Suchergebnisse

This book examines the phenomenon of urban fear - the increasing anxiety over crime and violence in Western cities despite their high safety - with a view to developing a comprehensive, critical, exploratory theory of fear, space, and urban planning that unravels the paradoxes of their mutual relations. By focusing especially on the southern European cities of Palermo and Lisbon, the book also aims to expand upon recent studies on urban geopolitics, enriching them from the perspective of ordinary, as opposed to global, cities. Readers will find enlightening analysis of the ways in which urban fear is (re)produced, including by misinformative discourses on security and fear and the political construction of otherness as a means of exclusion. The spatialization of fear, e.g., through fortification, privatization, and fragmentation, is explored, and the ways in which urban planning is informed by and has in turn been shaping urban fear are investigated. A concluding chapter considers divergent potential futures and makes a call for action. The book will appeal to all with an interest in whether, and to what extent, the production of 'fearscapes', the contemporary landscapes of fear, constitutes an emergent urban political economy.

Key-concepts as gentrification and touristification – and many other correlated to them – have recently moved from the academic lexicon to the political and public one. At the same time, they "travelled" from places in which they have been coined – British and North American cities – to be used all around the world. This article discusses some issues about the application of those concepts in the European South; it then proposes a new usage, based on the concept of articulation, analytically more accurate and politically more vivid. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Southern urban critique has enriched our understanding of global uneven development, but often ended up constructing a dichotomous understanding of two apparently homogeneous fields: the Global North (or West) and South. This has been particularly evident in housing studies. In this article, I advocate for a relational, multi-scalar and comparative approach to southern urban critique, capable of exposing quasi-colonial relations within the urban "West"; and apply it to the exploration of housing dynamics and systems in Southern Europe and Southern USA—two regions linked to their continental "cores" by historical patterns of uneven and combined development. Despite being characterized by different urban frameworks and housing systems, these regions have in common analogous patterns of globalization and neoliberalization, with similar impacts over housing, especially in the aftermaths of the global economic crisis. By discussing how global trends intersect with regional contexts, I aim to provide conceptual and epistemological instruments for deepening the analytical grasp and political relevance of southern (urban) critique. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This article aims to contribute toward transcending the dichotomy between deconstruction and reconstruction in critical security studies. In the first part, I review dominant (Western/liberal) logics of security and the main strands of critical security studies to argue that there is a need to overcome the liberal framework of the balance between rights and freedom, with its inherent imbrication with the fantasy of absolute security; and, contra the ultimate conclusions of deconstructive critique, at the same time to take the desire for security seriously. By advocating in favor of embracing the tensions that surface at the intersection of these two conclusions, I then move to my reconstructive endeavor. I set out a meta-theory – that of agonistic security – that is both analytical and normative in nature and inspired by the political theory developed by Mouffe and Laclau. Building on the opposition between antagonism and agonism, I argue that security belongs to the 'political' and that it constitutes a field of struggle for politicization. I then argue for three conceptual shifts that concretely define agonistic security: (i) from an absolute/static to a relational/dynamic understanding of security; (ii) from universalism to pluralism at a world scale; and (iii) from the dominance of individual rights in Western/liberal thinking toward an understanding of security as a collective endeavor. In conclusion, I take a step back and discuss the implications of agonistic security for the role of critique in security studies.

The international conference 'Housing for all in Europe – What problems? What solutions?', organised by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Portugal, the CICS.NOVA Research Center and the Collective Urbanólogo, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Portugal, was held on November 15, 2019 in Lisbon. The conference came at a time when housing has gained particular prominence in the European landscape. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, the European Union has no competence to legislate on housing matters, however, it is undeniable that different measures of various European institutions have had and still have an influence on access to housing in the Member States. The conference counted with the participation of a large spectre of speakers, both local and international, selected among policy experts, scholars, activists, practitioners and policymakers. Along the day, the conversation was structured in five sessions, where, on the one hand, the impact of EU policies on housing access was debated and, on the other, different forms of contestation and cooperation in the European context were analysed. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This article is a contribution to transcending the dichotomy between deconstruction and reconstruction in critical security studies. In the first part, I review dominant (Western/liberal) logics of security and the main strands of critical security studies to argue for the need to: overcome the liberal framework of the balance among rights and freedom, with its inherent imbrication with the fantasy of absolute security; and, contra the ultimate conclusions of deconstructive critique, to take the desire for security seriously at the same time. By advocating for embracing the tensions that surface at this intersection, I then move to my reconstructive endeavor. I set out a meta-theory with both analytical and normative nature, agonistic security, inspired by the political theory developed by Mouffe and Laclau. Building on the opposition between antagonism and agonism, I argue that security belongs to the "political", and that it constitutes a field of struggle for politicization. I then argue for three conceptual shifts, which concretely define agonistic security: i) from an absolute/static to a relational/dynamic understanding of security; ii) from universalism to pluralism at a world scale; and iii) from the dominance of individual rights in Western/liberal thinking toward security as a collective endeavor. In conclusion, I take a step back and discuss the implications of agonistic security for the role of critique in security studies. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

