Monika Streule

This article compares how state-initiated mass housing urbanization has contributed to processes of peripheralization in three very different historical and geopolitical settings: in Paris from the 1950s to the 1990s in Hong Kong from the 1950s to 2010s and in Mexico City from the 1990s to the 2010s. We understand mass housing urbanization as large-scale industrial housing production based on the intervention of state actors into the urbanization process which leads to the strategic re-organization of urban territories. In this comparison across space and time we focus particularly on how, when and to what degree this urbanization process leads to the peripheralization of settlements and entire neighbourhoods over the course of several decades. This long-term perspective allows us to evaluate not only the decisive turns and ruptures within governmental rationales but also the continuities and contradictions of their territorial effects. Finally, we develop a taxonomy of different modalities of peripheralization that might serve as a conceptual tool for further urban research.

Kockelkorn, Anne, Schmid, Christian, Streule, Monika, Wong, Kit Ping (2023) Peripheralization through mass housing urbanization in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Paris, Planning Perspectives 38.3, 603–641. DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2022.2126997

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Reinvestment and intensification are common processes in many urban areas across the world. These transformations are often analyzed with concepts such as ‘urban regeneration’, ‘urban renaissance’, or ‘gentrification’. However, in analyzing Shimokitazawa (Tokyo), Centro Histórico (Mexico City), and Downtown Los Angeles, we realized that
these concepts do not fully grasp the qualitative changes of everyday life and the contradictory character of the urbanization processes we observed. They do not take into consideration the far-reaching effects of these processes, and particularly do not address the underlying key question: how is urban value produced? Therefore, we have chosen a
different analytical entry point to these transformations, by focusing on the production, reproduction, and incorporation of the intrinsic qualities of the urban. We found Lefebvre’s concept of ‘urban differences’ and Williams’ concept of ‘incorporation’ particularly useful for analyzing our empirical results. In this contribution, we compare the ‘incorporation of urban differences’ in the three case study areas and offer this concept for further discussions and applications.

Hanakata, Naomi C., Streule, Monika, Schmid, Christian (2022) Incorporation of urban differences in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Los Angeles, City 26.5-6, 791–819. DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2022.2126231

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Everyday resistances and struggles over contested urban territories are particularly instructive for those interested in urban futures in the making. However, moving beyond the ‘territorial trap’ of narrow definitions of fixed and bounded territory closely associated with the nation state and state actors is critical for further developing a relational understanding of space and power. Processes of territorialization, with reference to socio-territorial concepts emerging from Latin American Indigenous, Afrodescendant, and feminist social movements and scholarship, help show how urban territories materialize from spatial regulations, collective imaginaries, and everyday practices. Urban territories do therefore serve as both the site of and what is at stake in social struggle.

This chapter’s empirical case study of Mexico City foregrounds urbanization and territorialization as key to a situated understanding of territory as a social product. We furthermore engage in a decentered perspective that focuses on the spatial dimension of power relations, with an emphasis on non-state actors such as city inhabitants and their ordinary urban practices and resistance against a large-scale infrastructure project. By grasping the epistemological and empirical complexities of a socio-territorial approach, this contribution aims to put territory to use for the transdisciplinary field of urban studies.

Schwarz, Anke and Monika Streule (2022) Rendering territory (in)visible. Approaching urban struggles through a socio-territorial lens. In: Brighenti, Andrea Mubi and Mattias Kärrholm (eds.) Territories, Environments, Politics: Explorations in Territoriology. New York: Routledge, 136–152.