Monika Streule – Page 14 of 19

October 31, 2018

Before Gentrification? An ethnographic study of Rosengartenstrasse in Zurich Wipkingen

Elective Course Spring Semester – 2018

In this seminar, we investigate current urban transformations along Rosengartenstrasse and the adjacent central neighborhood of Zürich, drawing on ethnographical methods like observation, interviews, and photographical research. Rosengartenstrasse was part of the former Westtangente and is today a congested street cutting right through the neighborhood. Local and regional government plan to implement a traffic policy, which if become accepted, not only would change the main street, but also the adjacent neighborhood fundamentally. However, already today, we can observe first transformations in the built environment of the area.

The main questions in this seminar are: What are current urban qualities of everyday life at the Rosengartenstrasse and the neighborhood? What kind of urban qualities are appreciated by residents and shopkeepers alike? Doing an ethnographical research of Rosengartenstrasse, we discuss these questions. Transformations in the urban neighborhood and architectural interventions will be analyzed. Thereby we will also deepen our knowledge about ethnographical research technics. Text discussions and guest lectures will supplement the empirical analysis. The goals are to understand contemporary urban transformation processes, and to gain insights about potentials and qualities of urban design.

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May 15, 2018

Urban territories of Mexico City: Ethnographic writing and positionality in translation

Institut d’Etudes Avancées de Paris – 2018

Ethnography is one of the key methodologies in current urban studies. Researchers from various disciplines are now using and adapting ethnography for an ever-evolving range of purposes and different urban settings. While employed widely as an empirical research tool, the writing part of ethnography often remains methodologically vague and there is little reflection on the implications of ethnographic writing in urban studies. How do we put something into words which did not exist as text before? How does this abstraction shape the way we think the urban? And, what could this mean for building theory from the empirical? Recent post- and decolonial thoughts on deeply inscribed power relations in knowledge production now create a useful moment to critically revisit this textual rendering of urban worlds, closely scrutinized in anthropology since the 1980s.

In this contribution I reflect on ethnography in urban studies by bringing in reflections from anthropology, focussing on ethnographic writing, using my experience of research. Taking the call to always locate our projects and ourselves precisely and consistently as a starting point has led me to engage carefully with the practices of representing the city I work with. In my extended study of urbanization in Mexico City, a main concern has been to call into question conventional representations of the urban. Together with a historical analysis and experimental mapping, I drew upon ethnography for knowledge production through writing.

Doing research in Spanish, writing in German, presenting in English, I am constantly confronted with the power of language and its effects on my objectifying of Mexico City. Dealing with the complexities of writing about urban territories unknown by many readers holds particular challenges for a monolingual textual representation. The situatedness of researching, writing, and speaking finally brings me back to the politics of translation in knowledge production – and to the question of how to translate positionality and to make it work for creating spaces for a more transversal understanding between and within urban worlds.

Invited paper at the Workshop Writing the city [into the urban], organized by Pushpa Arabindoo, Institut d’Etudes Avancées de Paris, May 3–4, 2018, Paris

November 21, 2017

Towards a new vocabulary of urbanization processes: a comparative approach

Urban Studies – 2018

Contemporary processes of urbanisation present major challenges for urban research and theory as urban areas expand and interweave. In this process, urban forms are constantly changing and new urban configurations are frequently evolving. An adequate understanding of urbanisation must derive its empirical and theoretical inspirations from the multitude of urban experiences across the various divides that shape the contemporary world. New concepts and terms are urgently required that would help, both analytically and cartographically, to decipher the differentiated and rapidly mutating landscapes of urbanisation that are being produced today.

One of the key procedures to address these challenges is the application of comparative strategies. Based on postcolonial critiques of urban theory and on the epistemologies of planetary urbanisation, this paper introduces and discusses the theoretical and methodological framework of a collaborative comparative study of urbanisation processes in eight large metropolitan territories across the world: Tokyo, Hong Kong/Shenzhen/Dongguan, Kolkata, Istanbul, Lagos, Paris, Mexico City and Los Angeles.

In order to approach these large territories, a specific methodological design is applied mainly based on qualitative methods and a newly developed method of mapping. After the presentation of the main lines of our theoretical and methodological approach we discuss some of the new comparative concepts that we developed through this process: popular urbanisation, plotting urbanism, multilayered patchwork urbanisation and the incorporation of urban differences.

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Schmid, Christian, Karaman, Ozan, Hanakata, Naomi, Kallenberger, Pascal, Kockelkorn, Anne, Sawyer, Lindsay, Streule, Monika, Wong, Kit Ping (2018) Towards a new vocabulary of urbanization processes: a comparative approach. Urban Studies 55(1): 19–52. DOI 10.1177/0042098017739750

October 31, 2017

Gentrification in Zurich: Weststrasse in Transformation

Elective Course Spring Semester – 2017

This elective course highlights the sociological perspective on architectural practice and introduces sociological research. It focuses on two main procedures: on the one hand, a systematic reading and discussion of theoretical texts, and on the other, empirical case studies of social aspects of the production of the built environment. In this course, a wide set of qualitative research methods is used (including various forms of interview, participant observation, image and text analyses). This approach enables students to gain their own experience by dealing with the various participants and constellations in the social field of architecture and building construction, and to familiarize themselves with the approaches and perceptions of various different participants.

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