Getting Political in the Neoliberal City Planning and Design for Social and Environmental Justice

1. Getting Political in the Neoliberal City: An Introduction

Burcu Yiğit Turan, Cristina Cerulli and Melissa Cate Christ

2. Plants as Allies in the Recombinant Trajectories of Ultimo, Sydney, Australia

Alexandra Crosby and Ilaria Vanni

3. From Waste Injustice and Environmental Racism Toward Restorative Justice: Dismantling Socio-Spatial Manifestations of White Supremacy in the Design and Planning of Waste Landscapes

Catherine De Almeida

4. Did the Danish Welfare Architects Leave Any Heirs? How Current Practices Operate Within, Against, and Beside Neoliberalism

Angela Gigliotti

5. Just Standards: Delineating the Potential of Green Space Provision Standards to Increase Environmental Justice

Doris Gstach

6. The Stickiness of Conducting Fieldwork in Spatial Design Research: A Case Study in Hong Kong

Evelyn Kwok

7. Urban Design In, Against, and Beyond Neoliberal Public Space: Everyday Appropriations and the Redesign of Malmö’s Western Harbor Promenade

Johan Pries

8. Temporary Spaces in Peripheral Urban Areas: Building Situated Knowledge, Not Best Practices

Claudia Seldin and Caio César de Azevedo Barros

9. Countermapping States of Exception in Cyprus: Critical Urban Practice in Architectural Education

Socrates Stratis

10. Vila Autódromo: Governmental Tactics to Remove a Defiant Favela

Biography

Burcu Yiğit Turan is a senior lecturer at the Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Her work lies at the intersection of critical theory and urban and landscape studies and focuses on environmental and socio-spatial justice-oriented histories, theories, methodologies, and practices in planning and design.

Melissa Cate Christ is a landscape architect, academic, artist, and director of transverse studio, a multidisciplinary design, research, and engagement consultancy which focuses on the planning, design, and activation of vibrant and sustainable urban places. Currently Sydney-based, Melissa has lived and worked in Sweden, Hong Kong, Canada, China, and the USA.

Cristina Cerulli is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Reading and a founding director of research-led social enterprise practice Studio Polpo. She works across practice and academia around supporting collective endeavors in the city and countering inequality through practices of care and actively proposing and implementing alternatives.

“Getting Political in the Neoliberal City is a timely book that highlights spaces and practices of politics in contemporary cities and offers urgent arguments for advancing spatial justice.”

Ed Wall, Professor of Landscape Architecture, Greenwich University, UK

“This insightful book offers a compelling overview of the growing focus on social, spatial, and environmental justice within built environment disciplines. Through a series of thoughtfully curated chapters, it helps readers grasp the complex burgeoning inequalities, and the formidable challenges faced by researchers, planners, and activists alike when trying to understand neoliberal space production. By integrating diverse disciplinary perspectives and geographical contexts, the book enriches the ongoing scholarly discourse on justice in the built environment. It is an essential read not only for planners and researchers but also for local activists who see planning, architecture, and design as vital tools in addressing socio-spatial and environmental inequalities. A powerful contribution to understanding and transforming the landscapes of justice.”

Irene Molina, Professor of Human Geography, Uppsala University, Sweden

“This collection theorizes struggles for equity and justice in neoliberal urban contexts from different disciplinary perspectives and with a range of professional approaches in geographically diverse cities around the globe. It explores the complex interplay of de- and re-politicizing planning, architecture and urban design, as these fields become shaped by neoliberalism. Based on in-depth empirical detail and creative conceptual exploration, the editors of and contributors to this volume argue for a true transformation of the spatial arts disciplines to vividly include critical knowledge and socio-political forms of civic emancipation, and liberation. A must read for those planners and designers interested in socio-spatial and environmental justice against the background of ever new trends in neoliberal urbanization!”

Sabine Knierbein, Associate Professor for Urban Culture and Public Space, Faculty of Architecture and Planning, TU Wien, Austria