In this article, we use Hage’s (2000) critique of White multiculturalism’s orientalizing logic of ethnic enrichment as a lens to analyze the multicultural valorization through ethnic food of the Javastraat, the commercial artery of Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt district. Stemming from a larger ethnographic study of gentrification in the area, the article provides evidence of how racial aesthetics have

This article calls for a consideration of the reuse aesthetics of urban ruins in terms of cultural valuations related to the political status of social practices. In the context of debates on ruins in the field of memory studies and along the division between politics and the political, I argue for the recognition of affective atmospheric practices based upon performative knowledge-making and reenactments

This article offers insight into how housing, renovation, and gentrification are more than matters of upgrading material dwellings and neighborhoods, but they substantially engage residents’ very notions of who they are and how they are perceived. Using the lens of valuation, gentrification is presented as much more than an exclusionary market relationship but as a process that shows how human perspectives

Taking the events of Cape Town’s “Day Zero” drought as a case study, this article examines the politics and poetics of water in the Anthropocene and the implications of Anthropogenic climate change for urban life. It argues that rather than being understood as an inert resource, fresh drinking water is a complex object constructed at the intersection between natural systems; cultural imaginaries; and

This article concerns how heritage pertaining to the Second World War (1941–1945), as this has been made manifest in the urban environments of Perak, Malaysia, is (de)valued and (mis) assessed over multiple scales within the state. After foregrounding the biases associated with official depictions of the event, it excavates the ways informal actors have sought to overturn the collective amnesia of

This article examines the praise and controversy that a change in color to the façade of the Główny railway station in Wrocław, Poland, provoked during 2010–2012. Ethnographically following the definitions and makings of a “historical” color during the reconstruction process, it pinpoints two contrasting and conflicting ways of valuing and devaluing historicity: the “scientifically accurate” historicity

In the last 50 years, and due to a dilapidation of funds, hundreds of public works have remained unfinished in Italy, most especially in Sicily. In 2007, the group of artists Alterazioni Video declared these modern ruins a formal architectural style—so-called Incompiuto Siciliano— through which they aim to change the buildings’ negative perception, turning it into something positive. In September 2015

Signs in the urban landscapes are never neutral; they always enact connections to power relations and social hierarchies. By examining the New Administrative Capital of Egypt’s (NAC) advertising billboards, the current study relates itself to the literature of Linguistic Landscape (LL). The study examines the NAC from a semio-discursive perspective. More specifically, it relies on the tools of Semiotic

In the aftermath of the truck attacks in Berlin, Nice, Paris, and Stockholm, new counter-terrorism measures are being installed in European city centers. Through an ethnographic approach, this article explores the socio-material effects triggered by the most conspicuous material responses to hostile vehicle treats: concrete barriers. We draw on the recent turn towards mobilities design thinking to

Scholarship on Ìrègún music, as an indigenous musical tradition, has attested to the performance practices of the genre yet very little is known on the connections of the music to environmental sustainability and nature spaces. Representations of nature space generally serve as an anchor for societal norms, values, and virtues. This article examines the nature and cultural spaces in Ìrègún music. I

Developing a framework of “affective atmospheres of unwelcome” from the work of Locatora Radio and Anderson (2009), Stewart (2008), and Thompson (2017), I examine how affective build-up and circulation suffuse a space in an atmosphere, as the atmosphere is taken up and felt in the bodies of street harassed individuals. I engage women’s narratives, the 2014 film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and

The description of public space usually hinges on two narratives of publicness: one narrative criticizes the State’s attempts to condition publicness on the basis of functionality, and the other denotes publicness with space that can be appropriated by ordinary people. However, there are no “pure” moments in which either narrative is neatly differentiated since they are simultaneously active, or fuzzy

Research on tourism to Machu Picchu rarely addresses the ways in which transportation, particularly rail travel, is integral to a visit to the UNESCO world heritage site. Yet the majority of visitors to Machu Picchu arrive by train, making rail travel a crucial component to the way in which the site is understood and experienced. This article examines rail travel to Machu Picchu through archival research

Ayvalik, a city located in northwest Anatolia, has been at the forefront of olive-based industries since the 1880s, when the industrialization of Europe led to the growth of commerce and agriculture in Anatolia, including first Istanbul and Izmir, followed by Ayvalik, due to their strategic locations. Ayvalik, which was an important Greek settlement under Ottoman rule, experienced a major turning point

The courtyard form of the traditional Arab house responded to both climate and the culture of its inhabitants. Islamic values, as well as socioeconomic factors, played crucial roles in the design. However, the mid-20th century marked the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s first rapid economic growth as a result of the discovery of oil; which dramatically increased the wealth and prosperity of the population

Drawing from multisite ethnographic research conducted at four Canadian UNESCO World Heritage natural sites, this writing focuses on the geosocialities of fossils and argues that fossils are alive:...

