Cultural Articulations of the New Urban Ideas

The way in which cultural approach operates though disciplines of knowledge and urban theories is a central theme of this article. If cultural approach in urban studies worked largely through cultural turn ideas in the end of 20th century, recently works through reinterpreted and expanded concept of culture as a structure/infractructure of urban life. Reflecting the crisis of cultural turn in urban theory in 21st century some authors and disciplines became more interested in the study of the urban political economies, urban political ecology and critical urban theory. Research seeking to explore recent urban crisis as a result of climate changes, growing social inequality and lack of solidarity in global scale has unsurprisingly been diverse and varied. Analitically this moment is compelling because it emphasizes the weakness of cultural factors in the process of articulation of a new urban ideas. This, however, raises a question with respect to much of the most visible results of urban studies and urban theory: are its proponents inclined to accept again the offer of cultural oriented urban studies in terms of cultural materialism, eco-criticism, eco-philosophy, ethics and aesthetics? Are they ready to rethink the relationship between economic and extraeconomic causality in the conditions of global multilevel crisis? This article is therefore primarily a theoretical attempt to articulate how urban theory might be moulded by global urbanisation in crisis.

Urban Resilience or Critical Theories of Change? Disputes on Urban Studies in the Context of Pandemic Crisis

The aim of the article is critical reconstruction of a current dispute in the field of urban studies. Recent dabates and polemics between researchers related to such approaches, as planetary urbanisation thesis, urban political ecology, assemblage urbanism, urban postcolonial studies and – last but not least – well known Los Angeles School – showed that the expieriencie of the urban cirisises is closely related to the search for the new knowledge and concepts, that can bring visons of change and sollutions. At stake is, however, the recognition that some theoretical proposals have the potential to develop critical knowledge, while others tend to become just new urban ideologies, attractive, but often reactive, ineffective or exclusive. The climate change, as well as recent pandemic crisis shows clearly that well-established theoretical criticism is just as nessecary as cultural activity or political action, if urban studies are to continue to provide us with knowledge that responds to the challenges of the future. Theoretical disputes are sometimes just a „family war”, but they often show the most sensitive problems to which scientific knowledge must answer. Urban crisises in turn, as COVID-19 pandemic clearly shows – are often unexpected pracitical tests of theories.

(Un)predictability of Dynamics. Reflections about the Crisis and the City (in the Margins of Thoughts of Yuri Lotman and René Thom)

The article deals with three issues: (1) how to understand the crisis in the context of the city, (2) what components in the urban crisis equation can be distinguished (constant, variable, unknown), and (3) according to which criteria the predictability of the dynamics of processes taking place in an urbanized environment should be understood. In the analysis, categories of text, code, narrative (discourse), structure and conditions were used as levels of crisis interpretation – in the light of findings of culture semiotician Y. Lotman and mathematician R. Thom. The main result of this study is that the crisis is a stable standard (rule) for all unstable morphologies, including cities.

Do the Urban Activists Want to Kill Us? Forces of Altermodernization and the Making of Conservative Moral Panic

The article offers an analysis of discursive reactions to the altermodernist patterns developed by urban social movements, present in right-wing and conservative-liberal narratives and journalism. These reactions are clearly backlash. The main thesis of the article is that they meet the conditions of moral panic. Therefore, the following elements of moral panic have been identified: excessive concern for the established order, false representations based on exaggeration and distortion, and the construction of deviation through the negative stereotype of the urban activist. The crucial element of the latter is the construction of the political enemy by means of “communization”.

Can Any City Be Happy Again? On the Margins of the Book by Charles Montgomery

The article deals with two main issues: (1) how to understand the crisis in the context of the city, (2) how to define “happy city” in the context of positive psychology. According to the book Happy City written by Charles Montgomery, the author tries to distinguish between two main conceptions of “happiness” (urban hedonism and urban eudaimonia) and tries to answer a question of what factors could make a city “happy” again. The brief analyses of cultural articulation of possible future of cities contains such issues as culture of crisis, social isolation, solitude in culture, ecocity and biophilic design.

This article enquires into the transformative potential of the London National Park City. In doing so it situates the vision for, the becoming, and the Charter of an urban national park in relational thinking about metropolitan nature and sustainable urbanisation. It looks at hopes and pitfalls of the London National Park City in the face of growing socio-environmental injustice and the climate crisis. First, the article explores the National Park City as a form of ecological reflexivity and social practice in the context of relational concepts of nature and the city. Second, it examines opportunities offered by the Park City with respect to urban environmental sustainability, health and wellbeing, connected diversity, socio-economic inclusion and political agency. Third, it looks at pitfalls of the National Park City relating to environmental gentrification, as well as to trade-offs between grassroots creativity and capability to bring about material change. Last but not least, the article advocates for negotiation of synergies between ‘green’ and ‘grey’ urban natures as a strategy to address the climate crisis.

