The ambivalence of urban obsolescence: questioning emancipatory design practices in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The research draws on the transdisciplinary debate, emerging within urban studies, which highlights the proliferation of fenced environments in the contemporary city. The research considers such environments to be tangible manifestations of dynamics of securitisation, control, privatisation, commodification, exclusion, depoliticisation. The research analyses therefore the production of the fenced city as essentially revolving around two archetypes: the gated community and the camp, as expressions respectively of phenomena of voluntary seclusion and forced confinement. The research interprets such archetypes from a twofold perspective: drawing, on one side, from governmental studies; and on the other side, from urban design studies. Expanding the trans-disciplinary character of the research (drawing from disciplines such as urban history, political economy, gender studies, performative arts), the research constructs a debate on urbanisms characterised by obsolescing phenomena: spaces of abandonment and dereliction, but also apparently leftover spaces, or interstitial and marginal ones. The analysis of such debate highlights a latent ambivalence: on one side, obsolescence is seen to partake into the production of the fenced city, through cycles of ruination, demolition, displacement; on the other side, obsolescence is read as emancipating from such production, creating the conditions for opening up, decommodifying, repoliticising the contemporary fenced city. Do camp-like or gated-community-like dynamics emerge even within obsolescing urbanisms? Or, conversely, do emancipatory practices emerge? The research attempts to answer such questions, challenging both sides of the debate. It does so investigating, at multiple scales, the reality of several obsolescing urbanisms in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The research concludes suggesting an epistemological shift, that would place obsolescence at the centre of the understanding of the current dynamics of urban transformation. In so doing, the research questions the relevance of its (theory-driven) method in framing and guiding urban research; and the relevance of its reflections on emancipatory practices – for the current debate on the social agency of urban design and architecture; and for the current dynamics of transformation in Phnom Penh

Forced displacements in Cambodia: creative re-appropriation practices versus current models of urban development

Forced evictions are commonplace in the developing world, mainly due to the need to repurpose land for allegedly higher order enterprises. In this post, Camillo Boano and Giorgio Talocci discuss their research with two relocation sites that originated from the same eviction in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. By looking at these cases, they show how newly-formed settlements can follow diametrically different paths: whereas one conforms to the current model of social development, the other one contests this model through home-grown urbanity practices

The de-politicisation of housing policies: the case of Borei Keila land-sharing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

This paper examines the design and evolution of a land-sharing process established for the on-site re-housing of an urban poor group in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), in the locality Borei Keila. The study is based on eight months of ethnographical and action research fieldwork. Some regard this land-sharing process as a success, but we find widespread criticism of it for excluding many original residents of the neighbourhood from the land-sharing agreement, leading either to their eviction or to difficult living conditions on site. We argue that these exclusionary results come from the deliberate misrepresentation of the urban poor group as a homogeneous block, and from the use of the housing provision as a pacifying tool against dissent. The case of Borei Keila highlights the risks of de-politicised and consensus-driven housing policies. It also provides the basis for a conclusive reflection on the recently approved National Housing Policy of the Kingdom of Cambodia

The de-politicisation of housing policies: the case of Borei Keila land-sharing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

This paper examines the design and evolution of a land-sharing process established for the on-site re-housing of an urban poor group in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), in the locality Borei Keila. The study is based on eight months of ethnographical and action research fieldwork. Some regard this land-sharing process as a success, but we find widespread criticism of it for excluding many original residents of the neighbourhood from the land-sharing agreement, leading either to their eviction or to difficult living conditions on site. We argue that these exclusionary results come from the deliberate misrepresentation of the urban poor group as a homogeneous block, and from the use of the housing provision as a pacifying tool against dissent. The case of Borei Keila highlights the risks of de-politicised and consensus-driven housing policies. It also provides the basis for a conclusive reflection on the recently approved National Housing Policy of the Kingdom of Cambodia

Framing a counter-city: The story of Sheffield Otherwise

Urban planning and design have often been complicit in perpetuating the systems of oppression embedded in colonial, capitalist, hetero-patriarchal, and racist spatial structures. Amid the current civilizational crisis, how can we enable possibilities for emancipatory and counter-hegemonic planning (Friedmann, 1989) and design? In order for new possibilities to emerge, we need to unmake what we know and look for radical approaches and practices that allow us to understand our responsibility to create counter-cities that nurture radical hope. This article presents the project Sheffield Otherwise, an exploration using research-design practices to shape a counter-city. Through a learning alliance, we partner with two community organisations working with diasporic and queer communities to reveal and frame their legacies and stories as part of the living heritage of Sheffield. We use counter-archiving and counter-mapping methodologies to engage with these counterpublics that have been excluded from official narratives, urban policies, and public space representations. In doing so, this project challenges hegemonic narratives about stigma and questions hegemonic planning and design practices that often lack understanding of the spatial heritage of diverse communities. Based on this experience, we argue that Counter-City constitutes a radical approach to imagining spatial justice that requires crystallising counter-hegemonic planning and design practices with subaltern counterpublics using methods such as counter-archiving and counter-mapping

Framing a counter-city: The story of <em>Sheffield Otherwise</em>

Urban planning and design have often been complicit in perpetuating the systems of oppression embedded in colonial, capitalist, hetero-patriarchal, and racist spatial structures. Amid the current civilizational crisis, how can we enable possibilities for emancipatory and counter-hegemonic planning (Friedmann, 1989) and design? In order for new possibilities to emerge, we need to unmake what we know and look for radical approaches and practices that allow us to understand our responsibility to create counter-cities that nurture radical hope. This article presents the project Sheffield Otherwise, an exploration using research-design practices to shape a counter-city. Through a learning alliance, we partner with two community organisations working with diasporic and queer communities to reveal and frame their legacies and stories as part of the living heritage of Sheffield. We use counter-archiving and counter-mapping methodologies to engage with these counterpublics that have been excluded from official narratives, urban policies, and public space representations. In doing so, this project challenges hegemonic narratives about stigma and questions hegemonic planning and design practices that often lack understanding of the spatial heritage of diverse communities. Based on this experience, we argue that Counter-City constitutes a radical approach to imagining spatial justice that requires crystallising counter-hegemonic planning and design practices with subaltern counterpublics using methods such as counter-archiving and counter-mapping

Fences and profanations: Questioning the sacredness of urban design

Adopting an impure and contingent conception of urban design as a biopolitical apparatus, along the theme of urban informal squatter-occupied spatialities, this paper searches for an alternative narrative of urban design. It presents a theoretical and analytical framework developed around Michel Foucault's and Giorgio Agamben's spatial ontology and political aesthetics as an aggregate source toward recalibrating the approach to urban design research, pedagogy and practice, integrating the debate around the dispositif and its profanation. Critically engaging with the complexity and contradictions of the current neoliberal urban design practice—articulated as a complex urban apparatus instrumental to regimes of security and control—the paper explores the conceptual tool of profanation as a potential antidote to the sacred production of the neoliberal city. The act of profaning the urban realm, of ‘returning it to the free use of men’, is approached through the lens of a design research initiative in a squatter-occupied space in Rome, Italy. The narrative that emerges from this theoretically inspired action research points to an alternative practice that can be read as a site of resistance in reclaiming the intellectual productivity of urban design theory and research