Renters with pets seeking quality and affordable accommodations face numerous challenges. This research aims to identify whether the racial/ethnic predominance of the neighborhood population relates to the willingness of landlords to accept pets. To address this question, we gathered 266 rental listings from Craigslist and Zillow over a two-week period in Forsyth County, North Carolina. While the vast

With books in development about aerial modernisms and aviation in interwar Britain, it seems as though modernist studies are taking an air-minded turn. Caren Kaplan’s Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above (Duke University Press, 2018) offers a wide history of “aerostation” that will appeal to those interested in air-minded modernism as well as others working in war studies, the history of technology

With COVID-19 we experience the dramatic effects of a cosmopolitical event by which a non-human actor politicizes, i.e. unbuttons the normalcy of the ‘cosmos’ of shared lived spaces, what we take for granted as and what we expect from a globalized life-world. The dynamics of infection unfold an existential learning situation not only of how we live and how we wish to live, but also how we may compose

This review-essay of Adam Rothstein’s Drone (2015) analyzes drone technology, more explicitly, the emerging opportunities for commercial and private usage of drones, in two parts: While the first part is dedicated to a careful reading of Rothstein’s book and an exploration of his method of tracing emerging technologies as narratives in terms of their constitutional technologies—the stories of four

The visibility and invisibility of vulnerable individuals or groups in public space have been extensively used as a conceptual tool to assess the “public” character of space. This article analyses the case study of the Parkdale neighborhood in Toronto demonstrating how public space is constructed in a path-dependent territorial process where different layers play a dynamic constitutive role: a material

Characteristics of port cities are significantly different than inland cities since they have a spatial relation with water. Waterfronts, main urban squares, and major streets are specified as the predominant components affecting socio-spatial configurations. The research assumes that the imageability of port cities, which refers to “port city identity” in this research, is associated with the visibility

A short reflection on Quarantine Urbanism. Reflecting on the urban discourse which is apparently coalescing around the coronavirus and its effects on the city, are a series of arguments and hypotheses, bound by an epidemiological vision of space, in which attention is placed on the system of relationships that define our practices of dwelling and space production rather than on the inhabitant or society

Quarantine measures and the crises triggering them are never neutral in the sense that a return to the past is impossible. These measures are also a signal of other things like systemic risks and weaknesses. A period of quarantine is also a thing in and by itself. What happens after quarantine is thus shaped both by the state of the social-ecological system preceding quarantine and by what happened

In the last weeks and months, COVID-19 has challenged and changed societies and social life around the world. In the case of Spain, the health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic led to the declaration of a state of alert by the central government, which involved partial home confinement. Given this exceptional situation, neighborhood activation through mutual support networks has been very important

Based on an ethnographic account of a transitory space of an aircraft under lockdown, this article reflects on quarantine as the product of expert technocratic knowledge, which blurs fine-grained social moments and relationships to create a homogenous functional space. It argues that space under lockdown is a form of a functional alienated space produced and conditioned by non-transparent management

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, reports on the crisis evoke many tropes of horror cinema, reinforcing the role of pandemics in apocalyptic imagination. More tied to the zombie film subgenre, horror tropes re-emerge daily in the news and mainstream culture: the unexplainable disease, the silence or denial of the authorities, the political disarticulation, the buzz of the media, the government

Our bodies have become attuned to a new regime of sensory experiences that now mediate our participation in the public sphere. This commentary is about the day I started to quarantine my voice and to wear a mask. In it, I explore the mask as a media object, and as a border between the body and the commons, including the ethics of communicable transmission. It marks some provisional thoughts in the

Brief position statements on the theme of quarantine

Sanitary Crisis, Civilizational Crisis is the translation of Michel Maffesoli’s Crise sanitaire, crise civilisationnelle. This paper can be taken as his pronouncement on the civilizational crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic acutely reveals. Maffesoli’s text urges one to see beyond secondary causes or dramatic representations of the pandemic as a sanitary crisis, and to consider the primary, and tragic

Introduction to Spaces and Cultures of Quarantine. This special issue assembles a set of short interventions selected by internal blind review from submissions in response to a call for papers. The contributors document the first phase of the pandemic from February to May 2020, reflect on and respond to the first few months of the global spread of COVID-19, its arrival in communities and its personal

Even in the twenty-first century, pandemics lead to a particular kind of spatial organization, such as quarantine. The outbreak of the contamination era re-justifies the medicalization of spaces. Throughout history, there have been several attempts to design spaces for contagious diseases and pandemic situations all over the world—quarantine islands, lazarettos, and healthcare architecture. In the

This position statement elaborates on academic southernness, arguing its endemic quarantined position in Western and Northern academia. Drawing from the author’s personal experiences, this piece creates a critical dialogue with bell hook’s “choosing the margin as a space of radical openness” (2000), building the notion of academic southernness. Academic southernness is conceived summing Bhan’s notion

This is an article about quarantine and the paradox of propinquity. There is a common assumption in sociology that people who interact and are in close physical contact develop social relationships. It is also believed that proximity and the socius of being with others allows for the coordination of activities and construction of society. During the COVID-19 lockdown, social distance measures made

