Changing Landscapes Of Urban Citizenship

Since the 2008 financial crisis, politics of austerity in Europe have engendered far-reaching socioeconomic and political transformations. The recent refugee ‘crisis’ has also deeply affected the sociopolitical terrain. Contrary to past arguments about the reduced significance of the nation state, Europe is experiencing a resurgence of nationalisms. Simultaneously, often as a counter-response, several European cities are experiencing an emergence of social practices that claim urban politics as a dynamic field of action and contestation potentially transcending national boundaries. In the past, such practices tended to focus mainly on claims for the 'right to the city'. Currently, however, we observe a greater range of argumentations that re-signify the arena of urban citizenship. Through the entanglement of different scales and actors, emerging practices of solidarity and needs-based claims, and alliances between differently entitled subjects, involving both natives and foreigners, challenge and reshape institutions of governance and reactivate the field of urban politics against austerity and securitisation. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue in Citizenship Studies.

At times of triumphant neo-liberalism cities increasingly become objects of financial speculation. Formally, social and political rights might not be abolished, yet factually they have become inaccessible for large parts of the population. The contributions gathered in this volume shed light on the clash between the perspectives of restructuring and reordering urban environments in the interest of investors and the manifold and innovative agencies of resistance that claim and stand up for the rights of urban citizenship. Renewed waves of urban transformation employ state coercion to foster the expulsion of poor and marginalised inhabitants from those urban spaces that attract interest from speculators. The intervention of state agencies triggers the work of hegemonic culture for reframing the housing issue and implementing moral and political legitimation, as well as legislation that restricts urban citizenship rights. The case studies of the volume comparatively show the different and sometimes contradictory patterns of these conflicts in Berlin, Sydney, Belfast, Jerusalem, Amsterdam, and İstanbul as well as in metropoles of Latin America and China. Innovative resistance agencies emerge that paint possible paths for the re-establishment of the right to the city as the core of urban citizenship.

This book provides theoretical and empirical perspectives on the urban impact of mega-events globally. It takes mega-events as an instance to analyse urban transformations and their effects on citizenship. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the book presents innovative and multidimensional analyses of mega-events with an international selection of case studies. The work provides a grounded theorisation of mega-events in the first part and scrutinizes its practices and processes in the second. Each chapter explores mega-events as crucial drivers and accelerators of urban and citizenship transformations. Rather than just focusing on a staged momentum, this book takes stock of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ that these events imply for the urban condition. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in urban studies, human geography, economics, architecture, planning, sociology, political science. It will also appeal to professionals and policy makers engaged in the planning, hosting and management of mega-events.

We live in an urban age. It is well known that urbanization is changing landscapes, built environments, social infrastructures and everyday lives across the globe. But urbanization is also changing the ways we understand and practise politics. What implications does this have for democracy? This incisive book argues that urbanization undermines the established certainties of nation-state politics and calls for a profound rethinking of democracy. A novel way of seeing democracy like a city is presented, shifting scholarly and activist perspectives from institutions to practices, from jurisdictional scales to spaces of urban collective life, and from fixed communities to emergent political subjects. Through a discussion of examples from around the world, the book shows that distinctly urban forms of collective self rule are already apparent. The authors reclaim the ‘city’ as a democratic idea in a context of urbanization, seeing it as instrumental to relocating democracy in the everyday lives of urbanites. Original and hopeful, How Cities Can Transform Democracy compels the reader to abandon conventional understandings of democracy and embrace new vocabularies and practices of democratic action in the struggles for our urban future.

Landscape Citizenships, featuring work by academics from North America, Europe, and the Middle East, extends the growing body of thought and research in landscape democracy and landscape justice. Landscape, as a milieu of situated everyday practice in which people make places and places make people in an inextricable relation, is proving a powerful concept for conceiving of politics and citizenships as lived, dialogic, and emplaced. Grounded in discourses of ecological, environmental, watershed, and bioregional citizenships, this edited collection evaluates belonging through the idea of landscape as landship which describes substantive, mutually constitutive relations between people and place. With a strong international focus across 14 chapters, it delves into key topics such as marginalization, indigeneity, globalization, politics, and the environment, before finishing with an epilogue written by Kenneth R. Olwig. This volume will appeal to scholars and activists working in citizenship studies, migration, landscape studies, landscape architecture, ecocriticism, and the many disciplines which converge around these topics, from design to geography, anthropology, politics, and much more.

Geelong's Changing Landscape offers an insightful investigation of the ecological history of the Geelong and Bellarine Peninsula region. Commencing with the penetrating perspectives of Wadawurrung Elders, chapters explore colonisation and post-World War II industrial development through to the present challenges surrounding the ongoing urbanisation of this region. Expert contributors provide thoughtful analysis of the ecological and cultural characteristics of the landscape, the impact of past actions, and options for ethical future management of the region. This book will be of value to scientists, engineers, land use planners, environmentalists and historians.

The contributions to Urban neo- liberalisation bring together critical analyses of the dynamics and processes neo- liberalism has facilitated in urban contexts. Recent developments, such as intensified economic investment and exposure to aggressive strategies of banks, hedge- funds and investors, and long- term processes of market- and state- led urban restructuration, have produced uneven urban geographies and new forms of exclusion and marginality. These strategies have no less transformed the governance of cities by subordinating urban social life to rationalities and practices of competition within and between cities, and they also heavily impact on city inhabitants’ experience of everyday life. Against the backdrop of recent austerity politics and a marketisation of cities, this volume discusses processes of urban neo- liberalisation with regard to democracy and citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, opportunities, and life- chances. It addresses pressing issues of commodification of housing and home, activation of civil society, vulnerability, and the right to the city.

Inclusive Solidarity and Citizenship along Migratory Routes in Europe and the Americas links non-essentialist concepts of solidarity and citizenship to migration in different empirical contexts. The chapters in this edited volume analyse how civil society initiatives renegotiate societal structures in solidarity with people on the move, noncitizens and racialized individuals, and in doing so advance theorizing and contribute to current debates about citizenship and solidarity. Focusing on solidarity among members of the so-called ‘majority society’ in Europe and the Americas, this book offers a compendium of chapters that analyses particular practices of solidarity – both material and symbolic – as well as the mindsets, discourses, and broader societal contexts that provide the fundament of these practices. As these empirical cases demonstrate, the main argument of the book is that solidarity is not necessarily based on a pre-established and exclusive community, but that more inclusive solidarities arise through collective practices, the emergence of new subjectivities, and the mediation of differences. Furthermore, the book argues that it is analytically fruitful to associate concepts of citizenship with solidarity by proposing the concept of ‘solidarity citizenship’ in order to bring into view societal modes of relating that are constitutive of collective as well as individual subjectivities. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Citizenship Studies.