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- Convenors:
-
Marta Contijoch-Torres
(Universitat de Barcelona)
Manuel Ramos (ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon)
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Short Abstract:
This panel seeks contributions that juxtapose the logistical dynamics involved in the implementation of new urban mobilities with the social experiences they aim to impact, with the objective of understanding the global development of relations between the "formal" and the "informal".
Long Abstract:
The study of mobility infrastructures in anthropology aims to unveil the intricate ways in which urban transportation systems produce narratives encompassing globalization, pledges of future connectivity, and tangible materialities within specific temporal and spatial contexts. The exploration of this new paradigm of mobility enables us to study specific infrastructures, institutions, and planning models alongside the material and social relationships they encompass, linking them to various domains and scales. This entails a recognition of how mobility plans, projects, and facilities are frequently overwhelmed by unforeseen uses, needs, appropriations, and alternative practices.
Our proposed panel assumes the comparability and resonance of these overflow processes. We are thus looking at contributions that, in different contexts, juxtapose the logistical dynamics involved in implementing new urban mobilities with the social experiences they propose to impact, with the goal of understanding the global unfolding of relationships between two often presumed segregated realms—the 'formal' and the 'informal.' We aim to debate how these dynamics reflect diverse and multifaceted processes of neoliberalization, conditioned by local institutional, political, economic, urban, and public service settings. We further assume that the notion of "informality" warrants examination and analysis as a concept that legitimizes specific, often abusive, and exclusionary actions. We expect that contributors agree to discuss this problematic notion, beyond its role as an analytical category.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Geoffrey Nwaka (Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria)
Paper short abstract:
To build just and inclusive cities in Africa, planners and government officials, who have idealized notions of the modern African city, should recognize and come to terms with the local reality of rapid urbanization and extensive urban informality in Africa, now and in the foreseeable future.
Paper long abstract:
Urban planning and governance in Africa have for too long remained prisoner of the colonial tradition, and have not adapted fast enough to the local reality of rapid urban change in the post-colonial period. UN-Habitat estimates that Sub-Saharan African cities have nearly 200 million slum dwellers, most of who work in the informal sector where they simply do not earn enough to afford the high standard of shelter and services that planners expect. While some elite neighborhoods enjoy high quality housing and residential environment, the bulk of the urban poor live in appalling conditions. Many of our planner and government officials, who aspire to international standards of modernity, tend to see the informal sector in these cities as ‘a chaotic jumble of unproductive activities’ that should be removed through their misguided policies of forced eviction and repression. We argue that that while these officials should uphold the laws that protect public health and the urban environment, they must recognize and come to terms with the local reality of rapid urbanization and extensive urban informality in the continent, now and in the foreseeable future. Current research suggests that the path to urban peace and sustainability in Africa lies in building more inclusive and socially equitable cities that accommodate the ways of life of majority of city inhabitants. The paper offers fresh insights on pathways to sustainable urban futures in Africa, and on appropriate urban planning and governance models and visions for the continent. It looks back at the colonial heritage of urban planning and governance in Africa, and on ways to rethink, decolonize and re-envision the African cities.
Lucía Abbadie (Udelar)
Paper short abstract:
Since the installation of a perimeter route in Villa García, the area has undergone a series of transformations, which have effects on those who live there. In this paper I propose to analyse to what extent these transformations have impacted the ways of living.
Paper long abstract:
Villa García is an old urban centre in a rural area at the periphery of Montevideo, in Uruguay, that it is located 21 km from the centre of the city.
In the last 30 years, a series of changes in urban infrastructure, which include the construction of a perimeter route that connects port and airport, as well as the main routes of the country, have created a series of transformation in the area, that includes that the area has turned a neighbourhood of Montevideo.
The installation of a free zone, a stadium and a university unit (the veterinary school) has caused a progressive transformation that includes the increase of urban public transport in the area, which still remains deficient. A flow of workers and students who come to the area from Monday to Friday join the inhabitants of Villa García, saturating the transportation available during peak hours. In return, the availability of frequencies has increased.
While the area is increasing in services, several informal settlements have been created and increased their population in the last decades. As a result, almost half of the inhabitants of this neighbourhood live on an “informal” condition regarding their legal land tenure situation.
As part of my PhD research, I would like to share and exchange ideas around the transformations in Villa García since the installation of these infrastructures.
Juan Granero (Universitat de Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
Amidst contemporary challenges, a new urban paradigm unfolds, prioritizing urban mobility and Barcelona's bicycle lanes (CB). In this doctoral research communication, CB is conceptualized as a sociotechnical system, recognizing its complex interplay among actors, politics, and societal implications.
