Urban Revolution

Estudio de los criterios utilizados por V.Gordon Childe para definir la antigua sociedad urbana. Análisis de las consecuencias de la emergencia de la ciudad en Mesopotamia y del territorio del que extraían los recursos agrícolas para el mantenimiento de las poblaciones urbanas.

Trabajo realizado para la asignatura Factores geográficos y económicos en la interpretación histórica, impartida por la profesora Marina Picazo, del Máster Universitario Mediterráneo antiguo.

For thousands of years, men have struggled to establish their supremacy. At first, they used spirits to secure for themselves a function in a natural world that seemed to have taken sides with the feminine. Eventually, they created an all-mighty divinity, and established their status as second to none other than that highest of all authority.

Sailing through history, we show that the way procreation was perceived has determined how men and women positioned themselves in the universe. It has wielded consequences that have deeply affected our evolution, from the primal vision of an all-encompassing natural world in which Mother Nature represented the source of all life, to the subjection of nature and woman, with God the Father sitting at the summit of the creation.

This emphasis on gender and nature brings into perspective the current social and economic resurgence of women and the new attitude towards environment that needs to be protected from our own deeds. These intricate leitmotifs make us witness a turning point in our history.

Open access: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14616718.2014.936179#.VQVYUxz40mw
In recent years responses to neoliberal urbanism and social injustice have been framed in terms of ‘the right to the city’, both by academics and social movements. This special issue presents case studies of housing struggles from around the globe that are framed within a right to the city perspective. In this introduction to the special issue we first present a short synopsis of the idea of a right to the city, as put forward by Henri Lefebvre; second, we briefly discuss earlier work that has used a right to the city lens to look at housing; and third, we provide an overview of the papers that make up this special issue.
Keywords: Henri Lefebvre; right to the city; housing; private property; social exclusion; social movements

Here I outline some new thinking regarding Lefebvre's concepts of differential space and the right to the city. The previous empirically orientated chapters in the book point to the potential of differential space but have so far left its nature and processes of production unexplored. Following Goonewardena et al (2008: 13) who argue for the need to take Lefebvre's spatial triad and the production of space ideas as a point of departure and Merrifield (2011) who urges us to go beyond Lefebvre, this chapter seeks to do just that. It does so by incorporating a fusion of differential space and right to the city ideas into contemporary contexts and grounded empirical case studies in the three cities which are the focus of this book. What follows is firstly, a conceptual discussion of the nature of the right to the city and its relationship with differential space. In the discussion below I focus on the ludic aspects and politicised appropriation characteristics of differential space. Secondly, is an analysis and discussion of case study empirical research, which argues that, inadvertently the potential for differential space was created through various heritage-led beautification and urban regeneration schemes

The many complex processes that characterised the Urban Revolution have been variously outlined, but the mental and cultural steps that were combined with the relevant phenomena are rarely discussed, and above all elusive is their connection with the archaeological evidence. On the other hand, some types of wall decoration techniques that are attested in Lower Mesopotamia in the early historic period can play an important role in revealing the occurrence of remarkable cultural transformation processes. Paying a special attention to the logics and technical organization of some findings, like the Uruk wall cone mosaics, features can be located that serve as clues to explain the development of certain types of mental paths which have a quite direct relation with the dawn of the historical ages. The central effort of this contribution is dedicated to accomplish these tasks through methodological tools that are provided not just by neurosciences, but also (and more meaningfully) by old and new reflections in the fields of cultural studies.

El texto propone una relectura de la revolución de 1868 a la luz de la transformación sociocultural alumbrada por la urbanización de Madrid: primero interpretando el derrumbe de la monarquía por su incapacidad de gestionar el colapso social y urbano de la capital; segundo destacando la manera en que los revolucionarios que tomaron el poder aprovecharon las nuevas redes de capital social tejidas en la ciudad de mediados del XIX; finalmente mostrando cuáles fueron las propuestas de una nueva gestión política de la capital que dichos revolucionarios propusieron como expresión de la ruptura política que pretendían encarnar.

El paso de las civilizaciones
preurbanas a urbanas es una de las
incógnitas que los científicos intentan
responder. A caballo entre el neolítico
y la edad del bronce, las grandes
civilizaciones mundiales han pasado de
un mundo primitivo a ser grandes
civilizaciones gracias al proceso
urbanizador. Hoy, gracias a las
nuevas investigaciones, sabemos un
poco más de este proceso.

