Beyond Urban Transformation. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life by Urban Ethnography Lab

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life

Beyond Urban Transformation

Beyond Urban Transformation. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life Editors and Project Leaders KOSMOS Workshop 2018, Berlin: Carolin Genz, Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe Urban Ethnography Lab, Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin

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A workshop dedicated to the discussion of ethnographic, architectural, and artistic research on the city as both a space of eviction, displacement, dispossession, resistance, division, gentrification, friction, tension, lawfare, as well as a space for of productive conflict, mobilization, commoning, encounter, community development, creativity, performance, interventionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; toward alternative futures.

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Editorial Urban space is one of the most vibrant interdisciplinary research fields in the 21st century. How and in what kind of society we want to live is negotiated and decided in cities. For us, as urban dwellers, ethnographers, geographers, sociologists, artists, urban planners and dsigners, research for the future of our cities should navigate multiple scales of analysis and be paired with a committed study of various actors` lived experiences of urban changes at different scales.

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How can we develop interdisciplinary approaches to bridge theoretical concepts with research methods that address the complexity of urban research issues today? What concepts of “urban transformation” help us look beyond and prioritize practice instead of grand theory by engaging with everyday life and needs of urban dwellers? To address these urgent questions, we orga nized this workshop.

The workshop brought together senior and junior scholars from urban anthropology, human geography, socio logy, urban planning and design to collaborate interdisciplinary on researching how urban transformation can be studied ethnographically from the perspective of urban everyday practice along the topics of urban commons and resilience. The KOSMOS Workshop “Beyond Urban Transformation. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life” was funded by the Excellence Initiative by Humboldt University of Berlin, hosted at Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies in Berlin in September 2018, and was organized by the Urban Ethnography Lab in cooperation with Harvard University and University of Toronto. Together with the participants, we have spent four intense and inspiring days in Berlin. A brief overview of activities, insights and outcomes can be found – read and viewed – on the following pages. – Carolin Genz & Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe Urban Ethnography Lab

Content Editorial iv Content

Beyond Urban Transformation Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life

I Urban Transformation

II Methodological Approach 14 III Urban Commons 30 Prospects 36 IV Background Information 38 Urban Ethnography Lab 40 KOSMOS Program

International Cooperation

List of Participants 43 Bibliography 46 Imprint 47

BEYON URBAN TRANSFORMAUrban resilience, particularly among TION Interdisciplinary Perspectives grassroots movements, occurs with on Urban Everyday Life Urban space is one of the central research fields of urban anthropology, which understands cities as social sites where cultural and political developments are initiated and condensed. Ne vertheless, urban anthropology draws on other disciplines such as historical and social sciences, architecture, geography, city planning, urban design and arts. These disciplines are concerned with processes of urban transformation – engaging different perspectives, mindsets, and theoretical frameworks. It is imperative to collaborate with people from different disciplines in order to locate gaps in our own urban research perspectives, and to develop new modes of transdisciplinary discourse.

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Urban transformation focuses primarily on the process of gentrification, urban renewal, neoliberalization of the city, and housing (Smith 1996, Brenner 2002, Larsen 2016). Understanding these processes requires on-the-ground research on everyday struggles and resi lience of urban actors who are constantly adapting to existing and emergent twenty-first century challenges, such as the role and changing patterns of public space, and new spatial practices in the rise of digitalization (Harvey 2012, Habermas 1989, Miller et al. 2016, and Lim 2002). Under the broad theme of urban transformation, the workshop focused on the two subthemes of urban resilience and urban commons. These were explored through a detailed process of sharing current research practice. We focused on methodological approaches that generate “thick data” (as opposed to big data) about the social and spatial practice of the urban everyday life.

everyday struggles, not only for the right to the city (Lefebvre 1968), but for the right to have rights in the first place (Arendt 1955). In those struggles the ‘part who have no part’ (Rancière 2002), those who, in a particular urban social arrangement, are thought to have less than equal claims than others, speak up and become visible. This sets in motion processes of recognition and legitimization that challenge the status quo and the existing hierarchical orderings in cities. These disturbances are breaches in the cultural and discursive system, and open opportunities for a broad, spontaneous, contingent reconfiguration of the existing urban order. Urban commons as a term typically denotes resources used, shared and managed by communities. The concept emphasizes self-determination, self-organization of the social and physical environment. Both the rise in commonly owned spaces and services in democratically governed areas, as well as the notion of urban commons as a product of resilience, raise hopes for the reclamation of cities for the public good. The urban commons need to be an inclusive arena for productive contest of various actors and their practices (Mouffe 2013). It is therefore that disciplines like anthropology should obtain the “militant middle ground” and concern themself with “practice rather than with grand theory” (Herzfeld 2001).

Workshop Questions Urban Space and Transformation How do theoretical models of urban transformation from various disciplines influence our disciplinary and interdisciplinary research methodologies and vice versa? How can we develop interdisciplinary approaches to bridge theoretical concepts with research methods in order to address more comprehensively the complexity of research issues today? What concepts of “urban transformation” help us to look beyond and find relevance in practice instead of grand theory by engaging with urban everyday life and current and future needs of urban citizens?

Urban Commons What do we understand as “the commons”, who governs them, what are long-term strategies and short-term tactics as part of the struggle over common space? How can we study spatial practices of contest in physical space, including the use of digital means? How can a productive contest over the commons benefit inclusive transformation processes and empower communities?

Urban Resilience In increasingly mobile, interconnected, and fast-paced cities, how do everyday practices of citizens contribute to collective resilience, that is, including otherwise underrepresented groups? How can we challenge the status quo and existing social and institutional hierarchies in cities in order to foster processes of legitimizing the right to the city for the greatest number of city users?

