The City in Transgression: Human Mobility and Resistance in the 21st Century

243 Pages·2020·11.681 MB·English

by  Benedict Anderson

The City in Transgression
The City in Transgression explores the unacknowledged, neglected, and
ill-defined spaces of the built environment and their transition into places of
resistance and residence by refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, the homeless,
and the disadvantaged.
The book draws on urban and spatial theory, socio-economic factors,
public space, and architecture to offer an intimate look at how urban sites
and infrastructure are transformed into spaces for occupation. Anderson
proposes that the varied innovations and adaptations of urban spaces enacted
by such marginalized figures – for whom there are no other options – herald
a radical new spatial programming of cities. The book explores cities and
sites such as Mexico City and London, the Mexican/US border, the Calais
Jungle, and Palestinian camps in Beirut and utilizes concepts associated
with ‘mobility’ – such as anarchy, vagrancy, and transgression – alongside
photography, 3D modelling, and 2D imagery. From this constellation of
materials and analysis, a radical spatial picture of the city in transgression
emerges.
By focusing on the ‘underside of urbanism’, The City in Transgression
reveals the potential for new spatial networks that can cultivate the potential
for self-organization so as to counter the existing dominant urban models of
capital and property and to confront some of the major issues facing cities
amid an age of global human mobility.
This book is valuable reading for those interested in architectural theory,
modern history, human geography and mobility, climate change, urban
design, and transformation.
Benedict Anderson is an independent scholar and practices in design,
architecture, and public art. He has worked in many different universities,
lectured extensively as an invited speaker, and exhibited in major exhibitions
around the world. His previous books for Routledge are Buried City,
Unearthing Teufelsberg: Berlin and its Geography of Forgetting (2017) and
The City in Geography: Renaturing the Built Environment (2019).
Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design
Routledge Research in Planning and Urban Design is a series of academic
monographs for scholars working in these disciplines and the overlaps
between them. Building on Routledge’s history of academic rigour and
cutting-edge research, the series contributes to the rapidly expanding litera-
ture in all areas of planning and urban design.
Cultural Mega-Events
Opportunities and Risks for Heritage Cities
Zachary M. Jones
Urban Renewal and School Reform in Baltimore
Rethinking the 21st Century Public School
Erkin Özay
New York in Cinematic Imagination
The Agitated City
Vojislava Filipcevic Cordes
The City in Transgression
Human Mobility and Resistance in the 21st Century
Benedict Anderson
The City Makers of Nairobi
An African Urban History
Anders Ese and Kristin Ese
Race, Faith and Planning in Britain
Richard Gale and Huw Thomas
Planning within Complex Urban Systems
Shih Kung Lai
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-in-Planning-and-Urban-Design/book-series/RRPUD
The City in Transgression
Human Mobility and Resistance
in the 21st Century
Benedict Anderson
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 Benedict Anderson
The right of Benedict Anderson to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Anderson, Benedict, author.
Title: The city in transgression : human mobility and resistance in the
21st century / Benedict Anderson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge research in planning and urban design | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020010150 (print) | LCCN 2020010151
(ebook) | ISBN 9780367262303 (hardback) | ISBN
9780429292132 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cities and towns—Political aspects. | Emigration
and immigration—Social aspects. | Refugees. | Homeless persons. |
City planning.
Classification: LCC HT153 .A528 2020 (print) | LCC HT153
(ebook) | DDC 307.76—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010150
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010151
ISBN: 978-0-367-26230-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29213-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Movement 8
Interview 8
Civil and civic 16
Migratory fields 21
2 Urban mobility 34
Movement to mobility 34
Surface wearing 43
Indifferent non-selves 54
3 Indeterminant occupation 68
Determinacy of experience 68
Opportunities in space 76
Discontent with place 82
4 Ousted vagrancy 95
Roaming where 95
Loitering how 101
Unhomely as 107
5 Collective anarchy 122
Off the wall 122
Rogue sites 133
Out of space 144
vi Contents
6 City in transgression 160
Instability of order 160
The radical turn 168
Infrastructure edges 174
7 Unbounded mobility 188
Dwelling in mobility 188
Fluid urbanity 192
Fabricating mobility 195
Index 217
Figures
0.1 Site of homeless man’s niche residence under overpass,
