Vertical urbanisms

Abstract

This paper develops a more diverse and multi-dimensional agenda for understanding and researching urban verticality. In particular, it argues for vertical geographies that encompass more than issues of security and segregation and are not necessarily framed by the three-dimensional politics of Israel/Palestine identified by some commentators. In opening up a wider world of vertical urbanisms, the paper outlines three key approaches: close attention to where urban verticality is theorised and the relationship between power and height, the importance of ethnographic detail to emphasise more everyday verticalities and disrupt top-down analytical perspectives, and geographical imaginations that carefully attend to the myriad spatial entanglements of the three-dimensional city.

Ordinary vertical urbanisms: City apartments and the everyday geographies of high-rise families

“…Afghanistan, Palestine-Israel) and renders verticality as ''politically suspect '' (ibid: 321). While these deployments of the concepts of verticality limit prospects for advancing critical urbanisms and political geography (Harris, 2015), the conceptual tools of verticality do not inherently preclude a focus on ''ordinary'' cities nor the potential for ''more progressive or hopeful verticalities'' (ibid). Moreover, while topographic engagement is ineluctable in verticalities research-''space will always be thought about topographically when the vertical is used as a metric of space'' (ibid)-the occlusion of the topological is not.…”

Aerial visibilities: towards a visual sociology of the sky

“…These five themes are: (1) the visual culture of contemporary aerial vision; (2) vertical biopolitics; (3) volumetric imagination; (4) the verticalisation of protest space; (5) density, depth and visibility, and the intensification of vertical urbanity. Our aim, in identifying these preliminary themes and collating these multi-disciplinary articles, is to encourage crossdisciplinary dialogue through a polyvocality (Harris 2015) that points to the discipline's potential postdisciplinary formation (Cambre, forthcoming). In doing so, we follow anthropologist Tom Hall's suggestion that we engage in purposeful looking and watchfulness (2017), where cities and non-urban spaces alike are given as much attention vertically as they are horizontally.…”

“…The volumetric turn, specifically in relation to notions of vision, power and politics, came in 2002 when Eyal Weizman published his influential essays on the Politics of Verticality. Since then, his ideas have been used as a lens to critically examine volumetric thinking, precisely in terms of asymmetric power in urban and non-urban settings (Graham and Hewitt 2012;Harris 2015, Elden 2013. Studies have sought to challenge the largely 'flat discourse' of geopolitics and (Graham and Hewitt 2012, 35) and associated fields, such as urban studies, as well as aerial warfare, security and the politics of sight (Adey et al 2011;Gregory 2011, Roy & Bishop 2009, Lee-Morrison 2015.…”

Skyscrapers in the Twenty-First Century City: A Global Snapshot

“…In addition, the number is expected to reach 30 by 2020 [39]. Megacities will continue to develop and grow, which is a phenomenon requiring more skyscrapers to avoid urban sprawl and other associated problems [53,54].…”