ABSTRACT

Through an exploration of emancipation in recent processes of capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice rather than an abstract professional field organized by institutions, politicians and movements.

Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and circumstances in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory practices relate with public space under ‘post-political conditions’? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopias are in crisis, we argue that productive emancipatory claims already exist in the lived space of everyday life rather than in the expectation of urban revolution and future progress.

 

 

part |19 pages

Introduction

part I|61 pages

Everyday Emancipation. Beyond Utopia, Law and Institutions

chapter 2|15 pages

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Utopian Dialectics of Planetary Urbanization

chapter 3|16 pages

Applying a Relational Approach to Political Difference

Strategies of Particularization and Universalization in Contesting Urban Development

chapter 4|15 pages

How to Reclaim Mafia-Controlled Territory?

An Emancipatory Experience in Southern Italy

chapter 5|13 pages

Improvising an Urban Commons of the Streets

Emancipation-From, Emancipation-To and Co-Emancipation

part II|58 pages

Practical Emancipation. On Places, Projects and Events

chapter 6|14 pages

Rupturing, Accreting and Bridging

Everyday Insurgencies and Emancipatory City-Making in East Asia

chapter 7|14 pages

Post-Political Development and Emancipation

Urban Participatory Projects in Helsinki

chapter 8|14 pages

Urban Events Under the Post-Political Condition

(Im)Possibilities for Emancipation in a Small-Scale City of Switzerland

chapter 9|14 pages

Emancipatory Research in the Arts

Shift the City—the Temporary Lab of Non | Permanent Space

part III|66 pages

Critical Emancipation. On Romanticisms, Agonism and Liberation

chapter 10|15 pages

Alternative Participatory Planning Practices in the Global South

Learning From Co-Production Processes in Informal Communities

chapter 11|15 pages

Revitalizing the Yeldeğirmeni Neighbourhood in Istanbul

Towards an Emancipatory Urban Design in the Landscapes of Neoliberal Urbanism

chapter 12|16 pages

Conflict vs. Consensus

An Emancipatory Understanding of Planning in a Pluralist Society

chapter 13|18 pages

Public Space Activism in Unstable Contexts

Emancipation From Beirut’s Postmemory

part IV|59 pages

Active Emancipation. On Influence, Recovery and Hybrid Ownership

chapter 14|16 pages

‘The City Decides!’

Political Standstill and Social Movements in Post-Industrial Naples

chapter 15|14 pages

Emancipatory Practices of Self-Organized Workers in the Context of Neoliberal Policies

IMPA, the Case of a ‘Recovered Factory’ in Buenos Aires

chapter 16|12 pages

Questioning Urban Commons

Challenges and Potentials in the Post-Democratic Era

chapter 17|15 pages

Hybridizing ‘Ownership’ of Public Space

Framings of Urban Emancipation in Crisis-Ridden Thessaloniki

part |14 pages

Conclusion

chapter 18|12 pages

Public Space Unbound

Emancipatory Praxis and Lived Space