Urban Narratives

Culture and sustainability conference, Helsinki 6-8 May

Posted on 22.4.2015 by Lieven Ameel

Culture & sustainability in focus in the upcoming conference “Culture(s) in Sustainable Futures” in Helsinki, 6-8 May 2015.

Perhaps surprisingly (from the perspective of my own, urban-biased view on cultural sustainable development), there is a suspicuous absence of urban issues in most of the programme, regardless of the many examples and possibilities in current urban developments.

There are some sessions and several papers, however, involving urban cases, for example session 6. “Operationalizing culture in the sustainable development of cities.”

Helsinki World Views at Think Corner, 8 April

Posted on 7.4.2015 by Lieven Ameel

Tomorrow, presentation of our Helsinki University research project on urban layers of meaning on 8 April 2015, at the Think Corner / Tiedekulma. I will be talking about visions and narratives of Helsinki’s waterfront development. Samu Nyström will introduce the research project, Mikko-Olavi Seppälä will discuss 1920s urban culture and identity in Helsinki.

More on my research of Helsinki’s waterfront here.

Update: the video of the presentation can be viewed here. The first part consist of a presentation by prof. Seppälä, the second part, with my presentation on Kalasatama & Jätkäsaari, begins at 36:25. Presentation in Finnish.

Literature and the Peripheral City

Posted on 14.3.2015 by Lieven Ameel

“Literature and the Peripheral City”, editors Lieven Ameel, Jason Finch, and Markku Salmela, and soon to be published by Palgrave, can now be pre-ordered here:

An inspiring, two-year project is drawing to a close. Heart-felt thanks to all contributors, to everyone at Palgrave, and to my terrific co-editors!

Content:

Preface

Introduction: Peripherality and Literary Urban Studies; Lieven Ameel, Jason Finch and Markku Salmela

PART I: CITY PERIPHERIES
1. Detroit and Paris, Paris as Detroit; Jeremy Tambling
2. ‘It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?’ Urban Peripherality and the Narrative Framing of Literary Beginnings; Lieven Ameel
3. The Peripheries of London Slumland in George Gissing and Alexander Baron; Jason Finch
4. A Topography of Refuse: Waste, the Suburb, and Pynchon’s ‘Low-lands’; Markku Salmela
5. London’s East End in Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem; Aleksejs Taube
6. The Configuration of Boundaries and Peripheries in Johannesburg as Represented in Selected Works by Ivan Vladislavic and Zakes Mda; Marita Wenzel

PART II: PERIPHERAL CITIES, GENRES AND WRITERS
7. Hungry and Alone: The Topography of Everyday Life in Knut Hamsun and August Strindberg; Tone Selboe
8. A Forest on the Edge of Helsinki: Spatiality in Henrika Ringbom’s Novel Martina Dagers langtan; Topi Lappalainen
9. Eduard Vilde and Tallinn’s Dynamic Peripheries, 1858-1903; Elle-Mari Talivee and Jason Finch
10. A Suburban Revision of Nostalgia: The Case of Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra; Bieke Willem
11. From Windowsill to Underpass: Young Women’s Spatial Orientation in Swedish Young Adult Literature; Lydia Wistisen
12. Centrifugal City: Centre and Periphery in Ricardo Piglia’s La ciudad ausente; Nettah Yoeli-Rimmer

Bibliography

Index

Urban Fragmentation(s), Berlin, March 16–19, 2015

Posted on 13.3.2015 by Lieven Ameel

I’ll be presenting a paper at the Urban Fragmentation(s) conference in Berlin, March 16–19, 2015. Promising conference, on the crossroads between linguistics, urban studies, sociology, and literary studies.

I will speak on the subject of “Narrative Planning in Helsinki’s Waterfront Regeneration: New Directions in Planning Practices and Theory.” Part of my broader research, which is presented (in brief) here.

Below, the abstract of the conference; the program can be found here (pdf).

