Contested Spaces (Sociology)

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century, as well as confronting long-standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas. This Companion provides cutting-edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 72 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of ‘urban regeneration’ in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six parts, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging econceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space;
housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda. This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state-of-the-art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate
and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

The aim of this research is to unravel and interrogate critically the recent histories of the production and reproduction of Castlefield, Manchester. This unravelling is accomplished theoretically through the historicised application of Lefebvre‘s spatial triad. Production of space histories and Castlefield‘s ‗regeneration‘ are revisited principally through archival and interview evacuations of the neglected years of the 1970s. Urban public space is seen as the key city synecdoche. The thesis argues against what is called the ‗dominant academic narrative‘: challenging the narrative where it ignores or downplays the role of counter-representations and counter-projects in the production of urban public space. The empirical research is based mainly on archival data and complimentary interview and visual data; the analyses are qualitative. Visual representations of space largely neglected in the literature are foregrounded throughout the empirical research. Spaces of representation and spatial practice are interrogated from the perspective of public space analysis which emphasises the importance of the contested nature of representations of space within the public sector and the vulnerable and unstable character of some official representations of space. The thesis therefore does not seek to reproduce what might be called a ‗traditional‘ Lefebvrian analysis which counter-poses repressive official representations of space against quotidian heroic, poetic spaces of representation. The research challenges oversimplified characterisations of Castlefield as a space simply of heritage, leisure and exclusive residential enclaves. A dynamic, complex spatial portrait is revealed whereby ludic, ‗natural‘ and abstract space rise and fall though intricate spatial layering as time unfolds. Urban differential space and ludic space are found to emerge through the interstices of abstract space as key outcomes of the contestation of space. The thesis concludes that the potential for differential urban public space exists through the production of new spaces and their diverse politicised appropriation.

The article explores women's clothing choices from a feminist geopolitical lens to comprehend mobility practices and power-relations across the contested city of Jerusalem. Building on 80 interviews with Palestinian and Israeli women, we explore the different ways in which women's clothing choices can be interpreted as a spatial practice that affects urban im/mobilities. First, we demonstrate the different ways through which cultural and religious norms and representations of the body are perceived as both excluding and restricting women from using certain areas in the city. Second, we suggest that clothing practices may enable movement and mobility that potentially undermine social-cultural norms. Thus, women's bodies and clothing can be a political site of difference and resistance that somewhat underscores the insurmountability of boundaries in the contested spaces of Jerusalem.

This draft section from the book:

Exploring the Production of Urban Space: Differential Space in Three Post-Industrial Cities

explores Henri Lefebvre's concept of the right to the city. Many Anglo-American researchers, activists and social movements
encounter right to the city ideas first through the English translation of
a Lefebvre essay in Lefebvre (1996). This provides a brief but powerful
explication of facets of the concept. Lefebvre always saw urban life
and urban space through a neo-Marxian practico-theoretical lens.
Importantly, his right to the city ideas have two aspects: first, abstract,
theoretical or strategic rights; and second, concrete, practical rights
(Aalbers and Gibb 2014: 208). They stress that chief among the abstract
rights is the ‘priority of use value’ in the production of space, that is, in
general terms cities should satisfy primarily the range of human needs
of city dwellers rather than create excess profit through neo-capitalist
accumulation. It is significant, but rarely remarked, that Lefebvre saw
the right to the city being asserted in the context of the struggle for
differential space.

The subject of this paper is the Armistice Day Poppy installation, Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, at the Tower of London.  This is a contemporary cultural project, a man-made, temporary construction on a previously constructed monument. The installation will be examined from the perspective of sacred space, asking the following questions: a) can the Tower and the Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red be considered sacred?  If so, have they been built intentionally so by humans or have they become sacred because of their use by humans?  b) If they are sacred, are they ‘divine’ or ‘horrendous’ or both (Thorley)?  c) Assuming sacrality, is Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red itself a contested sacred space because it is temporary and on the sacred site of the Tower of London or is this an example of the renewal of sacred space?  The research is of interest because it will compare the definition of sacred space in a contemporary, temporary, intentionally-built site to the historical, permanent, intentionally-built site.  Also, in comparing contested sacred space with the renewal of sacred space, it may become apparent that sacred space can be renovated and rejuvenated through intentional human interaction.

