The online workshop Revisiting the concepts of critical urban studies takes place at 17th and 18th of May 2021. There are 15 contributions and also interventions by Matthias Bernt (IRS Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space), Thomas Maloutas (Harokopio University of Athens), Miguel A. Martínez (Uppsala University), and Monika Streule (ETH Zürich). The event is organized by the Institute for Urban Research, Malmö University in collaboration with the Global Development Studies Discipline and Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science (HELSUS), University of Helsinki.
Workshop series Dislocating Urban Studies: Rethinking Theory, Shifting Practice organized by Özlem Celik (HELSUS and Global Development Studies Discipline, University of Helsinki), Claudia Fonseca Alfaro, Defne Kadioglu and Lorena Melgaço (Institute for Urban Research, Malmö University), 17th and 18th of May 2021
In this metroZones school, we shift the focus from ways of making to ways of reading maps. We conceive reading not as passive but as an active sense-making procedure of reconstructing and deconstructing how a given mapping ‘speaks to us’. Each mapping responds to other spatial images, so each reading corresponds to a re-reading, as a method for reflecting about situated spatial knowledge and power in cartographic practice. Through collaborative readings, we may uncover different or divergent cartographic discourses, strategies and languages.
What role do mappings play in the materializing of urban conflicts and conflicted landscapes? What do they reveal (or obfuscate) in spatial settings, which underlying conflicts and power patterns? How may a (counter)forensic perspective materialize invisibilized crime and spatial conflictivity? These questions will be explored and discussed on the basis of selected mappings from Berlin (the dispute around the planned Amazon tower), Mexico City (as contested mega-urbanization) as well as the archive of the research agency Forensic Architecture.
Friday 28.5.2021, 19:00-21:00 (via zoom) The counter-forensic gaze: mapping to uncover public truth. Public Lecture by Sergio Beltrán-Garcia in conversation with Anne Huffschmid
Saturday 29.5.2021, 10:00–18:00 (in situ) Reading as reconstructing: mappings as territories for sense-making and dispute. Workshop in Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien (see current pandemic regulations)
Sunday 11:00–14:00 (via zoom) Re-reading maps together: Collective knowledge production in urban research. Public discussion with workshop participants, metroZones Kathrin Wildner and Anne Huffschmid, Sergio Beltrán-García and comments by Monika Streule
This metroZones school starts on Friday evening with a lecture by Mexican architect Sergio Beltrán-García who will discuss a forensic perspective on mapping. On Saturday it continues with a workshop on creative readings of pre-selected mappings. The school will end on Sunday with a discussion on the outcomes and on the potential of re-reading maps in urban research by Monika Streule.
Both the Friday and Sunday discussions will be accessible via videoconference, a link will be provided to registered participants. The workshop on Saturday is limited to a certain number of participants and will likely take place in or around the Kunstraum Kreuzberg, depending on the current pandemic regulations; remote participation may be possible, please indicate when registering. Free registration until May 26 at
This paper introduces the concept of “bypass urbanism” to account for a process of urbanization that is reordering center-periphery relations of urban regions into new hierarchies. Bypass urbanism became visible through a comparison of large-scale urban transformations at the peripheries of Kolkata, Lagos, and Mexico City by zooming out and considering their impacts on the socio-spatial structure of the extended urban regions.
Bypass urbanism is not emerging from the construction of a singular new town or real estate project, but is the result of the simultaneous development of an ensemble of various independent but related projects. Therefore, bypass urbanism usually does not emanate from a coherent planning initiative, even less so from a hidden “master plan” at the hands of any single developer or state agency, but it emerges through a convergence of interests over large areas of land at the geographical periphery of urban regions that have been made available for new urban developments by various measures.
We understand bypass urbanism as a multidimensional process that includes material-geographical bypassing, the bypassing of regulatory frameworks, and socio-economic bypassing in everyday life. It results in the creation of exclusive and excluding spaces that enable middle and upper-class lifestyles, at the same time leading to the peripheralization of extant urban areas that are bypassed and neglected. The massive scale of bypass urbanism that we have observed represents a new quality of urban development resulting not in isolated urban enclaves or archipelagos, but in the fundamental restructuring of the extended urban region with far reaching and incalculable repercussions.
Sawyer, Lindsay, Schmid, Christian, Streule, Monika, Kallenberger, Pascal (2021) Bypass urbanism: Re-ordering center-periphery relations in Kolkata, Lagos and Mexico City. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 53.4, 675–703. DOI: 10.1177/0308518X20983818
Paper to be presented at the conference Decolonizing Planning in Latin America PART II: Including ‘non-expert’ and ‘non-technical’ knowledges. This full day mini-conference unites 14 scholars who will discuss how to advance thinking and action in Latin American urban planning and debate questions related to planning policy, practice and education.
This conference will take place in three languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese). See program for details, translation will not be available. Organizers and discussants: Jéssica Pineda-Zumarán (Universidad Nacional de San Augustín, Perú); Clara Irazábal-Zurita (University of Missouri – Kansas City, United States); Lara Furtado (Universidade de Fortaleza, Brazil)
