City Living: How Urban Dwellers and Urban Spaces Make One Another

339 Pages·2021·14.75 MB·English

by  Quill R. Kukla

City Living
City Living
How Urban Dwellers and Urban Spaces
Make One Another
QUILL R KUKLA
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kukla, Quill R, author.
Title: City living : how urban dwellers and urban spaces make
one another / Quill R Kukla.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University
Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021022701 (print) | LCCN 2021022702 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190855369 (hb) | ISBN 9780190855383 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Sociology, Urban. | City dwellers. | City planning. |
Cities and towns. | Public spaces.
Classification: LCC HT111 .K67 2021 (print) | LCC HT111 (ebook) |
DDC 307.76—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022701
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022702
DOI: 10.1093/ oso/ 9780190855369.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For and with Eli and Berlin
Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody,
only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Figures
Color Images
1. Map of the 2016 US presidential election, with darker blue indicating a
higher percentage of votes for Democrat Hilary Clinton and darker red
indicating a higher percentage of votes for Republican Donald Trump.
2. Racial segregation and 8 Mile Road, Detroit, 2011.
3. Entrance to the underground cinema at Köpi, which shows free movies
twice a week, and the northeast corner of the courtyard.
4. Entrance to the old gym at Köpi, which briefly hosted Queer Wrestling
Friday, as well as to Koma F (one of the main music venues), the archives
and information center, and the private common areas of the Hausprojekt,
including the Aquarium.
5. Köpi courtyard.
6. Residential street in Orlando West, just off Vilikazi St. The Orlando Pirates
soccer field, the “Berlin Wall of Soweto,” and an Apollo surveillance light
are visible in the background.
7. Street art by Julie Lovelace.
8. Street art by Afrika 47.
9. Panels south of Main Street by Tyke, Mars, and TapZ.
10. Work by Rasty to the left of Tyke’s work. Hijacked building with the telltale
signage in the background.
11. Rigaer 78, former squat and current Hausprojekt and music venue in
Friedrichshain.
12. Alley to a Hausprojekt courtyard on Kastinallee.
xii Figures
Text Photos
1.1. My home office. 28
2.1. Street art in the Smoketown neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. 61
2.2. (a) La République, Paris. (b) Robert E. Lee, Richmond, Virginia. 80
2.3. Michael Jackson memorial, Munich. 81
3.1. Ellington memorial and traditional facade in the Shaw neighborhood of
Washington, DC. 100
3.2. The same place shown in Figure 3.1, one year later. 100
3.3. The main strip of Columbia Heights on 14th Street after the 1968 riots. 102
3.4. The same block shown in Figure 3.4, in 2019. 103
3.5. Harriet Tubman Field, with the school and traditional Columbia Heights
architecture in the background. 109
5.1. Altbau apartment buildings in Wedding. 141
5.2. Decorated exposed Altbau wall with art by ROA, Berlin Kidz, and others. 146
5.3. Berlin Wall next to Köpenicker Straße, 1983. 148
5.4. The Spree near Schillingbrücke, looking north into East Berlin, the Wall,
and the checkpoint, September 1990. 149
5.5. The Spree near Schillingbrücke, same view as in Figure 5.4, July 2018. 149
5.6. “Shackled by Time” and “Take Off That Mask,” Blu. 151
5.7. Blacked- out art, with ads for the planned condos in view next to the
construction site. 152
5.8. Men urinating on Curvystraße. 153
5.9. Köpi soon after its occupation, early 1990s. 158
5.10. The fence outside of Köpi. 162
5.11. Main entrance to Köpi. 163
5.12. Köpi Bleibt. Edge of the west wing of the building. 168
5.13. Visiting dignitaries arrive at Tempelhof, 1954. 172
5.14. Community garden at Tempelhof. 174
5.15. Abandoned wing of the Tempelhof Terminal. 175
5.16. Nazi bomb shelter under Tempelhof, with paintings for children
on the wall. 176
5.17. Syrian refugee settlement with the children’s circus behind it,
photographed from Tempelhof Airport. 177
Figures xiii
5.18. The Karstadt during the 1930s. 180
5.19. Roof of the Karstadt. 180
5.20. Crowds talking to visiting reporters near the bombed ruins of the Karstadt. 181
5.21. Life against the Wall in Neukölln, a few blocks east of Hermannplatz, 1970s. 182
5.22. May Day demonstration at Hermannplatz, 1970s. The sign reads, “Only
under socialism do artists have equal rights and are they beneficiaries
of all social and cultural achievements.” 184
5.23. Free Syria rally at Hermannplatz. 188
5.24. Checkpoint Charlie, leaving the American sector, 1980. 190
5.25. The same view of Checkpoint Charlie as in Figure 5.24, but in 2018. 190
5.26. Cosplaying tourists and fake guards at “Checkpoint Charlie.” 191
5.27. Displaced bits of the Wall for sale in the Mauermuseum gift shop. 192
5.28. Copies of the American Sector sign for sale in the Mauermuseum gift shop. 192
6.1. Hijacked buildings in Hillbrow, as seen from Constitution Hill. 213
6.2. Ponte City Apartments, Berea, 2017. 217
6.3. Workers removing garbage from the center of Ponte City in 2003. 218
6.4. Rockey Street, Yeoville, 1985. 221
6.5. Raleigh St., Yeoville, early evening. 222
6.6. Chef Sanza at work in his kitchen in the Yeoville Dinner Club, Rockey Street. 225
6.7. Solitary confinement cell in Section 4, 2018. 229
6.8. Great African Staircase at Constitution Hill. 231
6.9. The informal economy and the monetization of space in Orlando West, Soweto. 235
6.10. The Orlando squatters’ camp, 1951. 236
