scholarly journals Introduction to the special issue “Contested urban territories: decolonized perspectives”

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Anke Schwarz ◽  
Monika Streule
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
American Association ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Territories

Abstract. This paper serves as an introduction to the “Contested urban territories: decolonized perspectives” special issue. The idea for this issue emerged during our reflections on a socioterritorial perspective, preeminent in the current Latin American analysis of contemporary urban struggles (Schwarz and Streule, 2016). It aims to contribute to these ongoing debates about a specific understanding of urban territories from a postcolonial and decolonized perspective by combining contributions from two paper sessions we organized at the 2017 meeting of the American Association of Geographers in Boston with additional papers by scholars who could not participate in the conference. All seven contributions tackle the question of what a relational and dynamic conceptualization of territory may contribute to current debates in the urban studies field. Put more precisely, to which extent are socioterritorial approaches of value for a further decentering and pluralizing of urban theory? What is their significance to research on urban social movements? And, finally, how does such a socioterritorial perspective nurture and complement an analysis of the social production of space? The present special issue invites the reader to get familiar with new concepts and engage in a critical reflection on the conditions of knowledge production in urban geography and beyond.

scholarly journals Analysis of Urban Transformation Through the Use of Expanded Research Tools

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110383
Author(s):  
Ana Elena Builes-Vélez ◽  
Lina María Suárez Velásquez ◽  
Leonardo Correa Velásquez ◽  
Diana Carolina Gutiérrez Aristizábal
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Design Development ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Cities ◽  
Research Tools

In recent years, urban design development has been an important topic in Latin American cities such as Medellín due to the transformation of their urban spaces, along with the new methods used to evaluate the social, morphological, and, in some cases, economic impacts that have been brought about by the urban development projects. When inquiring about the development process and impact of urban studies, and the inhabitants’ relation to a transformed space, it is important to establish the context within which images, drawings, and photographs are analyzed, using graphical approaches triangulated with other research methods to define comparative criteria. In this article, we reflect on the expanded use of various research tools for the analysis of urban transformation, taking with reference the experience lived by a group of researchers in two Latin American cities. From this, it is intended to understand how they work and how they allow us to understand the urban transformation of these cities, the data obtained, and the vision of the researchers.

Marxism as a tool for uncovering hegemonic discourses on nature

2021 ◽  
pp. 194277862110548
Author(s):  
Fernando González
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Geographic Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dominant Classes

Since its origins, geography has prioritized the study of nature. However, more recently the discipline has made advancements in studying power as a fundamental element in the social production of space and territory. What can Marxism offer to such investigations? In this brief article, I highlight some of the contributions of Marxist thought that I have found useful for geographic analysis and that stand out from the discipline’s other forms of analysis. Firstly, I recover elements from the thinker Antonio Gramsci that I consider important for debates regarding the social production of space and territory as an expression of power relations. Secondly, I retrace some aspects of Marx's concept of nature to examine certain notions that prevail in today's environmental debates. In this way, I look to denaturalize the hegemonic thought with which institutions and dominant classes exercise power in this area.

scholarly journals THE ENVIRONMENTAL DIMENSION OF SLUM UPGRADING

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSANA DENALDI ◽  
LUCIANA NICOLAU FERRARA
Keyword(s):  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Environmental Policies ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Environmental Dimension ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Environmental Recovery ◽  
The Social ◽  
Slum Upgrading ◽  
The Right

Abstract In metropolitan areas, a significant share of precarious settlements is located in environmentally protected areas. They have high levels of complexity and socio-environmental inequality compared with other areas of the overall territory. For this reason, any intervention in areas with such characteristics has to be managed by integrating social, urban and environmental dimensions. With regards to the evolution of slum upgrading policies and developments in the legal and institutional frameworks that regulate urban and environmental policies, the challenge to articulate these dimensions in order to guarantee both the right to housing and promote environmental recovery still remains. This paper is based on the theoretical panorama that problematizes the social production of space and divided approach to society and nature. It discusses the developments, limits and conflicts that emerge in the practice of slum upgrading. Two issues stand out: the management of the environmental dimension in upgrading projects and works; and the enforcement of the new regulatory frameworks to promote the regularization of these settlements.

