‘Sacar al pájaro’. Stigmatization and public space in Besós, Barcelona – José Mansilla
Excerpt from the presentation made in the framework of the “I Jornades de Marges i Perifèries Urbanes”.
public space
New online seminar on the anthropology of urban conflict
From July 3rd to 19th, 2019, "Keys for the Analysis of Conflicts in Neoliberal Cities", organized by Antiarq and anthropopologists of OACU, GRACU, GRECS working groups of the University of Barcelona.
Knowledge is in the neighborhoods
Neighborhoods are the collective ability of people to acknowledge the existence of the other. No surprise they are constantly under attack. With them, also the knowledge they represent are attacked, and the words and concepts that in neighborhoods are born and grow.
More about Barcelona’s Vila Olímpica
The Vila Olímpica is the biggest planned intervention of Barcelona in the 20th century. Its construction required the demolition of the old buildings and the eviction of its residents, as in the hygienist urban planning of the 19th century. However, some exiled memories survived the destruction, and come back to life whenever one of the evicted returns in his/her former neighborhood.
Crossing the capital of culture: summer in Marseille
What happened with the Euromediterranée, an ambitious project that costed over 3,5 billion euros, and that transformed 480 hectars? Can we get rid of it by simply calling it gentrification? A commentary by two Italian planners, R. Marchini & A. Sotgia.
Working-class holidays on Barcelona’s coast: a chronicle of Montgat
In 1985 an urban project sentenced the demolition of most of the sea baths of the small Catalan city of Montgat: the trend is to reconfigure all the waterfronts for tourism, rather than to respond to the local needs.
El Haouma, that is, the neighborhood
What happened to these young men that were so celebrated in 2011, the main actors of the so-called 'arab springs'? In recent years we only hear news about politicians, leaders, terrorists... but what about normal people, where have they been? The answer is simple: in their neighborhoods. In Hay Hlil, in Oukacha, in Hezbet el Haggana, where there is the same anger and frustration that there was before the protests.
Horizontal anthropology in the margins of Barcelona
Stefano Portelli's La ciudad horizontal (Bellaterra, 2015), a research on Bon Pastor's 'casas baratas': a neighborhood where no serious fieldwork can be led without getting involved, without challenging the existing barriers, without revealing clearly the aims behind the research itself. In this case, those are to influence urban planning, to stop the demolition of the neighborhood, and to demand an active role for the residents in the transformations of their territories.
To resist is to win: 10 years in the Forat
It has been ten years from that memorable night in which, after many months suffering the insolence of the city council, the continuous police harassment, and the arrogance of real estate investors, finally we returned them the blow. When various hundreds of inhabitants and sympathizers demolished the wall with which mayor Joan Clos ordered to encapsulate the Forat de la Vergonya, we understood that revolt is nothing more than the ultimate possible rational act against a governmental order based on the dispossession of the commons.
There is life in the lagoon
We normally consider Venice as a dead city. Its destiny seems such an inescapable fact that so little is done and even thought to imagine a different future. But something is moving in the lagoon.
Two cities in the same Lisbon
Two Lisbons live together in the same place, and represent two different urban imaginaries: the Marchas dos Santos populars is an effort to bring back to life the impossible memory, of the organic unity lost in some faraway past, before the 'Pombaline Split', when all Lisbon was bairrista.
Taksim halkindir- Taksim belongs to the people!
“Early in the morning I find Taksim square already full of people and fully operational, among the flags of the left-wing extraparlamentary groups, and of associations of the civil society, from feminists to LGBT, from kurdish anarchists to muslim anticapitalists and marxists…” A commentary from our correspondent in Istanbul: [in spanish and italian]
[audio: http://periferiesurbanes.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/CavBella.mp3|titles=Cav Bella|artists=Grup Yorum]…
Wastelands: Weizman on military urbanism
The spatial conflict over Palestine has re-articulated a certain principle: to be governed the territory must be constantly redesigned. This goes beyond a search for a stable and permanent “governable” colonial form, but rather points to the fact that it is through the constant transformation of space that this process of colonization has played out. Unpredictability and the appearance of anarchy are part of this violent logic of disorder.
Urban Typhoon: User-generated cities in Mumbai
Who is not frightened by the idea of the unstoppable growth of cities in Asia and in the former "third world", or by the perspective (apocalyptical, though critically framed) of moving towards a planet of slums? But in the places closer to this phenomenon - for example in the popular neighborhoods of Mumbai, India - the idea of slum has been criticized since many decades. These urban zones that don't even deserve being called neighborhoods, always presented towards the exterior as marked by lacks (of hygiene, of safety, of integration, of control, even of morality), under a deeper scrutiny reveal histories and dynamics complex and functional, that had been interpreted in various forms according to the different theories. Based in an office in Dharavi-Koliwada (the enormous neighborhood popularized by Slumdog millionaire), the two urban activists Matias ECHANOVE and Rahul SRIVASTAVA (from Urbz collective) show how a series of spontaneous social structures, internal to the so-called slums, cause a constant improvement and development, often obstructed by local authorities or by urban reform plans. In territories as thick and reticular as forests of mangroves, the only valid ways to development are those generated by their very users: homegrown, as the neighborhoods themselves.