We received over 300 applications for the KOSMOS Workshop. The large number of excellent applications exceeded our expectations by far. It was, therefore, an extremely difficult task to choose from the many outstanding young scholars and professionals who have applied. We started our workshop with Pecha Kucha presentations from our admitted participants coming from Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Germany, Israel, Mexico, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey UK, Ukraine, and USA. Through almost 25 different perspectives across various disciplines – including geography, architecture, visual communication, anthropology, sociology, and more – we discovered common interests: 4

These topics can be looked at under the broad theme of urban transformation, questions of knowledge production, and local ways of knowing and doing. Methodological explorations in engaged ethnography connect the participants and workshop contributors and led us to the following issues: What are new ways of mapping and accessible designs and genres, such as mind maps, collages, collective mapping, sketching? How can we push these methods forward and toward inter- and transdisciplinarity? What are embodied experiences of the city and how can we study communities, cities and everyday practices through our senses? What lies beyond vision, smell, hearing, taste, or touch?

Political Mobilization (class warfare, political violence, resistance, etc.); Commons (physical and spatial division, creating spaces of encounter, participatory design, green urban spaces, etc.); Housing Practices (self-construction, squatting, etc.);

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Demographic Flux (revitalization, displacement, gentrification, eviction and dispossession, etc.); Tactics and Strategies (interventions, occupation, architectural play, social and artistic performance, digital possibilities, counter-narratives, etc.)

1 A list of all participants can be found on pages 43–45.

01 Pecha Kucha presentations by the participants

Participants

I Urban Transformation

KEYNOTE

The city as promissory assemblage or: How to think and study the non-/transformative Concepts in urban studies, in context of the above statement, focus on different kinds of transformations that have taken place throughout history, how these transformations have come about, and what urban morphologies result from these transformations. From the perspective of everyday routines, stability, dependability, and reliability are indispensable for secure ways of living and experiencing the city. This tension of the urban as non-/transformative is articulated by manifold promises made in and by the city.

02 Alexa Färber during her keynote

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In this lecture, Prof. Alexa Färber proposed to think this non-/transformative character of the urban together with the notion of promissory assemblage. An understanding of the city as promissory assemblage allows us to study how different urban scales of are interrelated, and enables us to grapple the contradictory character of concepts such as ‘commons’ and ‘urban resilience’. The remaining question is: How do we meet situations where the non-/transformative is an issue of everyday concern in the city?

Prof. Dr. Alexa Färber »Cities are ever-changing arrangements of human and nonhuman actors, of ideas and their realizations, of lived, experienced and represented urban environments.«

Alexa Färber is a European Ethnologist and Isla mic Studies scholar. Her research interests include the combination of urban anthropological issues and actor-network theory, as well as the development of a concept of ‘tangibility of the city.’ She was main investigator for the research initiative ‘Low-budget-urbanity: On the Transformation of the Urban in Times of Austerity’ and editorial member of several journals in Cultural Studies. Since September 2018, she is Professor for ‘Historical Dimensioning of Everyday Cultures’ at the Institute of European Ethnology at the University of Vienna in Austria. For more information on her work and research please visit: https://euroethnologie.univie.ac.at/ institut/personal/professorinnen/alexa-faerber/

LECTURE

Parts and traps in participatory urbanism

In the first part, based on Ranciere’s distinction between the parts of a whole and the part with no part, Prof. Farías discussed how participation in infrastructural design takes place in a smart city project in Munich. He proposed to adapt Ranciere’s distinction between citizens and demos to study user and non-user participation, paying special attention to the political figure enacted by the non-user (Stengers 2005) who is capable of questioning what seems obvious, slowing down decision

making and opening up alternatives. In the second part, he problematizes current infrastructures of participation – including those developing experimental methods for visibilization and empowerment of people’s concerns, knowledges and valuation regimes – for their lack of attention to technical experts and their deficitary understandings of publics and participation. Continuing the analysis of the example project, he presented some tropes and traps set for luring public administration officials and experts into democratic participatory events. Is power increasingly logistic? Is technical democratization the answer? Should we stick to the formula ‘urban movements of the world, unite’? Shouldn’t they rather ‘specify’ or ‘design’? Under which conditions is it worth entering into collaborations with governmental actors, and when is it legitimate to betray them?

03 Ignacio Farías on participatory urbanism

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Ignacio Farías departs from two observations concerning current transformations in urban politics. The first one is that one of the most significant technological challenges for contemporary collectives lies in the design, maintenance and integration of urban infrastructures. If politics is understood as the making of decisions that are collectively binding, then infrastructures are thoroughly political not only because they allow for new forms of collective bonds and ways of life to emerge, but also because they might be impeding or blocking the existence of others. The second observation is that the complexity of infrastructural arrangements of urban life makes conventional understandings of participation obsolete. Participation has become a site of experimentation in itself, which is tentatively reshaped through different forms of collaboration with and between heterogeneous publics. What is crucial to understand is that these infrastructural and participatory turns in urban politics cannot be studied independently. Rather, we need to understand where and how these developments empirically intersect and conceptually challenge each other.

Prof. Dr. Ignacio Farías »Participation is the moment and practice in which things that are otherwise taken for granted can be problematized.« 9

Ignacio Farías is Professor for Urban Anthropology at the Humboldt University of Berlin since April 2018. He researches contemporary infrastructural transformations of cities and the accompanying democratic challenges. In 2015, he was appointed to the Tenure Track Assistant Professorship for Participatory Technology Design at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University in Munich as sociologist and cultural anthropologist. Previously, he was Senior Researcher at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). For more information on his work and research please visit: https://www.euroethno.hu-berlin.de/de/ institut/personen/farias

LECTURE

Always transformation: Theorizing the dynamic city and challenges for ethnography of difference on the local level. Second, drawing on the idea of Community as Urban Practices, I reflect on how an understanding of settings of belonging as connected both to roots and routes provides frames of identification with impacts for forms of urban commoning. Finally, I pose some questions as to what this may mean for doing ethnographic work. What does neighbourhood still mean if cities are always in transformation? Does urban commoning presuppose ‘roots’, rootedness and stability, or does it fit with high levels of mobility and translocal lives? Where do we include social inequality in our thinking about urban commoning, and what does this mean for doing ethnography and picking ‘sites’ for fieldwork?

