About
Theme 2014-15 The Margins of the City
The city is a space made of, and build around, heterogeneous margins. Borders, both empirical and conceptual, divide the city's centre from its periphery; trace the contours of zones of access on the basis of income, race, and gender; split the city into private and public zones. Some borders segregate (the poor from the rich) and others isolate (the rich from the poor). The urban life along the borders and inside the margins often does not conform to the idea of the productive urban citizen. The margins are the spaces of minority groups, migrants, homeless deviants, illegals.
The seminar explores urban marginality from a variety of perspectives - political and economic exclusion, marginalisation on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion, to name just a few - in order to question how these margins are produced, sustained, and reproduced in contemporary cities, both in the Global North and South. It aims to challenge the canonical understanding of life at the margin in order to cast a new light on what we consider to be, and what we know of, contemporary urban marginalisation.
Conveners
Conveners
Hanna Baumann (Department of Architecture)
Michele Lancione (Urban Studies Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Geography)
Farhan Samanani (Department of Anthropology)
Previous conveners
Kathryn Schoefert (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
Faculty Advisors
Dr Wendy Pullan (Director of the Martin Centre for Architectural Studies and Urbanism, Department of Architecture)
Dr Tatiana A Thieme (University Lecturer in Human Geography, Fellow and Director od Studies of Fitzwilliam College)
Faculty Advisor (previous years)
Professor Andrew Webber (Professor of Modern German and Comparative Culture, Head of Department, Dept of German and Dutch)
Past events
| City Seminar |
|---|
| A crisis in urban creativity and local distinctiveness?... 29 January 2008, CRASSH |
| Metropolis: temporary arts events as alternative strategies for urban public domains 12 February 2008, CRASSH |
| Sound and the City - Interdisciplinary Perspectives 22 February 2008, CRASSH |
| Sui-vellance; social bonding through spatial bondage 26 February 2008, CRASSH |
| The Latent World of the Contemporary City 11 March 2008, CRASSH |
| Screening of "Man with a Movie Camera" (Dzviga Vertov, 1929) 06 May 2008, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane |
| The Future of Venice 20 May 2008, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane |
| 16th-C Damascus: Ottoman rule and the development of a provincial city 03 June 2008, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane |
| City Seminar 03 November 2009, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| City Seminar 17 November 2009, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| Prof Caroline Humphrey: " Odessa: pogroms and the Built City" 01 December 2009, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| The Pacific Wall: Los Angeles and Cinema after 1968 12 January 2010, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane, Seminar room |
| Deconstructing Jerusalem and Exile 26 January 2010, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| Small Talk, Big Issues: Art and Beirut 16 February 2010, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| Professor Nigel Thrift: Life World Inc. 23 February 2010, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| The Unaccountable City 09 March 2010, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane |
| Did Walls Really Come Down? Contemporary B/ordering? Walls in Europe 20 April 2010, CRASSH 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge |
| Dr Hazem Abu Orf (Palestine): Urban Informality in Divided Cities 04 May 2010, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge |
| Dr Yael Navarro-Yashin (Cambridge): Abjected Spaces: Débris of War and its Affects 18 May 2010, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge |
| 'Mongrel City': Cosmopolitan Neighbourliness in a Delhi Squatter Settlement. 05 October 2010, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Ayona Datta (Lecturer, Cities Programme, London School of Economics) |
| Space, Place And Group-Making In and Out of the City 19 October 2010, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Professor Loic Wacquant (Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley) |
| Conflict and Coexistence in Levantine Cities 16 November 2010, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Philip Mansel (Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Institute of Historical Research, University of London) |
| Cities as Battlespace: The New Military Urbanism 25 November 2010, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Professor Stephen Graham (School of Architecture, Newcastle University) Keynote lecture. |
| Memory and the Struggle over Geography in a Jewish-Arab 'Mixed City' 18 January 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Dr Haim Yacobi (Marie Curie Visiting Fellow, Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge) |
| Nostalgia and the City 01 February 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Elizabeth Wilson |
| Place, Democracy and the City: an Experiment in Revolutionary Venezuela 15 February 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Professor Doreen Massey (Geography, Fac of Social Sciences, Open University) |
| Filming the Phantoms of Berlin: Christian Petzold's 'Gespenster' ('Ghosts', 2005) 01 March 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Professor Andrew J. Webber (Department of German and Dutch, University of Cambridge) |
| Lhasa: Streets with Memories 15 March 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Robert Barnett (Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program, Columbia University) |
| City Seminar Workshop 13 May 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Open to all but booking online is required. |
| Cities of Power 11 October 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Prof. Göran Therborn (Cambridge) |
| Contested Spaces and Urban Citizenship in India 25 October 2011, King's College, Rylands Room Romola Sanyal (Newcastle). Venue: Rylands Room, King's College |
| On the Plaza: Post-Soviet Urban Ensembles 08 November 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Owen Hatherley (Author) |
| How Cities Cope with Obduracy and Vulnerability 22 November 2011, CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge Anique Hommels (Maastricht) |
| Kinshasa on Film: Between Dystopia and Utopia 31 January 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1 Filip De Boeck (KU Leuven) and Koen Van Synghel . Part of the City Seminar series. NB: This event will begin at 4.15pm |
| Wounded Cities 07 February 2012, CRASSH Dr Karen E. Till (National University of Ireland Maynooth). |
