As Cities in Conflict goes on hiatus, I take a look back at the past fourteen months of publishing articles, film, photo-essays, mappings and infographics on the series, and comment on where urbanism is today: stuck between logics of saviourism and withdrawal.
This year's 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony will feature the demolition of Glasgow's renowned Red Road flats. The showpiece demolition not only marks the 'changing face' of the city's East End but also the brazen revanchism of the city's regeneration policy.
While media coverage of Brazil's urban protests continues to focus on Molotov cocktails and smashed windows, the fight against police violence, repression and institutional racism continues.
The stigmatising narratives which dominate popular discourse on the 2011 riots have imbued the punitive regeneration of Tottenham with a political and moral urgency.
After its destruction in the 2007 conflict, how did residents and architects go about rebuilding one of Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camps?
Initially mandated to protect and assist, the humanitarian project in Kabul has significantly reshaped the city over the past decade. In the absence of democratic control, and in the face of pervasive neoliberal logics, what happens to Kabuli's right to the city?
The increasing ubiquity of riots, gang crime, and terrorist attacks in cities, would suggest the hallmark of the contemporary period is one of rising 'urban conflict' rather than 'peace'. But what is the link between the 'fragility' of states, and increasing violence in the city?
Each year, for one week in September, Kabulis celebrate Martyrs Week. The image war which ensues on the streets, buildings and public spaces of the city is highly political, and has in recent years become increasingly violent.
Watch: Short film documenting the everyday life of migrants in Athens. Scapegoated for Greece's crisis and frequently victims of public violence, migrants in Athens are rendered anonymous, homogenous, impossible.
Landscapes of Emergency is a brief glance over the undeclared state of emergency that casts its shadow over the functions and the phenomena of public space in Athens (Video, 12 mins).
The closure of official channels of debate and establishment of migrant detention camps in Athens, has been the capstone to a long process of turning people against the most vulnerable populations in cities and, by extension, against all that urban culture stands for.