04 Talja Blokland presenting her work on community as urban practices

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The urban is inherently undergoing transformations. While urban studies may have searched for the city of stability and equilibrium, more and more scholars now focus on the dynamics of the urban. This means, however, that our understanding of the urban may conflict with everyday understandings of ‘place’ and ‘neighbourhood’ – this is particularly relevant to developing ideas about urban commons and communities of care. I explore two ideas in this presentation. First, drawing on ideas from Urban Theory, I ask how to think about the hierarchical order of urban society and its implicit rules and conventions on the neighborhood level, including the role of institutional agents – and the relevance of institutional ethnography as presented by Dorothy Smith. I combine this with ideas on what is usually referred to as ‘diversity’ (or the horizontal paradigm) and address its social organization

Prof. Dr. Talja Blokland ÂťAs cities expanded with tremendous speed and became the icons of vice, disintegration, anonymity and immorality, the fear that communities would disappear was an immediate result and was seen from the outset as connected with urban developmentÂŤ (2017: 16) Talja Blokland is Professor for Regional and Urban Sociology, Humboldt-University of Berlin. Her research interests include social theory, relational theory, urban sociology and social policy. Within urban research, her focus is on urban inequality and marginalization processes, placemaking, and neighborhood change and cohesion. For more information on her work and research please visit: https://www.sowi.hu-berlin.de/de/ lehrbereiche/stadtsoz/mitarbeiterinnen/copy_of_a-z/ talja-blokland

LECTURE

Paradigm shifts in global urban transformation: Upping sticks and going on? impacted actors. Charting my early research with the 1970s ‘self-help school of thoughts’ for the extreme poor urban communities in the then ‘Third World’ (which was enthusiastically promoted by the World Bank from Djakarta to Lima), to the recent areas of multicultural regene ration (like Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam), I would like to explore changing dynamics. As a way forward to tackle the emerging complex urban rapid transformation, I would like to refer to multidisciplinary work (including creative writing) at a few international old/new refugee camps in South Asian settings and introduce my current action-oriented research on urban protest movements and refugee crises.

05 Tasleem Shakur during his lecture

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In the past 30 years we have witnessed a proliferation of literature on trendy subjects such as ‘Globalisation’, ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Urban Changes’. Knowledge transfers in the name of ‘globalization’ (both in terms of reporting and research methods) continues to be from ‘West’ to ‘East’ with little evidence of reverse cultural experiences and lessons that would be more applicable in the contemporary global spaces and multicultural urban transformations. I attempted to illustrate how emerging cultures and spaces are continuously negotiated and contested with their adjacent (at times, heritage-historic) sites. I intend to highlight the socio-political and cultural transformation process over a period of time, mismatches between urban transformation and inappropriate research and policy approaches, and challenge conventional theories and concepts that continue to persist despite its non-currency with the

Prof. Dr. Tasleem Shakur

Tasleem Shakur is currently Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Edge Hill University, Lancashire UK Edge Hill University, Lancashire UK. He taught and researched on Architecture, Urban social anthropology and South Asian cultures at Oxford Brookes, University of Sheffield and at Soas, University of London. He is the founder Editor of Global Built Environment Review and South Asian Cultural Studies Journal. For more information on his work and research please visit: https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/geography/ staff/tasleem-shakur/

One of the main goals of the workshop was to share insights into current research practice and to develop collaborative and interdisciplinary models for research engagement. We invited the mapping artist and architect Diana Lucas-Drogan and the writer and researcher Sebastian Bührig in order to provide inspiration for our methodological questions:

Beyon Transformation CarolinUrban Genz & Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe

Which methodological concepts help us to think beyond our own disciplinary boundaries? What kinds of approaches are not simply connected to “terms” but focus on the didactic mediation? An example for this is the use of ethnographic, interdisciplinary or creative tools that capture the invisible or unspeakable dimensions of urban everyday. These and other questions enabled us to further our discussion on new approaches to urban ethnographic methods through creative enhancement in context with our very own practices of carrying out ethnographic research. Through a critical approach, we elaborated a narrative of rethinking “doing urban ethnographic research” to overcome boundaries of perception in the intersectional and wide field of urban studies.

As part of a skill-building approach, the workshop provided material for various methods of mapping and exercises (inside and outside the seminar room). This was supported through a “research booklet” for exercises conceptualized and assembled by us specifically for the purpose of providing an entry point to the complexities of the urban field and its transformative socio-spatial practi ces. We focused on two ethno-graphic research methods combined in transdisciplinary form: field note writing and mapping.

II Methodological Approach

SESSION MAPPING

06 Diana Lucas-Drogan presenting her work on counter mappings

Counter-Mappings in art and architecture

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Diana Lucas-Drogan is an architect and mapping artist (Berlin/Wien). In her work, she (re)draws and performs cultural codes in counter-mapping and reflects on methods of representing the research field. She follows the logic that the spaces we inhabit are defined and structured by power relations and rules. In this depen dency, our body, performances, and the way we navigate urban space are interlinked. She is part of the collective metroZones – Center for Urban Affairs and editor of the magazine Stadtaspekte.

During her presentation, Diana invited participants to think about the conceptualization of maps: construction, structure, representation, and authorship, but also questions around body and identity.

Her lecture touched upon concepts, scripts, image composition, and different media in regard to maps and map-making. Taking a closer look at exemplary works such as the projects from Iconoclasistas, Larissa Fassler and Mark Lombardi, the various codes and forms of display Diana encourages design thinking gave workshop participants an idea of the and shows examples of representing mul- amount of decisions that have been made tiple narratives of space and everyday during the process of map-making in the life through collective mapping. Working presented projects. Looking at maps in in the intersection of art and architec- their different manifestations – from paper ture, she claims that a critical mapping to performances and installations – she turn in architecture should be based on offered a genealogy of various media of quali tative research that enables visual maps and suggested to rethink the techand performative productions of map- niques of map production. making. That way, maps become critical For more information on her work and and sensitive tools for spatial research performances please visit: and analysis. lucasvandrogan.tumblr.com

MAPPING EXERCISE

Re-map your morning trip

07 Mappings of wayfinding by the participants

We started our methodological explorations into map-making as a research practice with a short exercise. In order to access the urban field and its embedded social and spatial practices of urban dwellers, the participants had to re-map their morning trip. The outcome showed a creative variety of thoughts, approaches and concepts.

