Places of everyday cosmopolitanisms: East-European construction workers in London

This paper illustrates how cosmopolitanisms among East-European construction workers in London are shaped by the localised spatial contexts in which encounters with difference take place. Their cosmopolitan attitudes and behaviours arise from both survival strategies and from a taste for cultural goods, thus challenging the elite/working-class divide in current cosmopolitanism literature. Through semi-structured interviews and participant photographs of 24 East-European construction workers who have arrived in London since the European Union expansion in May 2004, this paper illustrates how these ‘new’ European citizens, develop varying degrees and multitudes of cosmopolitanisms in everyday places such as building sites and shared houses. These cosmopolitanisms are shaped by their transnational histories, nationalistic sentiments, and access to social and cultural capital in specific localised contexts. Thus subjective perceptions of gendered, ethnic, and racial notions of ‘others’ that are carried across national boundaries are reinforced or challenged as their encounters with ‘others’ produce perceptions of marginalisation or empowerment in these places. This paper finally suggests that cosmopolitanism should be understood not simply through class but rather through access to power and capital in everyday localised contexts

Architecture of low-income widow housing: 'spatial opportunities' in Madipur, West Delhi

This article is based on a study of Madipur widow colony in west Delhi, built as part of the UN International Year of Shelter for the Homeless in 1987. Designed to accommodate widows from squatter settlements in Delhi, very few of the original houses now survive and very few of the original owners remain. The spatial stories of the participants suggest how and why and under what circumstances a State's visions of empowerment as translated into utopian architectural projects are transformed by the people who inhabit them. They illustrate how a particular set of `spatial opportunities' built into the widow colony are manipulated and seized upon by the participants to produce an uneven geography of architecture and empowerment. This article thus extends the important work on critical geographies of architecture to the architecture of low-income housing in the global South

Representations of Utopian Urbanism and the Feminist Geopolitics of ‘New City’ Development

Increasingly over the past few years the building of new cities “from scratch” has become a key strategy to promote development across much of the Global South. While several projects are currently under construction, many others exist primarily as proposals awaiting adequate investment or government action. This paper builds on previous literature that considers representations of such projects – promotional materials, digitally-produced video simulations, and master plans – as key components in the production of imagined urban futures. Through an exploration of the proposed Zone for Economic Development and Employment (ZEDE) in Honduras, this article demonstrates a feminist geopolitical approach focused on how such representations of utopian urbanism circulate through the local communities slated for new city development. I examine how representations of future urban spaces and future urban governance regimes become appropriated by local residents in organizing opposition or otherwise making sense of the proposed project’s potential impact on their lives.12 month embargo; published online: 30 Dec 2018This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

The New Urban Agenda: key opportunities and challenges for policy and practice

The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito ‘New Urban Agenda’ that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy

Book review: creating a sustainable American Dream: dropthe SUVs, grow a community garden and translate environmental justice into mainstream policy

How do we change from unsustainable lifestyles to more ethically responsible ones? In Bird on Fire, Andrew Ross charts the lessons we must all learn from the world’s least sustainable city, and stresses a strong social message: that sustainability cannot be achieved without addressing the problems of and learning from the grassroots – from indigenous populations – even, and this would generate ripples of shock among Republican senators, from minority and ethnic immigrants. Reviewed by Ayona Datta. Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City.Andrew Ross. OUP USA. November 2011

Book review: Seeing cities change: local culture and class

Seeing Cities Change demonstrates the utility of a visual approach and the study of ordinary streetscapes to document and analyse how the built environment reflects the changing cultural and class identities of neighbourhood residents. Ayona Datta finds this book raises the most important question for urban studies on how best to ‘see’ cities change through a scholarly lens, however, she is disappointed that it fails to show just how this ‘seeing’ is structured by the knowledge and power of the researchers themselves

Suburban development and networks of mobility : sites in Izmir, Turkey

In this paper we examine the tensions between the city and the town with a focus on the processes through which new forms of suburbia are produced near Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey. Through a historical analysis, we illustrate how rapid urbanisation, networks of transportation, and lifestyle choices have encouraged the movement of urban elites from the city to the countryside, leading to a rapid rise in high-end gated communities called sites near Urla, a small town on the Izmir-Cesme expressway