LIFE in a ZOO: Henri Lefebvre and the (social) production of (abstract) space in Liverpool

Building on recent critical contributions towards conceptualising neighbourhood change as socially produced and politically ‘performed’, this paper takes a closer look at the work of Henri Lefebvre to understand the production of urban space as a deeply political process. A common critical characterisation of neighbourhood change—occurring through a grand Lefebvrean struggle between ‘abstract space-makers’ and ‘social space-makers’—is critically examined through an in-depth historical case study of the Granby neighbourhood in Liverpool. Here, these forces are embodied respectively in technocratic state-led comprehensive redevelopment, notably Housing Market Renewal and its LIFE and ZOO zoning models; and in alternative community-led rehabilitation projects such as the Turner Prize-winning Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust. By tracing the surprisingly intimate interactions and multiple contradictions between these apparently opposing spatial projects, the production of neighbourhood is shown to be a complex, often violent political process, whose historical trajectories require disentangling in order to understand how we might construct better urban futures

Vehicle and mission design of a future small payload launcher

This paper presents the conceptual design and performance analysis of a partially reusable space launch vehicle for small payloads. The system uses a multi-stage vehicle with rocket engines, with a reusable first stage capable of glided or powered flight, and expendable upper stage(s) to inject a 500 kg payload in different low Earth orbits. The space access vehicle is designed to be air-launched from a modified aircraft carrier. The aim of the system design is to develop a commercially viable launch system for near-term operation, thus emphasis is placed on the efficient use of high TRL technologies. The vehicle design are analysed using a multi-disciplinary design optimisation approach to evaluate the performance, operational capabilities and design trade-offs

Forgotten Plotlanders: Learning from the survival of lost informal housing in the UK.

Colin Ward’s discourses on the arcadian landscape of ‘plotlander’ housing are unique documentations of the anarchistic birth, life, and death of the last informal housing communities in the UK. Today the forgotten history of ‘plotlander’ housing documented by Ward can be re-read in the context of both the apparently never-ending ‘housing crisis’ in the UK, and the increasing awareness of the potential value of learning from comparable informal housing from the Global South. This papers observations of a previously unknown and forgotten plotlander site offers a chance to begin a new conversation regarding the positive potential of informal and alternative housing models in the UK and wider Westernised world

Space as method: field sites and encounters in Beijing’s green belts

Great urban transformations are diffusing across the Global South, removing the original landscape of urban margins to make of them a new urban frontier. These processes raise questions of both validity and legitimacy for ethnographic practice, requiring critical reflection on both spatiality and method in fieldwork at the urban margins. This article draws on fieldwork experience in Beijing’s green belts, which could also be labeled the city’s urban margin or frontier, to reflect on the space-time of encounter in the field. I aim to demonstrate how space foregrounds not only our bodily experiences but also ethnographic investigations of the daily life, and hence becomes a method. Beijing’s green belts symbolise a historical-geographical conjuncture (a moment) emerging in its urban metamorphosis. Traditional endeavours (immanent in various spatial metaphors) to identify field sites as reified entities are invalidated over the course of the space-time encounter, requiring a relational spatial ontology to register such dynamics. The use in fieldwork of DiDi Hitch, a mobile app for taxi-hailing and hitchhiking, reveals the spatiotemporal construction of self-other relations needing recognition via the dialectics of the encounter. In this relational framework, an encounter is never a priori but a negotiation of a here-and-now between different trajectories and stories as individuals are thrown together in socially constructed space and time

MANIFESTAÇÕES SOCIAIS E NOVAS MÍDIAS: a construção de uma cultura contra-hegemônica

