Remembering, Forgetting and City Builders critically explores how urban spaces are designed, planned and experienced in relation to the politics of collective and personal memory construction. Bringing together case studies from North America, South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the book analyzes how contested national, ethnic and cultural sentiments clash in planning and experiencing urban spaces. Going beyond the claim that such situations exist in many parts of the world because communities construct their 'past memories' within their current daily life and future aspirations, the book explores how the very acts of planning and urban design are rooted in the existing structures of hegemonic power.
With contributors from the fields of architecture, geography, planning, anthropology and sociology, urban studies and cultural studies, the book provides a rich, interdisciplinary view into the conflicts over memory and belonging which are spatially expressed and mediated through the official planning apparatus.
Contents :
Introduction, Haim Yacobi and Tovi Fenster Remembering forgotten landscapes: community gardens in New York City and the reconstruction of cultural diversity, Efrat Eizenberg Memory, recognition and the architecture of a diasporic place: the case of Netivot, Israel, Haim Yacobi Neighbourhood and belonging: Turkish immigrant women constructing the everyday public space, Eda Ünlü-Yücesoy Memory, belonging, and resistance: the struggle over place among the Bedouin-Arabs of the Negev, Safa Abu-Rabia One place – different memories: the case of Yaad and Miaar, Tovi Fenster The reconstructed city as rhetorical space: the case of Volgograd, Elena Trubina Seoul: city, identity, and the construction of the past, Guy Podoler 'We shouldn't sell our country!': the reconfiguration of Jewish urban property and ethno-national political discourses and projects in (post) Socialist Romania, Damiana Gabriela Otoiu Forgetting and remembering: Frankfurt's Altstadt after the Second World War, Marianne Rodenstein From 'patrimoine partagé' to 'whose heritage'? Critical reflections on colonial built heritage in the city of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Johan Lagae Epilogue, Tali Hatuka
Tovi Fenster is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Human Environment at Tel Aviv University. Haim Yacobi is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
