Urban Studies 400, Seminar in Urban Studies
Cities of Capital, Crisis, and Contestation
Schedule, January-May, 2013
Gastown, January 12, 2013 (photograph by Elvin Wyly).  Ah, the sun is out!  Don't we forgive Raincity when the sun returns?  Here's a sunny image of Crab Park at Portside, with a reminder not to forget the murdered and missing women of the Downtown Eastside (and this will help you cry your way through several big boxes of tissues), and here is a view of the lions honoring the sister relations between two port cities -- Vancouver and Shanghai -- thanks to a gift from the Shanghai Port Authority in 1995.
Week One.  January 7.  Introduction.  You.  Me.  The Course.  Differences between seminar and lecture courses.  "Learn" as an intransitive verb.  Different kinds of seminars.  The "barn" metaphor. 

Read:

Michael Kahn (1971).  "The Seminar."  Unpublished manuscript.  Santa Cruz:  Kresge College, University of California - Santa Cruz.

Week Two.  January 14.  Our Urban Studies. 

Urban studies is a vibrant and fascinating field, but it is interdisciplinary -- which means that it doesn't have the clear, coherent definitions that you'll find in traditional disciplines.  This can make things a bit confusing at times, but it also provides a lot of freedom to explore questions in many different ways.  (If you want to read more about such definitional issues, skim through a bit of this).  This semester, I'm trying to give you more than the usual freedom to define our area of inquiry, by asking you to help us decide what our reading list is going to look like.  Recall that last week I asked you to skim and browse whatever you can find on some of the readings listed on the syllabus, and a few others I showed in class, and then we'd make some hard decisions this week.  So many books, so little time! 

So this week, we will make some choices, and in this process we will define the kind of urban studies we'll explore in the next weeks we spend with one another.

Thanks to Noah for compiling notes and reviews on these items, and posting to the discussion board for the WebCT Vista page for the course.  I do not require you to use that system for this course, but I encourage you to have discussions on there if you find it useful for conversation and brainstorming.

I'm sorry for taking so long to post this schedule page (as I type these words it's already Saturday night).  I got obsessed with some late-night brainstorming for my other course, which required a bit of number-crunching and overdosing on the empirical details of a court decision on New York City's "stop and frisk" policing policies (if you're interested, see this).

[[auto-excuse generator::OFF]]

See you Monday at 1!



Quick links, week by week...
 
 
CopyLeft 2013 Elvin K. Wyly
Except where otherwise noted, this site is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada License.
Week Three.  January 21. Rebel Cities... 

...Part 1.

So, we had The Vote.  I'm very sorry we weren't able to accommodate everyone's first choice -- so many ideas, so many books, so little time!  But we've agreed to jump into Harvey's Rebel Cities, up to page 25.  Don't forget the preface -- some wonderful ideas in here, too! 

and then we dive into the maelstrom:

"...it is useful first to reflect on how we have been made and remade throughout history by an urban process impelled onwards by powerful social forces.  The astonishing pace and scale of urbanization over the last hundred years means ... that we have been remade several times over without knowing why or how."

Harvey, David (2012).  Rebel Cities:  From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution.  London and New York:  Verso.

Week Four.  January 28. Rebel Cities, continued 

So we agreed we'll read up to page 88 of Rebel Cities...

Week Five.  February 4. Rebel Cities:  The Art of Rent

Let's read Chapter 4, "The Art of Rent."  It's a short chapter, which gives us some time to slow down and savor the argument and its implications.  But if you're still hungry after reading this chapter, then here's something optional.  Read some stories we told several years ago about Beatrice, and reflect, in light of Harvey's "Art of Rent" chapter, on what needs to be updated, refined, and adapted.  Some things have not changed since we examined those aspects of rent for that article; but some things have changed quite a bit.  If you were to help me think through a sequel to that story, what might it look like?
 
Random tidbit

"...it is possible to know how to produce effects without knowing how those effects are produced."

Nightingale, P., 2004, Technological capacities, invisible infrastructure and the un-social construction of probability:  The Overlooked Fixed Costs of Useful Research."  Research Policy 33(9), 1259-1284.

After one of our colleagues (thanks, Rebekah!) showed me a few sites to create QR codes, I did a test run to make one and suddenly realized that I don't know how to read or test it!  Perhaps you have a smartphone, and you can test this, and let me know next time we meet how it works?


 
 
[Optional, if you have time on February 14]
This just in from Harsha Walia, of "No One is Illegal":

In January 1991 a Coast Salish woman was murdered on Powell Street. Her
name is not spoken today out of respect for the wishes of her family. Out
of this sense of hopelessness and anger came an annual march on
Valentine’s Day to express compassion, community, and caring for all women
in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Coast Salish Territories.