SESSION WRITING

08 Sebastian Bührig giving insights from his research in the high-rise buildings of the “Komplex Leipziger Straße” in Berlin-Mitte

Tower block tales

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The researcher and author Sebastian Bührig loves taking walks. The city dweller’s reserve is, in his point of view, one of humanity’s greatest cultural achievements – the wonderful diversity of people can sometimes only be endured in the company of strangers. As a PhD candidate in Urban Design and Urban Sociology at HCU Hamburg, he works on possibilities of scientific and literary descriptions of urban phenomena. In his presentation, Sebastian Bührig presented a critique of housing blocks from his research at Leipziger Straße and shared examples of creative writing. Beyond the “dictatorship of lines” he is interested in the interfaces of communality and the interpersonal and in-between (such as buildings, people, city). Life in a highrise is anonymous. That’s the prejudice. The high houses from the outside seem upright in file. A strict grid puts their facade in order. We see the same shapes again and again. Residential tower blocks obscure the diversity of people, one might say. But if you rest your gaze on the facade, subtle differences emerge. The

human is in the detail. Large residential buildings enclose and organize thousands of living spaces. “‘Neighborhood’” is all the more exciting when many different people live in one place. Many people also have many interests. Interests connect people, but it is also the interests that divide them. My research on large residential buildings focuses on the interfaces of communality. It examines where and how various human living environments touch each other in dwelling. How are belonging to communities and differentiation from others expressed in the architecture of tall houses? At the edges of communality, one must be a wide-eyed listener in order to understand differences, contradictions, and common ground – how does one get to the points of contact of human togetherness? In what formats can stories of the side by side, above, below, against and together with each other be told? To follow the work of Sebastian Bührig please visit: www.buehrig.info

FIELDTRIP

Mapping Leipziger Straße Doing Urban Ethnographic Research Walking through the city, we aimed to capture its hidden symbolic logic, cultural, social and spatial codes in this exercise. What we capture is strongly influenced by our own attitudes, perceptions and how we attribute meaning: the way we are socialized influences how we sense the city and collect and produce urban ethnographic data. How can we uncover both the know ledge people already incorporate as well as their perceptions of the city? One approach to detect the blind spots and culturally meaningful spaces and places in an urban context is to engage tools that structure and materialize our own sensing and allow for creative ways of visualization. Together with the participants, we entered the urban field searching for things to wonder about: for surprises and for possibilities of promising observations. The workshop participants were asked to go outside, to sense the city and to map and write what they experience and ima gine in urban space. They were asked to focus on their perceptions and use their bodies as research tool through which they capture spatial practices and document acts of commoning or resilience. Urban ethnographic data needs to be written and visualized for us to be able to uncover spatial knowledge and share it with others. One can write dense and reflective field notes, following the example

of Geertz’ “Thick Description” (1973). For some spatial experiences and to convey our individual perceptions, however, words might not be sufficient. Current Urban Ethnography offers a variety of possibilities and tools to capture a set of data by writing field notes, recording, or mapping. The data we gathered became “thick” through its documentation, interpretation and representation by interlacing three methods: Mapping as drawing spatial observations. Writing in the form of structured field notes and words to describe the scenes one was observing and drawing on a map. Narrating, that is, using language of ethnographic moments to explain the collected data.

The “research booklet” provided to participants can be useful for processual map-making and qualitative data collection. The booklet can be filled with urban ethnographic data. The booklet is tangible: one can see and touch the data through the material, which encourages the production of meaning through sensuous, haptic and empirical techniques. Therefore, the material, chosen for the booklet helps to capture the acquired urban data creatively and to achieve tangible visualization.

09 Impressions of the “research booklet” for mapping and writing exercises

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As part of the workshop, we wanted to initiate a collective experience of data gathering and map-making. By bringing together various interdisciplinary perspectives of over 20 observers and researchers who all attended to one specific field site, we aimed to achieve a “thicker” outcome and to widen angles of observation through a single, collective mapping of one part of “Leipziger Straße” in Berlin-Mitte.

DIANA LUCÍA MARIÑO PUENTES

The step, step, step, mapping This block has a lot of geometrical forms, If they were alive, They were tired of being a floor Step How do you know that they don’t feel our steps? Step What if, when you step on a broken part of the floor, It is, because it had its heart broken? Step, step, step And what if, when they have plants on the surface, It is because they are pregnant? Step They feel and hear our rhythm steps? Step, step, step All the people have different rhythms for walking, but rhythms. Step, STEP, StEaP, sssttteeeaaapppp, stp, They, all together, make the song of the floor, The song of the urban pilgrimage ¡Step, step, step! If you jump, they feel more? ¡¡¡Step!!!

How do they feel the dog steps? Step The bike rides? The girls walking in high heel shoes? The busy people? Those who always feels late? That girl can´t miss the last train? The people sleep on it? The people walk to think better? Step Does the grass feel different from the concrete floor? Step What if the people sweep the floor tickle it? ¡Step! What if when someone falls, It is, because the floor needs a hug? ssssttteeeppp When someone walks on the leaves, Do they feel that beautiful crach, crach, crach? Crach, step, crach, step, It is time to get back? Walking backwards is another way to forget.

They prefer sneakers or boots for being touched? Step —El Laboratorio de Lucía September 7th 2018, Berlin Leipizger Street 2:15 p.m.

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10 Impressions from our fieldtrip at the “Komplex Leipziger Straße” in Berlin–Mitte

»You have been told to go grubbing

in the library, thereby accumulating a mass of notes and liberal coating of grime. You have been told to choose problems wherever you can find musty stacks of records based on trivial schedules prepared by tired bureaucrats. This is called ›getting your hands dirty in real research.‹ Those who counsel you are wise and honorable; the reasons they offer are of great value. But one more thing is needful: first hand observation. Go and sit in the lounges of the luxury hotels and on the doorsteps of flophouses; sit on the Gold Coast settees and the slum shakedowns; sit in the Orchestra Hall and in the Star and Garter burlesque. In short, [ladies and] gentlemen, go get the seat of your pants dirty in real research.« — An unpublished 1920s quote by Robert E. Park, recorded by Howard Becker

11 Mappings by the participants of the workshop

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24 ÂŠ Map by Jose Roberto Lagunes Trejo

12 Collective Mapping with Diana Lucas-Drogan

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12 Collective Mapping with Diana Lucas-Drogan

