Social Production of Space

Spatial situations of ordinary actions encountered in everyday life and spatial practices occurred related to these phenomena are mostly ambiguous in the city layers. When examining İstanbul as a 'palimpsest' city, the spatial practices in everyday life, how they work and affect society and culture are questioned together in the scope of this study. The aim of this study can be summed up as to discover the characteristics of 'conversation' as a simple/ordinary form of dialogue in everyday life that produces space. In the research the meaning is attributed not to the place; to the spatial practices that have emerged in that place and the spatialities are being tested. In this regard, theoretical back ground has been built, enabling us to explore the spatial features appeared about the practice producing the space. This study has been searched the spatial practices and the dynamics triggering the production of space regarding daily life of an urban layer in İstanbul; Çorlulu Ali Paşa Madrasah known as 'Conversation Space'. The emphasis of this study is that it will argue that conversation may create an interview environment, that this interview environment may both carry the potential of creating an alternative 'living dialogue space' , and may be grasped as a channel of an alternative social fact/communalism. With establishment of the links with urban strata, revealing the palimpsest urban spaces have been changing and transforming continuously, relationship networks appeared in these spaces and the characteristic features will begin to be explored.

This dissertation examines Istanbul as a geographical and historical totality and focuses on four different and integral parts of this totality: its Ottoman past, its dalliances with modern planning attempts, the city’s death throes in the face of rabid industrialization efforts, and its first true real estate boom. These divergent parts are scrutinized through the relationship between the state and space.
This work investigates the different modes a city takes under different configurations of a state composed of, but not limited to, cultural, ethnic, religious, class-based, formal, and spatial elements. By studying Istanbul alone, it is possible to gauge divergent trajectories of the production of space that the city takes.
The changes in Istanbul’s state-spaces are studied in five stages: the first involves the urban theory that engendered my critical stance on Istanbul and the production of space and how revolutionary urbanism can be harnessed to a re-evaluation of a semiperipheral metropolis.
The second part is related to an attempt in unraveling the early modern historical characteristics of the city and its overdetermining role in the formation of state mechanisms.
The third part unearths the rupture that modernity instigated in the urban fabric and conjoining state institutions and mentalities that shaped the city.
The fourth part focuses on the industrialization and population boom of the second part of the 20th century and locates the consequence of social developments in the urban space: the squatter settlements, the gecekondus.
The fifth part grasps the cycles of boom and bust in the real estate investments in Istanbul and is concerned in the concrete production of space of the five decades since 1965. Amidst the interplay of various elements, the emergent middle class in Istanbul and its social and historical moorings in the urban built environment are revealed to be rooted in the erstwhile squatters, in the gecekondu areas.

