Book Review - Urban Rage by Mustafa Dikec

This article examines the relationship between political uprising and megaproject-based global city reform in Paris and London. On the one hand, it considers the banlieue uprisings in Paris in November 2005 as an impetus for the Grand Paris renewal initiative launched in April 2007. This is compared with the large-scale reformations of space across London in advance of the 2012 Olympics as a contributing factor in the riots of August 2011. In both of these cases there is an integral though indirect link between urban planning and resistance. Engaging with Marxist political theory and critical urban geography, I argue that uprisings and global city developments relate in a mutually constitutive fashion. I also locate the suburbs, broadly defined, as an important site of contemporary political antagonism. I use the concept of “political topology” to suggest that global city pursuits present a new mode of uneven development that has not yet been adequately met in thought or practice. The two cases are thus used to open up to a more general analysis of twenty-first-century urban politics.

Urbanization and Development, 2010

Cities generally … comprise a motley of peoples and cultures, of highly differentiated modes of life between which there often is only the faintest communication, the greatest indifference, … occasionally bitter strife, but always the sharpest contrast. (Wirth 1938: 20) As the world moves towards its so-called urban 'tipping point', urbanization in the global South has increasingly come to be portrayed as the portent of a dystopian future characterized by ever-mounting levels of anarchy and brutality. The association between cities, violence, and disorder is not new, however. In a classic article on…/

The Sage Handbook of Urban Sociology: New approaches to the twenty-first century city, 2018

Despite the optimism of early 2011, by autumn the Egyptian Arab Spring had turned darker. For the revolutionaries based in Cairo's Tahrir Square (Figure 20.1), the reverie of the early months had given way to frequent violence and the realisation that this was to be a protracted struggle not easily won. In the acclaimed film 'The Square' (Al-Maidan 2013), which documents the events of the Egyptian Revolution through the eyes of activists from 2011 to 2013, one of the key figures states there is now 'war in the Square, not revolution'. It is a critical distinction not all Cairenes would have perceived or been sympathetic to, having believed that war was evident right from the early days. The activists had become attached to the Square and, through it, believed not only that they were able to feel the pulse of the city, but that 'whoever holds the Square holds power'. 2 Tahrir Square was fought over and occupied by the revolutionaries, the military and the Muslim Brotherhood with periods of heavy violence and relative quiet, all within the complexity of a three-way struggle to preserve or gain power. Filmed by Jehane Noujaim and her crew and some of the activists, 'The Square' depicts the close interfaces within the needs of everyday life, waging of political activism, and hostile clashes with the authorities. The setting of Tahrir Square and its surrounding streets depicts an urban backdrop so common and familiar that it evokes a sense that this violence could arrive on the doorstep of almost any city. During the two years portrayed in the film, Cairo slips repeatedly in and out of violence. Everyday locations and objects are conscripted into places of mass demonstration and protest, barricades, strategic viewing points, discussion groups, places of prayer, soup kitchens, first aid stations, hospitals. Alliances and associations are formed and broken. Yet to a good extent, urban life-working, meeting, shopping, being at home, being in the city-goes on in all of its expected and quotidian ways. Conflict was integral to the revolution and today the Square retains the memory and symbolic associations that represent dissatisfaction with the country's leadership and the

2013

2013

More than one hundred cities have passed the one million mark in the last twenty years. Small villages like Shenzhen in China have become huge metropolises of 6-10 million people. Huge infrastructural projects , dams and highways, are churning up the countryside. Vast shopping malls, science parks, underwater hotels, airports, container ports, gated communities and golf courses dot the landscapes of our world. In Santiago in Chile, in Mumbai, in Johannesburg in Seoul but also in New York, in London, Los Angeles , in Spain and in Ireland, there has been a building boom for the rich. But the other side of this massive urban expansion is a planet of slums: huge communities of makeshift urban shacks with no proper water supply or sanitation, thousands scavenging for food from the rubbish dumped by the cities, thousands being daily bulldozed out of where they lived. In Europe and the US, the homeless beg on the streets, soup kitchens abound, townspeople are returning to villages for food...

Over a 50-year span, Institute of Development Studies (IDS) research has not focused on cities or urbanisation to the extent it might have. We find that there is good reason for cities to now be described as the ‘new frontier’ for international development. In particular, violence is increasingly a defining characteristic of urban living in both conflict and non-conflict settings. This has important consequences for the relatively under-researched links between urban violence, the processes of state building, and wider development goals. Benefiting from key IDS contributions to the debates on the security–development nexus, citizenship and the hybrid nature of the governance landscape, we argue that the moment is opportune for the Institute to deepen its research and policy expertise on urban violence ‘in the vernacular’.

2000

Cities have always been arenas of social and sym- bolic conflict. As places of encounter between dif- ferent classes, ethnic groups, and lifestyles, cities play the role of powerful integrators; yet on the other hand urban contexts are the ideal setting for marginalization and violence. The struggle over control of urban spaces is an ambivalent mode of sociation: while producing

Policy makers must understand ethno-national conflicts and their management or resolution in terms of processes that span urban, regional, national and international levels. Trying to find or implement a solution at only one level may be severely limiting.

Resistance organisations often evolve by understanding popular sentiment and the needs and conditions of the city. These grievances need to be analysed carefully and taken seriously.