Public Space Unbound: Urban Emancipation and the Post-Political Condition.

Through an exploration of emancipation in capitalist urbanization, this book argues the political is enacted through the everyday practices of publics producing space. This suggests democracy is a spatial practice co-constituted by residents, places and practices rather than an abstract professional field organizing people and movements.

Public Space Unbound brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to examine spaces, conditions and processes in which emancipatory practices impact the everyday life of citizens. We ask: How do emancipatory mo(ve)ments relate with public space under ‘post-political conditions’? In a time when democracy, solidarity and utopia are in crisis, is it still productive to claim future progress by urban revolution, or shall we rather look at small emancipatory mo(ve)ments that characterize present everyday life?

Announcement by Routledge

Review by Nicole Kirchberger in dérive

What do the recent urban resistance tactics around the world have in common? What are the roles of public space in these movements? What are the implications of urban resistance for the remaking of public space in the "age of shrinking democracy"? To what extent do these resistances move from anti- to alter-politics?

City Unsilenced brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars and scholar-activists to examine the spaces, conditions and processes in which neoliberal practices have profoundly impacted the everyday social, economic, and political life of citizens and communities around the globe. They examine the commonalities and specificities of urban resistance movements that respond to those impacts. They focus on how such movements make use of and transform the meanings and capacity of public space. They investigate their ramifications in the continued practices of renewing democracies. A broad collection of cases is presented and analyzed, including Movimento Passe Livre (Brazil), Google Bus Blockades San Francisco (USA), the Platform for Mortgage Affected People (PAH) (Spain), the Piqueteros Movement (Argentina), Umbrella Movement (Hong Kong), post-Occupy Gezi Park (Turkey), Sunflower Movement (Taiwan), Occupy Oakland (USA), Syntagma Square (Greece), 1DMX (Mexico), Miyashita Park Tokyo (Japan), 15-M Movement (Spain), and Train of Hope Vienna (Austria).

By better understanding the processes and implications of the recent urban resistances, City Unsilenced contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the role and significance of public space in the practice of lived democracy and lived space.

Announcement by Routledge.

Review by Routledge

Interview with Jeff Hou in UW News.