Contested Markets, Contested Cities: Gentrification and Urban Justice in Retail Spaces

ISBN-13: 9781138217485 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 192 str.

Sara Gonzales

Opis

During the past decade many markets have been rediscovered as tourist attractions, food meccas and even regeneration flagships. These transformations are pushing markets to a gentrification frontier clashing with markets' traditional role as public meeting places that support, economically and socially, a diverse range of communities including the urban poor, migrant workers, ethnic minorities and the elderly. This book is the first to explore the contemporary challenges taking place in traditional retail spaces, drawing on rich international case studies from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Spain, Bulgaria, and the UK. It draws on three key themes. Firstly, contemporary transformations in markets are part of wider processes of neoliberal urbanisation. Secondly, markets can become political spaces for resistance or contestation between different groups and actors. The contested "public" nature of markets, their buildings or streets, becomes at stake as battleground for different notions of what the city itself means. Finally, markets offer opportunities for alternative practices for solidarity, cooperation and for bottom up "commoning." They can become semi-autonomous spaces in the face of corporatized food networks or exploitative labour relations through for example the exchange of locally and non-commercially produced food. This book adopts a relational and multi-scalar approach to explore markets from the inside and out, connecting to wider local, national and global processes. It will be of great interest to those studying Urban Studies, Geography, Planning, Sociology.

Recenzje

"The volume encourages us to expand our studies of gentrification beyond the residential
to investigate the relationship between transformations in retail spaces and access to public and urban life. The different cases presented in the book draw on three overlapping analytical
frameworks to present and analyze markets in different cities. Contested Markets,
Contested Cities, edited by Sara González, [examines] the different
roles played by markets, and their contradictions, from the perspectives of gentrification and the
right to the city." - Liz Mason-Deese, Independent Researcher, Antipode Foundation

O autorze

Sara González is Associate Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, UK where she teaches on critical urban geography courses and leads the research group on Social Justice, Cities and Citizenship. She has published work in international journals on the political and economic transformation in cities, the neoliberalisation of urban policies, gentrification and grassroots contestation of these processes. Between 2012 and 2016 she was the Principal Investigator in Leeds of the EU-funded Contested Cities network, bringing together more than 40 researchers across Europe and Latin America. Between 2006 and 2016 she was part of the editorial collective of the open-access ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. She favours participatory action research methodologies and has been a very active member of a campaign to support her local market in Leeds.