ÖZET
Kentlerin ortaya çıkması uygun coğrafyalarda üretilecek nesnelere yakınlıkla ve özellikle su kaynaklarının varlığıyla gerçekleşir ve kentler siyasi-dini erk ve tebaadan oluşan bir yapı tarafından kullanılırdı. Modernleşme, nedenleri ve sonuçlarıyla bu yapıları katmanlaştırdı ve kentsel planlama artık bir dizi işleme ve ölçüte dayalı hale geldi. 1933 yılında gerçekleşen IV. Uluslararası Modern Mimarlık Kongresinde (CIAM-Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne)  ana tema, kentleşme ve kentsel gelişme planlamaları üzerinden işlevsel kent kavramına odaklandı. Kaleme alınan bildirge, mimari miras ile yeni kentsel donanımların birliğinin nasıl sağlanacağını işaret eden bilgilerin yanı sıra, mimari mirasın ruhsal, duygusal, kültürel ve ekonomik değerini de vurgulamıştı. Ayrıca kent içinde sıkışıp kalmış imarsız yerleşmelerin de temizlenip yeşil alanlara dönüştürülmesinden söz ettiği gibi, eski tarihi alanlarda pastiş gibi eklerin yapılmasını da reddetmişti.
1943 yılında J. Tyrwitt tarafından Fransızcadan İngilizceye çevrilen bu metin (Atina Şartı-La Charte d'Athenes Paris, 1943) zamanla tüm dünyada planlı gelişmenin koşulu oldu. Rykwert (1976) modern kentsel ilkeleri kast ederek “kenti zonlara ayırmak kentlerin ölümü anlamına gelir” demişti. Bu doğrudur ama bu gün Amerikalı bir grup kentbilimci tarafından öne sürülen “kentleri bir enerji ilmeğine almak” gibi teknolojik bir ütopya da onları boğmak demek olur.
Rasyonalist ve iyi niyetli modern kent şiarları ile modern kent akılcı bir biçimde, eksikleri de olsa,  gerçekleşirken, 1980’ler civarında kabul gören neo-liberal politikalar, kentsel mekânı her türlü ticari işlemlerle, metalaşan kültürle ve yeni teknolojik devasa binalarla işgal ederek halkın alanını daraltıp kentlerin kamusal-sosyal alanlarını yok etti. Kentlere insan akını da önlenemez hale gelince mutsuz kent ve kentli nüfusu ortaya çıktı. Doğaldır, çünkü uzmanlar araştırmalara dayalı olarak, başarılı kentin yayıldığı alan ile barındırdığı nüfusu arasında bir orantı olması gerektiğini savunuyorlar.
Diğer yandan, anarşist görüşe göre kentsel gelişim teorisi mekânın kapitalist bir tanımıdır; şehri kimliksizleştirir ve ticari bir meta haline getirir. Kapitalist şehre hizmet eden mimari üretimlerin insanların yararı için üretildiği vurgulanır, ancak yarar vurgusu bir hedef şaşırtmadan ibaret olup bu gibi mekânlar insanlar olmadan, insanlara karşı ve yönetenlerin çıkarlarını korumak amaçlı bir araç olarak geliştirilirler.
Oysa insanlık kentler yapmaya hep devam edecek. Biz, bu kişisel anılarımız, arzu ve isteklerimizle şekillenmiş kentsel mekânlar içinde iş görüyor, yaşıyor olacağız. Karar vericiler ne buyurursa buyursun biz ahali olarak içinde rahatlayıp dinlenebileceğimiz, selam verip selam alabileceğimiz, oynayacağımız ve düş kurabileceğimiz mekânları istiyoruz. Korkutularak bunlardan asla vaz geçmeyeceğiz. Güney Amerika’da bazı bölgeler ve Ljubljana, Atina, Guimaeres ve Bordeaux gibi kentlerde yaşanan bazı müdahaleler ve muhteşem sonuçlarından başka, sosyal sınıflar arasındaki ayrımların daha kesin olduğu Londra, New York gibi kentlerde yaşanan deneyimler kentlerden umudumuzu kesmek yerine, geleceğin insanlığına dair umutlarımızı arttırıyor. Mimarlık, peyzaj, anahtarsız strüktürler, renovasyon ve genişleme, kamusal alan, sosyalleşme ve toplanma mekânları umudumuzdur. Bu konularda önermeler yapmalı, yapana destek olmalıyız. Hiçbir yöntemi bulunamıyorsa; yani, yıkıp kendimize yer açamıyorsak, São Paula’daki gibi «Arabasız Pazar» da mı yapamayız? Ya da…
Anahtar Kelimeler: Kent, Kamusal alan, sosyal mekân, boşluk, insanlar arası ilişki
ABSTRACT
Early settlements evolved in suitable geographies of benediction and felicity, especially near water resources, rich with blessed natural commodities, and were utilized by the ruling power reinforced by the duties and the appurtenant. Modernization, through its causes and ends aided in the stratification of these three on the one hand and systematized urban planning in congruence with a series of operations and standards, on the other. In 1933 during the IV.th International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM-Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne), participating architects focused on the concept of functional city in the context of urbanization and urban development. The declaration, along with the question of integration of the architectural heritage and the new urban equipage, underlined the spiritual, emotional, cultural and economic worth of the heritage. Also, the non-planned plots cramped in towns were proposed for clearance so as to remain as green areas and the declaration also prohibited postiche supplement in historical districts.
The text (Athens Charter-La Charte d'Athenes Paris, 1943) that pervaded the entire world as the dictum of planned urban development. Referring to the main idea of the programmatic development, Rykwert (1976) had said ‘zoning is the death of cities’. This is true but a technological utopia such as ‘planning cities as a series of energy loops’ is to suffocate them.
While modern towns were being realized with the rationalist and well-intentioned modern urban principles, with some deficis may be, around 1980s the most welcomed neo-liberal policies opened up urban space to every kind of trade business, commoditized culture, produced colossal sky-scrapers and occupied public space, diminished the freedom of people who once used such places for socialization and enjoyment. Nevertheless, dazzling sights and work possibilities drew mass populations to such cities. Hence the outcome was hectic towns and unhappy populations.  This is a very natural corollary, because based on research experts declare that the ratio of the land occupied by the cities to its population should be in the accurate range to create amiable towns.
On the other hand, according to the anarchist view, the theory of urban development is already a capitalistic determination of space; it is de-identification and commoditization of towns. It advertises the value of architectural productions as if it were to the benefit of people but the emphasis on human interest is a twist because this urban architecture without people is produced to promote the expedience and profit of the enterprisers and the ruling power.
Whereas, humanity will keep on producing settlements. We will keep on operating and living in urban spaces configured to house our wishes and desires. Whatever the decision-makers command, as humans we want spaces where we can rest and relax, greet each other, play and dream. We will never give up due to oppression and fear. Apart from the interventions and extraordinary results in several locations in South America, and in cities such as Ljubljana, Athens, Guimaeres and Bordeaux, recent experiences in cities such as London and New York where discrimination between social classes are severely marked, enhance our expectations for the future of humanity rather than disheartening us,. Architecture, landscape, “structures without keys” renovation and enlargement, public space, and socializing are our prospect. We should conjecture and make suggestions on these issues and support those who step forward. If there can be found no way-out, that is, if we cannot tear down towns and make a space for ourselves, cannot we at least set a day like “car-less Sunday” as in São Paula? Or else…

