Public and private in Hausmannian Paris (Territorial quote 3)

On territoriality and materiality:

"Second Empire architects also discouraged decorating practices that made domestic interiors resemble streets. In an article whose title – ”Des voies publiques et des maisons d’habitation à Paris” – signaled a conceptual separation between roads and houses, Charles Gourlier noted that within houses, wood parquet floors were replacing ”pavement” [dallages]. Formerly, slabs of concrete, stone, or marble had been used to cover floors inside apartments and to pave streets, but now they began to be confined strictly to the street. The street thus became a mineral realm whose hard, unyielding durability was perceptibly distinct from the more delicate, vegetal ground of the home."

Marcus S, Apartment Stories, City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London, 1999, p. 142 f.

Neighbourhood events and the visibilisation of everyday life: The cases of Turro (Milan) and Norra Fäladen (Lund)

This article, written together with Sebastiano Citroni, is published ahead-of-print in European Urban and Regional Studies.

Abstract

While scholars agree on the reasons behind the current proliferation of urban, small-scale, pre-organised events, the implication of these events for public life is more controversial, and involves polarised debates between enthusiasts and critics. This paper develops an international comparison between one city district in Milan (Italy) and one in Lund (Sweden), in order to explore how the variety of events that took place there between 2013 and 2015 possibly affected the local and on-going everyday public life. In both cases, the observed events aimed to de-stigmatise the broader urban districts in which they were staged, as well as to enhance a vibrant urban life in relatively disadvantaged areas. In the study, we identify three different ways in which these events make the public character of everyday life visible, and even redefine patterns of urban civility. The main argument deriving from our comparative ethnography is that the salience of events in the everyday life that they supposedly disrupt can be analytically addressed by developing a pragmatist approach to public space, discussing it in terms of territorial complexity.

At the Neighbourhood festival 'Fäladskalaset', Lund, 2016.

Temporality of Territorial Production - The Case of Stortorget, Malmö

This article is now published in Social & Cultural Geography (2017), 18, 5, pp. 683-705. 

Abstract: In recent years, we have seen the development of a more relational approach to territoriality. This perspective, which focuses on events rather than space, also opens up for an elaboration of temporal aspects of territorial production. In this study, I investigate the central urban square, Stortorget, in Malmö, Sweden, in order to develop a discussion of a time-space territorology. In 1978, Korosec-Serfaty performed a thorough study of the square, observing its everyday activities. The present study compares territorial productions at Malmö’s Main Square during 1978 with those of 2013. The results of the study indicate a change of time-space production in which temporary territorial appropriations and tactics tend to become shorter in duration, whereas the number of temporary and large-scale territorial strategies has increased and the role of these become more important. The study also shows how these territorial transformations include changes (in pace, rhythm, temporal salience and scale) that seem to vertically stabilise the territorial structure of the square, and thus decrease both territorial complexity and the possibilities for new publics to evolve

Stortorget, Malmö (2013)

Stortorget, Malmö (1978)

Stortorget, Malmö (1912), with the airship Hansa.

Stortorget, Malmö (1896), the unveiling of the statue Karl X Gustav.

Interseriality and different sorts of walking

This jointly written article about how to investigate different kinds of walking is out now in Mobilities. Written with Maria Johansson, Inês A. Ferreira and David Lindelöw.

Abstract: In this article, we attempt to develop a meta-language for a relational approach to urban walking that is able to account for walking as a mutable, embodied, materially heterogeneous and distributed activity. Following the perspective on walking as developed in a series of articles by Jennie Middleton, we develop a notion of the walker as a socio-technical assemblage. By recognising walking as an ongoing relation of different series of walking assemblages or ‘sorts of walking’, it becomes possible to study the mediation of these series through the focus on objects of passage: things or triggers that transform one walking assemblage into another via the process of appraisal. We suggest interseriality as a concept capable of handling a ‘relation of relations’; i.e. how different sorts of walking relate to one another and how the ongoing transformation of a walking assemblage ultimately also produces a mutable but sustaining walking person. Finally, we suggest a focus on boundary objects. Since walking assemblages cannot help but to transform in order to sustain, walks always include a series of different sorts of walking: the possible co-presence of different sorts of walking thus depends on boundary objects.

Suburbs and interstices

Call for articles to Lo Squaderno, No 46, Dec. 2017 here.

Theme: Suburbs and interstices.

Deadline for contributions: 15 September 2017

Article expected length: 1,500-2,000 words

Editors: Mattias Kärrholm and Andrea Mubi Brighenti