Capitalist City Research Articles

Institutional experiments in urban relationality: repairing the social bond in capitalist urbanism

ABSTRACT Isolation and loneliness have become characteristic of capitalist cities where spaces for sociality, connection, and togetherness are few and far between, supplanted by an abundance of artificial “pseudo-social spaces” mediated by capital. This social fracture at the heart of contemporary urbanism is an urban-spatial extension of sociality’s degradation and economic capture under capitalist production. For many urban Marxist scholars, urbanization is a process now characterized by the commons’ continuous appropriation and annihilation by private interests. Arguably, within this context, “experimental institutionalism” has aimed to reconfigure art institutions into sites for sociality, dialogue, care, and collaboration. Experimental institutionalism is a field of institutional reform, curatorial practice, and debate concerned with the art institution’s transformation into a socially responsible agent. In this paper, I summarize experimental institutionalism’s main dimensions, drawing on key examples from the field to explore the art museum’s capacity to repair the social bonds ruptured by capitalist urbanism.

The urban local centre: from the centrally-planned economy to the capitalist city. The experience of the Ursynów district in Warsaw

The polycentric structure of the city reflects the role of various stakeholders, public and private, in shaping the urban development and life quality. The paper investigates the role of the public and private sector in creation of the local centres in neighbourhoods, hubs concentrating the services and amenities indispensable for modern life. The analysis is based on the case study of the Ursynów district in Warsaw, designed and constructed mainly in the 1980s, but with several infrastructural, housing, and commercial investments realised after 1989. The study encompassed the location of local centres, their functions, and spatial forms. The findings demonstrate that both public and private sectors play intertwined and significant roles for the local centres and create a synergy effect in such areas. The results of the study also show the evolutionary nature of the local centres’ development. The main elements of the design persist, but the market-oriented economy and decentralised democratic institutions allowed them to continue the original plans, while making the local centres more attractive and richer function-wise than it was possible during the centrally-planned period.

Miguel À. Martínez 2020: Squatters in the Capitalist City: Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics. New York, NY: Routledge

Miguel À. Martínez 2020: <i>Squatters in the Capitalist City: Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics</i>. New York, NY: Routledge

A Smart Right to the City—Grounding Corporate Storytelling and Questioning Smart Urbanism

Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

The New Socialist City: Building Utopia in the USSR, 1917–1934

ABSTRACT Architecture and utopia have long been allies—not least in the history of imagining and building the new Soviet socialist city, an obsessive idea and project from before the 1917 revolution to the early 1930s. This essay explores these efforts as a determination to obliterate the poisonous cities of old and transcend the suffering cities of the present—as practiced utopia against the dystopia of the status quo. “Utopia” here is defined, drawing on Ernst Bloch, as perception, orientation, and critical method: the human impulse to “venture beyond” the “darkness of the lived moment” to discover the emerging “not-yet.” This essay examines Russian Marxist responses (including among workers) to the “hell” as well as the dynamism of the capitalist city, and examines, through the concept of “utopia,” visionary architectural projects and arguments, including Vladimir Tatlin’s monumental tower for the Third International (1919–20), “disurbanist” and “green city” plans in the 1920s and early 1930s, Georgy Krutikov’s flying “City of the Future” in 1928, the work of Moisei Ginzburg, and Boris Iofan’s “Palace of Soviets” in the early 1930s.

Drawing as an Ethico-political Practice

This essay explores drawing as an ethico-political practice. Taking London as an example, I speculate about a critical and creative, radical and imaginative engagement with speculative urbanization processes at a time when the extreme right is on the rise and the populist far right has become increasingly mainstream. Reflecting on a nonrepresentational drawing approach that responds to distantiated expert eyes by breaking free from their knowledge and pre-defined moral standards of the capitalist city, I explore different lines: lines that commodify the cityscape; lines that cross commodifying categories; lines that creatively produce alternatives; and lines of violent creativity. In so doing, I scrutinize conservative links between a visuality of capital accumulation and fascist urban aesthetics.