“The Centers for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (GWZ) will jointly host the 3rd Borders & Identity conference (BIC) from March 16th to 19th, 2015, at the Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany). BIC2015 provides a meeting place for researchers interested in interdisciplinary approaches to exploring Urban Fragmentation(s) from linguistic, literary, sociological, and historical points of view, or a combination thereof. The conference will be organized in three parallel strands, each chaired by a corresponding GWZ-center (ZAS, Center for General Linguistics; ZfL, Center for Literary and Cultural Research; ZMO, Center for Modern Oriental Studies):

Literature & Translation (ZfL)
Language & Linguistic Creativity (ZAS)
Society & Governance (ZMO)” (source: http://bic2015.de/)

Drawing on Local Narratives for Planning in San Francisco

Posted on 19.2.2015 by Lieven Ameel

Via @Citylab: engaging with the local community through coherent narrative mapping proved to be a successful way forward in the planning of a former power plant in Bayview-Hunters Point. Interesting: the planners and architects brought in experts in storytelling, Storycorps, to contribute with their expertise:

“Inspired by the vivid stories that were emerging, the design team reached out to StoryCorps, the nationwide oral history project that captures stories of under-represented communities, and asked them to start recording at Hunters View. Instead of a bare-bones recording space, the team wanted to have a place where residents would feel welcome and comfortable as they recounted their memories of living in the shadow of the power plant. They created a listening booth, using a shipping container as a quick and economical structure.” (Lydia Lee, Citylab.com)

Full text here.

More emerging documentation of the importance of local stories in planning processes, and the relevance of a coherent narrative mapping of place. A good case for narrative planning as an innovative and important paradigm.

Talk in Copenhagen 17 April 2015

Posted on 4.2.2015 by Lieven Ameel

Looking forward to give a talk at the University of Copenhagen, department of Nordic Research, 17 April 2015. The talk will be at the Institute of Name Research. Abstract below.

The talk is part of my research project on the narration of waterfront development in Helsinki.

See also the department’s website for more information: http://nfi.ku.dk/konferencer-og-seminarer/ameel17042015/

Abstract

In urban studies and urban planning, the last decades have witnessed something of a “narrative turn”: an increasing interest in the potential of narratives. In the case of Helsinki’s ongoing and large-scale urban projects, city narratives have been explicitly foregrounded by the City Planning Department.

The developments at Jätkäsaari and Kalasatama, two waterfront sites in central Helsinki, provide particularly complex case studies. The most conspicuous use of cultural narratives is the recent move of the Helsinki City to hire 8 artists to help the Planning Department to develop the city, the mediatized use of landscape art to help create spatial identities, and the commissioning of a literary novel in Jätkäsaari. It is possible to also identify several examples of less obvious, but at least as pervasive narratives, from official websites with historical information, to the fostering of narrative treads in social community websites, and the mini-narratives provided by street names and 3D-projections of how this neighborhood will look like in the future.

My presentation explores how methods from literary and narrative studies can bring new insights to the many – often very diverse – narratives that are used consciously and unconsciously in the development of new urban areas. How are such narratives structured? Are they used merely as vehicles to brand new neighborhoods, or as means to legitimize specific – perhaps controversial? – solutions? Or are they used to create more tangible experiences of belonging, and to strengthen a sense of personally experienced place? I will apply methodologies from narrative studies, such as genre, plot and metaphor, and conduct a close reading of the relevant planning documents. I will conclude with an examination of the toponyms of the streets, quarters and squares in Kalasatama and Jätkäsaari, and with an analysis of how these place names complement the planning narratives.

Tactical Urbanism: the new “Quick Fix” for Urban Policy?

Posted on 14.11.2014 by Lieven Ameel

Moving on from my previous post: in “Tactical Urbanism: The New Vernacular of the Creative City“, Oli Mould looks at how the “creative city” discourse has gradually become replaced by a new vernacular, that of “tactical urbanism”. De Certeau’s concepts of urban, everyday “tactics” is one of the relevant concepts in this context, and Mould has a rich set of data to work with, with a global outlook.