Two years ago, Alejandro Zuluaga and I co-created a short film that
documents the long history of the annual women's memorial march. By
focusing on the voices of women who live, love, and work in the Downtown
Eastside this film debunks the sensationalism surrounding a neighbourhood
deeply misunderstood, and celebrates the complex and diverse realities of
women organizing for justice. Since its release the film has screened in
campuses and film festivals across North America.

This is a not-for-profit production that is available for free viewing and
distribution here:

Twenty-two years later, the Feb 14th march continues to honour the lives
of missing and murdered women. This event is organized and led by women in
the DTES because women, especially Indigenous women, face physical,
mental, emotional, and spiritual violence on a daily basis. Recently, the
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women issued this statement: “Hundreds of cases involving aboriginal women
who have gone missing or been murdered in the past two decades have
neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention.”

This year, join us on Thursday February 14th at noon, when the march takes
to the streets and proceeds through the Downtown Eastside, with stops to
commemorate where women were last seen or found; speeches by community
activists at the court house; a healing circle at Oppenheimer Park around
2:30 pm; and finally a community feast at the Japanese Language Hall.

Full details here or on FB.

Over the years, the February 14th march has expanded to cities across
these lands. Marches will be held in at least ten other cities, find one
near you here.

Women in the DTES and Indigenous women across these lands continue to go
missing or be murdered as a result of gendered violence, poverty, racism,
and colonialism. Please join us on Feb 14th to grieve the loss of our
beloved sisters, remember the women who are still missing, and to dedicate
ourselves to justice.

-- Harsha Walia 
Week Six.  February25. Rebellious Urbanisms of Hope... 

That's a mashup of our two titles:  David Harvey's Rebel Cities, and Manuel Castells' Networks of Outrage and Hope.

Thanks so much for a wonderful discussion yesterday!  I will truly, sincerely, miss the opportunities for our conversations over the next three weeks!  Feel free to call or track me down before and after my Tuesday class, Geography 450 if you'd like to talk before our next meeting.  I'll also be in Geography Room 239 after 12:00 noon on Friday, February 8.

So, for our meeting on February 25, we agreed we will do two readings:

1.  Finish Harvey's Rebel Cities.
2.  Read up to page 52 of

Castells, Manuel (2012).  Networks of Outrage and Hope:  Social Movements in the Internet Age.  Bristol:  Polity.

See you soon!

If you'd like to chat or brainstorm, feel free to give me a call.  Try 604 682 1750, or if I'm not there, try my cell, 778 899 7906.

*

Here's one possible agenda for our seminar discussion today!
 
WWGDD?
What would Guy Debord Do?

Random Access Memory (totally optional, no need to pay attention to this unless you're interested!), Sunday, February 10, 2013.  Shh, can you keep a secret?  Took a break from writing some stuff with my brilliant friend Mark Davidson to read a bit of our selection of Harvey's Rebel Cities for this week, then took a break from that to look at Al-Bulushi, Yusuf (2013).  "Learning from urban revolt:  From Watts to the banlieus." City 16(1,2), 34-56, then -- shh! -- a certain time of year is fast approaching, so I had to go get a surprise for Jatinder, and ... da-Nah!  A trip downtown reveals that the Capitalist Consumption Curriculum now teaches Philosophy!
Week Seven.  March 4.  Black Athena on Facebook?  Egypt and the Arab Uprising... 

The "Black Athena" reference is an engagement with Martin Bernal's provocation to the study of classics and the African roots of classical Western, European history...

Might we be seeing a similar challenge today to our understandings of power and nation-states?

So:  for March 4, we agreed to read up to page 109 of Castells.  Thanks for a great discussion today...!
 
Guidance and Recommendations...

...from you to me.

Thanks very much.  I will do my best to respond to this valuable advice and guidance.  Doing so is a delightful challenge, something akin to what Harvey diagnoses when he suggests that the right to the city "seeks a unity from within an incredible diversity of fragmented social spaces and locations within innumerable divisions of labor."  Because we do have in this class a diversity of perspectives, experiences, and positions within so many divisions of labor.

But this all makes the barn a better barn, doesn't it?
Week Eight.  March 11.  From Networks of Outrage and Hope to Real Utopias... 

For this week, you've got a choice.  About half the class will be reading Castells, pages 156-234, with an especially close read of pages 156-218; the other half of the class will be reading up to page 50 of Eric Olin Wright (2010).  Envisioning Real Utopias.  London:  Verso.

Here's our collective assessment of Castells' Networks of Outrage and Hope!
 