Book Review: Miguel A. Martinez, Squatters in the Capitalist City: Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics

Book Review: Miguel A. Martinez, Squatters in the Capitalist City: Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics

Representing the Under-Represented: Labor Unions as Urbanists

Persistent precarity is a fundamental, yet usually hidden and often overlooked condition of urbanism, particularly for those who represent the human labor that produces and reproduces the capitalist city. The question, then, is how do those who represent this under-represented human labor, unions, engage with and influence the underlying power structure that actually shapes the city? Labor unions simultaneously shape and are shaped by the spatial political economy of the contemporary city. This article examines this phenomenon through analysis of an illuminating case study, the powerful Culinary Union in Las Vegas. Drawing from different primary and secondary sources, this article offers several valuable insights: organized labor is significant in the spatial production of the city, urban precarity can be mitigated by advocating for the public realm, and asserting agency in the power dynamics of the city can be an effective way of influencing its urbanism.

Understanding different levels of segregation in urban China: a comparative study among 21 cities in Guangdong province

ABSTRACT It has been suggested that more globalized cities are more polarized and segregated than other cities. However, this is mainly evidenced by advanced capitalist cities and other selected developed cities, while less developed cities are clearly under-researched. This paper draws on both developed and less developed cities in Guangdong province, and asks how socio-economic segregation levels differ among cities of varying economic development levels. We find that, contrary to expectation, less developed cities are showing higher levels of segregation than well-developed cities. We suggest that the key contributing factor is that the well-developed cities in Guangdong province are characterized by manufacturing-dominant economic structures and industrialization-based economic transformation. Correspondingly, their occupational structures are predominantly characterized by employees with a recent agricultural background; the restructuring process is therefore dominated by professionalization of the lower class. The stronger and faster industrialization and professionalization processes produce lower segregation levels in those more developed cities.

The art of care

Building on emerging work that considers urban life and designs through the lens of care, this article examines how a performative care practice might serve as an oppositional ethic and strategy in the late capitalist city. The analysis is based on the Guerrilla Grafters, an eco-arts collective that surreptitiously grafts fruit onto sterile city trees in San Francisco. Original data include interviews with participants and critics and a qualitative analysis of relevant media accounts. The article proposes that the Guerrilla Grafters are engaged in a performative care practice, a public facing set of actions that make visible and valuable the labor as well as ethics of attending to the interdependence of all life. This performative care practice is a discursive, relational and spatial strategy that seeks to interrupt relations of dominance and ideologies that cheapen certain life. Through a case study of performative care, this study provokes a more general examination of how care ethics and practices work in oppositional practices under dynamics of neoliberalism and ecological crisis in cities of the Global North.

The City in Flux: Toward an Urban Topology of Hong Kong Cinema

Whether appearing as a dramatic setting or as a “protagonist” in itself, Hong Kong’s urban space has inspired the imagination of filmmakers of different generations and artistic orientations. If architecture is the primary denominator of a city’s spatial identity,1 the cinema offers a repertoire of visual vocabularies through which this identity is articulated, contested, and transformed in time. “Space” here connotes both the diegetic configuration of setting and locale, and the non-diegetic realm of identity-making invoked by the cinematic medium. Space has also been used as a conceptual tool in critical discourse on the dynamics between the cinematic imagination and the urban space.2 Its long tradition of martial arts films and costume dramas notwithstanding, Hong Kong cinema displays an inherently urban quality that speaks through its subject matter, fictional personae, and the spatial aesthetics that have become an imprint of “Hong Kong-made films.” While critical attention to the relationship between the cinema and urban space tends to favor popular action films from the 1980s and afterward, filmmakers’ self-conscious engagement with the urban space can be traced further back. The black-and-white films of the 1950s and 1960s, for instance, frequently insert location shots at the beginning to authenticate the predominantly studio setting. The most commonly used scenes are panoramic views of high-rise buildings, motorways, rail stations, and different types of modern transportation. Mostly appearing in the credit sequence, these shots display an inner logic that amounts to a self-narrative of the city that varies from a critical self-distancing from the capitalist city in left-wing films to a celebratory embrace of capitalist modernity in right-wing films.3 The symbolic reinvention of the urban space as an experiential realm of identity-making, therefore, has been a leitmotif in Hong Kong films for a much longer time than it is commonly assumed.

