#capitalism – Urban Issues

Psychotic Spaces: Condo Commercials

June 9, 2020October 17, 2020Posted in ENG, Thinking Out LoudTagged #architecture, #branded housing, #building boom, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #hostile architecture, #housing, #London, #neoliberal urban space, #right to the city, #Turkey, #urban development, #urbanism, #İstanbul, CommodityLeave a comment

Psychosis can bluntly be defined as a condition of losing touch with reality.

New condo commercials present truly psychotic spaces, spaces with no connection with reality.

One recent example is the commercial for Redrow development in London. The commercial was pulled after widespread criticism (Telegraph). The scenes from the commercial are remarkable regarding describing the city as a distant reality and the protagonist as a winner (we are not sure what he won, but he says ‘I did this’ at the end).

Another example is the commercial for Quasar Istanbul which is a luxury housing development in Istanbul. The promotional film shows various images, like gardens, jewellery, women posing in weird poses, but we don’t see the houses. That’s a bit odd regarding this is an advertisement to sell houses, or is it? It is a like a thriller/horror movie trailer and a quite a long one. Just to save you, the real deal starts after 00:52.

The two commercials show us examples of psychotic spaces framed in such advertisements: spaces away from reality, distant from everyday life and wrapped with superpowers and some illusions.

Both commercials have a feeling of walking into one’s delusions …

If these are just imaginary thought exercises or thriller movies, it would probably be fine. But, there are tools to reproduce our cities, and not in a very pleasant way. I don’t know you, the reader, but this is not the city I would like to live in.

Maybe, just maybe, it is time to come back to reality.

Divided Cities: Old and New

November 9, 2019October 17, 2020Posted in ENG, Thinking Out Loud, Urban IssuesTagged #architecture, #branded housing, #capitalism, #city, #housing, #London, #neoliberal urban space, #neoliberalism, #NewYork, #public space, #right to the city, #segregation, #urban, #urban space, cities, exclusionLeave a comment

Guardian Cities recently released a documentary series called Divided Cities.

As our world grows more polarised, Divided Cities goes beyond Trump and Brexit to tell the story of five cities that reflect big global divisions in surprising and troubling ways.

The series provides a broader perspective on being divided in contemporary times. While it includes a classic example for a divided city through the case of Nicosia – “the UN-patrolled barricade that cleaves the island of Cyprus into a mostly Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north”, it also expands it through the case of Memphis – “One of the worst of the country’s so-called “food deserts” is in Memphis, Tennessee, where many neighbourhoods lack what seems a basic right in richer neighbourhoods – a supermarket.”

Although I agree with the Guardian editors that divisions, segregation and exclusion in our cities are rampant, divided cities is hardly a new concept. Cities have been perhaps divided since they have been first founded. Miletos, Jerico, Ur, … they have all produced and reproduced various divisions, segregations and exclusions within.

For our contemporary cities, being spatially divided is perhaps another embodiment of divisions such as class or race. Although in contemporary cities official racial segregation has not been like the case as it was in South Africa and redlining in the US, it continues in more indirect, or perhaps insidious, ways. Segregation by class, on the other hand, is normalised, accepted and happening full-fledged.

This normalised way of segregation and exclusion creates everyday discrimination against working classes. It becomes visible incident by incident when it reaches a truly outrageous stage. We have seen this in the case of a segregated playground where children living in social housing were not allowed to use the playground in a common area of residential development in London. Another example was the poor door incident, when the poor door practice – providing separate entrances for ‘market’ and ‘affordable’ housing residents in the same building – hit the headlines, it created such a reaction. However, these incidental reactions are hardly providing solutions for the main problem. Although these outrageous attempts might be taken under control, as it happened in London after the segregated playground incident, overall class-based segregation is normalised and accepted in contemporary cities. Otherwise, it would not be possible to displace hundreds of social housing residents to build more condos and so-called luxury housing developments in cities like London and Manchester.

Perhaps the solution lays behind to challenge the common-sense of our times that for the many it is good enough to live in good enough conditions and places, while the few are entitled to live in privileged places.

(Image Credit: The Guardian | Matt from London/Flickr)

How Utopia Became a Real Estate Leaflet?