This 40-day diary tracks the ordinary effects of self-isolation and quarantine on a small island off the British Columbia coast. Drawing on reflections on the emotional and embodied dimensions of self-isolation, and on observations of the effects of physical distancing in public spaces, the writing paints a picture of COVID-19 as atmospheric dis-ease. Whereas disease is sickness and disorder, dis-ease

For one who is alone in a country where he or she has newly arrived, a quarantine is nothing but an incarceration that can barely be tolerated without having moments of mental breakdown. Although, this imposed isolation has the prospect of redemption at its end, the infinite scope of time during which that current situation will last is indeed problematic. Being in quarantine is a distinct experience

This article aims to explore whether or not digital space assumes the role of the spatial urban grid when movement of people is restricted under quarantine. The era of Web 2.0 and the increasingly easy access to mobile devices and the internet has created alternative virtual space for urban socio-spatial interactions. The article addresses these concepts in three parts. First, it adapts a theoretical

This article reflects on the connections between space, social movements, and urban memory by analyzing the effects of quarantine on the massive Chilean anti-neoliberal movement. It explores two aspects of the quarantine that have unsettled and challenged the spatial dimension of collective action: restrictions on transit through the city and the imposition of hygienic measures on infrastructure and

In this essay, I describe two logics of space that are operative in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Quarantine partitioning is unavoidable and widespread. As a mode of governing, it presents a logic of space understood through its divisibility, making this logic seem like a given. Using the topological concept of a sphere eversion, I describe an alternative way of understanding spaces of quarantine

The spread of the COVID-19 has generated a global rupture of routines and everyday life. The situation for informal settlements is exceptionally delicate due to their socio-economic conditions and the restrictions imposed by the quarantine to contain the virus. In this brief piece, we present our reflections about the quarantine in relation to urban informality. Most of our discussion is centered on

The paradigmatic turn into network society has radically transformed the capacity to situate ourselves into geographical extension and communities. While the view from above has historically represented privileged vantage points reserved for elites, the popularization of mobile digital devices and the general technological acceleration have disclosed new elevated standpoints to the masses, such as

Physical spaces are a critical component for a sound human education, the true mission of universities. History has demonstrated that the most relevant paradigms have been generated under two essen...

Much has been written about the neoliberal aestheticization of cities and its role in fostering consumption not just in, but also of, urban space. However, at a time when the pursuit of aesthetic e...

Communities living in Latin American slums present more vulnerability of diseases, high rates of infant mortality, and low life expectancy, generally as a result of the high levels of soil contamin...

In the Information Age, it is becoming crucial to understand the socio-technological factors and their possible outcomes so as to fulfill the upcoming spatial needs of the society. Thus, it is aime...

Homeless people were a new sight in the post-1989 Czech Republic, as the previous regime effectively criminalized homelessness. Thus, in the 1990s, the new visibility of homeless people was a shock...

With the supposition that architectural discourse has an interdisciplinary nature, this study aims to display the way literary fiction borrows several themes from architectural discourse in order t...

Above – Degrees of Elevation

This article engages with the spatial turn in the analyses of and activism against political violence. It does so through an ethnography of memory activism around an arson attack in Turkey, which took place in 1993 in the central-eastern city of Sivas before live TV cameras and thousands of onlookers, including law enforcement officers. The attack killed 33 guests of a culture festival organized by

In a prior paper (Suartika, Zerby, & Cuthbert, 2018), cultural space and its social meaning were examined in detail. While the three main gateways into culture were analyzed, the actual processes t...

During migration, whether due to war, political conflict, or poverty, immigrants of turmoil carry their limited personal belongings, family items, and supportive objects in their luggage, bags, and...

This paper is part of a wider research project on Paradoxical Spaces: Encountering the Other in Public Space that explores how cultural difference is practiced and negotiated in different public sp...

This paper offers a critical analysis of how urban placemaking as a top-down or bottom-up action, involving organizational intervention or facilitation, is typified by problematic angles of approac...

The arrival of the digital computer demanded a new spatial logic for performing arts ticketing. As late-20th-century box offices updated equipment, managers imagined a ticketing space that was open...

Contemporary interventions in historical Mahalleh and the design of new settlements in Iran rely on Western micro-urbanism patterns such as urban villages and new urbanism. Although the urban lifes...

In this paper, we develop the concept of home, presenting an example of Vietnamese entrepreneurs running their business in Poland. This subject is peculiar to the perspective of immigrants, who hav...

Technological advances have enormously increased surveillance techniques in the last three decades. In this article, we scrutinize the re-instatement of bekci, the traditional night watchmen patrol...

In this paper, a new approach for evaluating the impacts of identity and collective memory (CM) on social resilience will be presented. The approach is applied in Bam city, located in Iran, which s...

This paper offers a theoretical investigation about the notion of “skills“ within a geographical approach. For spatial practices, the challenge is probably less about understanding what individuals...

My argument follows geographer Gunnar Olsson when he asks, “What is geography if it is not the drawing and interpreting of a line? And what is the drawing of a line if it is not also the creation of new objects?” Using Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 novel Mason & Dixon (MD), about the drawing of the Mason-Dixon line, I explore how the mapmaker’s productive power is never merely reflective, but generative too