The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces

Fisker, Jens Kaae; Chiappini, Letizia; Pugalis, Lee; Bruzzese, Antonella

doi:10.4324/9781315103952

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Arguing with Beveridge and Koch (2019), what if we consider that everyday practices are part of such ever-present challenges to orders of politics? Postfoundationalism could possibly unlock its full potential, both theoretically and practically, if 'the political' could be imagined as a constant process that never ceases to materialise in urban realities (see Fisker et al, 2019). A non-teleological lens could therefore shed light on new opportunities to find hope for transformative politicisation in habitual practices.…”

Section: Putting Post-foundationalism To Work For Generating Hopementioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagining hope through the political: A post-foundational reading of urban alternatives beyond postpolitics

Saleh,

Landau-Donnelly

2023

Urban Studies

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This paper proposes hope as a lens for critical urban research for the purpose of grasping the interplay between forces of change and stability as manifested in popular uprisings, as well as in broader, self-organised spatial practices in everyday life. This hopeful lens allows for reimagining hope through the concept of ‘the political’, defined in the post-foundationalist literature as an ontological condition assuming the inherent impossibility for ‘politics’ to reach its final closure, fixation or stability. The hopes thus arising from ‘the political’ provide critical urban scholars with better tools to navigate the ever-present possibilities for emancipatory change and action, arising from an ontological lack of foundations, upon which political orders are temporarily based. In this paper, we show how theoretical notions from post-foundationalism can expand the current sense of hope by instilling a non-teleological view on inherent possibilities for matters to be otherwise, thus implying the absence of certainty about presupposed ideas of what genuine political change should look like. Through this lens, hope appears linked to concrete openings for alternatives found in everyday life. By laying out such a hopeful approach, we aim to expand the awareness of urban ‘scholars’ to ponder both mundane and radical materialisations and practices of ‘the political’ within urban settings. Ultimately, by reimagining hope to look beyond or alongside postpolitics, we unlock a future-oriented research agenda that adds nuance to an ontologically restricted conception of ‘politics’, which allows for broader empirical attunement to ever-present embodied signs of unfinished urban alternatives generated by ‘the political’.

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Section: Putting Post-foundationalism To Work For Generating Hopementioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagining hope through the political: A post-foundational reading of urban alternatives beyond postpolitics

Saleh,

Landau-Donnelly

2023

Urban Studies

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“…Secondly, UDPs often require the intervention of the urban government (e.g., civic crowdfunding) or a third sector as in the case of Commonfare. Lastly, the output of UDPs enables a redistribution of local resources and common goods and services, resulting in an alternative production of space (Fisker, Chiappini, Pugalis, & Bruzzese, 2018).…”

Section: Instances Of Urban Digital Platforms: Civic Crowdfunding and Commonfare In Milan And Amsterdammentioning

confidence: 99%

The Urban Digital Platform: Instances from Milan and Amsterdam

Chiappini

2020

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The article interrogates the concept of the urban in relation to digital platforms designed for citizen-based initiatives and local projects. We must broaden our scope as urban scholars to include this vast undergrowth of ‘other’ platforms and study how they intersect with the social and material fabric of cities. Drawing from media and internet studies, urban sociology, and digital geography, I introduce the novel concept of ‘urban digital platform’ (UDP). I do so theoretically by using a digital geography body of work and the level of abstractness proposed by Bratton (2016), in ‘the stack,’ which are entry points to define any kind of digital platform. While global and for-profit digital platforms exploit density, size, and diversity, extracting resources into a data-driven form of governance and computational production of space. UDPs benefit from the urban as a front to (re)organise citizen-based, mutual-aid initiatives, and solidarity actions. The core of the UDP concept lies in the ambiguity of the role of the urban government, media literacy, and techno-biases as basic requirements for citizens to access the platform, its services, and goods. Those claims are supported by instances and empirical findings of two analysed platforms in Milan and Amsterdam.

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“…Even acknowledging the existence of a vast spectrum of possibilities and criticalities (an overview on the concept of alternative is provided in Gritzas and Kavoulakos, 2015), the debate regards the dichotomy alternative -capitalism. However, the contemporary debate does not refer to capitalism as the only hegemony against which alternatives are produced (Fisker et al, 2018), and there is a refusal of any binary thinking to include a certain degree of pragmatism (Gibson-Graham and Miller, 2013; Phillips and Jeanes, 2018). The first implies that alternatives are produced in opposition to other contingent hegemonies, which pervade contemporary cities (such as patriarchy and racism), and thus, referring to Haraway's work (2003), alternative can be defined as any significant otherness that becomes politically significant.…”

Section: The Need For Alternatives In a Critical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet the contemporary debate refutes the understanding of alternatives as mere opposition to capitalism (Amin et al, 2003;Gritzas and Kavoulakos, 2015;Jonas, 2010;Samers, 2005;Schreven et al, 2008), as in short, the main risk is to simplify and naively interpret alternatives as 'good', denying the possibility that alternatives might be as exploitative as capitalism, and not be transformative. The already mentioned refusal of binary oppositions (Fisker et al, 2018;Gibson-Graham and Miller, 2013;Phillips and Jeanes, 2018) results in the concept of alterity, a condition in which dynamic solutions, not fixed in time and space, are put in action to cope with reality (Jonas, 2013). Thus, if Aureli (2013b), according to Rogers' definitions (2014), represents architects' collectives as an 'alternative capitalism', the concept of alterity, in which the distinction alternative-capitalism, or, more generally, alternative-mainstream, collapses, suggests that the practice, the aims, and the radicality of architects' groups and collectives might be dynamic, not fixed, related to contingency and personal agendas, which Bader (in Kemper, 2018) describes as individual choices and necessities which drive practitioners.…”

Section: Architects' Collectives Defining An Alternative Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discussing Alternativeness to Incorporate Contradictions. Framing Research on Architects’ Collectives and Groups

Catalanotti¹

2020

Ardeth

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The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Reimagining hope through the political: A post-foundational reading of urban alternatives beyond postpolitics

Reimagining hope through the political: A post-foundational reading of urban alternatives beyond postpolitics

The Urban Digital Platform: Instances from Milan and Amsterdam

Discussing Alternativeness to Incorporate Contradictions. Framing Research on Architects’ Collectives and Groups

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