December 17, 2017October 17, 2020Posted in ENG, Thinking Out LoudTagged #branded housing, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #discourse, #housing, #inequality, #media, #neoliberal urban space, #right to the city, #urban development, #urban spaceLeave a comment

When it comes to gated communities, recurrences of similar everyday life images and spatial representations in mass media form a discourse of the future everyday life. It depicts an ideal living environment that aligns neoliberalization with an idealization of private urban services, commodified forms of housing production, enclave living and exclusiveness, as well as the glorification of consumerism. This aligns with neoliberalism’s “pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world” since the 1970s (Harvey, 2007, p. 3).

Understanding the role of this discourse in the imagining and producing of future everyday life in cities is critical for the production of urban space in the future and for the role of utopian thinking. In this respect, a critical investigation of the representation of future everyday life in housing developments would provide some insight on these issues. This particular case study focuses on mass media representations of the branded housing projects developed in Istanbul, which provide some clues.

To read the full short article on Public Seminar, click here.

Another Embodiment of Housing Crisis: Co-living Spaces

November 15, 2017Posted in Urban IssuesTagged #architecture, #branded housing, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #housing, #inequality, #London, #neoliberal urban space, #New York, #urban development, Commodity, everyday life, home, ProjectsLeave a comment

Helen Lock wrote for CityMetric on recent trend of co-living and its discontents.

Co-living buildings provide small apartments or rooms as well as communal spaces such as a library, restaurant, or co-working space. Freelancers or entrepreneurs can get work done, then sign off and mingle with people doing the same thing in the evening.

But my knowledge of housing is what I’ve learnt from my own expensive, mould-laden, experiences of renting, and I was initially quite taken with the idea. I am, after all, a target demographic for the model: freelance, young, jaded by private renting and unlikely to ever own my home.

Instead of worrying about those concerns, I could embrace being, “mobile” and “experience-led” along with lots of other people in the same situation that is, if I were to put all my trust in the developers I’ve spoken to. “People don’t care about ownership, nowadays,” I’ve been told several times by people, who, by nature of their very profession, own a lot of property. (CityMetric)

The article points out important issues regarding this trens such as its connections with precarious work and housing problems young, urban, professionals are facing.

While there are some positives in the model, such as the social aspect, it’s hard to shake the feeling that these options represent a sticking plaster fix to two converging problems: precarious work and not enough decent, spacious, affordable places to live.

Co-living spaces also benefit, in my opinion, from the current trend of seeing anything associated with words like “start-up” and “tech” as inherently exciting and good – and therefore not requiring much scrutiny. Housing experts say that building standards in such spaces are often lower than normal. (CityMetric)

It shows a different version of commodification of urban space by packaging various everyday experiences in these establishments as well as providing very limited living spaces with higher costs.

The article provides some insights about these issues, see the article for details here.

Documentary: Paris MegaCities ShortDocs Citizen Film Festival

July 27, 2017March 16, 2018Posted in Urban IssuesTagged #architecture, #art, #branded housing, #building boom, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #condo, #daily life, #documentary, #housing, #inequality, #neoliberal urban space, #Paris, #segregation, #urban development, #urban space, megacitiesLeave a comment

Short Documentaries filmed by Citizens to Show Existing Solutions and Inspire New Initiatives?

Megacities of the world present lots of opportunities, but are also full of challenges.

So we need your help to bring to light, through the lense of your documentary, local inspiring solutions that have been implemented by a person or a community, near your home that have met those challenges head on. Through your story you could potentially change the lives of a friend, a neighbor, a family in another Megacity.

Your short documentary will change the world. (megacities-shortdocs.org)

The World’s Climate in 2100 – An Interactive Map

July 25, 2017November 23, 2019Posted in Urban IssuesTagged #capitalism, #cities, #city, #climatecentral, #climatechange, #daily life, #neoliberal urban spaceLeave a comment

To illustrate just how hot cities’ future could be and the choices they face, Climate Central created the interactive above in partnership with the World Meteorological Organization. It shows how the average summer high in the future in each of these cities compares to other cities of today. In some cases, the shift puts them in a completely new temperature zone. (climatecentral.org)

Shifting Cities is an interactive map which illustrates possible temperature changes in cities in 2100 if the world fails to reduce carbon emissions. The map also includes temperature changes if “moderate emissions cuts” are achieved. (planetizen)

Click here for the interactive map to search your city and more.