O artigo analisa algumas manifestações sociais que surgiram pelo mundo a partir de 2008, em especial no Egito, na Espanha, nos EUA, no Chile e no Brasil. O nosso interesse está no impacto, nessas manifestações, do uso das redes sociais, já razoavelmente inseridas num contexto de intensa mediação na comunicação entre manifestantes e na opinião pública em geral. Analisamos dois aspectos: o impacto na organização desses movimentos e o uso cada vez mais central das imagens como forma de comunicação. Com a preocupação de identificar pontos de novidade mais do que analisá-los profundamente, indicamos que há interessantes possibilidades de luta contra-hegemônica a partir do uso extensivo e intensivo das mídias sociais, o que se dá pela busca da democracia radical e pelo uso crítico da imagem. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Internet. Mídias sociais. Hegemonia. Movimentos sociais. Política.SOCIAL MANIFESTATIONS AND NEW MEDIA: the construction of a counter-hegemonic culture Paulo Rodrigues Gajanigo Rogério Ferreira de Souza The article analyzes some social protests that have appeared around the world from 2008, especially in Egypt, Spain, USA, Chile and Brazil. Our interest is in the impact, on these events, of the use of social networks, already fairly inserted in a context of intense mediation in communication between protesters and public opinion in general. We analyze two aspects: the impact on the organization of these movements and more central use of images as a form of communication. With a view to identify new points, more than deeply analyze them, indicate that there are interesting possibilities for counter-hegemonic struggle from the extensive and intensive use of social media, which is given by the search for radical democracy and critical use of images. KEYWORDS: Internet. Social media. Hegemony. Social movements. Policy.MANIFESTATIONS SOCIALES ET NOUVEAUX MÉDIAS: la construction d’une culture contrehégémonique Paulo Rodrigues Gajanigo Rogério Ferreira de Souza Cet article analyse quelques manifestations sociales qui ont eu lieu dans le monde à partir de 2008, tout spécialement en Égypte, en Espagne, aux États-Unis, au Chili et au Brésil. Notre centre d’intérêt se situe au niveau de l’impact créé par l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux dans ces manifestations déjà suffisamment insérées dans un contexte d’intense médiation de ces réseaux pour la communication entre les manifestants et l’opinion publique en général. L’analyse porte sur deux aspects: l’impact au niveau de l’organisation de ces mouvements et l’utilisation chaque fois plus centrale des images comme moyen de communication. Dans l’intérêt d’identifier des éléments nouveaux plus que d’en approfondir l’analyse, nous signalons qu’il y a des possibilités intéressantes de lutte contre-hégémonique grâce à l’utilisation intensive des médias sociaux, auxquels on fait appel en vue d’une démocratie radicale et pour l’utilisation critique de l’image. MOTS-CLÉS: Internet. Médias sociaux. Hégémonie. Mouvements sociaux. Politique. Publicação Online do Caderno CRH no Scielo: http://www.scielo.br/ccrh  Publicação Online do Caderno CRH: http://www.cadernocrh.ufba.br

A Journey into the City. Migrant Workers' Relation with the Urban Space and Struggle for Existence in Xu Zechen's Early Jingpiao Fiction

In contemporary China, rural-urban migrants constitute a new urban subject with entirely new identity-related issues. This study aims at demonstrating how literature can be a valid field in investigating such evolving subjectivities, through an analysis of Xu Zechen’s early novellas depicting migrants’ vicissitudes in Beijing. Combining a close reading of the texts and a review of the main social problems characterising rural-urban migration in China, this paper focuses on the representation of the identity crisis within the migrant self in Xu’s stories, taking into account the network of meanings employed by the writer to signify the objective and subjective tension between the city and the countryside

Europe\u27s New Urban Question

Europe is in crisis, deep economic and political crisis. With many member-state economies now tottering on zero-growth meltdown, professional politicians and economists persist with austerity drives and devise ideological covers for the continued plundering of public resources. Frack capitalism power-drills into the public realm, extorting value from erstwhile common property. A para-state of technocrats and Euro-bureaucrats, meanwhile, governs, sending us rain and sunshine from above (Marx). One big problem such professional representation poses for ordinary Europeans -- for people I shall call amateur shadow citizens -- is PARTICIPATION. Shadow citizens are disenfranchised Euro-citizens who express a citizenship waiting in the wings, a potential solidarity haunting the mainstream, floating across frontiers and through designated checkpoints. This lecture investigates the dialectic between professional austerians and shadow citizens, doing so while attempting to put a fresh spin on Henri Lefebvre\u27s late ideal that the right to the city is nothing less than a new conception of revolutionary citizenship