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The third unit of our workshop was devoted to different scholarly and activist perspectives on the commons and commoning as both a process and a series of practices. The commons are populated by practices of claiming and reclaiming this shared space. Therefore, respective spaces can be identified by the continuous negotiation of these very practices in the form of resistance and resilience to power structures that aim at taking over or control the commons. Interestingly, while the commons are spaces that emerge from democratic efforts and as part of an emancipatory project (Stavrides), it is itself a spatial

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entity that underlies particular rules about decisionmaking and boundaries (Dellenbaugh-Losse). These rules should ensure and protect the space`s form and nature, but are always also exclusion ary in certain ways. Hence, fluidity and continuous contest over space and practices is characteristic for it. In the scope of the workshop, we could not go into depth when it came to resilience as a concept. Therefore, we have offered one example for socio-spatial resilience as a practice of commoning in the film ‘Rent Rebels,’ where it comes in the form of adaptation and creative tactics to cope with urban crises.

III Urban Commons

LECTURE

The production of common space ferences and encourage the participatory building of shared urban worlds. Drawing from examples related to the recent experiences of urban commoning in Mexican and Brazilian cities, this presentation will show that emerging common spaces may shape potentialities of different forms of social organization. It is through such experiences that autonomy as a political project may be reproblematized. Spaces of autonomy, thus, may be rethought not as “‘autonomous spaces’” but, rather as spaces of expanding commoning which potentially challenge the dominant “‘city of enclaves’”. What makes common space different from public space? What does it mean to claim the right to the city in the context of urban commoning? What is the role of urban communities in the definition of urban commons? What kind of power relations define and sustain urban commoning?

13 Stavros Stavrides on common spaces

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Experiences of spatial commoning in contemporary metropolises create forms of shared public life that overspill the boundaries of existing public spaces. Common space produced through practices of urban commoning may give form to processes of cooperation which encourage encounters and offer opportunities of creative communication. If enclave spatiality corresponds to rules that enclose and corrupt commoning, then threshold spatiality characterizes those common spaces that invite newcomers and is not identified with any self-enclo sing community. Threshold spatiality corresponds to forms of self-management that permit the expansion of commoning circles. In opposition to public spaces which are used under the rules established by specific authorities, common spaces emerge as urban thresholds through practices that rediscover democracy as practice. The sharing between equals and the opening of the circles of sharing towards “‘outsiders’” necessarily implies creating forms and rules of urban social life that can profit from dif-

Prof. Dr. Stavros Stavrides »Commoning is about complex and historically specific processes through which representation, practices and values intersect in circumscribing what is to be shared and how in a specific society.«

Stavros Stavrides is an architect and Professor at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he teaches graduate courses on housing design (incl. social housing design), as well as a postgraduate course on the meaning of metropolitan experience. His research is currently focused on forms of emancipatory spatial practices and urban commoning, characteristically developed in his last books Common Space: The City as Commons, (2016 in English – forthcoming in Greek and Turkish), and Common Spaces of Emancipation (forthcoming in English). He has lectured in European and Latin American Universities on urban conflicts and practices of urban communing, and he has participated as an activist in urban and union struggles. For more information on his work and research please visit: http://www.arch.ntua.gr/en/node/234

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

Urban Commons Roundtable

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Around the question of power relations that define, sustain or disable urban commoning, Stavros Stavrides clarified that the sharing of power is both a precondition and result of commoning. Power, thereby, is to be understood as something done by different actors involved. Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse added to this that we need to attend to the complexity of the commons as a concept; on one end of the spectrum, they can be understood as tied to emancipatory practice (in reference to Lefebvre). On the other end, they are understood in context with practices on the ground, which show that commons can have very strict rules about participation, decisionmaking and boundaries. The workshop participants were specifically interested in the question of porosity of such boundaries and the issue of in- and exclusionary practices of communing. The notion of different publics was a recurring theme in our discussions on this third day as well. Dr. Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse is an urban researcher, consultant, and author with a concentration on integrated post-industrial urban development, specifically: culture and creative industries, real estate market dynamics, intermediate and adaptive reuse of vacant buildings, bottom-up urban development, and urban commons. She has also published widely about the political, symbolic, and normative aspects of architecture and urban planning.

Urban commons present a possible “third way” to manage urban resources that work in the niche between the market and the state. Commons offer a means to understand and manage resources in terms of their use value, as opposed to considerations of exchange value and profit maximization (regarding the market) or bureaucratic and administrative structures and questions of citizenship and use (regarding the state). For this reason, urban commons can provide a true realization of Lefebvre’s right to the city for a range of otherwise disadvantaged groups. The ‘commons framework’ is very flexible and can be adapted to a wide variety of resources and resource types, from wind power to housing. In addition, organizations engaging in commoning can take on an equally wide range of forms and degrees of formalization. However, it is important not to idealize commons, which not only have the power to include but also to exclude, especially in an urban context, where the pressure on limited space and limited resources is particularly high. Equally, she considers it important not to over-theorize commons, else we run the risk of alienating the future commoners, in particular, those with non-academic backgrounds. —Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse 14 © Marry Dellenbaugh-Losse, 2017

The urban researcher Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse and Stavros Stavrides discussed a variety of issues around urban commons and commoning as process and practice.

FILM SCREENING

»RENT REBELS« Resistance against (and resilience towards) the sell-out of Berlin In the last years Berlin has changed a lot. Flats that once were unattractive are now being used as secure investment objects. The transformation into owner-occupied flats and massive rent increases becomes an everyday phenomenon. The visible tenant protests in the vibrant metropolis of Berlin are a reaction to the growing shortage of affordable housing. The film is a kaleidoscope of the tenants’ struggles in Berlin against their displacement from of their neighbourhoods. Ranging from the occupation of the Berlin town hall to a camp at Kottbusser Tor, the organized prevention of evictions and the struggle of senior citizens for their community center and ageappropriate flats, a new urban protest movement is on the rise.