I would claim that differential space is the conceptual culmination of the major spatial themes of  Lefebvre's spatial project. That said, I argue that it is essential to consider differential space and the right to the city as related intimately. Lefebvre developed both concepts in the politically volatile Parisian years of the mid-1960s. He did so partly in response to the evident political tensions and spatial contradictions impacting on France, especially Nanterre University and Paris in this turbulent epoch. Lefebvre developed the concept of the right to the city in his 1968 book Le droit à la ville: publication of which predated the May disturbances of that year. In the same year his book L’irruption de Nanterre au sommet was published in which he begins to develop the concepts of: urban utopia, urban society and differential space. It is unlikely to be coincidence that these books followed in close succession and I contend the right to differential urban space is a fundamental right to the city. Lefebvre counter-poses the abstract homogenised space of neo-capitalism against heterogeneous space of difference and the everyday lived space of ordinary urban inhabitants. I want to suggest here that although the powerful spatial practice and dominant representations of space subjugate the urban realm through the production of abstract space, it is possible for differential space to emerge.

O desenvolvimento de fontes de energia com a magnitude das antropogénicas, nome-adamente as nucleares, impõe ao Homem a responsabilidade de garantir que das suas invenções não perde o domínio e consequentemente cria cenários irreversíveis e demasi-ado desfavoráveis à vida na Terra. A possibilidade de que o sistema climático pode ser irreversivelmente alterado, e que não haverá alguém para responsabilizar dessa alteração, é um problema ético novo: a subjugação da posteridade à atual geração por meio das emissões de gases de efeito de estufa. A resposta à importante questão sobre as origens do Antropoceno exige uma avaliação empírica rigorosa da dimensão global e do grau de alteração antropogénica direta da biosfera terrestre, desde o Plistoceno até à atualidade.

This is the first issue of an academic journal, of which I am aware, to focus on Henri Lefebvre and urban planning. Urban spatial planning evolved as a concept to integrate the complex social, economic, environmental, political and land use conundrums of late 20th century society. Similarly, the spatial ideas of Henri Lefebvre encompass these issues but stress the importance of everyday life, production, culture and history. This thematic issue of Urban Planning is predicated principally on three of Lefebvre’s major works: The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 974/1991), Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre, 1947/1991) and The Urban Revolution (Lefebvre, 1970/2003). Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the investigation of cities and urban society have been taken up most rigorously in the fields of geography, urban studies and latterly architecture. Despite this, it is clear that Lefebvre’s five central concepts: the production of space, abstract space, everyday life, the right to the city and planetary urbanisation—provide powerful tools for the examination of urban planning, cities and urban society in the Global North and South. Anglophone urban planning first embraced Lefebvre’s ideas in the 1980s. Surprisingly then, it is only in the last ten years or so that urban planning academia and research has witnessed a blossoming of interest in Lefebvre’s ideas.

ABSTRACT In recent years responses to neoliberal urbanism and social injustice have been framed in terms of ‘the right to the city’, both by academics and social movements. This special issue presents case studies of housing struggles from around the globe that are framed within a right to the city perspective. In this introduction to the special issue we first present a short synopsis of the idea of a right to the city, as put forward by Henri Lefebvre; second, we briefly discuss earlier work that has used a right to the city lens to look at housing; and third, we provide an overview of the papers that make up this special issue.

This current paper is part of the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Development and Cultures 2015 – 2016, organized by the KU Leuven Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA) and the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning (ASRO) with focus on Cities in Development: Spaces, Conflicts and Agency. As part of the evaluation of the course this paper relates to the topic of the debate: Urban Fragments and Assemblages by Colin McFarlane and Johan Lagae, with cases from DRC, Uganda, South Africa and India.

Colombian cities have problems related to housing, there are a lot of people living in precarious neighborhoods without the minimum health and social security conditions, the poorest population does not has the possibility to have a house through the formal housing market, that is why they just have the option of living in informal settlements. This situation is creating new communities in a permanent battle for the access to social, economic and cultural services of the city.

The dark side of citizenship is about how the lack of home utilities, in this specific case the electric energy, could become in a fragmented/fragmenting social infrastructure in the city of Medellín, where the urban policies related to home utilities are generating cases of segregation in areas of the city affected by unemployment and extreme poverty. In the global urbanism era this problematic is creating the basis for an urban revolution where the people is affected by the politicization and the commercial exploitation of the home utilities as a product in the market.

In this case, the informal human settlements were established due to the forced displacement and the inequality in the state and the country, the city was built for families and communities fighting for a piece of land and the provision of the fundamental public and social services. Medellín is the demonstration of the reaction of the people to the lack of home utilities, related to supposed technical, operational and financial issues, argued by the company (“public company”) in charge of providing services in the city. The local government and the Public Companies of Medellín, in a segregating act, deny the provision of electric energy to people living in high-risk areas and extreme poverty; this situation is pushing people to take collective actions and protest against the Municipality, which according to the Colombian law, must ensure the providing of the home utilities as a basic human right in the development of the city.

Keywords: Electric energy, home utilities, infrastructure, segregation, urban revolution, global urbanism, urban policies.