Keywords: City, public area, social space, void, human interactions

Parque Alcosa, in Seville, is a neighbourhood that is well known mainly for the marked identity of its inhabitants and for the important tradition of mobilizations aimed at overcoming the difficulties created by its peripheral position and its deprivations, which have been present since the origin of the neighbourhood. Through the application of some methodological tools developed in the framework of the Social Production and Management of Habitat (PSGH) from a qualitative approach, this article aims to deepen, from a complex perspective, in the transformation phenomena that have affected the neighborhood of Parque Alcosa in order to demonstrate the transformative potential of CIVITAS in the processes of transformation of the Habitat.

Descrizione principi di funzionamento endoreattori ibridi, principali parametri caratteristici di dimensionamento, configurazioni moderne in via di sviluppo, tipologie di combustibili, additivi e ossidanti.
Confronto prestazionale in una manovra di Hohmann con endoreattori liquidi, utilizzando il programma NASA CEA (Combustion Equilibrium Analysis).

Co-Author:
Barberi Spirito Daniele
Bassissi Enrico

This article investigates on the concept of space, its production, use, and change processes, and uncovers the interrelations between social and spatial practices. Based on Lefebvre’s concept of the Right to the City, the article discussed two main spatial rights: the right to the oeuvre and the right to appropriation. To justify these spatial rights on the ground of legal rights, a comparison method is used in this article and three main legal documents is set against each other. These documents are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ‘World Charter for the Right to the City’ and the ‘European Declaration of Urban Rights’. As a result of this comparison, 22 universal norms are identified. These norms and the awareness regarding them and their ethical and legal background can empower social/spatial activism and be used for performing and evaluating spatial practices.

