Hello again,
Just a reminder that tomorrow nights's colloquia is from 4-6pm in G07
Pearson, UCL. We've got two interesting presentations lined up (see
message below). Hope to see you there.
Cheers,
Regan
>
> Hi all,
>
> We've got a nice colloquia session lined up for February. We'll be meeting
> this coming Thursday, 16 Feb from 4-6pm in G07 Pearson Building, UCL. Two
> doctoral students will be presenting some of their recent work--Sean Knox
> from Durham University and Sobia Kaker from Newcastle University (see
> abstracts below). A discussion/Q&A will follow each and then we'll head to
> the pub for a drink. It's a great chance to meet a few other urban-related
> postgrads, see what kind of work other people are up to, and socialize a
> bit.
>
> Hope to see you there,
>
>
> Regan Koch
> UCL Department of Geography
>
>
> Abstract I:
>
> Laboratories of Assembling: Experimentalism and Regeneration in
> Newcastle-Gateshead. Sean Knox, Durham University.
>
> In this paper I offer an account of the (re-)making of urban futures in
> Newcastle-Gateshead. I do so by examining the emergence, composition and
> enacting of the '1PLAN' - a spatial and economic master-plan for
> Newcastle-Gateshead – which acts as a heuristic device for the assembling
> of urban futures. In the paper I develop three entangled orientations to
> understanding such processes. First, I conceive the making of the '1PLAN'
> as emerging from and as driven by an array of urban desires, whose roots
> are geographically diverse, politically embedded and that act as the
> productive force of assembling. Second, I construct the doing of the
> '1PLAN' as a set of creative and calculative experimental practices
> situated in laboratories of assembling. In doing so, I visit the
> laboratories of the architect, planner and regeneration officer as a means
> to describe the taking-place of the differing experimental modes through
> which the urban is learnt, known and produced. Third, I emphasise the role
> that technologies and their artefacts – here I am thinking, among others,
> of physical models, virtual models, visualisations, commercial feasibility
> and institutional reports - play in the constructing of urban futures.
> Specifically, I highlight their function as tools of learning and devices
> of persuasion that enact and reflect urban desires. As means of
> illustration I story the moments in which the three orientations are
> entangled in the assembling of the '1PLAN'.
>
> ABSTRACT II
>
> Reflections from Fieldwork: Space, Security and Circulation in an
> Archipelago of Enclaves. Sobia A. Kaker
>
> Using different types of enclaves (enclosed neighbourhoods, gated
> communities, and ethnic/sectarian enclaves in informal settlements) as the
> lens of analysis, Karachi is seen as a fractured city where space
> (political and social) is highly contested, security is an imperative (and
> an obsession), and circulation creates paradoxes of inclusion and
> exclusion, security and insecurity, openness and restriction. The city is
> a flashpoint of various forms of violence, which are wholly attributed to
> sectarian, ethnic, and political violence.
>
> This presentation dissects space, security and circulation in selected
> enclaves of Karachi. The internal dynamics are put in context of external
> dynamics to understand contests of space at the local, national, and
> international level. The argument presented is that a careful analysis of
> the spatial structure of the city, and closer attention to the geography
> and politics in different enclaves might offer an alternative approach to
> viewing violence in Karachi as the eruption of tensions in space, security
> and circulation in the city. At a wider level, the presentation will aim
> to highlight the manner in which cities are evolving in today’s globalised
> world as fractured entities which become sites of local, national and
> geopolitical struggles.
>
>
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