Mexico City 3
1.1 Deep blue sea 11
1.2 Zaatari Refugee Camp Jordan Kompsat-2 Satellite
5 June 2013 13
1.3 Hyper-City, aerial view Mexico City 15
1.4 Dymaxion World Map, Buckminster Fuller 1943 23
1.5 El Alto, La Paz Bolivia 26
2.1 Homeless habitat under bridge, Treptow District, Berlin 40
2.2 Horizontal Surface, Millennial Bridge, Foster + Partners 44
2.3 Vertical Surface, Freedom Tower, New York 45
2.4 Martin Place, Sydney 48
2.5 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin 54
2.6 Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne 55
2.7 Homeless shelter, underground passageway, Regents Park,
Central London 61
3.1 New York Highline – determinacy of plan and
indeterminacy of programming, James Corner, Diller
Scofidio + Renfro and Piet Oudolf 71
3.2 Still image from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker 74
3.3 Slum Bario, Rochina, Rio De Janeiro 78
3.4 Joseph Beuys, I like America and America Likes Me 1974
René Block Gallery New York 81
4.1 Homeless person riding subway, New York City 108
4.2 Homeless sites, compilation image: Paris, Berlin, Madrid,
London, New York, Mexico City, Merida, Sydney,
Melbourne 114
5.1 Asylum seekers camp, Oranienplatz, Kreuzberg, Berlin 126
5.2 Banner, asylum seekers camp, Oranienplatz, Kreuzberg,
Berlin 127
5.3 Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut Lebanon 142
5.4 Mar Elias Palestinian Refugee Camp, Beirut Lebanon 143
5.5 Homeless, Zoological Garden Train Station, Berlin 148
viii Figures
5.6 Excerpt from pg. 66 of Anarchy © 1988 by John Cage 152
5.7 Excerpt from pg. 67 of Anarchy © 1988 by John Cage 153
6.1 Homeless shelter, Mexico City 163
6.2 Shanties beside highway overpass, Mexico City 165
6.3 Homeless site, Mexico City 170
6.4 Homeless shelter, highway overpass, Mexico City 175
6.5 Highway infrastructure, Mexico City 179
7.1 Aerial view of Hamburg 1947 190
7.2 Los Angeles City Airport 191
7.3 Paper Loghouse, Kobe Earthquake 1995, Shigeru
Ban Architects 196
7.4 Paper Partition System 4, 2011 East Japan Earthquake,
Shigeru Ban 197
7.5 Shipping containers Port of Rotterdam 198
7.6 Layout typologies for shipping containers showing
intersections between public space (light grey) and private
accommodation (dark grey) 200
7.7 Spatial schema, private and public spaces 203
7.8 Community interior-exterior spaces, sleeping, school,
kitchen, dining, play, solar-wind energy generation 204
7.9 Collaged image refugee communities, Mexico City’s
Central Plaza (Zocalo), golf club and medium strip 206
7.10 Visualization of refugee community housing, inner-city
highway overpass, Mexico City 208
7.11 Visualization of refugee community, inner-city highway
overpass, Houston, Texas 209
7.12 Visualization of refugee community, London 212
Preface
The university originated in the pursuit to understand all manner of
phenomena, from the body, medicine, mathematics, and the sciences to broader
inquiries into philosophy, humanity, Earth, and the cosmos. By contrast, the
present-day university is consumed by the business of education and individ-
ual self-interest, much to the detriment of collective enquiry. This seemingly
bipolar position has overtaken the core ethical role of the academy –
an institution charged with the dissemination of knowledge and creation
of an environment expressing thought and dissidence, risk and inspiration;
where experimentation, critique, failure, and pleasure are valued as much
as success. It might sound as if my disillusion with the university system
has clouded my perception of the many great things that happen within
and emerge from universities, which have a positive impact on the world
at large. This is not the case. I remain hopeful. I always believed in the
students I taught and trusted them implicitly, and I hope that the education
I provided fed into and enhanced their practices in design and architecture.
The transgression of the academy to form the modern-day university I later
learnt is not too dissimilar to the transgression this book explores in exam-
ining city and human mobility in the 21st century.
In 2016, after more than 25 years and eight universities, I left the academic
world that had consumed so much of my own. I could have stayed on in
my final university post until retirement (god forbid!), protecting my small
patch of ground, stemming the flow of new people with new ideas, but
instead I chose to leave. Thick or thin skinned, it was not the fault of the
skin – more the bruising on top of the bruising of working in the system of
entrepreneurial education. Now an independent scholar, I am answerable
to myself, to my ideas, and to the publisher. I am always fearful of what
I write. Like a performer about to take the stage, I am nervous of my perfor-
mance. I write in fear; not only of not knowing but also of how to express
an idea on a theme to find answers – however flawed they might turn out
to be. It is wonderful to be given the opportunity to write down ideas and
to be reviewed and critiqued by peers, and by encountering differing views,
I learn in the process.