Supported by twenty years of the study of urban, urban-rural, global/planetary trends and action/inaction, CITY has turned increasingly to a holistic but also various and detailed series of accounts of ‘where the world is at’ and to where it is and might/could/should be heading.
Its panel sessions for this year’s AAG and the current issue of the journal (20.1) take up these and related themes: Download flyer for more info >>
See also the editorial from our latest issue, 20.1 ‘Planetary’ urbanisation: insecure foundations, the commodification of knowledge, and paradigm shift
City sponsored panels at the 2016 AAG:
The Urban Process under Planetary Accumulation by Dispossession 1.
Session no. 2571
Wed, 30 March at 3:20 PM – 5:00 PM in Golden Gate Room, Hotel Nikko, 25th Floor
What does the never-ending crisis of globalisation tell us about the spatial nature of capitalist accumulation and dispossession? Is there a limit to the ways in which global capitalism mutates to escape its own contradictions? If capitalism only displaces problems rather than solving them, who bears the brunt and who decides their fate? What will be the outlook of planetary urbanisation of capital without China-sponsored capitalism? How can the left use socio-spatial processes to produce radical alternatives to residual, dominant and emerging forms of power?
David Harvey’s theory of uneven geographical development continues to provoke such questions as well as provide invaluable insights into the way the urban process is not only central to the economic accumulation of capital, but also the terrain in which capitalists seek to liberate themselves from democratic control. Harvey’s major lesson is that any project to overcome capitalism’s legitimacy, is tied to our ability to confront the way capital transforms daily life to compound its own growth rate.
CITY had the pleasure of publishing Harvey’s reflection on urbanisation in its first ever issue. On this occasion to commemorate its 20th anniversary, CITY is pulling together a series of panels to explore how Harvey’s critique of urban accumulation maps the deterritorializing terrain of crisis, tracking new spaces of dispossession, and expressions of revolt and revolution.
The aim isn’t simply to highlight the legacy of a celebrated intellectual, instead we want to explore how Harvey’s work connects with a growing but also contentious field, in which CITY has played a significant part, of theoretical analysis, empirical research and political activism, one which helps expose strategic weaknesses in contemporary capitalism, fights the consolidation of political economic power, and gives us the intellectual tools to avoid blind alleys and help in the construct ion of liberatory ways forward.
Hyun Bang Shin
Bob Catterall
Chair:
Bob Catterall
Participants:
Elvin K. Wyly
Ilse Helbrecht
Ayona Datta
Miguel Robles-Duran
Hyun Bang Shin
Sponsorships:
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
The Urban Process under Planetary Accumulation by Dispossession 2.
Session no. 2671
Wed, 30 March at 5:20 PM – 7:00 PM, in Golden Gate Room, Hotel Nikko, 25th Floor
Chair:
Hyun Bang Shin
Participants:
Nasser Abourahme
Bob Catterall
Alex Loftus
Matthew Gandy
Sponsorship:
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Socialist and Critical Geography Specialty Group
The Practical Person’s Guide to the city, urbanisation, and the planet
Session no. 3465
Thur, 31 March at 1:20 PM – 3:00 PM, in Nikko Ballroom II, Hotel Nikko, 3rd Floor
Some recent debates on, variously, ‘the city’, the urban (or urban-rural), urbanisation, and the planet in relation to their theoretical, empirical and/or political bases and implications have surfaced, without fully addressing each other. We invite a full discussion of these in relation to aspects of four papers: “Beyond city limits: a conceptual and political defense of ‘the city’ as an anchoring concept..’.(Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson); “Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism.”(Hillary Angelo and David Wachsmuth); “Towards the Great Transformation: Where/what is culture in ‘Planetary Urbanisation’? Towards a new paradigm” (Bob Catterall); and ‘The intelligent woman’s guide to the urban question'(Kate Shaw).
Organiser:
Mark Davidson
Chair:
Nasser Abourahme
Participants:
Hillary Angelo
Richard A. Walker
Mark Davidson
Kate Shaw
Bob Catterall
Sponsorship:
Urban Geography Specialty Group
Amateur Urbanism
Session no. 3565
Thur, 31 March at 3:20 PM – 5:00 PM in Nikko Ballroom II, Hotel Nikko, 3rd Floor
In this lecture sponsored by CITY, Andy Merrifield will present his current work on Amateur Urbanism. Professionals and wannabe professionals are everywhere in urban studies today, everywhere in the exclusive running and ruining of cities, everywhere in the control of urban economies, everywhere in austerity drives, everywhere in think tanks and institutions who study cities, everywhere mass media have a say about cities, everywhere the grant money flows, the payroll beckons and the spotlight shines. The biggest problem this professionalism poses for any urban dissenter—for people I shall call amateurs—is representation. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation, into a representation done for and by professionals. And professionals brook no dissent. Professionals are realists; everybody else lives in cloud-cuckoo-land. This paper stakes out its terrain in cloud-cuckoo-land and explores the nemesis of professionalised urbanism: amateur urbanism, an urban knowledge and practice not on anybody’s payroll, a passionate labour of love.
Organiser:
Kurt Iveson
Chair:
Bob Catterall
Participants:
Andy Merrifield
Kurt Iveson
CITY LIGHTS bookstore, San Francisco
Hard copies of the journal CITY – analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, are available in San Francisco from the City Lights bookstore:
San Francisco Landmark #228
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue
Between Broadway and Pacific North Beach, Built 1907
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz…. “ (Beginning of Howl by Allen Ginsberg.)
Howl was first performed at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955, by Ginsberg’s friends and fellow poets Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Kenneth Rexroth. Soon afterwards, it was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who ran City Lights Bookstore and the City Lights Press.
City Lights was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin. Although it has been more than fifty years since tour buses with passengers eager to sight “beatniks” began pulling up in front of City Lights, the Beats’ legacy of anti-authoritarian politics and insurgent thinking continues to be a strong influence in the store, most evident in the selection of titles.
See City Lights website for the complete Short History of City Lights >>
San Francisco Landmark #228
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Avenue Between Broadway and Pacific
North Beach
Built 1907