In this paper I argue that it is rather unfortunate planning theorists have, with a few notable exceptions, tended to ignore the potential contributions that all Henri
Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the production of space can make to planning theory. In
particular, I argue that Lefebvre’s concept of differential space could provide a  powerful focus for planners’ conceptual approaches to the creation and enhancement of public space. Rather than simply complaining about the privatisation, loss or
corruption of ‘public’  space, we should appreciate the potentialities inherent in the  production of differential space through the contestations that can occur in the creation of a more fair and just society in asserting ‘the right to the city’.  What might
be called ‘strong’ differential space:  the spaces of politicised appropriation and the assertion of rights to the city, insinuates itself to a constant dialectical struggle through elements of the spatial triad. This paper provides a snapshot of ongoing research based mainly on archival sources, interviews, visual data and observation.

In this paper I argue that it is rather unfortunate that planning theorists have, with a few notable exceptions, tended to ignore the potential contributions that Henri Lefebvre’s spatial triad ideas regarding the production of space can make to planning theory and urban democracy. In addition to the familiar spatial triad, I argue that Lefebvre’s concept of everyday differential space could provide a powerful focus for urban planners’ conceptual approaches to the creation and enhancement of inclusive democratic public space. In addition I work with the concepts of quasi-public space and publicness and a spectrum of publicness is proposed that together inform the approach to differential space. A case study approach is used based on international comparative research. A mixed methods methodology is deployed where archival data form the bulk of the original empirical sources, supplemented by interviews, visual data and non-intrusive observation. Three cities form the basis of the case studies: one in the UK and two in North America. A robust rationale for the choice of case studies is provided. This paper explores critically through original research, the production of urban public space focusing principally on the era of the 1960s to the 2010s. A range of implications and consequences for the production of differential space are outlined. Methodologically, the mixed research methods approach, based on a series of methodological clues provided by Lefebvre delivered a tough but flexible empirical framework allowing for qualitative analyses used iteratively throughout the research process. Through exploratory research the paper discloses city centre space to consist of  highly complex, contested spaces produced by various social relationships. Their complexity has compounded through time by the accretion of layers of subsequent spatial practice, and through the many official and unofficial representations of space that have rendered the areas more visible or less visible since the 1960s. Rather than simply complaining about the privatisation, loss or corruption of ‘public’ space, we should appreciate the potentialities inherent in the production of differential space through the contestations that can occur in the creation of a more fair and just society in asserting ‘the right to the city’. What might be called ‘strong’ differential space: the spaces of politicised appropriation and the assertion of rights to the city, insinuates itself to a constant dialectical struggle through elements of the spatial triad. Conclusions draw attention to the importance of spatial histories and differential space for democratic urban public space. The paper makes an original contribution empirically through case study revelations in the three cities. Lost histories are recovered and unexpected spatial civil society and public spirited coalitions revealed. Theoretically, the paper goes ‘beyond Lefebvre’ by situating differential space in the contemporary neo-liberal context. Recommendations for urban policy and practice are provided.

Key-Words - spatial triad, Lefebvre, differential space, public space, democracy

""In today’s post-industrial city, migrants and ethnic minorities are forming, through their religious practices, particular spaces of alterity, often at the ‘margin’ of the urban experience, for instance in converting anonymous warehouses into places of worship. This paper examines diverse facets of the religious spatiality of Afro-Christian diasporic churches - from local emplacement to more visible public parade of faith in the urban landscape. One of the aims is to explore to what extent particular spatial configurations and locations constitute ‘objective expression’ of social status and symbolic positionalities in the post-migration secular environment of the ‘host societies’. Without denying the impact of urban marginality, the paper shows how religious groups such as African Pentecostal and Prophetic churches are also engaged, in their own terms, in a transformative project of spatial appropriation, regeneration and re-enchantment of the urban landscape. The case study of the Congolese Kimbanguist church in London and Atlanta also demonstrates the need to examine the articulation of local, transnational and global practices and imaginaries to understand how religious and ethnic identities are renegotiated in newly ‘localised’ diasporic settings.