Urban development of Pyongiang under the influence of Juche idea

In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), urban planning and urban architecture reflect the interest of the working class. The goal for the working class was to develop a specific type of urban planning, as a result of which the DPRK introduced a socialist model of urban planning. Until the beginning of 1970, the DPRK depended on the influence of the USSR, it wanted to go beyond that framework, especially in the field of urban planning and architecture. In the early 1970s, Kim Il-sung presented the thesis of Juche's idea, which encompasses all aspects of society. During the 1980s, Pyongyang was promoted to the world as the socialist capital of the world. However, in the 21st century, Korean architecture has noticed many changes compared to the past. In addition to remaining faithful to rationality and monumentality, social differences were given to special groups. Since the arrival and rise of Kim Jong-un to power, the newly built parts of Pyongyang are reminiscent of the physiognomy of capitalist cities.

Miguel A. Martínez, Squatters in The Capitalist City. Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics, New York and London: Routledge/ Taylor &amp; Francis Group, 2020

El estudio de los okupas o del movimiento okupa ha ido ganando terreno en el campo de la Sociología y de las ciencias sociales en las últimas décadas. Y gracias en gran medida al autor de esta obra, Miguel A. Martínez, quien ha dedicado una gran parte de su carrera académica al estudio de este particular sujeto político de los movimientos sociales urbanos. De hecho, este libro contiene de forma sintética las principales aportaciones de este autor en los últimos 20 años de una brillante e itinerante trayectoria.

Migrant accommodation as a housing question, and how (not) to solve it

This paper looks at migrant accommodation in Berlin. In recent years, there has been a visible increase in camps to accommodate migrants. Rather than solely considering this as a reaction of repressive state actors aiming to contain the movement of migrants, the paper emphasizes another factor to explain the proliferation of camps: a neoliberal city and the resulting shortage of affordable housing. The budget cuts, austerity and privatizations in the 2000s converge with a border and asylum regime that reacted to an increase in arriving migrants since 2015. In this way, a new relational understanding of the camp and the city is configured: camp accommodation becomes part of a broader housing question. This housing question is materialized in a peripheral and substandard form of accommodation, as well as in the increasing permanence of camps. Based on in-depth field research, this paper adds new empirical knowledge to explore this context. The paper looks at current attempts to solve the housing question and problems of camp accommodation. Official approaches of planning ‘better’ camps are problematized as they do not engage with the roots of the housing question: the political economy of the city, a capitalist city that shapes urban space in terms of exchange rather than use value. Finally, alternative attempts are presented. Some aim to create practical solutions like shared housing projects, while others are targeting broader levels of the housing market in Berlin. By opening the question of camp accommodation to housing movements, another political perspective arises: to include migrants in the call to create a Right to the City and housing for all.

Book review of ‘Squatters in the Capitalist City: Housing, Justice and Urban Politics'

What is squatting? Is squatting a social movement? In a retrospective analysis of some of the most emblematic cases of squatting in Europe as well as through an exhaustive review of the literature on this field of study, the author responds to these and many more questions. The book presents the past learnings and current and future challenges for the radical urban social movement of squatting. I examine the book’s content and point to some issues I would have liked to see included.

A SOCIEDADE DO CANSAÇO NA PAULICEIA DE LUCIANA TONELLI

Flagrantes do tempo: poema-reportagem na pauliceia, de Luciana Tonelli, pode ser considerado como um conjunto de poemas que, apesar das singularidades, compõem uma unidade, nomeada pela poeta “poema-reportagem”. Lido como um percurso por São Paulo, o livro expõe, pelo olhar do sujeito lírico voyeur, o cotidiano urbano capitalista, em que o tempo é fragmentado e, ora os indivíduos estão submetidos à voracidade e à velocidade das horas, ora ao tempo que permite a deriva do olhar. Neste trabalho, pretende-se, a partir de poemas selecionados, refletir sobre como a configuração da urbe capitalista contemporânea limita as vidas dos cidadãos, dando forma ao que Byung-Chul Han denomina sociedade do cansaço. Por uma abordagem transdisciplinar dos estudos literários, busca-se perceber na lírica de Luciana Tonelli como o sujeito urbano é representado em sua exaustão, bem como em condições favoráveis para a reinvenção de suas vidas.&#x0D; PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Luciana Tonelli. Sociedade do cansaço. Sujeito lírico voyeur.

