Blog | Urban Research

This blogpost uses the phenomenon of the fata morgana – mirage – to illustrate the dynamics of real estate advertisements for exclusive housing developments in Cairo. In doing so, we investigate some of the ways in which public media and advertising create a display of the urban that does not reflect the lived social, spatial, and economic reality of the majority of the population. At the same time, this urban visual is produced and shaped by the intersectional dynamics of embedded societal norms.

Olena Kononenko has been a guest researcher at the CRC 1265 since mid-May 2022. With Lucie Bernroider and Sarah Etz, she spoke about Kyjiw’s past, present and future, similarities and differences between Kyjiw and Berlin, her experiences at the CRC 1265 and her hopes for future returns – to both Kyjiw and Berlin.

Cameras on public roads, inside buses, trains, parks and squares; private video surveillance systems that also record street images; geolocation mechanisms; drones flying over large avenues; the use of artificial intelligence and facial recognition in different spaces of circulation of people. Urban public spaces are increasingly interwoven with information and communication digital devices and infrastructures. These transcend physical limitations and install mechanisms for gathering individual and collective personal data; they promote changes in social dynamics, aggravate territorial conflicts and expand the surveillance potential of cities.

This post presents a personal account of my experiences growing up in Ramallah, Palestine, studying at Al-Quds Bard university in Palestine and then emigrating to France. It is an overview of all the spaces I had to interact with throughout my life which have now come to define my identity. By observing the different political and social atmospheres in different spaces and their effect on me, I have come to realise that my identity has no static definition and is continuously redefined through every space I exist in.

In the city of Antofagasta in Northern Chile, 16,396 people live in around 62 so-called informal settlements which lack basic service provision – with water access being the residents’ main concern. Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork carried out between 2018 and 2020, this blog post offers a hydro-social analysis of the informal practices of water acquisition employed by the residents of Antofagasta’s informal settlements. By taking into account both the material elements of these practices as well as their underlying logics and rationalities, the author aims to shed light on the reciprocal relationship between official water access and social belonging, paving the way for a more nuanced discussion of urbanisation processes.

Idealised values of common identification and consensus often attributed to urban neighbourhoods are romanticised, transfiguring and problematic. The socio-spatial construct of the neighbourhood is constituted not only by what we have in common and what we share, but also by dissent and conflict. We argue that conflict is not to be seen as deficient but can rather be constitutive and, in some cases, even productive for the socio-spatial (re)production of urban neighbourhoods. A research design that combines theory on social negotiations, rules and conventions in the public sphere with critical mapping techniques based on workshops conducted in the field helps to analyse the ambivalent role of conflicts in Berlin-Neukölln.

Izidora, a so-called “informal” settlement in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is a laboratory of urban politics and sustainable urbanization technologies. As a self-constructed neighbourhood, it is marked by inequalities as well as conflicts with the municipal authorities. In this text, I portray the politics of Izidora’s dwellers, as they appropriate different agroecological practices, enmesh them in their struggle for housing and citizenship, and pursue an emancipatory logic of urban planning. Activist coalitions with intersectional agendas and political articulations of alternative forms of urban agriculture in Belo Horizonte’s peripheries have led to the creation of Izidora, as well as an array of new urban imaginaries. This text is about Izidora and the politics of a city in the making.

Navigating public space is globally complex and complicated . In nations of the Global South, where democracies are gradually becoming problematic , it is becoming obvious that these democracies are blurry with porous boundaries. Various mechanisms such as “no trespassing” signs, high fences and strategic CCTV cameras all testify to increasing contestations over what public space means and who has a right to access it. In Africa, the situation is progressively getting worse, as the recent oppression and killings of unarmed protesters in public spaces attest to. For example, the arrest and killings of unarmed protesters in the cities of Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria and Kampala, Uganda , should bring to the fore debates and questions on the reconfiguration and negotiation of public space. In this post, we seek to reflect on the ENDSARS protest in Nigeria and its implications for rights to public space in Nigeria.