6.11. Soweto uprising in Orlando West, June 16, 1976. 237
6.12. Bank City shops, near Jeppes and Simmonds Streets. 241
6.13. Jeppestown, 1950s, on the edge of what is now Maboneng Precinct on
Main Street. 243
6.14. Fox Street in Maboneng on a Sunday afternoon. 245
6.15. Outdoor boxing gym on Beacon Street in Maboneng Precinct, with
Kombis in the background. 246
6.16. Intimate stenciling in Maboneng. 252
6.17. Looting and protesting of Maboneng in Jeppestown by Zulu residents, 2015. 253
7.1. Teepeeland. 280
7.2. Blurred squats and Hausprojekte in Friedrichshain. 282
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without enormous help from all sorts of
people and places. My largest debt is to the cities that most closely informed
my research and taught me their ways, especially Berlin, Johannesburg,
Soweto, New York, and Washington, DC. These cities invited me in and
allowed me to explore and learn from them. Without them, and other cities
that I have explored and inhabited, there would be nothing but abstractions
in this book.
My son, Eli Kukla, contributed so much to this project that it could not
have existed without him. He served as my research assistant for all of my
fieldwork. Because of his extraordinary facility with languages, his official
job was to help with communication in German and Arabic (and, as it turned
out, Zulu, which he picked up quickly), as well as to translate documents,
help with archival research, and identify languages used in different sites.
But in fact, his role became much more extensive. He helped me choose and
interpret research sites and accompanied me on nearly all of my research
outings. Perhaps most important, he discussed each part of our experience
with me endlessly and helped me interpret what we saw. He read drafts of
multiple sections and gave me helpful comments. In short, he participated
in almost every stage of the research and writing process, in ways that far
exceeded his official assistantship responsibilities. He has put literally hun-
dreds of hours into this project. Although all the text here is my own, he con-
tributed so much by way of both labor and ideas to this book that he almost
counts as a coauthor.
My next debt is to Marianna Pavlovskaya. When I began working in ear-
nest on this book, drawing only on my background as a philosopher and
my enormous and passionate love of cities, I quickly came to realize that
I needed a grounded empirical understanding of how cities developed and
worked in order to complete the book responsibly. I decided to go back to
school and get a master’s degree in urban geography from CUNY-H unter
College. Marianna Pavlovskaya took me on as an advisee and mentored my
master’s thesis, “Repurposed Spaces in Berlin and Johannesburg,” which
formed the basis for Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of this book. I could have not had
xvi Acknowledgments
a better adviser; she is a brilliant geographer who was willing to both share
her wisdom with me and take me seriously as an odd colleague- student hy-
brid. I thank her for taking on such a quirky project and advisee; for being so
supportive and insightful in her advice; for letting me work independently
when I wanted to; and most of all, for doing more than anyone else to help
me make the paradigm shift from thinking like a philosopher to thinking
like a geographer, or at least a philosopher- geographer. Her intellectual ex-
ample and mentorship have been invaluable. Indeed, my time at Hunter was
a midcareer gift. The intellectual training, stimulation, and inspiration I re-
ceived there were pivotal for getting me through this project. I am grateful
as well to my other professors in the program, particularly Inez Miyares and
Rosalie Ray, whose seminars also had a hand in shaping this book, and to
Jillian Schwedler, who served as the second reader on my thesis and whose
work on repurposed space inspired my own.
My third debt goes to my wise and forbearing editor at Oxford University
Press, Lucy Randall, who both supported and believed in this unusual inter-
disciplinary project and showed unlimited patience with my ever- extending
timeline, which kept stretching to incorporate new degrees, new fieldwork,
and several changes in direction in my writing.
I am incredibly grateful to multiple exceptionally educated, knowl-
edgeable, and committed tour guides, archivists, and other residents with
special geographic knowledge in Washington, DC, Berlin, Johannesburg,
and Soweto, who got excited about my project and ended up helping me
with my research in ways that went far beyond their job descriptions.
With their help, I found and accessed spaces I never would have other-
wise known about, made invaluable connections, and got a deep and rich
feel for the cities. These were people who love and understand their cities,
and were willing and able to share that love and understanding; their gen-
erosity and knowledgeability were remarkable. My colleague and friend
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò allowed me to interview him in depth about the racial
micropolitics of a playing field in Columbia Heights, Washington, DC.
Maria Klechevskaya of Berlin ended up redirecting my approach to finding
research sites. Julia Dilger, the archivist at the Neukölln Museum in Berlin,
spent an entire day helping me find treasures in her collection. Natalia
Albizu let me interview her in depth about life in Neukölln. I am especially
honored and grateful that the residents of Köpi 137 decided to allow me
to do research and take photographs in their home, despite their commit-
ment to privacy. In particular, I thank Köpi spokespeople Frank and Gabby