Recent Publications
Publications
Globalization promised an interconnected world, yet our cities are increasingly divided. In the past decade, for example, thousands of miles of new border walls have been constructed, many in urban contexts. People embrace the idea of walls out of fear, and leaders make promises that only reinforce divisions. Boundaries, of course, are not a new phenomenon. They have historically defined communities for cultural, political, and economic purposes. As urbanization increases and economic inequality reaches record levels, however, urban divides are becoming more pervasive. This volume of Perspecta—the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America—investigates divides as a mechanism of urbanism, both spatially and socially complex.
Spatial urban divides are often perceived as binary: separating one entity from the other with walls, fences, and infrastructure—symptoms of conflict or of a failed society. Yet, with intensifying gentrification and ghettoization, urban divides are often not merely walls.
In texts, images, and studio projects, Perspecta 50 explores broad questions facing urbanism and architecture today, including the effect on urban housing of migration and the blurred boundaries between the formal and informal city. The contributors—architects, urbanists, and academics—identify and critique distinct urban typologies and architectural devices used globally to divide. Among the contributions are Dana Cuff’s essay on spatial politics in Los Angeles, Jenny Holzer’s reminiscence of guerilla art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gary McDonough’s investigation of “soft portals” in global Chinatowns, and Studio Gang’s vision of “Polis Station.” Perspecta 50 invites readers to question the inevitability and ubiquity of urban divides.
Contributors Marisa Angell Brown, Jon Calame, City Reparo, Andreea Cojocaru, Dana Cuff, Kian Goh, Jenny Holzer, Jyoti Hosagrahar, Jeffrey Hou, Andrés Jaque, Meghan McAllister, Gary McDonogh, Mitch McEwen, Alishine Osman, Todd Reisz, Mahdi Sabbagh, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Michael Sorkin with Terreform, Studio Gang, Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Guy Trangoš, Urban-Think Tank, Jesse Vogler, Annabel Jane Wharton, Theresa Williamson.
Edited by Mahdi Sabbagh and Meghan McAllister.
Meghan McAllister and Mahdi Sabbagh—Preface
Jon Calame—Foreword
Dana Cuff—Power Lines: Boundaries of Erasure and Expansion in Los Angeles
Jesse Vogler—{Dis}Incorporation: Further Notes on the City as a Legal Concept
Mark Hackett and Ken Sterrett—(Re)Connecting Belfast: Mobility Justice in Divided Cities
Mitch McEwen—Watercraft: Detroit Water Infrastructure and Its Protocols of Sprawl and Displacement
Kian Goh—Terrains of Contestation: The Politics of Designing Urban Adaptation
Michael Sorkin with Terreform—A Metropolis - Not an Enclave: Gaza Ring City
Tatiana Bilbao Estudio with Onnis Luque—Forever Transient: Life at the ‘Affordable’ Mexican Periphery
Guy Trangoš—Deepening Division: Interpreting Scales of Spatial Contestation in Johannesburg
Alfredo Brillembourg, Hubert Klumpner, and Alexis Kalagas—Separation Anxiety: Inequality and Exclusion in Athens and Cape Town
Todd Reisz—'Along Sound Lines’: Drawing Up Dubai’s Labor Camps from 1950 to 2008
Annabel Jane Wharton—Jerusalem’s Divisions: Architectures and Topographies of Urban Violence
Meghan McAllister and Mahdi Sabbagh—Evidence: Visualizing Urban Divides
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Alishine Hussein Osman—Traversals: In and Out of Dadaab Refugee Camps
Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency—The Concrete Tent: A Paradox of Permanent Temporality
Jyoti Hosagrahar—Heritage, Modernity, and Difference in Contemporary Indian Urbanism
Theresa Williamson—Rio’s Favelas: The Power of Informal Urbanism
Andreea Cojocaru—A Hierarchy of Separation: Emerging Territorialization Techniques in Romanian Gypsy Communities
Andrés Jaque—Transmedia Urbanism: Berlusconi and the Birth of Targeted Difference
Gary W. McDonogh—Open Portals: On the Divisions and Permeabilities of Global Chinatowns
Jenny Holzer—The Making of a Public: Guerilla Art in the 1970s and ‘80s
Jeanne Gang and Alissa Anderson—Toward new possibility in the public realm, together: Polis Station
Jeffrey Hou—Urban Commoning in Cities Divided: Field Notes from Hong Kong and Taipei
Marisa Angell Brown—Radical Urbanism in the Divided City: On M. Paul Friedberg’s Riis Park Plaza (1966)
