City Unsilenced

Jeffrey Hou is Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle. His work focuses on design activism, public space, and cross-cultural placemaking. He is the editor of Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010) and he was the City of Vienna Visiting Professor at TU Wien (2013). Sabine Knierbein is Associate Professor for Urban Culture and Public Space at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, TU Wien. She currently coordinates the AESOP Thematic Group for Public Spaces and Urban Cultures. She is the editor of Public Space and the Challenges of Urban Transformation in Europe (2014) and Public Space and Relational Perspectives: New Challenges for Architecture and Planning (2015).

"The book documents a moment of resistance that has spread around the world – moving from the Global South to the Global North – and that has attracted castes of people who are not the usual suspects out into the streets. In so many places and cultural contexts, as the pace of social, economic and political disenfranchisement increases, and more people find themselves on the outside of taken-for-granted social systems, the accounts in City Unsilenced shout out loud: these things really happened." -Urban Studies"This cutting-edge collection raises important and salient questions and provocations about urban resistance in the context of dominant neoliberal practices in many cities in the contemporary era. Its distinctiveness lies not only in its excellent critical analysis but also in its breadth of case studies, drawing insights from a variety of sites and cities across the globe. This is a must-read for urbanists and activists who recognise the crucial importance of public space for transformative urban politics."-Sophie Watson, Professor of Sociology, The Open University"In response to austerity politics and market-based governance of urban land, large-scale social protest has erupted in the public spaces of cities across the globe. In City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy, editors Jeffrey Hou of UW-Seattle and Sabine Knierbein of SKuOR, Vienna – both scholars of the dynamics of public space –have compiled the stories, strategies and the-ories derived from social movements in urban spaces since 2011. In this volume, the collected authors demonstrate how public spaces in cities operate as both the subject and object of civic unrest." - Naomi Adiv, Portland State University, USA

• Acknowledgement Introduction1. Shrinking Democracy and Urban Resistance: Toward an Emancipatory Politics of Public SpaceJeffrey Hou and Sabine KnierbeinPart I. Mobilizing: Taking to the Streets! 2. Between Street and Home: Mobility, Housing, and the 2013 Demonstrations in BrazilLuciana da Silva Andrade and João Paulo Huguenin3. San Francisco’s Tech-led Gentrification: Public Space, Protest, and the Urban CommonsManissa M. Maharawal4. Reconfiguring the Public through Housing Rights Struggles in SpainMelissa García-Lamarca5. Urban Resistance and Its Expression in Public Space: New Demands and Shared Meanings in ArgentinaPaula Rosa and Regina VidosaPart 2. Reclaiming: From Public Space to the Political6. Reclaiming Public Space Movement in Hong Kong: From Occupy Queen’s Pier to the Umbrella MovementYun-Chung Chen and Mirana M. Szeto7. Occupy Gezi Park: the Never-ending Search for Democracy, Public Space and Alternative City-makingBurcu Yiğit Turan8. The Right to the Sidewalk: the Struggle over Broken Windows Policing, Young People, and NYC Streets Caitlin Cahill, Brett G. Stoudt, Amanda Matles, Kim Belmonte, Selma Djokovic, Jose Lopez, Adilka Pimentel, María Elena Torre, and Darian X.9. Leveling the Playfield: Urban Movement in the Strategic Action Field of Urban Policy in PolandAnna DomaradzkaPart 3. Negotiating: Urban Resistance and Emerging (Counter) Publics10. Athens’ Syntagma Square Re-loaded: From Staging Disagreement Towards Instituting Democratic Spaces Maria Kaika and Lazaros Karaliotas11. Democracy, Occupy Legislature and Taiwan´s Sunflower Movement Ketty W. Chen12. Shifting Struggles over Public Space and Public Goods in Berlin: Urban Activism between Protest and ParticipationHenrik Lebuhn13. Occupied Oakland, Past and Present: Land Action on the New Urban FrontierMarcus Owens and Christina AntipordaPart 4. Contesting: Against Backlashes, Criminalization, Cooptation and Anti-Pluralism14. Operation 1DMX and the Mexico City Commune: The Right to the City Beyond the Rule of Law in Public SpacesSilvano De la Llata Gonzalez15. Public Space in a Parallel Universe: Conflict, Coexistence and Co-optation between Alternative Urbanisms and the Neoliberalizing CityElina Kränzle16. Miyashita Park, Tokyo: Contested Visions of Public Space in Contemporary Urban JapanChristian Dimmer17. Worlded Resistance as ‘Alter’ Politics: Train of Hope and the Protest against the Akademikerball in ViennaSabine Knierbein and Angelika GabauerConclusions18. City Unsilenced: Spatial Grounds of Radical DemocratizationSabine Knierbein and Jeffrey HouNote on ContributorsIndex