Author: Melissa@globalroaming

Predictive Urbanism

June 22, 2021

In this Public Colloquium, Melissa Butcher, Sarah Keenan, Joel McKim and Scott Rodgers engage in a roundtable discussion with Manu Luksch about her VR Exhibition Predictive Cities. The live colloquium, hosted by the BISR Urban Intersections Experimental Collective, will also be recorded and made available as a podcast.

The Predictive Cities exhibition –  sponsored by the BISR Urban Intersections Experimental Collective, running from 16 June – 31 August 2021 – is situated in the virtual space of a Mozilla Hubs VR chatroom. It contains two kinds of objects. First, memes that spawn a selection of Luksch’s artworks interrogating network urbanism and citizen agency, and second, spherical photographs of Songdo, South Korea, internationally famous as case study of greenfield smart cities. The series Songdo is custom-made for VR and shown the first time at this occasion.

Attendees are strongly encouraged to visit the exhibition before attending the Public Colloquium, though can also choose to do so afterwards.

New article on the lived experience of multicultural cities

September 6, 2019

(2019) Becoming ‘ghosts’: recalling the impact of urban change on the lived experience of multiculture. Ethnic & Racial Studies, 42 (3): 387-394.

This review focuses on the contributions of Neal et al.’s book Lived Experiences of Multiculture. I examine their focus on the implications of place in encounter, and their reference to the importance of competencies and reflexivity. While much has been written on these fields, their granular ethnography reveals points of conviviality in the grounded socio-spatial relations of diversity in sites that blur the boundaries between public and private: parks, chain cafes, leisure groups, and schools. However, while spaces of hopeful encounter clearly exist, the complexity and pain of these processes and the power relations that underpin them, particularly under conditions of urban transformation, require further exploration. Therefore, I would argue for an extension of this work to incorporate an account of belonging that allows for the impacts of urban transformation, the power relations inherent in these processes, the need for more interdisciplinary engagement in the field of intercultural competence, and the need to ensure our analysis of diversity and encounter does not stray too far from a focus on conflict.

New article on women and automobility in Delhi

September 6, 2019

(2019) ‘Sir, it was my right of way!’ Examining cultural change and the contested entitlements of automobility. Mobilities. DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2019.1635337

This qualitative study uses a frame of entitlements to explore how automobility reflects the complex tensions of cultural change, including shifting privileges within gendered and classed social relations. Through documenting the mobility of a cohort of middle-class women in Delhi, three regimes of entitlement are identified within the city’s ‘landscape[s] of power’ (Bagheri 2017): the car and its impact on the built environment; the constraints of gendered expectations; and middle class entitlement within a neo-liberal city. The findings highlight the capacity of competing entitlements to structure and contest cultural change, as well as the importance of contextualising mobility theory.

Spaces and Flows conference

October 22, 2018

Looking forward to speaking at the 2018 International Urban and Extra-Urban Studies conference this week in Heidelberg. Giving a paper on gender, class and driving in Delhi.

https://spacesandflows.com/2018-conference/program

Gendering the City article

May 9, 2018

The introduction to our GPC special issue on ‘Gendering the City’ is now available online:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1462773

Defying Delhi’s enclosures: strategies for managing a difficult city

November 21, 2017

New research publication from the SING:E project:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1395823

Reflecting wider debates on the city as a site of coercion and opportunity, Delhi is marked by the coordinates of both cultural nationalism and neo-liberal aspiration. The former positions the city as a site of cultural pollution, at times claiming ‘western lifestyles’ have contributed to gendered assault. In juxtaposition, Delhi’s neo-liberal landscape positions the female body as a valued commodity, iconic of ‘globalised living’, embedded in discourses of autonomy and modernity. This article will argue that these entangled cultural constructs have created a city of threat and discomfort that problematizes women’s access, be it for livelihood or leisure, enclosing women within coordinates not of their making. Yet rather than acquiesce to this urban topology, the agency of the single, middle-aged, middle-class women in this ethnographic study extends our understanding of the agonistic relationships within urban space, and the capacity to negotiate them using practices of avoidance, deception, adaptation, defiance, and care, at times creating their own enclosures in the process that enabled access to the city. Age and class as well as gendered expectations impacted on the available resources and outcomes of these negotiations, revealing the diverse possibilities of urban living that can enable pockets of social and political flourishing even within a difficult city.

In Conversation with Korean film director Lee Hyuk-sang

October 23, 2017

Pleased to be holding a ‘conversation’ with Korean film director and activist, Lee Hyuk-sang, at the Korean Cultural Centre, London, 02 November.

Lee Hyuk-sang is part of the Pinks collective of activists and filmmakers, tackling subjects such as LGBTQ rights, workers’ struggles, and state violence against citizens. The London Korean Film Festival is screening three of their most recent works (Two Doors, The Remnants and Goodbye My Hero).

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lkff-2017-in-conversation-with-director-lee-hyuk-sang-pinks-tickets-38936078860?aff=es2

http://koreanfilm.co.uk/site/the-2017-festival/programme-lineup/documentary