Contemporary cities
Contemporary cities are undoubtedly experiencing dramatic transformations. Their topographical landscapes are being spectacularly (re-) constructed through the renaissance of docklands, the gentrification of former industrial districts, the creation of premium multi-use high-rise buildings, the creeping ‘urbanization of suburbs’ vis-à-vis edge city business districts, information super-corridors, mega-malls and ‘non-places’ like airports and vast car lots, and the punctuation of metropolitan space with elite tightly secured downtown condominiums and inner urban and suburban gated communities as well as now quite ‘distressed’ older suburbs. This sprawling fragmentary city has prompted some scholars to talk of a postmodern urbanism, a postmetropolis, or a splintering urbanism; concepts which disavow traditional mappings of the city. Moreover, if we uncover the social relations of the contemporary city – for example, how the transnational time-geographies of powerful urban actors orchestrate the city as a site of distanciated and multiple connections, and how urban life is choreographed through the territorially perforating mobilities (or the locally dependent immobilities) of people, corporations, money and information – then perhaps the very notion of the city as a bounded entity becomes less than tenable (Amin 2005).
Crucially, these fragmenting topographies and undulating topologies also raise profound questions about contemporary urban politics: in doing so perhaps forcing us to move beyond or at least investigate more systematically the spatialities of the ‘new urban politics’ of growth regimes and coalitions. For whether through the migration of people or information, trans-national moments of connection are sparking new political alliances and alternative expressions of citizenship, justice and political affiliation: ones that do not neatly fit into our conventional understandings of urban politics. On the other hand, qualitatively new territorial zones are surfacing in the form of downtown privately managed (or private-public) business improvement districts, corporate and cultural citadels, and edge city developments, often accompanied by ‘interdictory’ regimes of security designed to deter ‘quality of life’ offenders. And whether motivated by fear, hatred, or a sense of belonging, many gated housing developments are ‘privatopias’ (McKenzie 2004), featuring residential private governments that actively secede from the formal urban political process. New political boundaries and networks are thus cutting across erstwhile municipal and political lines, and thereby offering significant challenges and opportunities to progressive groups whose aim is to foster strategic and democratic metropolitan-wide governance (Dreier et al 2001).
The session will examine this emergent urban political arena inviting papers that offer theoretical development and/or specific case studies and/or comparative analysis. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
New conceptualizations of the contemporary urban political arena
The micro-governance of economic spaces such as edge cities, business parks, mega-malls, BIDs and their relationship to the politics of ‘City Hall’, ‘democracy’, and city-regional level governance
New territorial demarcations formed out of secessionist political movements, interest groups, housing associations etc
Strategies to develop consolidated metropolitan governance
Trans-urban and trans-national political attachments, affiliations and alliances and their engagement with the (formal) urban political process
New claims to citizenship and to ‘publicness/privateness’ in urban places, whether in downtowns, gated housing estates, on roads and other corridors of transportation (‘automobility’), streets, and interstitial spaces
Urban political mobilizations that challenge the hegemonic politics of exchange value and the interdictory character of many urban ‘public’ spaces
Crucially, these fragmenting topographies and undulating topologies also raise profound questions about contemporary urban politics: in doing so perhaps forcing us to move beyond or at least investigate more systematically the spatialities of the ‘new urban politics’ of growth regimes and coalitions. For whether through the migration of people or information, trans-national moments of connection are sparking new political alliances and alternative expressions of citizenship, justice and political affiliation: ones that do not neatly fit into our conventional understandings of urban politics. On the other hand, qualitatively new territorial zones are surfacing in the form of downtown privately managed (or private-public) business improvement districts, corporate and cultural citadels, and edge city developments, often accompanied by ‘interdictory’ regimes of security designed to deter ‘quality of life’ offenders. And whether motivated by fear, hatred, or a sense of belonging, many gated housing developments are ‘privatopias’ (McKenzie 2004), featuring residential private governments that actively secede from the formal urban political process. New political boundaries and networks are thus cutting across erstwhile municipal and political lines, and thereby offering significant challenges and opportunities to progressive groups whose aim is to foster strategic and democratic metropolitan-wide governance (Dreier et al 2001).
The session will examine this emergent urban political arena inviting papers that offer theoretical development and/or specific case studies and/or comparative analysis. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
New conceptualizations of the contemporary urban political arena
The micro-governance of economic spaces such as edge cities, business parks, mega-malls, BIDs and their relationship to the politics of ‘City Hall’, ‘democracy’, and city-regional level governance
New territorial demarcations formed out of secessionist political movements, interest groups, housing associations etc
Strategies to develop consolidated metropolitan governance
Trans-urban and trans-national political attachments, affiliations and alliances and their engagement with the (formal) urban political process
New claims to citizenship and to ‘publicness/privateness’ in urban places, whether in downtowns, gated housing estates, on roads and other corridors of transportation (‘automobility’), streets, and interstitial spaces
Urban political mobilizations that challenge the hegemonic politics of exchange value and the interdictory character of many urban ‘public’ spaces
Labels: Contemporary cities
