Tag: Land
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Episode 70 – Property Rights Versus Tenants in Poland
Beata Siemieniako on the restitution of housing and tenants’ struggles. Unregulated restitution of property to prewar owners (or rather their legal successors) remains a major source of conflict over housing in Poland, most notably in Warsaw. This episode features Beata Siemieniako, a Warsaw lawyer and urban activist who has been supporting tenants in their struggle…
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Episode 62 – In Conversation with Nick Blomley (The Urban Lives of Property Series I)
This podcast series explores the “life of property” in urban theory and practice. In conversations with scholars who have led the way in property debates, it aims is to advance conceptual and theoretical groundwork on this notion that fundamentally shapes everyday urban lives and political discussion about the city. Within the social sciences and critical…
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Episode 61 – Are Community Land Trusts Transformative?
Community land trusts are proliferating across the globe, promoted as a potential solution to the ever-worsening affordable housing crisis. CLTs provide a mechanism for decommodification, collective ownership, and community control; however, those ideals are hard to operationalize, and many CLTs function more as traditional affordable housing providers than as urban commons. This episode discusses the…
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Episode 60 – On Peripheralisation
How do “peripheries” form? And how does urbanization generate processes of peripheralization? Today, urban research is increasingly confronted with processes of extended urbanization that unfold far beyond cities and agglomerations: novel patterns of urbanization are crystallizing in agricultural areas and in remote landscapes, challenging inherited conceptions of the urban as a bounded and dense settlement…
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Episode 51 – Racism and Social Mix
Social mix has become a central planning discourse worldwide to address urban inequalities and segregation as key urban problems of the 21st century. Far from being benevolent, the discourse of social mix and its related implementations are subjected to a fundamental critique highlighting racist underpinnings and consequences in targeted neighborhoods. The conversation draws on insights…
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Episode 49 – Ukrainian Cities at War
Listen to urban researchers sharing their insights on the situation in Ukrainian cities at war, from Kyiv, Kharkiv to Mariupol. Our guests discuss Putin’s identity politics and the way his propaganda hits a wall in the context of the shelling of Ukrainian cities. Countering the images of an opposition of “Ukrainian vs Russian” inhabitants as…
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Episode 44 – Decolonize/Decenter: Planning in the South
‘How can academic research be of service to envisioning alternative planning agendas that reflect the realities of the so-called Global South?’ is the central question that our guest host Inhji Jon stresses in this episode. Since Western-centric planning approaches imposes norms on places and times where they are inappropriate, we need to explore the possibilities…
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Episode 39 – The Urban Hinterlands of Slavery
The transatlantic slave trade had a lasting impact not only on the development of big ports like Liverpool, London, Nantes or Bordeaux, but also in cities that far less frequently associated with slavery. In this episode, four researcher-activists from Bremen and Lancaster speak about how slavery is not just a bygone period of cruel practices…
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Episode 7- When Social Housing was Big
Post-war mass housing is at a crossroads in Western Europe. Demolition, densification, adaptation, or conservation? Two experts help us sort it out. Maren Harnack proposes what it requires to take advantage of the existing settlements from that period. And Miles Glendinning draws lessons of what we may learn from the experience of mass social housing…
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Episode 6 – Reviewing Suburban Planet
Roger Keil’s new book, ‘Suburban Planet’, is a major contribution to (re)thinking the urban age in terms its peripheries rather than its centres. He seeks to provide us with a way of coming to terms with the process of suburbanization and the diversity of suburban forms. But does he succeed? And what are the political…
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Episode 5 – Take Your Eyes Off the City Center!
We are living on a suburban planet, if you ask Roger. He even wrote a book with that title. In the interview, he elaborates on the political implications of that condition. Situating his work on global suburbanisms in relation to the L.A. School and the debate around planetary urbanization, he flexes his intellectual muscles to…
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Episode 4 – Bridging Urban Research and Action
The call to make academic research more socially relevant has become a commonplace. But what does it mean to for academic research to benefit urban activism? What is to be done when the logics of academia obstruct deeper activist engagements? This roundtable engages these challenges with four seasoned activist-scholars. Kate and Uli work in academia…
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Episode 3 – Reclaiming the Tourist City – Part 2
Part 2: Regaining Democratic Control The second part examines the extent to which democratic control has been exerted in the Checkpoint Charlie case and how development plans have been modified under increased pressure from societal groups. Listen to hear about the possibilities of contesting tourist-centred developments in inner cities and why activists should never automatically…
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Episode 2 – Reclaiming the Tourist City – Part 1
Part 1: Heritage Preservation and Urban Development Much-visited by tourists and generally avoided by Berliners, the site has faced growing conflict over plans to develop a hotel, Hard Rock Cafe and museum. This first part details the historical importance of the empty plots at the former Cold War border crossing and reflects on wider debates…