Is “tactical urbanism” merely the new “quick fix” for urban policy, as Mould suggests? There is certainly a risk that this is (or will be) the case. De Certeau (and Deleuze & Guattari) have in several instances (and, of course, often in fairly complex language) described just how thoroughly totalizing, profit- and control-driven ideologies can incorporate and appropriate small-scale, everyday counter-“tactics”. It is a disturbing phenomenon that could also be discerned in research on parkour conducted by Sirpa Tani and myself on parkour – as we wrote in the conclusion to our article “Parkour: Creating Loose Space?”: “the potential of unexpected and unintended activities such as parkour to foster a positive atmosphere for other loosening activities should be investigated further and … the perceived subversive character of traceurs … will need closer scrutiny and contextualization.” (Ameel & Tani 2012: 28)

What I missed most in Mould’s text was a the sense that small-scale urban tactics are worth the trouble – the sense that these welcome, and in indeed necessary, elements in the contemporary city, whatever their name and the narrative that is being attached to them (often unwillingly). As researchers, we can sit back and point out how (often white middle class) citizens in the urban trenches put up small-scale activities only to have them incorporated in the neoliberal newspeak they were supposed to upset. Worthwile activities are turned into totalizing tools by way of forceful narratives, and researchers have the potential to work actively towards providing people with a vocabulary that enables them to counter (neoliberal) “creative city” (and other) mantras.

GIS & Cultural Mapping for Preserving, Developing and Reconnecting the City

Posted on 7.11.2014 by Lieven Ameel

Getting acquainted with a rich collection of articles on the historical urban landscape, its preservation and development: Francesco Bandarin’s and Ron van Oers’s (eds.) Reconnecting the City. The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the Future of Urban Heritage (2014).

(source: wiley.com)

The importance of a rigorous cultural mapping to understand the city’s many layers of meaning is one of the things rightly foregrounded in this volume.

And an interesting (and rare) warning about using GIS: GIS-based mapping “is useful for coordinating visual data and capturing the visual morphology of the city, but has its limitations when recording the urban experience” according to Julian Smith who has a few critical words for “modernist assumptions about mapping and documentation” in this volume (p. 224). Food for thought for the emerging GIS-enthusiasm in literary studies (see my earlier post here).

From the little I’ve seen of the volume so far, nevertheless, there are some points of view I would’ve like to see more of in a book like this. One is the potential of literary sources for a cultural or narrative mapping of place. A second one is the importance of resilient, everyday practices that give meaning to place, and that are so hard to pinpoint in urban heritage discourse. How to preserve and foster everyday spontaneity, in its many forms? And is preservation even desirable? One of the things that came up in the work I conducted with Sirpa Tani on parkour (see here), in particular in our article “Parkour: Creating Loose Spaces?”.

In view of this second comment, I’m increasingly looking forward to reading the upcoming book by Oliver Mould (a fellow parkour researcher), which promises a counter-narrative to the creative city discourse in the form of new interest in forms of urban subversion.

Towards new City Imaginaries

Posted on 25.9.2014 by Lieven Ameel

Important article in the Guardian here, advocating a new imaginary on cities, by

Ewald Engelen, Sukhdev Johal, Angelo Salento and Karel Williams.

The article provides a provocative, re-evaluation of Jacobs and Raban, but also of Glaeser, Florida, and Sassen.

Is the city of the “creative class” about culture, or is really about keeping the middle class in?

Several of the insights presented shed light on current developments in my home city, with relevance for similar international projects: Guggenheim Helsinki, but also the complex waterfront development I’m currently working on.

Favorite quote:

“Increasingly, the dreams of urban prosperity through competition have served to legitimate hugely costly – and publicly subsidised – spatial urban interventions in prestige redevelopment. Real-estate investments to keep the upper-middle classes in the city, to accommodate a growing army of international students and young service workers, to attract major corporates and financial service providers to business parks, to persuade the hypermobile cosmopolitan ‘creative class’ to nest locally.”