Cities Interrupted: Visual culture and urban space

Description

Cities Interrupted explores the potential of visual culture – in the form of photography, film, performance, architecture, urban design, and mixed media – to strategically interrupt processes of globalization in contemporary urban spaces. Looking at cities such as Amsterdam, Beijing, Doha, London, New York, and Paris, the book brings together original essays to reveal how the concept of ‘interruption’ in global cities enables new understanding of the forms of space, experience, and community that are emerging in today’s rapidly transforming urban environments. The idea of ‘interruption’ addressed in this book refers to deliberate interventions in the spaces and communities of contemporary cities – interventions that seek to disrupt or destabilize the experience of everyday urban life through creative practice. Interruption is used as an analytic and conceptual tool to challenge – and explore alternatives to – the narratives of speed, hyper-mobility, rapid growth, and incessant exchange and flow that have dominated critical thinking on global cities. Bringing art and creative practice into the centre of discussions about the future of cities, alongside discussions of development, design, justice, health, sustainability, technology, and citizenship, this book is essential reading for anyone working at the intersections of a range of urban, cultural and visual fields, including urban studies, urban design and architecture, visual studies, cultural studies, media studies, art history, and social and cultural geography. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS CONTRIBUTORS FOREWORD: INTERRUPTING INTERRUPTION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 VISUAL CULTURE AND INTERRUPTION IN GLOBAL CITIES What is interruption? Visualizing interruption Note PART ONE CRISIS AND RUIN 2 WHY WE LOVE ‘INTERRUPTION’: URBAN RUINS, FOOD TRUCKS AND THE CULT OF DECAY What’s wrong with dystopianism? The great inversion ‘Interruption’ meets the great inversion Meet the food truckers So when was interruption? Notes 3 RESCUING HISTORY FROM THE CITY: INTERRUPTION AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN BEIJING1 Soft powers Urban dreams Intervention Breaking Interruption Notes 4 INTERRUPTING NEW YORK: SLOWNESS AND THE HIGH LINE Slow New York Elevated street The High Line effect Slow street Heterotopia and retro- walking Note 5 SOUND, MEMORY AND INTERRUPTION: GHOSTS OF LONDON’S M11 LINK ROAD Traffic streams LINKED: Where are all those people now? Out of time, out of place Ghosts and the dislocation of time and space Conclusions Acknowledgements Notes PART TWO RESISTANCE AND RENEWAL 6 SUBURBIA, INTERRUPTED: STREET ART AND THE POLITICS OF PLACE IN THE PARIS BANLIEUES1 The image of the Cité : building consensus in the banlieues Interrupting art Conclusion Notes 7 LOOKING AT DIGITAL VISUALIZATIONS OF URBAN REDEVELOPMENT PROJECTS: DIMMING THE SCINTILLATING GLOW OF UNWORK What sort of image is a digital visualization? Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes 8 ‘HERE WE ARE NOW’: AMSTERDAM’S NORTH–SOUTH METRO LINE AND THE EMERGENCE OF A NETWORKED PUBLIC Lessons from the past Here we are now: from tunnel vision to open house Conclusion: in defence of crisis Notes 9 POP-UP SHOPS AS INTERRUPTIONS IN(POST-)RECESSIONAL LONDON From ‘limited time’ retail to community-oriented pop-up shops Creative fillers at times of recession A shared pop-up aesthetics Expected and unintended experiences Conclusions Note PART THREE BODIES AND SPACE 10 INTERRUPTION EXPANDED: URBAN PHOTOGRAPHY’S PERSPICACIOUS VIEW I II III IV 11 BUILDERING, URBAN INTERVENTIONS AND PUBLIC SCULPTURE Charms and perils of verticality Buildering as metaphor Notes 12 INTERRUPTING THE STREET Beat Streuli: reconfiguring the street Michael Wolf: Street Views Coda: from still to slow REFERENCES INDEX