How is urban planning linked to migrant activism?4 answersUrban planning plays a crucial role in shaping the experiences of migrants and influencing migrant activism. The built environment, including the design of neighborhoods and access to public services, significantly impacts the integration of migrants into urban spaces. However, urban planners often struggle to adapt their practices to meet the needs of migrant populations, leading to challenges in their integration. The spatial distribution of migrants within cities, along with the availability of affordable housing and employment opportunities, are key factors influencing the urban integration of migrants. By considering the unique challenges faced by migrants, urban planners can contribute to creating inclusive and supportive environments that foster migrant activism and solidarity.
How can urban spaces be more democratic?5 answersUrban spaces can be more democratic by recognizing that people carry their rights with them and that rights are present wherever bodies go. This means that democratic principles should be upheld not only in relation to the government, but also in workplaces, schools, churches, and both public and private spaces. Additionally, efforts should be made to democratize historiography and construct the past "from below" to include alternative voices in urban history and heritage. Critical analysis based on the institutional design of democratic processes in the public sphere and urban spaces can further empower local governments. The concept of urban democracy should be explored, along with social self-organization practices and experiences of social re-appropriation of the city. Finally, urban parks should strive for diversity and social mixing among diverse groups to create a more democratic public space.
How is urban space linked to activism?5 answersUrban space is closely linked to activism as it serves as a platform for contestation and transformation. Activists engage in tactical practices and strategic interventions to challenge established power structures and shape the meaning-making process in urban environments. Through participatory planning and budgeting, activists aim to involve the community in decision-making processes regarding the development and transformation of urban spaces. Urban activists not only occupy spaces but also drive urban transformation by contesting spatial manifestations of power. Their practices contribute to the creation of creative and destructive, constructive and destructive influences on the appearance of urban space. By understanding the potential of urban activism, we can rethink activism as a form of urban design practice and explore its role in shaping cities.
How do geography and spaces affect protest?5 answersGeography and spaces play a significant role in shaping protests. The 2019-2020 Hong Kong Anti-ELAB protests saw a shift from occupying symbolic public space to a wider range of everyday spaces, such as malls, offices, and industrial buildings, enabled by new digital media platforms like Telegram. Protest can create productive but limited spaces of inclusion, as seen in the representation of language, iconic structures, and movement through campus and urban locations in Seydina Issa Sow's comic Sidy. Spatial realities and control of protest actions can impact the capacity of actors to build social coalitions, as observed in the Iranian protests. The administration of protest spaces and protesters' attempts to subvert controls are explored through the police practice of kettling and the impact of maptivism on occupying city spaces and resisting state administrations. Demonstrations shape the urban landscape, disrupt traffic, and challenge elite designs of urban spaces, with the choice of protest locations influenced by historical conventions and symbolic readings of city space.
What are the relationship between city and space ?3 answersCities and space are closely interconnected. The way space is developed, used, and reproduced in cities plays a significant role in the manifestation of disasters and the creation of disaster risks. City size distributions, both within countries and across different spatial scales, exhibit power laws, indicating the presence of a spatial fractal structure. The construction of gender identity in cities is influenced by the relationship between space and gendered interaction in different types of spaces, such as domestic, private, borderline, and public spaces. The space syntax approach provides a framework for understanding the connection between the physical patterning of cities and the economic, social, and cognitive life of their inhabitants. Historians use different sources, such as urban planners' perspectives and the lived experiences of individuals, to understand the city as both an abstract physical entity and a lived experience.
What is activist space?5 answersActivist space refers to physical or virtual spaces that are utilized by activists to voice their political objections and make their discontent known to the public. These spaces play a significant role in social movements, such as environmentalism, as they allow activists to gather, demonstrate, and express their subjective meanings and experiences. Activist spaces are not only physical places but also assemblages of co-creation, shaped by the individuals who occupy them. They can include public installations, protest sites, archives, and places of remembrance. Activist archives, like Interference Archive, serve as transmovement and prefigurative "free spaces" that forge connections between communities and create networks of solidarity through the archival process. Landscape architects, such as Lawrence Halprin, M. Paul Friedberg, and Karl Linn, have also contributed to activist spaces by using participatory methodologies to reinstate the public life of the city and resist typical urban renewal development.