scholarly journals “Not all spaces are territories”: creating other possible urban worlds in and from Latin America – an interview with Raúl Zibechi

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Streule ◽  
Anke Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Urban Territories ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract. In light of his most prominent book “Territories in Resistance” (Zibechi, 2008), we conducted an interview with the researcher, journalist, and activist Raúl Zibechi. A well-known Uruguayan columnist with various Latin American newspapers, Zibechi was introduced to an English-speaking audience when translations of two of his books were published in 2010 and 2012 (Zibechi, 2010, 2012a). Combining activism and research, he has been working with social movements throughout Latin America since the 1980s. Socioterritorial movements, the key concept around which much of Zibechi's work revolves, are of particular interest for our theme issue “Contested Urban Territories: Decolonized Perspectives”. Our interview revisits Zibechi's idea of the emergence of new or other subjects through socioterritorial practices, and in consequence, of socioterritorial movements as harbingers of possible urban futures. In this context, the interview also explores links to the writings of Carlos Walter Porto Gonçalves on “territory”, Henri Lefebvre on “space”, and Frantz Fanon on “zones of being and non-being”. We understand a conversation along these lines as a contribution to the ongoing debate on a decolonialization of knowledge and knowledge production in the field of urban studies.

scholarly journals The gentrification approach as an analytical tool in assessing the effects of participatory urban policy

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Łukasz Drozda
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Policy Science ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Participatory Techniques ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The objective of the article is to present the assumptions of the gentrification approach, which allows one to assess the impact of public spatial actions undertaken by various actors in the process of social production of space. The study proposes a research methodology that distinguishes the social, economic and spatial dimensions of gentrification. The author makes use of source literature on the subject of gentrification and public policy theories as well as the results of the author’s gentrification research conducted in Warsaw, New York and Istanbul on examples of places that were planned using various types of participatory techniques. The study performs the operationalisation of the measurement of gentrification as a useful analytical tool in policy science.

Henri Lefebvre

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Zieleniec
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Henri Lefebvre is now established as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century. Over a long life (b. 1901–d. 1991) he wrote and published prodigiously more than sixty books and several hundred articles on a range of issues and themes. His legacy and lasting impact not only includes being the most influential and seminal theorist on the reprioritization of space in social and critical analysis but also recognition for his contribution to the analysis of everyday life, modernity, the Right to the City, and the urban. He continues to influence and inspire research across a number of disciplines and fields; these include rural and regional studies, sociology, geography, politics, philosophy, and urban studies. Lefebvre’s commitment Marxism; his nondogmatic and humanist approach to the definition, discussion, extension, and application of key concepts; and his integration of those concepts into his various analyses of the rural and the city, of the state, of space and politics, and of modernity and everyday life led him to a conflicted relationship and at times marginalization within the structuralist-influenced French Academy and the Communist Party of France in which he was a member for thirty years. His anti-Stalinist stance and nonconformist opposition to the structural determinism prevalent within the party led to his expulsion, but throughout the 1960s, as professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg and latterly at the new university at Nanterre, he became one of the most respected teachers and intellectuals inspiring and influencing the May 1968 student revolt. Lefebvre’s work after that, still influenced and committed to Marxist dialectics and critique, increasingly focused on the urban, the social production of space, everyday life, modernity, and the survival of capitalism. Of these his introduction of the concept of the right to the city and the social production of space have been immensely influential for a range of urban scholars and theorists and his work as a whole is being increasingly adopted, adapted, and extended by a variety of researchers of the city in a range of disciplines. The works selected below reflect Lefebvre’s long career and extensive corpus of work. However, only those books and articles that have been translated into English are included here. They represent his exegesis of Marxism and its application to a range of themes that were applied or are important for urban analysis. The secondary literature cited is organized thematically and while not comprehensive provides an overview of the expanding literature on, about, and applying Lefebvrian analysis.

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