Commodifying Urban Space: The Clash of Promises and Everyday Life

May 26, 2017Posted in TalksTagged #architecture, #branded housing, #building boom, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #condo, #daily life, #housing, #inequality, #neoliberal urban space, #public space, #right to the city, #segregation, #Turkey, #urban development, #urban planning, #urban space, #İstanbul, Commodity1 Comment

Cities have been experiencing neoliberal urbanisation processes since the 1970s globally and with a greater pace since the early 2000s. As part of these, housing enclaves –segregated and under-controlled living areas- have been expanding with different versions across the countries. Via this practice, the commodification of urban space has been deepening while also transforming the everyday life of the citizens. The talk focuses on the case of branded housing projects in Istanbul, Turkey as a particular version of housing enclaves and discusses their recent emergence in this locality regarding the projects’ development processes, discursive formation and spatial practices.

The talk was given as part of Open Talk Series of the Space+Place+Society Research Network at Heriot-Watt University (3 May 2017).

…none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography…

November 3, 2016October 17, 2020Posted in QuotesTagged #architecture, #art, #authoritarianism, #branded housing, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #daily life, #geography, #hostile architecture, #neoliberal urban space, #public space, #right to the city, #urban development, #urban spaceLeave a comment

Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings. -Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism

Advertisement-free Cities

September 13, 2016July 29, 2020Posted in Urban IssuesTagged #architecture, #art, #capitalism, #cats, #cities, #city, #commodification, #daily life, #London, #neoliberal urban space, #photography, #public art, #public space, #right to the city, #street art, #urban space, Artworks, CommodityLeave a comment

What if we strip our towns from outdoor advertisements which dominate public spaces for quite some time?

CATS – the Citizens Advertising Takeover Service did this for you in London and the result is marvellous.

It was funded via Kickstarter by almost 700 people who pledged over 23k GBP to get the project up and running, and as organizer James Turner noted in a blog, “This isn’t a clever marketing stunt. The people behind it are volunteers. We want to inspire people to think differently about the world and realize they have the power to change it.” (boredpanda)

Check it out:

Image Credit: boredpanda

The result shows how much our public space is occupied by advertisements, and how it is commodified silently. It also shows potentials to use these spaces for public art (or for other good causes like feline world domination) instead of increasing consumption.

Thanks CATS for making a point with our feline friends 🙂

A Questionable Robin Hood Story: Branded Housing Projects and Public-led Commodification of Urban Space

July 15, 2016May 7, 2020Posted in ENG, Thinking Out LoudTagged #architecture, #branded housing, #building boom, #capitalism, #cities, #city, #commodification, #condo, #daily life, #hostile architecture, #housing, #inequality, #mega projects, #neoliberal urban space, #public space, #right to the city, #segregation, #Turkey, #urban development, #urban space, #urbanism, #İstanbul, Commodity1 Comment

Abstract

Inequalities in urban space have been on the rise since the 1970s with global neoliberal restructuring processes. This rise in inequality fosters segregation in urban space which has become observable through gated enclaves. Housing enclaves became a way of urban space production in many countries. Aligning with this global trend, since the early 2000s, following the 2001 economic crisis, a new version of housing enclaves has been emerging in Turkey- branded housing projects. The projects are produced under certain brands as urban spatial commodities by private developers or public private partnerships, and widely use various types of advertising like any other commodity on the market. The role of state institutions in the production of this commodified and marketed form of housing provision is illustrative of the practices of the neoliberal state. This article[1] discusses branded housing projects in relation to the role of the developing neoliberal state in Turkey, firstly by giving an overview of the neoliberal urbanisation processes which Turkey has been going through; secondly by discussing the main characteristics of the projects; and thirdly by focusing on the role of public institutions in the production of such places, and criticizing the role of revenue-sharing model. The article thus questions the role of the neoliberal state in contemporary commodification of urban space in Turkey.

For full article on Research Turkey, click here

Serin B. (July, 2016), “A Questionable Robin Hood Story: Branded Housing Projects and Public-led Commodification of Urban Space ”, Vol. V, Issue 7, pp.06 – 23, Centre for Policy and Research on Turkey (ResearchTurkey), London, Research Turkey. (http://researchturkey.org/?p=12324)