Background information: To date, the film RENT REBELS has been screened more than 300 times in Berlin cinemas. Furthermore, there are other screenings with film discussions in cooperation with neighborhood initiatives, associations, institutions and political parties – up till now around 220 events in 70 cities have taken place. In the media, the film has been discussed and commented from alternative to bourgeois press, from homeless persons’ publications, social federations’ papers or the Federal Head Office for Political Education to a speech given by Germany’s justice minister. The film lets the tenants speak with their competencies and skills, their critique and efforts against sheepishly accepting the shortage-producing housing policies and the scarcity of the housing market. The film shall encourage the city dwellers not to surrender to feelings of powerlessness but to confidently take part in the shaping of their neighborhoods, areas and the city itself. A documentary by Gertrud Schulte Westenberg and Matthias Coers, D 2014 | 78 min. | German with English, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Greek subtitles www.mietrebellen.com

Prospects The Urban Ethnography Lab aims to promote urban ethnography at an inter- and transdisciplinary level, to foster international collaboration on research projects in urban settings and the exchange of thoughts and building of networks among students and researchers between universities in Berlin (Germany), Toronto (Canada), and Cambridge (MA, USA). Furthermore, we aim to solidify existing partnerships, while promoting further collaborations with new institutions.

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The workshop â&#x20AC;&#x153;Beyond Urban Transformationâ&#x20AC;? has set in motion two related future prospects. First, the Urban Ethnography Lab supports events and outreach activities that represent opportunities to exchange knowledge and to engage on research issues of value to those participating. Second, we will share and collaborate with participants on various formats of publication. We are looking very much forward to upcoming activities and more of those exciting discussions on urban futures!

Thank you We want to thank all participants, speakers and the organizing team for sharing their valuable time and thoughts with everyone at the workshop. Thank you all for your insightful criticism and good energy, both of which kept us going through 3.5 days packed with information and inspiration! Special thanks to our speakers and contributors Prof. Alexa Färber, Prof. Ignacio Farias, Prof. Talja Blokland, Prof. Tasleem Shakur, Prof. Stavros Stavrides, Prof. AbdouMaliq Simone, Dr. Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse, Diana-Lucas Drogan and Sebastian Bührig. Furthermore, we want to thank our cooperation partners from the Ethnography Lab at the University of Toronto, especially Bronwyn Frey for coming all the way to Berlin for helping us with the organizational aspects. We also thank Susanne Käser for jumping in and providing organizational support, and Christian Bauer for the design of the workshop program. Last but not least, we thank Prof. Ilse Helbrecht from the Geography Department at Humboldt University and Director of the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies for supporting our ideas throughout the application process. We are very grateful for having been chosen by the Excellence Initiative of Humboldt-University for the KOSMOS Program funding, which enabled us to organize this year’s workshop and to expand our international and interdisciplinary networks.

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IV Background Information

Urban Ethnography Lab Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies Researchers and practitioners from many fields have been adapting ethnographic research methods to suit the complex demands of contemporary urban settings. The Urban Ethnography Lab is an initiative by scholars from Humboldt University’s Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, the Department of Social and Cultural Geography from Humboldt University of Berlin and University of Toronto’s Ethnography Lab.

The Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies is unique in its transdisciplinary approach to urban studies. One of its key challenges is the implementation of an international network of academic departments and other institutes that pursue metropolitan research. Its role is to offer a forum where innovative inter- and transdisciplinary approaches of the Humboldt University’s diverse disciplines can come into dialogue on current and future developments in metropolises.

The motivation for the partnership bet ween Humboldt University and University of Toronto was to create a lab that promotes ethnographic methods in the study of urban and metropolitan areas and increase its relevance in science and policy-making. The long-term objectives of the Urban Ethnography Lab are to enhance ethnographic research methods at the intersection of urban anthropology, human geography and design, create opportunities for research on urban comparisons, and promote the creation of a research network by facilitating the exchange of students and researchers internationally.

The Urban Ethnography Lab is one of the center’s “Urban Research Groups” with special focus on urban ethnographic methods in the interdisciplinary section of urban studies.

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urban-ethnography.com

URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY LAB

KOSMOS Program Excellence Initiative, Humboldt University of Berlin The KOSMOS Program strengthens sustainable international partnerships of Humboldt University. The program is a key element in the internationalization of research and teaching in the context of the Humboldt University‘s strategy “Bildung durch Wissenschaft. Educating Enquiring Minds: Individuality - Openess – Guidance.” KOSMOS was developed with the objective of creating a sustainable tool for strengthening international partnerships. The program further consolidates the

university’s international profile, aiming to generate enthusiasm for Humboldt University among science partners around the world. A KOSMOS Workshop gives Humboldt University’s scientists the opportunity to exchange ideas with international guests regarding current topics, and determine new perspectives and approaches for future collaborations. For more information please visit: www.exzellenz.hu-berlin.de/en/funding/ top-level-research/kosmos-programme 41

KOSMOS Workshop “Beyond Urban Transformation”, Berlin 2018 Project Leaders Carolin Genz is an urban anthropologist and currently research fellow and lecturer at the Department for Cultural and Social Geography (Humboldt-University of Berlin). Specifically, her research focuses on social practices of production and appropriation of space and digital tools of urban resistance and network practices. Further, she is part of the academic advisory council for gender mainstreaming and diversity for the Senate Department of Housing and Urban Development in Berlin, and co-founder of the “Urban Ethnography Lab” (Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin).

Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe is an anthropologist, architect and instructor. Since her doctoral studies at Harvard University (GSD, CMES/ Anthro/ WGS), she engages in research with actors involved in and impacted by transformation in various urban contexts, and is interested in their contest of knowledge, identity performances and everyday practices. As postdoctoral scholar, she is currently involved in the interdisciplinary SNF project “Visual Communication in Participatory Urban Planning Processes” at the University of Basel and the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Switzerland.

International Cooperation One significant outcome of the workshop is the establishment of scientific partnerships and cooperation. Toge ther with scholars from Harvard University (USA) and University of Toronto (Canada), who share our objectives of interdisciplinary research and engaged ethnography around matters of urban space, we want to develop long-term networks for young academics in the field of urban research.

