New paper in Antipode: Inhabiting dispossession in the post-socialist city

My new paper in Antipode took years to write. Since the time in which I did the archival and ethnographic research underpinning it much life, death, pandemic, and international moving happened… but I hope I was finally able to give justice to that material.

The paper is open-access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12821

It builds on my previous research around #race #class #housing #resistance in #Bucharest, and it expands on crucial Romanian scholarship to offer a trans-Atlantic dialogue around the (un)makings of #urban #racialised #dispossession.

I am thankful to my comrades Frontul Comun pentru Dreptul la Locuire and CARUSEL, to my colleagues and friends Bogdan (Diana Bogdan), Robert and Alina Stoiculescu in Bucharest, to the anonymous reviewers and to the Antipode board.
I am also very much thankful to a number of Romanian scholars to which I am indebted for their friendship and writings, including Liviu Chelcea, Eniko Vincze, Marian Ursan, Veda Popovici, Ioana Florea, George Zamfir, Zamfi Irina, Catalin Berescu, and the quasi-Romanian like myself Erin MC ElRoy!

Thanks also to the Urban studies foundation for supporting part of the archival/ethnographic work and to the ERC for supporting additional research & writing.

Inhabiting Dispossession in the Post-Socialist City: Race, Class, and the Plan, in Bucharest, Romania
Abstract

The paper explores the racialised geography of a series of socialist blocs located in the southern periphery of Bucharest, labelled as a contemporary Romanian “ghetto”. Through extensive ethnographic and archival work, it expands on contemporary Western race-aware urban scholarship, advancing an expansive reading of the “plan” as a key element to account for the endurance of foundational dispossession in the context of Bucharest. The goal is to trace how the social segmentations of “class” and “race” have been diagrammed through discontinuous city-making in the last hundred years, refuting a reading of these complex processes as a matter of evolutionary stages between economic regimes, which ends up reproducing a stereotypical representation of the Eastern “other”. The paper contributes to a situated approach to racial urbanism, offering the basis for a trans-Atlantic dialogue around the makings and unmakings of urban dispossession.

Keynote on Planning for Social Justice at DASTU, in Milan w/Oren Yftachel

Tomorrow I will be delivering one of the keynotes at the “Planning for Social Justice” event DAStU – Politecnico di Milano, at 9:30am CET

I am excited to share the floor with my City – Analysis of Urban Change, Theory and Action comrade, the wonderful Oren Yiftachel

The event is also online, info: https://www.eccellenza.dastu.polimi.it/2021/10/25/planning-for-social-justice-conference-02-11-2021/

I will be presenting on Inhabiting Racialised Dispossession in Bucharest, Romania

Below is the full event’s poster.

Roundtable on housing with Gago, Khosla, Williamson & myself at UK-Ireland Planning Conference

If you are attending the UK-Ireland Planning Research Conference, don’t miss tomorrow’s (9th Sept 2021) roundtable on ‘Worldwide perspectives on (in)justice in planning with a focus on housing precarity’.

Featuring Verónica Gago, Renu Khosla, Theresa Williamson and myself.

Thanks to the wonderful Gabriel Silvestre, Cat Button and Helen Underhill for organising it!

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/apl/events/item/ukireplannconf2021/