Paper for the Conflicts in the city Congres: "Cultural centres as mediators for local conflicts" (original) (raw)
The urban space in European cities is undergoing deep transformation, through formal and informal initiatives. The gentrification of poor neighbourhoods is often counterbalanced by fast projects of local revitalization fostered by public or private actors which seldom leave time to local population to adapt to those changes. In these processes, previous existing inhabitants face difficulties to accustom themselves to an evolution in the commercial, housing and public space fabric that is targeted to the new wealthier segments of urban dwellers.
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The urban space in European cities is undergoing deep transformation, through formal and informal initiatives. The gentrification of poor neighbourhoods is often counterbalanced by fast projects of local revitalization fostered by public or private actors which seldom leave time to local population to adapt to those changes. In these processes, previous existing inhabitants face difficulties to accustom themselves to an evolution in the commercial, housing and public space fabric that is targeted to the new wealthier segments of urban dwellers. These fast urban renewal processes can create two major conflicting discourses. The first, between locals and newcomers' desires and the second, between the official renewal proposals and the alternative ones proposed either by informal citizen groups or by architects that contest the official plan. On the one hand, we have existing inhabitants and their way of life, comprising their adapted shops and bars, moderate housing prices and their accustomed gathering places. On the other hand there are the newcomers' natural will to produce and reproduce their own way of life into the new space they live in. According to Neil Smith 1 , this change usually occurs slowly but can turn into violent conflicts. This new desire for a better quality for a life can be compatible with the existing one, if the process takes place through dialogue, consensus among actors and following a slow pace of development. The conflict arises when the two discourses stop coexisting and come to a confrontation. A new form of Empire using Hardt and Negri's expression 2 , is creating an urban renewal discourse that precludes alternative discourses to coexist, other than a form of political and ecological resistance: "the will to be against". But this resistance, although it seems to be informal: through demonstrations in the streets, occupations of empty plots, and other contestations that receive media coverage 3 , is somehow supported, financed and disseminated by culture stakeholders through programs that push for citizen empowerment. BMW Guggenheim Lab analysing actual 100 urban trends 4 , Goethe Institut launching a debate about participatory politics and planning 5 , and the European Union culture program Creative Europe 2014-2020 6 , are only a few examples of culture actors that launch reflection groups in such phenomena, that decline in several funding programs for local culture centres. Given this nowadays growing interest of culture actors for the aforesaid resistance phenomena, what a better field to analyse the implication of culture centres in the debate between discourses and the production of a new form of consensus, as a clue to identify possibilities to overcome and positively counterbalance the confrontation between the two major discourses fore-mentioned. Public space as confrontation space The evolution towards a wealthier status of the neighbourhood of Malasaña in the city centre of Madrid has been the object of a large discussion in the Spanish social media, but also of an academic debate on whether to call this process gentrification or a natural urban evolution process. The Spanish sociologist and urbanist Aurora Justo analyses the urban and social changes of Madrid, from a gender
FROM THE EDITOR: "CITIES: IDENTITIES, APPROPRIATION OF SPACE AND RESISTANCE PRACTICES"
The idea of this special issue came from a discussion about the need to bring a collective analysis in the global making of cities which is rare in urban studies in Turkey. There are assuredly many precious high-quality research on the ongoing urbanization processes and policies in different metropolitan cities of the country and this research takes largely into account the specificities of Turkish urban policies, Turkish cities, the construction of " gecekondu " neighbourhoods and the everyday life inside them. However, few research place this examples in a more global debate: What is the genesis of the current development of cities and what are the political and economic rules behind their development and their spatial organization? Which place and role is attributed to the city dwellers in this process? Do the latter seek also to create their own spatial practices and how do they invest the city. The objective of this issue is to make a modest contribution to this global debate by proposing case studies from different countries. The issue does not have the objective to focus only on urban development and urban transformation but to show rather how different everyday practices both from public actors and city dwellers contribute to the spatial appropriation of city. By making this, it would like to analyze also if the inevitable interaction between different actors create some tensions, resistances and protest. Cities are frequently characterized by concentration of inequality, insecurity, and exploitation. They have also long represented promises of opportunity and liberation. Public decision-making in contemporary cities is full of conflict, and principles of justice is rarely the explicit basis for the resolution of disputes (Marcuse et. al., 2009). Cities are today confronting also a more competitive global environment, and local governments have taken to place-marketing, enterprise zones, tax abatements, public-private partnerships, and new forms of local boosterism but also have reached out for new strategies of social control and workfare policies (Mayer, 2007: 91). According to Mayer, the most important goal of urban policy has become to mobilize city space as an arena for market-oriented economic growth (ibid). However, the cities and city life cannot be resumed to an economic AP
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