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University of Toronto Ethnography Lab (EL), located in the Department of Anthropology, enriched the cooperation and workshop. EL was established in 2014 and is a growing center that promotes ethnographic research methods and practices within the university and outside academia, with a focus on urban areas. Arranged in interest groups, the EL explores the craft and impact of ethnography in the contemporary world. Bronwyn Frey is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Drawing on science and technology studies (STS) and political economy, she is interested in how the logic of markets and the capabilities of software are translated into work experiences and structures. Her current fieldwork focuses on food delivery apps, couriers, and software developers in Berlin, Germany. As part of EL, she founded and led the Visual Ethnography Group from 2016 to 2017. Emily Hertzman is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Chinese Indonesian mobilities and identities. She received a BA and MA from the University of British Columbia and a

PhD from the University of Toronto (2016). She is the coordinator of the Ethnography Lab in the Department of Anthropology at University of Toronto and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asian Institute, where she manages the Richard Charles Lee Asian Pathways Research Lab. Jessika Tremblay is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department of Anthropology, co-founder of the Urban Ethnography Lab, and co-coordinator of the Ethnography Lab. Her research foci include: social media, ICT4D (ICTs for socio-economic development), urban ethnography, digital ethnography, and community branding. Her geographic research areas include Indonesia (Java) and Toronto (Kensington Market). Ethnography Lab (EL) Department for Anthropology University of Toronto, Canada https://ethnographylab.ca/

Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) Harvard University, Cambridge, USA https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/home

List of Participants Britta Acksel is a PhD Candidate at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at Goethe University Frankfurt. Following her Master´s in Cultural Anthropology, since 2013 she has been a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, first in the project Energiewende Ruhr and, starting in 2016, Virtual Institute Energy Transition North Rhine Westphalia. Vincent Andrisani, PhD, is a term lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). Exploring the relationship bet ween sound, space, and the city, his research challenges us to rethink our understanding of urban development by tuning in to the everyday sounds that surround us. More of his work can be found at www.vincentandrisani.com. Safa Ashoub is a political scientist, urbanist, and PhD candidate at the Chair for Urban Design and Urbanization, Technische Universität Berlin (TUB). She holds a double Master’s in International Cooperation and Urban Development (Mundus Urbano Program) and a Master’s in Poli tics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh (2012). She has worked in international development at the GIZ, UN Women and UN-Habitat. Dr. Nufar Avni is an urban geographer and planner, and currently a Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current research project, ‘Divided Communities’, investigates the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in three neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. Nufar’s main research interests are the role of justice and equity in planning policies, urban redevelopment,

and planning in spaces of ethnic conflict. Ahmad Borham is an independent urban researcher, practicing design architect and teacher at the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and the American University in Cairo. He holds a Master’s of Science for his thesis ‘Resilient Rules: Culture and Computation in Traditional Built Environments’. He is the cofounder of the Cairo from Below and Madd initiatives which share the aim of encouraging inclusive urbanization in Cairo. Aslı Duru is a Marie Sklodowska Curie Research Fellow in the School of Geo graphy and the Environment, University of Oxford. Her research interests include the development of visual/digital narrative methods to understand the intersections between urban environments, inclusion/ exclusion and wellbeing across the life course. Ingrid Enriquez-Donissaint is the Mary Poppins of brand planning. Various brand puzzles have allowed her to make the most of ethnography-centric methods to best appreciate human blind spots and sensitivities. From kindergarten space to engineering firm mandates, her fascination for people, context and academic journey have fueled priceless collaboration and meaningful solutions. Roos Gerritsen is an anthropologist at Heidelberg University whose research focuses on popular visual culture, media, food, urban spaces and the senses in south India. Roos is particularly interested in exploring multimodal methodologies that attend to the sensorial experiences of urban life. This interest has materialized

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS in various peer-reviewed papers, photo essays and exhibitions. Susanne Käser is a graphic designer, researcher at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel and a certified Rolfing practitioner. She holds a Master‘s in Visual Communication and Image Research from the Academy of Art and Design, Basel. Her research interest is in the visualization of urban transformation processes. She is currently involved in the project Visual Communication in Participatory Urban Planning Processes, 2018.

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Diana Lucía Mariño Puentes, is an urban creative activist (artivist) and a PhD candidate and CONACYT-funded research scholar in Social Sciences of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur, México. Diana is developing the doctoral thesis: Artivism for Social Change: A comparative analysis between the cities of México City (México) and Bogotá (Colombia) with the aim of social change to demand the right to the city. Özgün Rüya Oral received her undergraduate degree in İstanbul University Faculty of Law and pursued a graduate degree in Urban Policy Planning and Local Government Programme at METU. Her research is on legal ambiguity on areas of urban transformation. She has also been working as a lawyer on urban and environmental law cases since 2013. She will continue her studies in Urban Studies at Malmö University. Melissa Yang Rock is an Assistant Professor of Geography and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of WGS and Asian Studies Program at the State University of New York. Her research centers on the intersection of geographies of care, social reproduction and urbanization. Her doctoral project deals with the

impacts of Olympic urban redevelopment upon low-income and marginalized communities in China’s capital city. Mathilda Rosengren is a visual anthropologist and geographer with a particular interest in the relational, more-than-human structuring of urban nature. Currently, she studies for a PhD in Geography at the University of Cambridge, UK, where she explores the relation between notions of ‘unplanned’ urban nature, and official urban planning in Berlin and Gothenburg and is co-convenor of the research group Infrastructural Geographies. Bogdan Seredyak is a visual artist and an architect with an affection for design and its effective communication. He holds a degree in architecture from the New Jersey Institute Technology. His interests lie in pushing the boundaries presented by the built environment as well as challenging the notions presented in contemporary society. His current oeuvre explores paths that confront special proper ties in the living and digital habitat. Benedikt Stoll lives in Berlin and works as a self-employed artist and urban designer on projects ranging from temporary architecture, participatory urban development and site-specific art in public space. He holds degrees in architecture and interdisciplinary urban design (Master’s of Research, University College London). He is a co-founding partner of Guerilla Architects, associate of Urban Transcripts and initiated die Anstoß eV. Nežka Struc is a PhD candidate in social and political anthropology at the University of Ljubljana. She is also queer poet, gardener and vegan chef. She researches counter power of self-organized local and urban food supply groups who depart from capitalistic structures. Her

