Austerity urbanism and the makeshift city

Abstract

This paper engages with a recent set of critical arguments concerning the 'post-crisis city' and the political economy of 'austerity urbanism'. The focus of the discussion is on practical interventions in the vacant and disused spaces of recessionary cities, and in particular on temporary designs and provisional uses. In this way it opens a further line of argument about urbanism under conditions of austerity, alongside analyses of the formal politics of austerity or the possibilities of urban activism in these settings. Its concern is with forms of urban intervention that rework orthodoxies of urban development as usual: in particular the timescales that inform conventional development models; the understandings of use around which sites are planned and designed; and the ways in which value is realised through the production of urban spaces. The argument centres on European contexts of austerity urbanism, drawing on critical examples of urban design and occupation in the region's largest economies. Such urban strategies are concerned with a politics and a practice of small incursions in material spaces.

Intensifying or transforming sustainable cities? Fragmented logics of urban environmentalism

“…Elite decision-makers seeking to promote new forms of eco-capitalism often highlight the need for urban agglomerations, city-regions and pan-urban collaborations, with new forms of governance that by-pass existing forms of governance to get growth moving (Brenner and Schmid 2015). By contrast, in a context where neoliberal urban growth is seen not to be working, grassroots movements have been engaged in a wide range of neighbourhood and networked forms of DiY urbanism, tactical forms of urbanism and horizontal urbanism (Tonkiss 2013, Ferreri 2015. The issue is to what extent are multi-level governance frameworks re-enforcing the dominant strand of sustainable cities' debates of the last three decades or are possibilities for alternatives likely to flourish?…”

Urbanismo, crisis y austeridad

“…Cuatro niveles y escalas de compromiso deberían articular este esfuerzo: -Urbanismo activista.-La crisis ha provocado un archipiélago de pequeñas intervenciones y ocupaciones del espacio público en respuesta directa a la retirada del Estado de su tradicional labor de regulación socio-espacial. Junto a los movimientos sociales urbanos tradicionales, estas nuevas experiencias muestran el potencial de lo transitorio para refigurar la ciudad (Tonkiss, 2013), pero también y especialmente la importancia de la reapropiación del espacio público y la autogestión colectiva de la ciudad (Harvey, 2012;Sevilla-Buitrago, 2015). Tanto el uso cotidiano de la calle como su ocupación en protestas urbanas masivas pueden articularse en torno a urbanismos activistas para generar nuevas formas de comunes urbanos.…”

Innovating Climate Governance

“…The last decade has witnessed the rise of precarious urban conditions involving temporary land use, the appropriation of vacant buildings, pop-up trucks and stores, energy and water precarities, and related dialogues (e.g. Neilsen & Rossiter, 2008;Bishop & Williams, 2012;Andres, 2013;Tonkiss, 2013;Németh & Langhorst, 2014;Harris, 2015). The world as a whole seems to be moving towards more precarious states of existence as the durable edifices of twentieth century liberal democracy slowly crumble.…”