| Urban Reflections - Filmic Narratives of Place, Planning and Change 21 February 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room Mark Tewdwr-Jones (UCL Bartlett) |
| Telescopic Urbanism 06 March 2012, CRASSH Prof Ash Amin (Cambridge) |
| Power Tower: Tatlin and Petrograd, London and Kapoor? 29 May 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room S1- 1st Floor Professor John Milner (Courtauld Institute of Art) . NB Seminar room S1- 1st Floor* |
| An Infrastructure for Freedom?: Common Things and Res Publica in a Contemporary Russian City 16 October 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Dr Oleg Kharkhordin (Political Science and Sociology, European University at St Petersburg) |
| “A Peculiar Band of Thugs”: Construction Workers and the Construction of France 30 October 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Jacob Paskins (Research Fellow at Girton College ) |
| Designing for Evolution and Posterity: The London Olympic Legacy Masterplan 13 November 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Dr Juliet Davis (LSE Cities, London School of Economics and Political Science) |
| The Urbanism of Exception: Not-To-Design and the Paradoxes of Informalities 27 November 2012, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Dr Camillo Boano (Senior Lecturer and Course Director of MSc Building and Urban Design in Development, Co-Director of the UCL Urban Lab, The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London) |
| Producing Mostar. A Lefebvrian Investigation of a Contested City 29 January 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Dr Giulia Carabelli (Queen's University Belfast) |
| Ordinary Topologies: Everyday Life in and out of Ramallah 12 February 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Dr. Christopher Harker (Geography, Durham University) |
| Fluid Cities: Circulation and the Politics of Mobility 26 February 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First Floor David Pinder (Lecturer in Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London). |
| Urban Politics, Learning, and Inequality: Informal Sanitation in Mumbai 12 March 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Dr Colin McFarlane (Geography, Durham University) |
| CANCELLED-Cities for People/Film 07 May 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor Cancelled |
| A Tale of Four Cities: Does Ethnic Diversity Lead to Urban Conflicts? 21 May 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor Radu Carciumaru (Lecturer, South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg) and Sherrill Stroschein (Senior Lecturer in Politics, UCL). NB Seminar room SG2* |
| City Seminar. Theme 2013-14 20 October 2013, CRASSH Mobilising Cities |
| Public Health Work in African Cities 22 October 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Ruth Prince (Cambridge), Noemi Tousignant (Cambridge) at City Seminar NB Seminar starts at 5.00pm today* |
| London 'Super Rich' Neighbourhoods 05 November 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room S1, First floor Roger Burrows (Goldsmiths, London) at City Seminar |
| Mobilising Shack Dwellers in Post-Apartheid South Africa 12 November 2013, CRASSH Seminar room SG2, Ground floor S’bu Zikode (Founder of Abahlali baseMjondolo) NB *Seminar room SG2, Ground floor, 5.00PM |
| Istanbul and the Grassroots 19 November 2013, CRASSH, Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Martin Schwegmann (Humboldt, Berlin) at City Seminar |
| Gated/Gating Community: The Settlements Complex in the West Bank 26 November 2013, CRASSH Seminar room SG2, Ground floor |
| The New Urban Question 14 January 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Andy Merrifield (Cambridge) at City Seminar |
| Globalisation along the Back Roads 28 January 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Caroline Knowles (Goldsmiths) at City Seminar |
| Performance, Power and Place of the Hustle Economy in Nairobi, Kenya 11 February 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Tatiana Thieme (Cambridge) at City Seminar |
| Informal Urban Citizenship in Buenos Aires: Migration, Informality and Visions for a just City 25 February 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Tanja Bastia (Manchester) at City Seminar |
| Theorising Cities Now 04 March 2014, CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor Jennifer Robinson (UCL) at City Seminar |
| Mapping Urban Spatial Practices and Cultures of Dissent in Lahore and London 11 March 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1, Ground floor Nishat Awan (Sheffield) at City Seminar |
| Intimate City: Violence,Gender,Ordinary Life in Delhi Slums 22 April 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1 Ayona Datta (Leeds) at City seminar |
| (Im)mobilizing Bangkok: motorcycle taxi drivers and street protest 30 April 2014, CRASSH (S1) 1st Floor Claudio Sopranzetti (Oxford) at CRASSH |
| CANCELLED-Refugees and the Urban Poor (City Seminar) 06 May 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1 |
| Living the Security City: Navigating Karachi’s Enclaves 20 May 2014, CRASSH Seminar room SG1 Sobia A. Kaker (LSE/Newcastle) and Postgraduate Networking at City seminar |
| Revanchist Sanitisation or Coercive Care? 20 October 2014, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building Sarah Johnsen (Heriot-Watt University) at City Seminar |
| Refugees and the Urban Poor: In Two Palestinian Enclaves 03 November 2014, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building Silvia Pasquetti (Cambridge) at City Seminar |
| Participatory Sonic Arts in Rio and Belfast 24 November 2014, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building (NB different day and time) Pedro Rebelo (Belfast) joint event City Seminar and Civic Matter |
| Relocating Urban Asylum 01 December 2014, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building Jonny Darling (Manchester) at City Seminar |
| CANCELLED-Evacuate 26 January 2015, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building City Seminar |
| Skateboarding and the City 09 February 2015, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building Iain Borden (UCL) |
| An Urban Perspective on State Fragility in Lebanon 23 February 2015, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building Sara Fregonese (Birmingham) ~City Seminar |
| Militant Masks: Youth and Insecurity in the Niger Delta 09 March 2015, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building David Pratten (Oxford) |
| Welfare, Neighbourhood and New Geographies of Diversity 18 May 2015, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building. Mette Berg & Ben Gidley (Oxford)~ City Seminar |
| CANCELLED-Youth and Modes of Operating in Abidjan. 01 June 2015, Room SG1, Alison Richard Building. AbdouMaliq Simone (Goldsmiths) ~ City Seminar |
| Urban Research at Cambridge: City Seminar Workshop 04 June 2015, Room SG2, Alison Richard Building. Workshop ~ City Seminar |