Volume 14 (2024)

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/2863

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    Editorial: Social mobilisations and planning through crises
    (AESOP, 2024) Rossini, Luisa; Gall, Tjark; Privitera, Elisa
    Cities are increasingly becoming sites of contestation. Intersecting crises—economic, social, political, and environmental—are shaping urban life and governance. The 2007/08 financial crisis triggered waves of austerity that profoundly restructured urban planning. The COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, inflation, and climate change further intensified urban inequality and precarity. This editorial introduces the special issue which explores how urban social movements respond to these crises. Based on an Early-Career Workshop on Urban Studies (Lisbon, 2022), it highlights the role of grassroots mobilisation and engaged scholarship in shaping alternative urban futures. The articles in this issue examine contestation, co-optation, and innovation in planning, offering a diverse and comparative perspective on planning through crises.
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    Caracas, Departure City: Urban planning after emigration and collapse
    (AESOP, 2024) Gzyl, Stefan
    The recent deterioration of living conditions in Venezuela has resulted in an unprecedented migratory crisis, infrastructure collapse, and institutional decline. In the middle of this complex situation, migrants’ left-behind properties are being transformed into new uses. These changes often contradict zoning regulations, prompting a series of legal, social, and spatial strategies to conceal them. This article examines ongoing spatial and programmatic transformations of vacant homes in Caracas, the country’s capital, framing these changes within disciplinary discourses of shrinking and departure cities and in a specific experience of collapse that shapes daily life in the city. The article studies spatial transformations in terms of their material conditions and the opaque and informal procedures that produce them, describing the process from the point of view of various actors, from architects and entrepreneurs to local residents and planning authorities. Through interviews, site visits, and photographic documentation, the article describes the challenges and possibilities for social organization and institutional renovation in a climate of emigration and uncertainty.
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    Imitation of planning: Strategies to address tenure and economic insecurities in informal settlements of Buenos Aires
    (AESOP, 2024) Sliwa, Marcin Wojciech
    This paper analyses economic and tenure insecurities and risk of eviction in informal settlements and shantytowns in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It shows how the bottom-up planning initiatives led by community leaders and activists are often motivated by the fact that engagement with or imitation of formal planning regulations and codes increase the perceived tenure security in these settlements. If and when security from eviction is achieved, however, or when households who occupy these lands do not aspire to stay there in the long-term, planning efforts might be ignored or even rejected. In such situations they may refocus their priorities on livelihood strategies and saving. This research was conducted as an ethnographic case study based on physical and digital fieldworks. The findings urge urban planners to pay more attention to the way in which mainstream planning approaches magnify existing and create new insecurities and informalities, instead of addressing them. Planners need to recognise the gaps between their planning ambitions, and the realities and priorities of people living in informal settlements and shantytowns in situations where the state is unable to ensure access to affordable housing.
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    Resisting and reinforcing neoliberalism
    (AESOP, 2024) Rossini, Luisa
    In the context of the ongoing global intertwined financial, environmental, socio-political crises, the intricate relationship between neoliberal urban planning and the challenges these crises present has become increasingly visible. Despite these challenges, neoliberal restructuring justifications remain central to urban agendas and planning culture, often exacerbating social inequality. Its principles and related political decisions frequently intensify social conflicts, sparking protests as their adverse effects on marginalized communities and areas become evident, especially after decades of market-driven policies and the global financial crisis. In many cities around the globe, these popular rebellions, as local and residential activism, started increasingly to target varying regulatory regimes and strategies pursued by supranational, national, or local authorities, often organized as urban social movements. This think piece examines how neoliberal urbanism simultaneously incites resistance and absorbs it, reflecting a paradox where insurgent practices challenge the system but are also co-opted into its framework. By exploring key dynamics in urban governance, participation, and social movements, it seeks to understand how neoliberalism’s resilience lies in its ability to incorporate dissent into its operating logic while marginalizing radical alternatives, so to perpetuate its dominance despite widespread opposition. Briefly mentioning some examples of organized groups and forms of resistance around the globe, theoretical debates, and historical perspectives, the discussion unfolds by: analyzing how neoliberal practices shape urban governance and planning; investigating how movements resist neoliberalism and how their ideas are co-opted; addressing the enduring struggle over “to whom the city belongs” and proposing ways to foster meaningful democratic engagement.
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    Public spaces and neoliberal policies: The Greek case
    (AESOP, 2024) Dimelli, Despina
    The process of neoliberalizing public spaces involves implementing policies aimed at increasing capital flow to offset reductions in local budgets. In Greece, although public spaces are decisive elements of the urban tissue, the tools, strategies, and mechanisms for their development are mainly based on public funding and the role of the private sector is still weak. The current paper analyzes the policies for public spaces since 1950 until today and the role of public and private sectors in their development. It focuses on specific periods as the Olympic Games, the economic crisis and today, to investigate the policies followed for public spaces development. The research area is the capital of Greece, and the examined case studies include both small- and large-scale areas to cover different types of public spaces. Research focuses on the changes in the legislative framework to promote the role of private sector and evaluates its role and collaboration with the public sector. The analysis of the case studies shows that constrained expertise, centralized decision-making procedures, and inadequate coordination of synergies among management entities, have resulted in notable deficiencies in the partnerships between the public and private sectors in supporting projects for the regeneration of public areas.
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    Reclaiming public spaces: Planning through informality in Santiago de Chile
    (AESOP, 2024) Rossini, Stefania
    This article aims to highlight how communities in Santiago de Chile have managed to claim back public spaces through informal practices that also take the form of informal planning. Particularly, the research explores the case of two community-led initiatives that are situated in deprived neighbourhoods in the north and south of the Chilean capital. The results demonstrate how communities develop and establish alternative spatial and institutional arrangements to contest the ineffectiveness of the state and ensure their own right to the city. Through the lens of informal urbanism, this article points out the political dimension of informal practices, and their importance in promoting structural change and expanding planning knowledge.
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    The right to the ecological city: De-paving and public space transformation through community gardening in Montreal, Canada
    (AESOP, 2025) Krähemer, Jérémie
    This article explores how bottom-up, citizen-led initiatives based on community gardening and depaving practices are transforming public space and promoting socio-ecological transition in Montreal, Canada. More specifically, the article looks at how community organisations reclaim asphalt-covered, underused, and abandoned spaces in order to create urban gardens. Drawing on the literature of the right to the city and socio-ecological transition, and based on a qualitative methodology including interviews and participatory observation, the article discusses how these initiatives contribute to the emergence of a ‘right to the ecological city’. The article argues that they do so by transforming urban spaces, empowering residents, building social ties, and implementing alternative modes of urban governance.