The void : Urban wasteland as political space
(2016) In Lund Political Studies- Abstract
- The rugged field and group of trees between housing estates or next to the railroad tracks, the left-over space of deserted industrial areas, the vacant demolition site of a central city block – they could all be termed ‘urban voids’. However, they are often anything but voids, in a literal sense, as they are not empty, or deserted. Yet they are ‘urban voids’, lacking an evident function, or a definition according to a plan. It is a category of urban space constructed as a nothingness, even though the very same space is often used for a variety of purposes. The aim of this thesis is to show how the urban void becomes as the constitutive outside of the City. It investigates the difference made between well-defined urban spaces (known... (More)
- The rugged field and group of trees between housing estates or next to the railroad tracks, the left-over space of deserted industrial areas, the vacant demolition site of a central city block – they could all be termed ‘urban voids’. However, they are often anything but voids, in a literal sense, as they are not empty, or deserted. Yet they are ‘urban voids’, lacking an evident function, or a definition according to a plan. It is a category of urban space constructed as a nothingness, even though the very same space is often used for a variety of purposes. The aim of this thesis is to show how the urban void becomes as the constitutive outside of the City. It investigates the difference made between well-defined urban spaces (known by names such as ‘street’, ‘park’, ‘parking lot’, ‘housing block’) and the other kind of space.
The production of the void – either it is made a no-space, devoid of any meaning, or a mesmerising rabbit- hole leading to another world – is here understood as fundamentally political. With a relational conception of space and an anti-essentialist conception of politics and the political, the author conducts a deconstruction- inspired analysis of the becoming of the urban void as another kind of space. The Derridean notion of an undecidable provides a figure of thought that hinges the analysis together with a particular way of under- standing how dominant discourses on the City and conceptualisations of the urban void interact to deter- mine each other. It does not present a “truer” version of the urban void, but aims to shake up the dominant modes of conceptualising the phenomenon.
The analysis engages a variety of texts – whether in the shape of what one might call ‘theory’, or ‘empiri- cal material’, or a TV-series, or a novel – and the thoughts provoked by working with those texts, have been edited into a montage. Fieldwork – in Athens (Greece), Berlin (Germany), Brasília (Brazil), Malmö and Stockholm (Sweden) – interviews, analyses of policies and plans, and close readings of academic literature from a range of different fields, have generated material for the study. The editing of a montage is, however, more than a mere methodological tool or a way of writing; with Rancière’s notion of ‘indisci- plinary thought’ it politicises the way of making the analysis by engaging a variety of perspectives and material in different forms that transgress disciplinary boundaries.
The thesis not only writes the urban void into politically relevant space, but also represents it in a way that makes it obvious as a politically relevant space. It brings the ‘no-spaces’ out of an (assumed) obscurity, yet at the same time de-mystifies the (same) fascinating places, in hope of a less polarised and more nuanced discourse on the urban wastelands. Only then can the existence of the urban void as a category of left over space be questioned, and the thesis concludes by opening up for future inquiry the question of what kind of city could become from a point of view where the urban void is just another kind of space. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/19a06faf-a822-4a2b-8c95-a581df797d4c
- author
- VON SCHÉELE, CECILIA LU
- supervisor
-
- Björn Badersten LU
- Martin Hall LU
- opponent
-
- Docent Hertting, Nils, Uppsala universitet
- organization
- publishing date
- 2016-09-16
- type
- Thesis
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- urban void, urban wasteland, urban planning, urban politics, space, rhythm, undecidable, montage, Derrida, Massey
- in
- Lund Political Studies
- issue
- 181
- pages
- 254 pages
- publisher
- Lund University
- defense location
- Edens hörsal, Paradisgatan 5H, Lund
- defense date
- 2016-09-16 10:15:00
- ISSN
- 0460-0037
- ISBN
- 978-91-7623-927-8
- 978-91-7623-926-1
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 19a06faf-a822-4a2b-8c95-a581df797d4c
- date added to LUP
- 2016-08-25 11:33:05
- date last changed
- 2019-07-05 13:40:06
@phdthesis{19a06faf-a822-4a2b-8c95-a581df797d4c,
abstract = {{The rugged field and group of trees between housing estates or next to the railroad tracks, the left-over space of deserted industrial areas, the vacant demolition site of a central city block – they could all be termed ‘urban voids’. However, they are often anything but voids, in a literal sense, as they are not empty, or deserted. Yet they are ‘urban voids’, lacking an evident function, or a definition according to a plan. It is a category of urban space constructed as a nothingness, even though the very same space is often used for a variety of purposes. The aim of this thesis is to show how the urban void becomes as the constitutive outside of the City. It investigates the difference made between well-defined urban spaces (known by names such as ‘street’, ‘park’, ‘parking lot’, ‘housing block’) and the other kind of space. <br/><br/>The production of the void – either it is made a no-space, devoid of any meaning, or a mesmerising rabbit- hole leading to another world – is here understood as fundamentally political. With a relational conception of space and an anti-essentialist conception of politics and the political, the author conducts a deconstruction- inspired analysis of the becoming of the urban void as another kind of space. The Derridean notion of an undecidable provides a figure of thought that hinges the analysis together with a particular way of under- standing how dominant discourses on the City and conceptualisations of the urban void interact to deter- mine each other. It does not present a “truer” version of the urban void, but aims to shake up the dominant modes of conceptualising the phenomenon. <br/><br/>The analysis engages a variety of texts – whether in the shape of what one might call ‘theory’, or ‘empiri- cal material’, or a TV-series, or a novel – and the thoughts provoked by working with those texts, have been edited into a montage. Fieldwork – in Athens (Greece), Berlin (Germany), Brasília (Brazil), Malmö and Stockholm (Sweden) – interviews, analyses of policies and plans, and close readings of academic literature from a range of different fields, have generated material for the study. The editing of a montage is, however, more than a mere methodological tool or a way of writing; with Rancière’s notion of ‘indisci- plinary thought’ it politicises the way of making the analysis by engaging a variety of perspectives and material in different forms that transgress disciplinary boundaries. <br/><br/>The thesis not only writes the urban void into politically relevant space, but also represents it in a way that makes it obvious as a politically relevant space. It brings the ‘no-spaces’ out of an (assumed) obscurity, yet at the same time de-mystifies the (same) fascinating places, in hope of a less polarised and more nuanced discourse on the urban wastelands. Only then can the existence of the urban void as a category of left over space be questioned, and the thesis concludes by opening up for future inquiry the question of what kind of city could become from a point of view where the urban void is just another kind of space.}},
author = {{VON SCHÉELE, CECILIA}},
isbn = {{978-91-7623-927-8}},
issn = {{0460-0037}},
keywords = {{urban void; urban wasteland; urban planning; urban politics; space; rhythm; undecidable; montage; Derrida; Massey}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{09}},
number = {{181}},
publisher = {{Lund University}},
school = {{Lund University}},
series = {{Lund Political Studies}},
title = {{The void : Urban wasteland as political space}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/11374984/von_Sch_ele_dissertation_thesis_The_void.pdf}},
year = {{2016}},
}