Thames Town—an English-like village built in Shanghai—is many places at once: a successful tourist destination, an affluent residential cluster, a city of migrant workers, and a ghost town. The Real Fake explores how the users of Thames Town transform a themed space into something more than a “fake place.” Piazzoni understands authenticity as a dynamic relationship between people, places, and meanings that enables urban transformations. She argues that authenticity underlies the social and physical production of space through both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. The systems of moral and aesthetic judgments that people associate with “the authentic” materialize in the village. Authenticity excludes some users as it inhibits access and usage especially to the migrant poor. And yet, ideas of the authentic also encourage everyday, spontaneous appropriations of space that explicitly break the village rules. Most scholars criticize theming, arguing that it produces a fake, exclusionary, and controlling city. Piazzoni complicates this view by focusing on how people negotiate a sense of authenticity in an explicitly “fake” environment. Heritage studies tell us that we authenticate places through affective and embodied experiences, as evidenced by the data collected in Thames Town. Although the exclusionary character of theming remains unquestionable, it is precisely the experience of “fakeness” that allows Thames Tow’s users to develop a sense of place.

Lucien Kroll se definit comme un « architecte urbaniste » motive par les pratiques humaines et ecologiques. Avec Simone Kroll, jardiniere, coloriste et potiere, l’atelier bruxellois Lucien Kroll explore depuis plus de cinquante ans les possibles qu’offre la cohabitation urbaine, dans une optique de partage ou l’usager devient artisan de son propre habitat. Les processus qu’ils mettent en place faconnent, petit a petit et au fil du temps, des paysages a mille lieues de la « carte postale » : des espaces de vie hospitaliers, habites et habitables, au coeur desquels la culture peut trouver sa voix.

This article introduces the concept of academic social space as a useful construct to understand and interpret the academic language socialization of individuals in English second language academic spaces. Academic social space builds on the concepts of community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and production of space (Lefebvre, 1991). The article then reports on a study that adopted the notion of academic social space to examine the language socialization of one international student in a tertiary institute in New Zealand. Data about this case from various sources including diaries, interviews, class observations, field notes, institutional documents, and video/audio recordings of classroom interactions are presented. The analysis of findings from this study showed the student displayed three differential participation patterns in the three social spaces in which he was engaged. He presented himself as an active participant in his English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course, a silent participant in the first mainstream social space, and a changing silent-active participant respectively in the classroom and online domains of his second mainstream social space. The findings also showed that the concept of academic social space enables thick description (Geertz, 1973) about the language socialization experiences of additional language learners in tertiary contexts. Understanding the various aspects of social space enables researchers, educators, policy makers, and teachers to revisit their notion of space by considering it as an active, dynamic, and organic participant in the learning process of second language learners.

This dissertation deals with the historical spatial developments of two adjacent neighbourhoods
in the old city centre of Utrecht. Wijk C and the Breedstraatbuurt are now very different in
appearance and the reasons for this are discussed. Although the neighbourhoods share some parts
of their history, gradually differences have come about. Especially in the nineteenth and early
twentieth century, Wijk C was considered a notorious slum area and was substantially sanitized.
The Breedstraatbuurt did not suffer from this negative perception, and it has maintained more
historical and monumental buildings. Public perception and identity and memory are often linked
with the appearance of the landscape but results from a public survey show that redevelopment of
Wijk C has not erased historic consciousness. An interpretation of the historic developments using
theoretical concepts of social space reveal that similar social processes have influenced spatial
structure throughout the history of these neighbourhoods.

My undergraduate dissertation, written at the University of Sheffield. This dissertation aims to incorporate Henri Lefebvre's 'Production of Space' into a reading of 'Piers Plowman', which assesses the breakdown of feudalism, the incresed use of material culture by the church and the portrayal of the body.

Drawing upon findings on the memory culture of German expellees after World War II, this essay takes a both scholarly and personal look at the inner-German migration after 1990. Based on the concept of Heimat as social space, it discusses what leaving, looking back and returning mean to the migrant and their surroundings. A short typology of loss through migration is followed by outlining possible gains of leaving home for better or for worse. What can we learn about dealing with migration experience from the German expellees’ case? How to make sense of and integrate migration into a biographical or group narration? Finally, the essay points out that returning migrants may feel a sense of alienation, as not only themselves but also their place of origin will have changed in their absence.

Chapter 3 presents empirically informed analyses of a number of new public
space projects initiated first as counter-projects and counter-spaces
by a variety of community and historic preservation society interests.
It demonstrates further that, Vancouver City Council (VCC) proved
receptive to the counter-projects and provided an overarching strategic
spatial framework within which the projects on the ground were
devised and implemented. This chapter also introduces the importance
of the social animation of public space, whether through politicised
collective action or ludic enjoyment. Changing representations of space
through time are shown to have implications for spatial practice on the ground, based on differences in the way social behaviour in public
space is understood and interpreted.

20 years after the first democratic elections in South Africa the urban society in Johannesburg is still marked by the legacy of apartheid which makes it difficult for residents of former township areas and members of suburban middle classes to encounter each other in everyday life. Nevertheless there are spaces created or used by urban dwellers with the intention of living up to the ideal of the non-racist post-apartheid society. This case study of a charismatic church in Linbro Park, north-east of Johannesburg, analyses how the white, middle class church leadership conceives of the church as a public space of the Christian rainbow nation. The analysis of the experiences of township dwellers, though, shows subtle processes of exclusion at work. The article argues that this post-apartheid space of encounter is fraud by many contradictions, tensions and ambivalence; an urban space where urban dwellers transgress, but also reproduce racial and class-based boundaries.

The paper explores Tati's use of new film media in 'Playtime' in ways that reveal more fundamental modes of social, mimetic and situational mediation as performed in the film by architects, and architect-like characters, and by the architectural settings which Jacques Tati devised.

Urban Exploring is the fringe practice of entering disused or inaccessible parts of the urban city and infrastructure. This paper analyses the history of Urban Exploration and the reasons why the urban dwellers engage in it. It, also, draws on similarities between modern explorers and preceding unconventional urban theorists or artists. The paper concludes with the view that exploration can be a viable, alternative way of decoding and exposing the hidden places of the city, a tactic to produce space and give use to mundane urban areas.

""The goal of the dissertation based on several years of field research in Pilsen conducted by a wide range of research methods is to analyze the production of space in relation to the examined homeless population. The production includes dominant representations of space and formal social control strategies, which make this population deviant, as well as spatial practices exercised by this population, which are labeled as deviant. In short, the dissertation deals with geography of the homeless and their control. The text is based on theories and findings of constructivist criminology, also on neomarxist and poststructural approaches in cultural geography and urban anthropology, which do not interpret space as an invariable and inert arena for reification of social processes, but as a dynamic cultural construct in symbolic, social and material unity.
As a result of urbanization and industrial revolution production of space in Western society from Early Modern Period takes place in two different, but not dichotomic spheres – public and private. Public and private spaces can be considered to be the key cultural categories, which constitute the character of space as well as social structure and everyday actions and behavior of people in modern society. Social status of the homeless automatically defines them as a population without any private space in the form of accommodation where they could exercise activities and satisfy needs that are culturally connected with such space (sleep, food, relax, social reproduction, hygiene, etc.). Nevertheless, it does not mean the homeless do not construct their own places that fulfill some functions of private space. However, they create such places in public space and also in space that can be labeled as residual. The character of residual space is usually so ambiguous, that it cannot be, apart from strict definition of legal ownership, in relation to its sense considered private or public. These places are empty and deserted spaces in urban environment, which at this moment are not being produced by dominant social forces and from the point of view of the majority they have no function. They are characterized by indifference, suppression of norms and their control.
In contrast, public space is defined by ambivalence. On one hand, it is open space for all citizens, on the other hand, it is characterized by tension resulting from confrontation of strangers. It is a sphere of constant conflict between current social order and practices of individuals whose actions can attack the order. Therefore public space is a primary sphere of power and social control, which is primarily focused on marginal social groups. On the basis of exercised strategies of public space social control and their interpretation we can state that the homeless perform transgression not because of the quality of their behavior, but because of its spatial context.
Constitutive element of deviation is the fact that the actions are meant to happen at a different place. According to Mary Douglas the homeless are out of place, because in public space they perform activities that do not belong there, but to private sphere. Said differently, the homeless violate dominant social and spatial order of society as they exist, or their behavior exists, in a wrong place. Geography of the homeless gives a fundamental and general finding that social relations and actions are always physically, symbolically and socially embedded in space. Homelesness, transgression, deviation or any other phenomenon cannot be examined without its relation to spatial structure as culture is always spatial.

"""

The publication deals with the issue of evaluating the effects of the currently followed urban policies, especially in reference to the so-called nightmare of participation. The book is part of a debate concerned with phenomena such as urban social conflicts, the revitalization of urban space, urban planning and housing policies. The author analyses the problem of gentrification in Poland and its links to revitalization programmes. The publication in based on the author’s research on the bottom-up production of space in Warsaw, New York, and Istanbul.

This study examines the role of social space in the social beings‘ lives. It argues that, shaped by the human experience, space is itself a shaping force that reflects itself on the human being, having the power of controlling and governing their presence on earth. This argument is further investigated to encompass the spatial structure of contemporary social scene. The condition of the urban subject who is supposed to practice his/her life inside this spatial structure is therefore surveyed in characters‘ relationship with their space in Elizabeth Gaskell‘s North and South and David Lodge‘s Nice Work, a postmodern rewriting of the canonical novel. The spatial structures of both novels are determinant of the characters‘ identity formation. The spatial shift the characters of both novels face is crucial to the whole of the thesis, since in the characters‘ move across different spaces, there are clues as to how these two novels reflecting different societies present different answers to the spatial question. These different answers are sought through the concepts of Thirdspace and mobility, which provide an alternative space, opened up within the urban space, which is inclusive and celebrative of differences. This alternative understanding of space also enables the hybrid identity to form amidst the cityscape of our times, which the characters of the postmodern text employ in their identity formation.

This paper provides a framework for understanding the phenomenon of the discursive-material production of space, and also, for considering how unknowns may be organised. Language is instrumental to the production of place but has been overshadowed by investigations of material transformations. This is partly being redressed by the ‘linguistic turn’ in urban policy analysis over recent decades which recognise the performative aspects of language. However, the methodological ‘gap’ between discursivities and materialities remains as too often analysis of urban policy discourse has taken an aspatial analytic approach. Representations of space cannot be divorced from spatial practices and vice versa. Based on my premise that many visions, plans and strategies never materialise, and even some that do materialise have little bearing on what is produced, a mixed-method approach is required that considers the recursive interactions between spatial practices and representations of space. Grounded in the theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault, which conceptualis space as a social process and broaden discourse to embrace spatial practice respectively, I devise a conceptual and operational analytics which I refer to as interpretive-spatial analysis with the goal of helping to bridge the problematic ontological, epistemological and methodological divide between discursivities and materialities.

Gamarra es primer destino comercial de ropa de Lima y del Perú, a tal punto que Arellano Marketing señala que el 41% de los consumidores tienen como lugar de compra Gamarra. Sin embargo, existen escasas investigaciones sobre el consumo que se lleva a acabo en este importante emporio y nulas si se trata del consumo final de ropa, a pesar de que los consumidores finales representan, según PROEXPANSION, el 60% de sus clientes.

Por tal motivo, la Escuela de Sociología de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, la Municipalidad de La Victoria a través de su Subgerencia de Promoción Empresarial y los empresarios de Gamarra, promovieron la realización del estudio La experiencia de compra en Gamarra del investigador social Moisés K. Rojas Ramos.
¿Cuál es el distrito de residencia de los compradores de Gamarra? ¿A qué nivel socioeconómico pertenecen mayoritariamente? ¿Por qué compran en este conglomerado comercial? ¿Cuánto tiempo permanecen haciendo sus compras? ¿Qué tan importante es comprar para las fiestas de fin de año? Son algunas de las preguntas que este estudio responde. La investigación se aproxima al consumo desde el enfoque de la “experiencia de la compra”. Se sitúa en el paradigma de la multidimensionalidad y complejidad al ponerle énfasis a la práctica de compra y todo lo que ello implica. El estudio se llevó a cabo con 50 asistentes de investigación y responde las principales preguntas sobre los consumidores finales de Gamarra.