Keywords:
Diaspora religion - African churches - Urban space – Pentecostalism - Kimbanguism"

As noted by Sassen, cities are sites for the contradictions of the globalization of capital. Both the powerful and the more and less disadvantaged are concentrated in them. In the city variously marginalized people however also find their voices and often make claims on the city as "contested terrain." In the global city diversity is heightened and concentrated by migration and immigration. Despite the fact that the dominant, corporate culture,  "inscribes noncorporate cultures and identities with ‘otherness’, thereby devaluing them, they are present everywhere."  Immigrant communities and their informal economies are common examples of this process and there are many ways by which one can study these social, political, and economic phenomena. This illustrated essay is the latest in a long series based on visual sociological research that I have conducted about how the meanings of neighborhood spaces are changed by their inhabitants. After briefly discussing relevant theories, and the long history of New York’s Little Italies we will turn to images, of Belmont's Little Italy in the Borough of The Bronx, New York as a paradigmatic site for visual and symbolic competition between once dominant Italian Americans and those which are challenging them for local hegemony, especially Albanians and, more recent and more numerous, Latinos as potential ethnic successors. 
The growth and development of immigrant communities and their informal economies are common examples of the classic process of “Invasion and Succession.” There are many ways to document and illustrate contrasting and changing demography. Here special attention has been paid to commercial vernacular landscapes that play a major role in the defining the ethnic (in this case primarily Italian American) quality of city neighborhoods. We will also look at ethnic graffiti and since today urban neighborhoods are also “virtual” we will consider Belmont’s presence on the WorldwideWeb.

The atlas is not only a collection of images, but a
“form of visual knowledge or a knowledgeable form
of seeing”.1 It is an infinite archive which gains
meaning through the concept of montage. Images
provoke different interpretations when working in
groups. They perform specific functions in particular
contexts. “You don’t ‘read’ an atlas the same way
you read a novel, or a book of history or an essay of
philosophy”, Georges Didi-Huberman states.2
The “Atlas of Designerly Visual Knowledge”
falls into such logic. It is about associations and
interrelations between the users, the space, and
an assembly of images consisting of axonometric
drawings, plans, sections, diagrams but also collages
and photographs of models, created through the
urban design studio work, at the Department of
Architecture, University of Cyprus, as well as at
the School of Architecture at KTH in Stockholm,
Sweden. They portray potential urban commons of Famagusta
after the longed-for reunification of Cyprus.

In this paper I argue that it is rather unfortunate planning theorists have, with a few notable exceptions, tended to ignore the potential contributions that all Henri Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the production of space can make to planning theory. In particular, I argue that Lefebvre’s concept of differential space could provide a powerful focus for planners’ conceptual approaches to the creation and enhancement of public space. Rather than simply complaining about the privatisation, loss or corruption of ‘public’ space, we should appreciate the potentialities inherent in the production of differential space through the contestations that can occur in the creation of a more fair and just society in asserting ‘the right to the city’. What might be called ‘strong’ differential space: the spaces of politicised appropriation and the assertion of rights to the city, insinuates itself to a constant dialectical struggle through elements of the spatial triad. This paper provides a snapshot of ongoing research based mainly on archival sources, interviews, visual data and observation.

This article explores LGBT politics of space in Jerusalem, a contested and fractured city. By interpreting the challenges and contradictions inherent in the Jerusalem Open House (JOH), a social movement and community space in Jerusalem, the article will show how the discourse and the practice of the JOH lead to a politics of holding. This LGBT spatial politics consists of striving to include oppositional politics, emphasizing the consolidation of public and private LGBT politics of home. The JOH persistently maintains a politics of holding, continually balancing inclusion, creating a home-like space and framing the organizational space as a shelter for all LGBT individuals in Jerusalem, while adopting a politics of visibility. This visibility enhanced processes of politicization which at many points stand in contrast to the JOH’s goals of being accessible, inclusive and safe. The politics of holding illustrates the religious, political, national and ideological fractures’ at work in producing a unique kind of LGBT spatial politics in the conservative Jerusalem space.

This article examines refugee accommodation centers in Germany as constitutive elements of deterritorialized borders. It is argued that in the refugee experience, borders reveal themselves as ubiquitous rather than as mere separation lines between nation states. Before that backdrop, it is shown that the social production of refugee centers and camps rests on powerful processes of boundary drawings that replicate the b/ordering mechanisms of the nationalist order of our allegedly globalized world. Yet, this paper also employs a reversion of perspectives and exposes that manifold practices by refugees and their supporters challenge or (re-)negotiate these boundaries on various spatial levels. A special focus is put on the dimension of the everyday and everyday spatial practices. Rather than fixed once and for all, refugee centers, and boundaries more generally, are therefore understood as inherently unstable sites of struggles, as spaces of the articulation of the Political.

