ABSTRACT
What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics?
City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions, and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They explore the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), Researchers for Fair Policing (New York), Urban Movement Congress (Poland), urban activism (Berlin), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope and protests against Academic Ball in Vienna (Austria).
By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |15 pages
Introduction
chapter 1|13 pages
Shrinking Democracy and Urban Resistance
part 1|50 pages
Mobilizing
chapter 3|14 pages
San Francisco’s Tech-Led Gentrification
chapter 5|11 pages
Urban Resistance and its Expression in Public Space
part 2|52 pages
Reclaiming
chapter 6|14 pages
Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong
chapter 7|11 pages
Occupy Gezi Park
chapter 8|12 pages
The Right to the Sidewalk
chapter 9|13 pages
Leveling the Playfield
part 3|51 pages
Negotiating
chapter 10|12 pages
Athens’ Syntagma Square Reloaded
chapter 12|11 pages
Shifting Struggles over Public Space and Public Goods in Berlin
part 4|57 pages
Contesting
chapter 14|13 pages
Operation 1DMX and the Mexico City Commune
chapter 15|13 pages
Public Space in a Parallel Universe
chapter 16|15 pages
Miyashita Park, Tokyo
chapter 17|14 pages
Worlded Resistance as “Alter” Politics
part |13 pages
Conclusions