Organisers' description :
This wide-ranging, synthetical paper offers a cross-cuang view of a range of emerging research on the politics of verticality which appertain to contemporary urban spaces. Arguing that critical urban social science has long neglected the vertical aspects of urban life, the paper seeks starting points for a vertical turn within such research through engaging with recent research in architecture, political theory and cultural studies on the intersections of architecture and contemporary colonial power, the profusion of skyscrapers and subterranean architectures, and the proliferation of vertically-organised sensors and targeting and imaging systems within security, military and cultural circuits. These emerging developments are connected with earlier discourses on the politics of vertical architecture, aeriality and the vertical view within urban studies, architecture, cartography and geopolitics. The paper finishes with a reflection on the challenges of addressing the politics of verticality and aeriality within critical urban social science.
