collection explores themes such as new forms of political mobilisation, the effects of economic instability, the political ecology of urban nature and the presence of collective memory.
Mark R Gornik: Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City
An insightful and prescient portrait of the emerging face of Christianity as it enters its third millennium.
Gareth Millington: 'Race', Culture and the Right to the City: Centres, Peripheries, Margins
Linking debates in 'racial' and ethnic studies to wider concerns with the city and urbanism.
Atherton, Baker & Reader: Christianity and the New Social Order: A Manifesto for a Fairer Future
Is Britain a broken society? Three contributors tackle the question in this easy-to-read manifesto aimed at the Church, public sphere and academia. They examine the values and direction of British/Western society in view of current political, economic and civil debates, and propose a new Christian agenda for change.
Baker & Beaumont eds: Postsecular Cities: Religious Space, Theory and Practice (Continuum Resources in Religion and Political Culture)
Rapidly diversifying urban locations are the best places to witness the emergence of new spaces in which religions and spiritual traditions are creating both new alliances but also bifurcations with secular sectors.
G. Myers & M.Murray: Cities in Contemporary Africa
Explains how and why cities on the African continent have grown at such a rapid pace, and how long-time urban residents and new-comers interact, negotiate, and struggle over access to limited resources through religion, culture and politics.
Garth Myers: African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice
Engages with the vibrancy and complexity of African cities with fresh eyes
Mendieta and Butler: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia / SSRC Book)
a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one all-encompassing contemporary concern: what role does or shouldreligion play in our public lives?
David W Smith: Seeking a City with Foundations
Outlines key urban trajectories alongside theological and biblical themes to develop a new vision for urban mission.
Edward Glaeser: Triumph of the City
Triumph of the free market?
Daniel Dorling: Bankrupt Britain: An Atlas of Social Change
a unique atlas giving a comprehensive picture of the effect of the recession on Britain
Laurence Smith: The New North: The World in 2050
The world in 2050 will be radically different from today; Northern countries – notably Canada, Russia and Scandinavia – will rise at the expense of southern ones.
Ricky Burdett: Living in the Endless City
This book will give the reader access to a wealth of ideas and data about Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and, by extension, urban life across the globe.
Danny Dorling: So You Think You Know About Britain?
Exploring the key issues that make the headlines Dorling will change the way you think about the country and explain just why you should feel positive about the future.
Michael Symmons Roberts & Paul Farley: Edgelands
A book about the blank spaces on the A-Z, the hinterlands of Britain that are not urban and not yet country: the lost, the liminal and the unloved.
Nigel Copsey (ed): British National Party: Contemporary Perspectives
Recent developments in the far right in Britain, are covered by a range of commentators with a particular focus on the British National Party (BNP).
Claire Freeman: Children and their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds
The book seeks to embrace childhood as a time of freedom, social engagement and environmental adventure and to encourage creation of environments that better meet the needs of children. The authors argue that in doing so, we will build more sustainable neighbourhoods, cities and societies for the future.
Tim Butler: Ethnicity, Class and Aspiration: Understanding London's New East End
a compelling analysis of the importance of aspirations and education in understanding social class and ethnicity in contemporary Britain.
Wesley Howard-Brook: Come Out My People!: God's Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond
A remarkable offering for those who care about the interface of power and faith . . . . I could not put it down, and expect to continue to be instructed by it. --Walter Brueggemann
Nezar AlSayyad: The Fundamentalist City?: Religiosity and the Remaking of Urban Space
This book attempts to establish a relationship between two important phenomena: the historic transition of the majority of the world’s population from a rural to an urban existence; and the robust resurgence of religion as a major force in the shaping of contemporary life in many parts of the world.
Simon Parker: Cities, Politics and Power (Routledge Critical Introductions to Urbanism and the City)
combines a concern with how the cities in which we live are organised and run with a broader focus on cities and urban regions as multiple sites and agents of power.