This chapter provides an overview of the field of housing politics in contemporary Lisbon: the transition from the end of a period of economic crisis and deep austerity to a fast economic growth based on exportation, tourism and real estate; the intersection of historical housing problems with new trends of financialisation, touristification and gentrification; and growth of social movements concerned with the right to housing and to the city. By reflecting on housing crisis and struggles, the chapter takes two conceptual steps. On the one hand, by building on an understanding of austerity as the downloading of vulnerability to risk from the economic to the social sphere, it explores the entrenchment of austerity in the field of housing. On the other hand, by questioning the capacity of emerging social movements to fight the social vulnerability brought by austerity, it questions social movements' potential to establish themselves as a 'resilient' alternative to the dominant models of economic development.

This chapter provides an overview of the field of housing politics in contemporary Lisbon: the transition from the end of a period of economic crisis and deep austerity to a fast economic growth based on exportation, tourism and real estate; the intersection of historical housing problems with new trends of financialisation, touristification and gentrification; and the growth of social movements concerned with the right to housing and to the city. By reflecting on housing crisis and struggles, the chapter takes two conceptual steps. On the one hand, by building on an understanding of austerity as the downloading of vulnerability to risk from the economic to the social sphere, it explores the entrenchment of austerity in the field of housing. On the other hand, by questioning the capacity of emerging social movements to fight the social vulnerability brought by austerity, it questions social movements' potential to establish themselves as a 'resilient' alternative to the dominant models of economic development. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Dedicating a PTP Interface to spaces of refuge, migration and border enforcement is a very timely decision. The six pieces collected here set out a truly global picture of the nexus of human mobility, politics of citizenship and planning amid turbulent processes of capitalist urbanisation – or, to put it with Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid, 'planetary' urbanisation. I particularly appreciate the way the contributors were able to open up the 'immigration and refugee crisis'. For one, the authors indirectly expose the pathetic cry of Western politicians and media for the tiny fraction of the world refugee population their wealthy countries have to deal with. More importantly, the six pieces also provide a clear picture of the real 'crises' at stake: crises of housing, urban development, dispossession and extraction, imperialist war – the latest, and most hideous, crisis of capitalism-as-urbanisation (cf. Rossi, 2017), in short. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Fear is among the most powerful of human feelings. Urban fear, the fear of being victims of crime and violence in urban space, particularly so. Urban fear shapes space and is in turn shaped by space. The relationship between fear and space has been studied in terms of three key dimensions: urban (geo)politics, or the political economies of security; otherness, the way social cleavages (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality) mediate the encounter in urban space; and space, the role of the built environment and (modernist) spatialities and urban planning. In line with the recent affective turn in social and cultural geography, the concept of landscapes of fear has provided a fruitful theoretical instrument to understand the co-constitution of emotions and practices in this field. By connecting the dimensions of (geo)politics, otherness, and space, the mobilization of the concept of landscape has allowed understanding how context-specific, yet trans-scalar, atmospheres of fear are (re)produced at the intersection of political-economic, socio-cultural, and technical factors. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The government of security and safety constitutes a privileged angle from which to study the links among government, public policy and urban dynamics, particularly in places where neoliberalisation intersects with historical racial and class tensions – as is the case in many US cities. I am concerned with the connection between (racialised) security politics and the institutional transformation of local security policymaking. I use the case of Memphis (TN, USA), which is paradigmatic of the neoliberalisation of security and permanent 'low-intensity' austerity; present four practices and trends – 'predictive' policing, rhetoric about 'community' selfdefence, safety 'grants' and the 'mission creep' of the militarised police department; and discuss continuities/discontinuities with regard to long-term trends of restructuring crime control in the USA. The case of security policymaking allows me to argue that austerity and neoliberal rule tend to replace public policy – intended as a course of action stemming from conscious choice by the government – with a complicated patchwork of state intervention/disengagement, whose ultimate effect is the 'end of public policy' proper. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion