CFP: contested spaces
Call for Papers for a session on THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL PRACTICES IN CONTESTED SPACES at the EASST 2006 conference in Lausanne, August 23-26 2006.
‘The contributions to this proposed session will revolve around the question “Can planning and design ameliorate as well as (inadvertently) accentuate divisions in contested spaces” like Belfast, Beirut, Berlin, Mostar, Jerusalem, Nicosia, Johannesburg and even Brussels or Montreal and others? The presentations will approach answers to this question by looking at the way the design of the built environment (buildings, street patterns, public spaces, …) exerts an intended and/or unintended gravitational pull upon social practices, expectations, perceptions, policies, daily routines etc. At the same time they look at the way how the design of the built environment responds to social practices; sometimes in pre-emptive obedience.
The focus of this session transcends the dichotomy between a technological determinist and voluntarist stance; the former sees human beings as a mechanical function of technologies and infrastructures, whereas the latter claims that human beings retain the ultimate primacy over the design of artefacts. In Giddens’ terminology, this is a debate about structure and agency which he suggests to transcend by means of the concept of structuration. A similar stereoscopic view is well developed in STS circles, crystallised in concepts like the “seamless web” (Hughes), the “technological drama” (Pfaffenberger), the “technizen” (Brand) or “co-evolution” (Rip, Kemp, Guy, Shove and others). This theoretical angle has been applied to refrigerators, planes, GMOs, sewerage and highway systems but not in a systematic fashion to the phenomenon of contested spaces.
What could be interesting in descriptive terms is how peace walls, politically motivated culs-de-sac, double-entry factories etc. influence daily routines, social networks, shopping behaviours, employment choices etc. This is the deterministic angle that explores the “politics of artefacts” and by corollary, the authenticity of hatred and ultimately the autonomy and pristine-ness of human beings. In short: To what extent is the everyday ‘practice’ of division cemented or even fabricated through the built environment? And to what extend can it be ameliorated through physical design? Would this be manipulative social engineering even if both sides agreed on a proposed intervention? From a voluntaristic perspective it is interesting to examine how social practices, perceptions of safety, movements in space etc. are driving forces for the shape of planned or unplanned built artefacts. An example
from a Belfast redevelopment project is the request of citizens to plant trees instead of bushes because no potential perpetrator can hide behind them. Cowan puts this effect in more generic terms: “In Belfast, what is being reflected in bricks, mortar and concrete is a bitterly divided society”.
But this is not only the case in Belfast. What can be learned if we apply the same stereoscopic view to the large and even growing number of other contested spaces and cities around the world? What kinds of technological dramas have been staged there in the past and what kind of socio-technical strategies are employed by their playwrighters? Have architectural and infrastructural interventions delivered the expected outcome? In plain language: What are good strategies? These questions mark the transition from a descriptive to a prescriptive mode which meets concrete demand for empirically grounded knowledge. After all, in every case where space is contested – and this includes the French banlieues – a number of urgent challenges have to be addressed that include the interplay between the technical and the social. And in every case, the answer will contain elements of steel, concrete, glass, bricks, trees, street furniture, etc. Sharing experiences will be very important in this regard. And sharing experience is the purpose of the proposed session.’
SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:
Deadline for abstracts 15 December 2005
The session organising committee includes Rachid Chamoun (Beirut), David Perry (Chicago) and Ralf Brand (Belfast). We invite abstracts (up to 300 words) on any of the issues raised above. Abstracts should be sent via e-mail to r.brand @ qub.ac.uk by 15 December 2005. Decisions on these will be communicated to authors by the 1st of March 2006. Guidelines for preparing and presenting papers are available here.
Thanks Biella!