Downtown Eastside Updates
[From Carnegie Community Action Project]

===
MEDIA INTERVIEWS ABOUT GENTRIFICATION

Ivan interviewed on CBC On the Coast, February 18 www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/British+Columbia/On+The+Coast/ID/2336430599/

Ivan interviewed on the Phillip Till show, CKNW, February 21, 6am slot (select and scroll to 6:38am) http://www.cknw.com/news/audiovault/index.aspx

Jean interviewed on CBC Early Edition, February 25 (scroll to 2:11:15) http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/British+Columbia/The+Early+Edition/ID/2338565999/

Ivan interviewed on CBC “The 180,” Friday March 1 http://www.cbc.ca/the180/excerpts/2013/03/01/pidgin-restaurant-and-pigeon-park/
Ivan interviewed on Co-op radio "The Rational," March 4 (first interview) http://www.coopradio.org/content/rational-111

===
NEWS ABOUT CHINATOWN CONDO REZONINGS

Jean Swanson, "Don't displace the soul of Vancouver." http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/611_js/

Ivan Drury, "The lesson from Woodward's is that condos in Chinatown are a low-income extinguishment project" http://ccapvancouver.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/611_id/

Metro News, “Vancouver’s changing Chinatown” http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/577040/vancouvers-changing-chinatown-condos-culture-and-the-end-of-cheap-rent/

Globe and Mail, “Buildings to soar over Chinatown after Vancouver eases heights” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/buildings-to-soar-over-chinatown-after-vancouver-eases-height-restrictions/article9013895/

Georgia Straight, “Vancouver city council set to consider 16-storey development in Chinatown” http://www.straight.com/news/356131/vancouver-city-council-set-consider-16-storey-development-chinatown

CBC / Huffington Post, “Vancouver homeless advocate raps Chinatown development” http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/02/24/bc-gentrification-chinatown.html

Vancouver Sun, “17-storey mixed-use tower approved in heart of Vancouver’s historic Chinatown” http://www.vancouversun.com/life/fashion-beauty/storey+mixed+used+tower+approved+heart+Vancouver+Chinatown/8005011/story.html

===
MEDIA COVERAGE ABOUT INCOME INEQUALITY

Georgia Straight, “BC NDP’s poverty platform still unclear.” http://www.straight.com/news/356641/bc-ndps-poverty-platform-still-unclear

Vancouver Sun, “Activists rally at Vancouver aquarium for higher welfare rates.” http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Activists+rally+Vancouver+Aquarium+higher+welfare+rates/7935112/story.html

===
"PICKETING PIDGIN"
Downtown East, special issue March 2013

This special (half-size) issue of the Downtown East was published quick to answer some of the major media attacks on the Pidgin Picket and on the low-income community in the Downtown Eastside. The editorial collective of the Downtown East stands with the Pidgin picket for dignity, justice, and housing for low-income communities and for an end to the gentrification forces that threaten these communities.

Why Picket the Pidgin restaurant, Wendy Pedersen & Homeless Dave (HD)
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/pedersen_hd/
The reasons and goals for the Pidgin Picket from the point of view of two of its organizers.

We need homes, Jean Swanson
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/swanson2/
Low-income people in the Downtown Eastside is in the midst of the worst housing crisis they have ever experienced. The picket is broadcasting housing needs to the public.

Responding to media attacks, Kim Hearty
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/09/hearty/
Since the picket started the major media has been bashing the picketers and criticizing the community? Why? Who are they representing?

Ada Dennis, evicted & replaced with condos and Pidgin restaurant, Ada Dennis
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/ada-dennis-evicted-and-replaced-with-condos-and-pidgin-restaurant/
A speech from an Indigenous low-income resident evicted from the building that is now 21 Doors condos and Pidgin restaurant.

How do we know gentrification is pushing up hotel rents? Jean Swanson & CCAP
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/swanson_ccap/
Excerpts from Carnegie Community Action Project’s 2012 study on rents in SRO hotels, including an argument that Woodward’s condos drove low-income housing and people out of the Western DTES.

Pigeon: a recent peoples’ history of a peoples’ park, Ivan Drury
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/drury/
The Pidgin Picket is only the latest in a history of community defence and struggles for justice at Pigeon Park.

Unpublished letter to the editor of The Province about Pidgin Picket, Sid Tan
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/tan/
Responding to media poor bashing low-income DTES residents through attacking the picket.

Questions and Answers about Pidgin Picket, Jean Swanson
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/swanson1/
Confusion abounds about the Pidgin Picket. This article takes on the myths in the media and replies with facts.

Displaced and then replaced, Terese Lulf
http://downtowneast.net/2013/03/08/lulf/
The business and media attacks on drug users and other “undesireables” in the DTES are violent displacement efforts against our most beloved community members.
Week Nine.  March 18.  What is a City in an era of Planetary Urbanization? 

For this week, read any one of these:

Andy Merrifield (2012).  "The Urban Question Under Planetary Urbanization."  International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, September.

Andy Merrrifield (2011).  "Crowd Politics:  Here Comes Everybuddy."  New Left Review, September/October.

Byron Miller and Walter Nicholls (2013).  "Social Movements in Urban Society:  The City as a Space of Politicization."