The  aim  of  this  essay  is  to  understand  how  violence  inflicted  on  bodies  embed  them  in  spatial  relations  in  urban  spaces.  While  agreeing  with  this  point  of  view,  the  essay  simultaneously  argues  that  the  body  also  becomes  the  ‘site’  where  spatial  relations  get  inscribed  through  the  language  of  violence.
In  this  essay,  these  arguments  have  been  studied  through  the  lens  of  communal  riots  in  urban  spaces.

Adviser: Susan L. Woodward
This project seeks to answer the following questions: Why did the 2011 Syrian Revolution transition into a civil war? What contributed to the popularity of rebel efforts in the countryside? This case study on the Syrian Civil War begins by characterizing key events in the current civil war setting in order to characterize the nature of participation on the insurgent side of the conflict. Further, this project sets out to identify key events and actors in their respective geographic and demographic frameworks in order to identify the nature of participants and their respective characteristics. I will ultimately draw a connecting line between the nature and degree of insurgent participation by speculating on grievances. The latter process is identified as originating in the re-arrangement of the domestic economy. In other words, I argue that the local origins of the insurgency are a product of the breakdown in the dynamics between group actors and their respective economic institutions. The last discussion will allow the author to offer insight into the relationship between macro-level determinants of civil war and the micro-foundations of identification with and/or participation among insurgent efforts. The nature and origins of political grievances will be discussed at the end of this project.

This article analyses patterns of competition between religious groups in urban settings, and empirical indicators of the dominance of one religious community over another, utilising the theoretical model of ‘Antagonistic Tolerance’, or competitive sharing of space. The key analytical concept used is ‘religioscapes’: the distribution in spaces through time of the physical manifestations of specific religious traditions and of the populations that build them. These indicators include perceptibility (for example, height, mass, colour, audibility) and centrality in a settlement. The model is explained with reference to patterns of change of religioscapes in: Sarajevo, Bosnia; Sofia, Bulgaria; Belgrade, Serbia; and other examples from the post-Ottoman world. While the focus of the paper is mainly on cities, an analysis of specific sites in contemporary Cyprus reminds us that urban conflicts are inevitably tied to those in wider social spheres.

With Singapore serving as the subject of exploration, The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore explores the purview of imaginative representations of the city. Alongside the physical structures and associated practices that make up our lived environment, and conceptualized space engineered into material form by bureaucrats, experts and commercial interests, a perceptual layer of space is conjured out of people’s everyday life experiences. While such imaginative projections may not be as tangible as its functional designations, they are nonetheless equally vital and palpable. The richness of its inhabitants’ memories, aspirations and meaningful interpretations challenges the reduction of Singapore as a Generic City. Taking the imaginative field as the point of departure, the forms and modes of intellectual and creative articulations of Singapore’s urban condition probe the resilience of cities and the people who reside in them, through the images they convey or evoke as a means for col...

Garland, C. (2014) ‘As Barriers Fall, Contingency Becomes Possibility: Protest Resisting and Escaping Containment and Categorization’, Part II Identity, Embodiment and Categorisation in Eds. Lamond, I. and Spracklen, K. 'Protests as Events: Politics, Activism and Leisure (London: Rowman & Littlefield International) Hardback ISBN/9781783480760 Paperback ISBN/978-1-78348-077-7 eBook ISBN/978-1-78348-078-4 

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781783480760

Paper presented at 'Practicing Theory - ASCA International Workshop and Conference 2011', Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 2nd-4th March 2011 https://asca.uva.nl/programme/archive-conferences/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory/asca-international-workshop-2011-practicing-theory.html?1583659550967

This article analyses the actual and potential ramifications of the Syrian Civil War, with particular regard to the notion of ungoverned spaces, or rather spaces of contested governance and misgovernance. As well as presenting the issues that such spaces inside Syria pose, the article seeks to address the issue of the spread of contested governance throughout the Middle East, to assess what this might mean and to suggest how prior consideration of these issues might inform future policy decision-making. Ultimately, this article contends that an increased awareness of incidences of contested governance and misgovernance, improved information about such incidences, and modelling of potential outcomes based on accumulated data, provides a sound basis for a swift and adaptable response if and when outside powers are drawn in.