Este estudio al ser de utilidad práctica, está dirigido a las personas que de alguna forma están asociadas a Gamarra y que a su vez requieren de información con la cual construir un mejor lugar para sus compradores y que todo ello se traduzca en el mayor rendimiento económico de este complejo comercial. Los sucesos recientes acontecidos en La Parada abren una gran posibilidad de mejora para Lima y en especial para Gamarra. Entonces, ¿qué planes llevamos a cabo? Este estudio brinda una serie de pistas al respecto, asunto que le da una considerable actualidad. Además de que el mes de diciembre, por la gran acogida de público (la gran época de campaña) y el interés de los consumidores por adquirir prendas de vestir, es el mes de Gamarra.

ISBN: 978-9972-46-496-6
pp.132
Lima, 2012

To answer the question: What does dramaturgy have to do with the landscape? I can blatantly say that if dramaturgy is about drama and landscape about pastoral idyll – nothing. However, the recent cultural history of Western world has brought deep changes in both conceptions.
Along performative and affective turns dramaturgy lost its culturally well-rooted thought, the linguistic, logocentric thought, and started regarding performance first of all as an affective and meaningful event, an expressive social situation, a shared experience, a here-and-now of human coexistence and communication. Over recent decades dramaturgical thought thus 'spaced out' and moved from a depth of logocentrism over inter-textual plateaus to a surface of environment. On that slippery terrain I identify a tendency in contemporary performing arts that I name 'landscape dramaturgy'. Here we cannot speak of traditional Western idea of landscape, which has human inhabitation as its ultimate purpose and which involves humans' interventions into the Earth's surface as the integral element. In an artistic sense, we thus cannot speak of the traditional landscape oil on canvas, where the land is staged for the viewer as 'scenery'. To carefully approach landscape dramaturgy, apart from the changed conception of dramaturgy, we should accept a new notion of landscape as the morphology of the Earth's surface, which is not a 'shoveled land'. Landscape dramaturgy is therefore a metaphor that has a strong epistemic rationale, grounded in rethinking the position of the human mind and human agency in the world.

Cities and suburbs are on the brink of a new era. Decades-long suburbanisation of the affluent and the socially mobile has almost ceased as we knew it. In its place there is now city gentrification and suburban diversification, upsetting linear understandings of mobilities on the metropolitan level. In his dissertation Yannis Tzaninis addresses the puzzle of contemporary production of (sub)urban space by investigating the former suburban new town Almere, a space and place caught in a vortex of global change. Through the analysis of municipal statistics, and by conducting a survey and interviews with current and former residents of Almere, he analyses people’s mobilities, experiences and aspirations. He finds that placemaking processes are fluid and adapt to wider social changes, while households are pushed and pulled depending on material resources, aspirations and city branding. In conclusion he uncovers the character and future of suburbia, advancing our understanding of urban growth, placemaking and mobility.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, capitalism – in particular its latest evolution, which the French theorist Henri Lefebvre calls “neocapitalism” – imposed its dominance over the space of modern cities (Production 8). This article aims to elucidate the way in which two modes of opposition to the neocapitalist domination of space, namely Western European street art and Henri Lefebvre’s theory, affect citizens’ experience of space. Throughout this article, it will become clear that Lefebvre and Western European street art share similar strategies of spatial resistance, based on the reconfiguration of what Lefebvre describes as the individual’s experience of the “perceived” and “conceived space” (38). However, what I call the paradox of visibility faced by these two figures of contestation casts doubt upon their ability to allow for a re-appropriation of the city space by its citizens. This will precipitate a questioning of their efficiency as strategies of spatial resistance.