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS work aims to build a bridge between deconstructions of hegemonic social science and the everyday practice of ethnographic fieldwork. Jose Roberto Lagunes Trejo is a practicing architect and urban designer. His research centers on spatial inequalities, mapping as a commoning practice, and public space as a driver for social innovation. Spatial Networks of Resilience, he proposes that the co-creation of networked spaces at the neighbourhood scale enhance community resilience at the city level. He is currently working at Fundacion Hogares in Mexico City. Luanda Vannuchi is a geographer with a master in Urban Studies. She is also a dancer and participated in Terreyro Coreográfico, a collective of dancers, ar tists, architects and activists. In her PhD research at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil she investigates recent transformations in São Paulo’s inner city, tracing the advance of neoliberal urbanization and rising struggles in defense of urban commons. Swati P. Vijaya is a PhD candidate in the Department of WGS at Ohio State University, USA. Her research interests include feminist geography, urban anthropology and queer studies, with specific focus on South Asia. Her doctoral project deals with ‘Queer Sociality in Urban India: Situating Caste in Queer Women’s Spatial Negotiations in Mumbai’. She holds an ongoing research affiliation with Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Marlene Wagner (Dipl.Ing.) is an architect, researcher and lecturer. She is a co-founder of the not-for-profit Architecture and Development buildCollective, and a member of the Urban Mobility Living Lab, as well as the manager of

cultural projects with the Southern Africa Documentation and Cooperation Centre. She is focusing on socially transformative change and cross-cultural and transdisciplinary design-build practice. Jeremy Williams is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School of North American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. His doctoral project is titled ‘Between the Idea and the Reality: New Public Spaces in the United States’. He spent sev eral years working professionally in urban governance. His research interest is in the intersection between theoretical and critical perspectives, and the ‘realities’ of urban politics, culture and society. Sakura Yamamura is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute. She studied Geography, Sociology and Social/Cultural Anthropology and her expertise lies in the intersection between migration studies, and urban and economic geography. The core focus of her postdoctoral research project Intersecting Spaces of Superdiversity delves into the complexity of multiscalar contexts of socio-spatial diversification in urban spaces.

Bibliography Abram, S. & Weszkalnys, G. (2013): Elusive Promises. Planning in the Contemporary World. An Introduction. In: Abram, S. & Weszkalnys, G. (eds.): Elusive Promises. Planning in the Contemporary World. New York, Berghahn Books, pp. 1-33. Blokland, T. (2017): Community as Urban Practice. Cambridge: Malden, pp. 1-14, 160-169. Bourdieu, P. (1999): Understanding. In: Bourdieu, Pierre; Accardo, Alain; Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst (1999): The weight of the world. Social suffering in contemporary society. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, pp. 607-626. Brenner, N.; N. Theodore (2002): Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Farías, I., & Blok, A. (2016): Technical democracy as a challenge to urban studies. In: City, 20 (4), 539-548. Gutzon, H. et al. (2016): Introduction: The Housing Question Revisited. In: ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, [S.l.], v. 15, n. 3, Sep. 2016, pp. 580-589. Habermas, J. (1989): The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harvey, D. (2011): The Future of the Commons. In: Radical History Review, 2011 (109), pp. 101– 107. 46

Harvey, D. (2012): Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso.Larsen. Herzfeld, M. (2001): Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Lim, M. (2002): Cyber-Civic Space in Indonesia: From Panopticon to Pandemonium? In: International Development Planning Review 24 (4), pp. 383-400. Mouffe, C. (2013): Agonistics. Thinking the World Politically. London: Verso. O’Reilly, K. (2005): Introduction to Ethnographic Methods. In: Ethnographic Methods. Abingdon/ New York, pp. 1-24. Perkins, C. (2009): Performative and Embodied Mapping. In: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, pp.126–132, Manchester, UK.

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Powell, Kimberly (2010): Making Sense of Place: Mapping as a Multisensory Research Method. In: Qualitative Inquiry 16 (7), pp. 539–555. Parkhurst, P (1999): The weight of the world. Social suffering in contemporary society. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, pp. 607 - 626. Roy, A. (2009): The 21st-Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory. In: Regional Studies 43.(6), pp. 819-830. Smith, N. (1996): The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge. Stavrides, S. (2014): Emerging common spaces as a challenge to the city of crisis. In: City 18.(4-5), pp. 546–550. Wood, D. (1992): How maps work. In: Cartographica, 29 (3&4), Autumn/Winter 1992, pp. 66-74.

Beyond Urban Transformation Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life Editors (eds.):

IMPRINT

Carolin Genz Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe Project Leaders KOSMOS Workshop 2018

The publication is based on lectures, discussions and collaboration during the KOSMOS Workshop “Beyond Urban Transformation. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Urban Everyday Life” at Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Humboldt-University of Berlin, September 5-8, 2018.

Humboldt University of Berlin Urban Ethnography Lab Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin

Scientific Cooperation: Urban Ethnography Lab, Berlin, Germany Georg-Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies, Berlin, Germany KOSMOS – Excellence Initiative, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany Geography Department, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Germany University of Toronto, Anthropology Department, Ethnography Lab, Canada CMES, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

ISBN 978-3-00-061538-2 Authors:

Talja Blokland, Sebastian Bührig, Mary Dellenbaugh-Losse, Alexa Färber, Ignacio Farías, Bronwyn Frey, Carolin Genz, Emily Hertzmann, Diana Lucas Drogan, Diana Mariño Puentes, Tasleem Shakur, Stavros Stavrides, Jessika Tremblay, Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe. All Images are subject to the copyright of Carolin Genz, if not marked otherwise.

The publication was supported by the KOSMOS Program, Excellence Initiative of Humboldt University of Berlin. For further information please visit: www.urban-ethnography.com Design & Layout: Christian Bauer bauerchristian.com Proofreading: Bronwyn Frey Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe Printed in Germany The views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Humboldt University of Berlin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

How can we develop interdisciplinary approaches to bridge theoretical concepts with research methods that address the complexity of urban research issues today? What concepts of Âťurban transformationÂŤ help us look beyond and prioritize practice instead of grand theory by engaging with everyday life and needs of urban dwellers?

ISBN 978-3-00-061538-2