EGS Seminar - Tuesday 02 November 2010

Tuesday 02nd November, E0.05 from 1.00-2.00 pm.


Lunch, and an opportunity to chat with the speaker, will be in room E402 from 12:30. All are invited!

‘ As Found: Contested (re)appropriations within the ‘left-over’ spaces of the city’
In this talk Jo will discuss ‘informal,’ left-over spaces which are intrinsic to the planning system and the ordering, zoning and separating of the urban landscape. Such interstitial, dis-used and marginal geographical spaces emerge in various urban locations and punctuate the staged and controlled official public sites and the everyday, ubiquitous spaces of the contemporary city. According to De Sola-Morales (1995: 120) these ‘strange places exist outside the city’s effective circuits and productive structures,’ and from an economic point of view represent places ‘where the city is no longer.’
Their qualities are overlooked, and in various discourses from the realms of architecture, planning, design and urban theory, they are depicted negatively. Represented on official maps as ‘a white mark’, they remain ignored until planners, architects and developers realise their real estate value. As places once used but now abandoned, to an authoritarian viewpoint they represent unacceptable socio-economic abandonment, contrary to the ideal image of the city. Yet, Jo suggests, they also represent a ‘domain of unfulfilled promise and unlimited opportunity’ (Cupers and Miessen 2002: 83). Over time these non prescriptive, liminal spaces acquire and express multiple and shifting social, aesthetic, political and economic meanings as opposed to clarity of function and distinct identity. They provide the context for instances of ‘pure potentiality’ (Anderson: 2010) to unfold, allow for alternative readings of space and offer a temporary context for activities normally prohibited. Jo proposes that policy makers and city officials could learn from the transient qualities of these spaces and the activities that enliven them, rethinking them as a resource rather than a hindrance to the city.