Paper long abstract:
The prevailing economic, social, and ecological challenges create an opportunity for a transformative urban paradigm, notably centered on urban mobility and the emergence of bicycle lanes (CB). The rapid deployment of CB in Barcelona is intertwined with the city's global network connectivity, yet it reflects local idiosyncrasies and specificities. This communication from an ongoing doctoral research grounded in anthropology and infraestructures, critically examines the CB implementation not as a predefined reality but as a crystallization of ongoing urban processes. Approaching the CB as a 'sociotechnical system,' 'urban assemblage,' or part of 'technogenesis,' the study acknowledges its highly intricate and ever-evolving nature. The CB's political and infrastructural complexities involve a myriad of social actors, diverse political stances, and constant negotiation between normative uses and user appropriations. The CB both influences and is influenced by human actors, technical devices, political positions, and social movements. Far from consensus, it becomes a genuine battleground where various social groups mobilize, fortify positions, and ultimately imprint their significance onto urban spaces, shaping the understanding of inhabiting the city.
Anna Giulia Della Puppa (Sapienza University of Rome)
Paper short abstract:
The paper investigates how urban mobility, touristic gentrification, spatial injustice and political controversy intersect with the construction of the Metro Line 4 infrastructure in the neighbourhood of Exarchia, Athens, by describing this process from the perspective of contemporary logistics.
Paper long abstract:
”Who moves? Who moves who? Who has to move? Who can stay put?" wondered Jonh Urry (2010:7). These questions seem all the more pertinent in the contemporary urban dimension.
The paper intends to investigate the urban mobility dimension of the city of Athens and the construction of its infrastructure, Metro Line 4, by describing it from the perspective of contemporary logistics.
Indeed, intending logistics as "a heterogeneous apparatus of techniques, knowledge and infrastructures finalised to circulation" (ITBB, 2022) that "exhibiting its apparently technical disposition (…), transforms and reproduces social relations and power conditions" (Grappi, 2018), we can grasp both the political size of logistics and the importance of extending its domains to the everyday spatialities of the city. The paper dwells on the paradox of circulation as a pervasive urban phenomenon and the effects that this and its immobile infrastructures produce on the territories where these last are implemented, exacerbating old spatial injustices and creating new ones, in turn driving new forms of mobility.
Focusing on the frictions between the formal rhetorics of free flows and mobility of people and goods on one side and the stability and temporalities of the spatialised practices of Exarchia inhabitants on the other, I define "petty logistics" as the everyday assemblages of subjectivities and urban infrastructures and trajectories, through which people, algorithmic goods, and capital move and intersect different forms of informal urban mobility, deeply imbricated with the social and spatial transformations in which cities are involved (tourism, leisure, displacement, commuting, care work, financialization,…).
Joan Uribe (Universitat de Barcelona)
Paper short abstract:
Uno de los factores limitadores de la supervivencia de las “personas en situación de calle”, es la itinerancia vinculada a sus rutinas de vida cotidiana. Desde la perspectiva del nuevo paradigma de la movilidad de John Urry, se organizó la investigación en dos bloques: inmovilidad, y movilidad.
Paper long abstract:
Uno de los factores limitadores de la supervivencia de las “personas en situación de calle”, es la itinerancia vinculada a sus rutinas de vida cotidiana.
A través del estudio de sus movilidades desde la perspectiva del nuevo paradigma de la movilidad de John Urry, se consideró que su movilidad está condicionada por su inmovilidad (dónde pernoctan, en que condiciones y con qué materiales), lo cual organizó la investigación en dos bloques: inmovilidad, y movilidad.
Se constató que la mayoría de estas personas se mantienen en itinerancia respecto a su espacio de referencia, incluso a riesgo de la pérdida de sus pertenencias.
A su vez, sus (in)movilidades, parecen tener significados relativos a las expectativas de estancia en situación de calle, en combinación a las presiones del contexto urbano y los diferentes agentes que intervienen en él en relación a la entre: la representación del espacio, la práctica espacial y los espacios de representación, propuestos por Henri Lefebvre, formalizados de manera más evidente desde lógicas de “arquitectura hostil”.
Su movilidad se ha analizado a partir de factores como: ocupación económica; cobertura de su alimentación; higiene; socialización; relación con servicios sociales. Los resultados, parecen apuntar a una lógica de la movilidad centrada en la cobertura de las necesidades –es decir, literalmente, en su supervivencia -.
Tanto su inmovilidad como su movilidad, se ubican en la lógica , del sentido táctico que propone Michel de Certeau y como intento de gestión de su alteridad como sujetos no deseados en el espacio urbano.