Performances of Towns-ghost

The article takes readers to the towns-ghost destroyed in both World Wars. The author re-callas examples of French villages detruit from Picardy and martyr cities: Czech Lidice and French Oradour-sur-Glane. Starting from Schechner’s “as performance” category, the author analyzes how the contemporary meaning of these places is built and with what means they create anti-war performances.

Artivistic Mapping Practices Against Crises. Towards Urban Potential

The article focuses on the artistic-activist practicies of mapping urban crises, asking about their critical and transformational potential. Artivistic mapping – combining artistic practices with a form of political activism – is recognized in context of extracting inequalities in monitoring crisis areas, as well as the city’s transformational capabilities. Looking at the involvement of artists and activists in mapping projects is combined with the question of the potential for anti-crisis action – shaping political perceptions and stimulating alternative practical responses to generated urban problems. The following issues are addressed: (1) counter-mapping and the relationship of artistic practices with critical cartography, (2) the development of activist mapping forms – maptivism and crisis mapping, and (3) references to the interests of new urban ontologies, in particular the on-epistemological dimension of urban mapping assemblage, binding issues of updating and the potential of cities.

Mapping is recognized in the critical-activating dimension as a form of cognition oriented on creative experimentation and interference in existing reality. Because of this, it is an interesting and prolific area for practical consideration of the form of ‘engagement policy’ through ‘research of potentiality’. It is worth considering in what sense the practices of artistic and activist crisis mapping can be a “turning point” – opening “a window to new ways of seeing and imagining” (K. Dovey, M. Ristic). It is primarily a field for asking questions about transformational mapping possibilities – perceiving the city as a place of “radical potentiality” (C. McFarlane). In order to illustrate the problem more clearly, the last part of the work analyzes the anti-gentrification activities in the San Francisco Bay Area, in particular the mapping practices undertaken by Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.

Rethinking Empathy in the Context of the Crisis of Urban Co-presence

The article proposes to rethink the idea of empathy in the context of the question on dynamics organising the realm of urban co-presence in the times of environmental crisis. I put forward the thesis that empathy is not solely a cognitive ability of subject but a material, relational and deterritorializing process operating with urban entanglements, being a the same moment oppositional to entropy. The arguments in favor of the proposed approach to empathy are based on the diffractive reading of Theodor Lipps’s projective theory of empathy, consisting in its interpretation through the lens of new materialistic approach. Referring new materialists’ thought to Lipps’s findings, I show that some threads of their thinking about ontology of diverse naturalcultural phenomena can be found in Lipps’s studies on empathy. I arrive with the conclusion that new materialistic translation of the notion of empathy which shows its inseparability of the notion of sympathy, makes it a useful conceptual tool for inventing new, more ethical modes of urban co-presence in the age of sixth extinction.

The City as a Commons or the Sum of Private Property? Polish Urban Question in the Context of Urban Social Movements Activities

The article discusses two ideas of the city in the Polish public discourse: the city as a commons and its antithesis – the city as the sum of private property. In the first part of the article, the author analyses the processes in which both ideas were developed. In the second part of the article the author analyses the role of Polish urban social movements, which are one of the few social actors that discussed the idea of the city as a commons when Polish public discourse was dominated by neoliberal dogmas in which the city was reduced to the sum of private property. In conclusion, according to Victor Turner’s concept of social change, the author analyses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the reception of both ideas in Polish public discourse.

“New Opening” in the Design of Urbanised Spaces

Inspired by the activities of the international scientific collective New Keywords Collective, I present mottoes that should accompany a new opening in the design of contemporary urbanized areas. The re-modelling of the dominant spatial planning policies into intersectional and horizontal, should lead to a process of sharing public goods and the inclusion of categories of ‘temporariness’ and ‘disassembling’ in the global discourse as inevitable in times of crisis.

In the following article, we explore interconnections between using bicycle sharing systems and the personal approach to ownership as well as to such practices as shared use and borrowing. Based on primary, qualitative research conducted in march 2020 we claim that public bicycles – despite their history rooted in ideas of common use – are perceived as one of many services available within the city. Users see them as useful in a particular situation but do not associate them with shared use or the common good. Therefore we claim that bike-sharing systems – despite optimism – cannot be classified as part of the sharing economy. Based on users opinions they should be classified as part of access based or collaborative consumption.