Alphabet city: orthographic differentiation and branding in late capitalist cities

ABSTRACT This article examines the emergence and design of letter-based city logos in order to discuss what they reveal about writing and cities, and the dynamics between them. Developing a political economic and social semiotic analysis, I suggest that these letter-based logos respond to an increased competition for attention in society—strongly linked to new media technology and patterns of mobility in late capitalist economies. I further argue that they illustrate globalizing linguistic processes such as the truncation, commodification and adaptation of language to global audiences and technologies, and thereby contribute to mask the social and material reality of the branded cities. The article contributes to the broader examination of the ways in which cities and writing interact by drawing attention to the continued spread of abstract and standardized register forms for representing institutional power and distinction within globalized markets, and by discussing their local socio-economic embedding.

Pandemia e desemprego no Brasil

Resumo A pandemia da COVID-19 é um problema de saúde pública global que imprimiu uma nova dinâmica à economia mundial. A rápida propagação da doença e o uso do distanciamento como forma de prevenção expuseram as desigualdades sociais e urbanas das cidades capitalistas. No Brasil, como em outros países, o isolamento social promoveu rápidas mudanças no mercado de trabalho, com impactos mais severos para 37,3 milhões de pessoas que vivem na informalidade, já que elas não têm direitos como Fundo de Garantia por Tempo de Serviço (FGTS) e seguro-desemprego. Para a Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT), as primeiras demissões estão ocorrendo entre aqueles que vivem do trabalho precário, como terceirizados, balconistas, garçons, funcionários de cozinha, diaristas, manipuladores de bagagem e produtos de limpeza. Assim, faremos uma breve síntese das consequências que a crise sanitária vem promovendo para os trabalhadores brasileiros, bem como proporemos medidas de enfrentamento que não se limitem aos auxílios emergenciais. A recuperação e a criação de ocupações dependerão, entre outros fatores, da retomada dos gastos com programas sociais e econômicos que reduziram as desigualdades sociais no início deste século, como o Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento em Favelas (PAC-Favelas); o Programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida; o Programa Bolsa Família (PBF); e o Programa de Geração de Emprego e Renda (Proger) com recursos do Fundo de Amparo ao Trabalhador (FAT). Esses programas podem e devem ser ampliados a fim de fazer com a que a economia retome o crescimento em longo prazo.

Squatters in the capitalist city. Housing, justice, and urban politics

Miguel Martinez, Squatters in the capitalist city. Housing, justice, and urban politics. Routledge, 2019.

De salvaje a domesticada

Rosario (Santa Fe, Argentina) tuvo y tiene, dentro de su planta urbana, espacios de agua que históricamente la caracterizaron. Como muchas otras ciudades, su vínculo con el agua ha sido un desafío histórico durante su trayectoria urbana que se relacionó a grupos, dispositivos y artefactos articulados a esos espacios hídricos. El agua en estado natural y ligada a la tierra, el agua salvaje, es un objeto cuya presencia desde lo urbano mereció particular atención. Dentro de la dialéctica argentina civilización o barbarie y en el caso particular de las aguas salvajes mediante su domesticación, la hipótesis del trabajo consiste en que dicha domesticación se desarrolló como una ideología urbanística articulada –como praxis– a aquel pensamiento político cuyo resultado excede la transformación de los espacios hídricos, afectando a toda la ciudad. El objetivo del trabajo es interpretar esa dicotomía agua salvaje/domesticada a través de las discusiones conceptuales sobre la injusticia espacial, entendida como un conjunto de asimetrías sociales resultantes de la ciudad capitalista.