Big city blues
TL;DR: Big City Blues as discussed by the authors discusses the themes and stories of the articles below, which present different aspects of life in the metropolis, including the over-stimulation of the desensitized urbanite, the wandering flâneur who fortifies him/her self against fragmenting pressures, the explosion of everyday peace into riots, the battles for political and social recognition of identity and property rights, and the f...
Abstract: The advent of the ‘mega’ or world city seems inseparable from the ambivalent and transient experience of modernity – the ideals of liberty, individuality, property, accelerating progress, and, for many, the realities of immobility, anonymity, poverty, and arresting regression. When more than half of the global population pursues an existence within an urban frame, the densities and boundaries of urban spaces swell to fantastical proportions. With the vast increase in size, so the experiences and expectations of the city become more pronounced and profound. This introduction to this special issue of Thesis Eleven, ‘Big City Blues’, discusses the themes and stories of the articles below, which present different aspects of life in the metropolis. The over-stimulation of the desensitized urbanite, the wandering flâneur who fortifies him/her self against fragmenting pressures, the explosion of everyday peace into riots, the battles for political and social recognition of identity and property rights, and the f...
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10 Mar 2017TL;DR: In this article, the authors challenge the conventional (modernist-inspired) understanding of urbanization as a universal process tied to the ideal-typical model of the modern metropolis with its origins in the grand Western experience of city-building.
Abstract: This book challenges the conventional (modernist-inspired) understanding of urbanization as a universal process tied to the ideal-typical model of the modern metropolis with its origins in the grand Western experience of city-building. At the start of the twenty-first century, the familiar idea of the 'city' - or 'urbanism' as we know it - has experienced such profound mutations in both structure and form that the customary epistemological categories and prevailing conceptual frameworks that predominate in conventional urban theory are no longer capable of explaining the evolving patterns of city-making. Global urbanism has increasingly taken shape as vast, distended city-regions, where urbanizing landscapes are increasingly fragmented into discontinuous assemblages of enclosed enclaves characterized by global connectivity and concentrated wealth, on the one side, and distressed zones of neglect and impoverishment, on the other. These emergent patterns of what might be called enclave urbanism have gone hand-in-hand with the new modes of urban governance, where the crystallization of privatized regulatory regimes has effectively shielded wealthy enclaves from public oversight and interference.
28 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative framework of analysis to study urban crises is proposed. But the authors argue that there is a need to establish the analytical links between "everyday life and systemic trends and...
Abstract: This article aims to develop a comparative framework of analysis to study urban crises, arguing that there is a need to establish the analytical links between ‘everyday life and systemic trends and...
15 citations
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01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: The Millennial Change: The Urban World of 2025 as discussed by the authors is a two-stage scenario: the first stage is the Millennial change and the second stage is good governance in practice: an action plan.
Abstract: I - The Millennial Change. II - Trends and Outcomes: The Urban World of 2025. III - Two Scenarios: The Urban World of 2025. IV - Rising to the Urban Challenge: Governance and Policy. V: Good Governance in Practice: An Action Plan.
319 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a double conceptual framework is deployed to define the notions of absolute strangers and outsiders in modern citizenship, where the citizen-as-absolute-stranger in addition to accruing political rights may also accrue social, economic or identity rights or traverse wider relations between him or herself and other absolute strangers in either national or international settings.
Abstract: This article deploys a double conceptual framework. One frame is positioned through the ideas of absolute strangers and outsiders. The other frame develops out of, though is distinct from, the first, and refers to the disaggregated forms of modern citizenship. The citizen-as-absolute-stranger in addition to accruing political rights may also accrue social, economic or identity rights, or traverse wider relations between him or herself and other absolute strangers in either national or international settings. It is in this context that outsiders are configured - aliens who have no national-juridical status
36 citations
TL;DR: In the case of a social minefield, however, an explosion is likely to spread instantaneously, thanks to contemporary technology transmitting information in real time and prompting the "copy-cat" effect.
Abstract: Britain’s August riots were an explosion bound sooner or later to happen. Just like a minefield: one knows that some of the explosives will, true to their nature, sooner or later explode, but one doesn’t know where and when. In the case of a social minefield, however, an explosion is likely to spread instantaneously, thanks to contemporary technology transmitting information in the ‘real time’ and prompting the ‘copy-cat’ effect. This particular social minefield was created by the combination of consumerism with rising inequality. This was not a rebellion or an uprising of famished and impoverished people or an oppressed ethnic or religious minority but a mutiny of defective and disqualified consumers, people offended and humiliated by the display of riches to which they had been denied access.
31 citations
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs the normative core of the recent European riots, when young rebels reacted to the disregard for their civic claims to equal treatment, and use the example of the two biggest riots in contemporary French and British history to show that prevailing analyses only grasp certain aspects of these events: these riots were primarily neither "race riots", "issueless riots" nor "riots of defective consumers" and that the everyday undermining of their equality as citizens and the physically experienced violation of minimum constitutional standards that best explain the motivations of those participating in the riots.
Abstract: This essay reconstructs the normative core of the recent European riots, when young rebels reacted to the disregard for their civic claims to equal treatment. Referring to the available data and facts, the essay uses the example of the two biggest riots in contemporary French and British history to show that prevailing analyses only grasp certain aspects of these events: these riots were primarily neither ‘race riots’, ‘issueless riots’ nor ‘riots of defective consumers’. Nourished in particular by experiences with the police and the school system in the urban districts from which the rioters recruited, rage was directed against the symbols and embodiments of a state that has failed to live up to its promise of equality. It is the everyday undermining of the principle of their equality as citizens and the physically experienced violation of minimum constitutional standards that best explain the motivations of those participating in the riots.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that modern democracy is revolutionary when viewed as an open and self-instituting articulation of political power, starting in the Italian Renaissance city-states, the German free cities, and the Swiss federation where urban autonomy was matched by the creation of elected forms of rulership.
Abstract: This article develops three interconnected arguments concerning the image of modernity as a revolutionary epoch and the way in which this image has been understood and theorized. These three lines of conceptualization, which can only be sketched in less rather than greater detail here, concern the constellation or figuration of modernity, its democratic dimension, and in reference to each, the work of Max Weber, especially The City. More specifically, the article argues that modern democracy is revolutionary when viewed as an open and self-instituting articulation of political power. Its modern revolutionary impulse begins in the Italian Renaissance city-states, the German `free' cities, and the Swiss federation where urban autonomy was matched by the creation of elected forms of rulership and the development of federated circulations of power.
10 citations