‘Tales from other people’s houses’: home and dis/connection in an East London neighbourhood

This paper explores what it means to live together in the city through a focus on home and urban public space in East London. It develops a conceptual framework for understanding home as a site of dis/connection – both connected to and disconnected from – the wider estate, street, neighbourhood and city. Drawing on a series of home-city biographies with residents living on different housing estates, we explore what makes a city ‘liveable’ for its diverse residents within and across domestic and public spaces; how home-city dis/connections shape ideas and experiences of living together; and the importance of sensory, material and social contexts of home in shaping residents’ dis/connections with neighbours and the wider neighbourhood. By taking seriously the practices, experiences and imaginings of home as a site of urban dis/connection, we argue that urban scholars can gain a fuller picture of what it means to live together in the city, and understand and challenge inequalities, exclusions and prejudices that shape urban lives

Anti-bacterial activity of inorganic nanomaterials and their antimicrobial peptide conjugates against resistant and non-resistant pathogens

This review details the antimicrobial applications of inorganic nanomaterials of mostly metallic form, and the augmentation of activity by surface conjugation of peptide ligands. The review is subdivided into three main sections, of which the first describes the antimicrobial activity of inorganic nanomaterials against gram-positive, gram-negative and multidrug-resistant bacterial strains. The second section highlights the range of antimicrobial peptides and the drug resistance strategies employed by bacterial species to counter lethality. The final part discusses the role of antimicrobial peptide-decorated inorganic nanomaterials in the fight against bacterial strains that show resistance. General strategies for the preparation of antimicrobial peptides and their conjugation to nanomaterials are discussed, emphasizing the use of elemental and metallic oxide nanomaterials. Importantly, the permeation of antimicrobial peptides through the bacterial membrane is shown to aid the delivery of nanomaterials into bacterial cells. By judicious use of targeting ligands, the nanomaterial becomes able to differentiate between bacterial and mammalian cells and, thus, reduce side effects. Moreover, peptide conjugation to the surface of a nanomaterial will alter surface chemistry in ways that lead to reduction in toxicity and improvements in biocompatibility

Walking with light and the discontinuous experience of urban change

The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2020 The Authors. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers). This paper is concerned with the affective power of light, darkness, and illumination and their role in exposing and obscuring processes of rapid urban change. Little academic attention has focused on how lighting informs multiple, overlapping, and intersecting urban temporalities and mediates our experience of an ever-changing city. This paper foregrounds a walk through the illuminated city at night as an epistemic opportunity to develop an embodied account of material and temporal change in ways that disrupt the aesthetic organisation of the sensible world at night. By detailing the discontinuous experience of walking through differently lit spaces, the paper develops novel ways of conceptualising the experience of urban change that unsettle common understandings of subjectivity, temporality, and the city. The paper draws on a single night's walk from Canning Town to Canary Wharf in east London – an area that has recently undergone rapid change, including the erection of enclaves of high-rise development. By accentuating the shared experiences of walking with light, we reveal the affective capacities of light and dark to conceal and expose wider material, embodied, and temporal urban changes but also how we might challenge the organisation of the nocturnal field of the sensible

The 'living of time': entangled temporalities of home and the city

This paper explores the entanglements between urban and domestic temporalities in order to understand what it means to live in the city. Inspired by the film Estate: a reverie (Zimmerman, 2015a), and drawing on a series of home-city biographies, this paper explores the ‘living of time’ through the memories, experiences, and narratives of residents living on different housing estates near Kingsland Road in Hackney, East London. We address two key questions: how are residents' experiences of urban living shaped by multi-layered and entangled temporalities of home and the city? What can an understanding of the urban and domestic 'living of time’ reveal about temporality, home and the city? We explore the ways in which entangled and multi-scalar ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ (Clifford, 1997) chart migration, housing and family histories for urban residents which, in turn, shape and help to articulate narratives of domestic and urban change in terms of stability and instability. We then turn to the overlapping and/or contested temporalities of urban and domestic lives, whereby residents’ home lives – and their wider ideas about the estate, street, neighbourhood or city as home – are affected by processes of urban change in complex and often contradictory ways. Finally, we investigate the ways in which home-city temporalities have shaped, and are shaped by, people’s hopes and fears for their future homes. Urban dwelling is shaped by multiple and multi-layered temporalities, intertwining the past, present and future, generations and life courses, and housing, family and migration histories. The urban and domestic ‘living of time’ reveals how residents adapt to, negotiate and at times resist processes of change and continuity at home and in the city