ABSTRACT

Alternative urban spaces across civic, private, and public spheres emerge in response to the great challenges that urban actors are currently confronted with. Labour markets are changing rapidly, the availability of affordable housing is under intensifying pressure, and public spaces have become battlegrounds of urban politics.

This edited collection brings together contributors in order to spark an international dialogue about the production of alternative urban spaces through a threefold exploration of alternative spaces of work, dwelling, and public life. Seeking out and examining existing alternative urban spaces, the authors identify the elements that provide opportunities to create radically different futures for the world’s urban spaces. This volume is the culmination of an international search for alternative practices to dominant modes of capitalist urbanisation, bringing together interdisciplinary, empirically grounded chapters from hot spots in disparate cities around the world.

Offering a multidisciplinary perspective, The Production of Alternative Urban Spaces will be of great interest to academics working across the fields of urban sociology, human geography, anthropology, political science, and urban planning. It will also be indispensable to any postgraduate students engaged in urban and regional studies.

part 1|2 pages

Alternative urban spaces of work, exchange, and consumption

chapter 2|18 pages

The production of rurbal space

23Alternative food provisioning in Denmark

chapter 3|17 pages

Framing alternative urban spaces in unstable contexts

A view from Beirut

chapter 4|15 pages

New workspaces in Milan and Berlin

Coworking spaces between defensive strategies and transformative potential

chapter 5|20 pages

Deus ex machina

Makerspaces in Milan and their transformative potential

part 2|2 pages

Alternative urban spaces of dwelling

chapter 6|18 pages

Producing refugee spaces

95Disruptive spatial practice and the everyday in Cairo

chapter 8|23 pages

The production of slums

Old Fadama as an alternative space of urban dwelling

chapter 9|16 pages

In-between the planned grid

Kothi sexuality, domesticity, and urban interstitiality in Chandigarh, India

part 3|2 pages

Alternative urban spaces of public life

chapter 10|18 pages

Reclaiming democratic (public) spaces through music

171The case of Viaduto Santa Tereza in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

chapter 11|21 pages

Alternative spaces emerging from the Gezi protests

From resistance to alternatives

chapter 12|17 pages

Citizen-led micro-regeneration

Case studies of civic crowdfunding in London and Milan