Titles
A-C
D-G
H-K
L-O
P-S
T-Z
Alternative Housing Strategies to Foster Sustainable Livelih...Are Korean CPTED Policies Adapting to Social Changes?Beyond the MLP: Systems mapping for a gender-equitable cycli...Bridging the Gap: Integrating Cycling and Public Transport f...Building a Deep Learning Model to Encourage Eco-Friendly Tra...Caring for the city in times of overtourismCañadas, El Moral, and Colinas de Tonalá: Decent Housing f...City of Sins: Urban Development, Geotrauma, and Gentrificati...Co-creating and Imagining Livability: Visions and Needs of H...Co-Creating Place-Based, Blue-Green Solutions for Flood Resi...Co-design and Co-governance of Urban Parks in Viña del Mar,...Community-Led Infrastructure Management: Case Studies from L...Feeding the Bubble: Digital Nomads and Transnational Gentrif...Flood Resilience and Urban Policy in Nairobi, Cali, and Pune...From Pollution to Insulation: Self-managed Reuse of Industri...Green and healthy mobility transitions in Barcelona and the ...Green Gentrification: Two Strategic Cases in the Chilean Cit...Heat Resilient Streets: Strategies for Reducing Thermal Stre...Imagining and Co-creating a More Livable City: Insights from...Impact Analysis of Green Spaces on Violent and Property Crim...Improving CPTED Strategies in Response to South Korea's Evol...Keep Tahoe Latino, and other pleas for belonging in the plan...Livability Through Gastronomy: Culinary Heritage and Social ...Mapping Racial Change: Gentrification and the Valuation of W...Methods of analysis of women’s perceptions in residential ...Mobilising NEETs to Lead Spatial Change through Transformati...Modelling Jakarta as a Sinking City: A Computational Approac...Ordinary Infrastructures of Care: Hair Salons and Everyday U...Overtourism, Sustainable Community Engagement and Placemakin...Plasticulture Urbanism in Antalya, Türkiye: Off-Season Food...Policy Directions and Challenges of Crime Prevention Through...Polite NIMBYism; informal strategies of hostile designQueer Borderscapes: The geographies of border internalizati...Redefining Public Space - A process involving residents in d...Resilient Cities Building: The Effectiveness of Flood Mitiga...Role of family institution in realising a livable citySmart Cities and Climate Change Adaptation: A Systematic Rev...Sociotechnical barriers to cycling adoption: Insights from T...The Dukha: Resilient Traditions and Sustainable Living in th...The Everyday Lives of Workers in Luxury Apartments: A Case o...The Extended Body: Investigating the Negotiations Between Bo...The Future of Dwelling: Addressing Food Scarcity in the UAEThe Random Encounter and the Possibility of CommunityTourist-Resident Mobility Interactions: An Exploratory Analy...Touristification and Livability: A Comparative Study of Barc...Turning a Street into a Classroom: Play and Place-Making as ...Urban Densification and Ecosystem Services: A Complex Trade-...Urban Planning and Crime Prevention: The Role of Built Envir...Urban Structure, Accessibility, and Socioeconomic Segregatio...
Schedule

IN-PERSON Barcelona Livable Cities. Section B

The Urban Experience: From Social Policy to Design
The Random Encounter and the Possibility of Community
E. Goldberg
4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Abstract

Writing in Current Affairs about Jeremiah Moss’ Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul (2017), Nathan J. Robinson outlines two opposing visions for the ideal city. The first “progressive” vision imagines the city as “a hub of growth and innovation, clean, well-run, high-tech, and business-friendly.” Its primary figure is the entrepreneur. The second “timeless” vision imagines the city as “a place of mystery and confusion, a bewildering kaleidoscope of cultures and classes. It is a refuge for outcasts, an eclectic jumble of immigrants, bohemians, and eccentrics … home to cheap diners, fruit stands, grumpy cabbies, and crumbling brownstones.” The respective figure is the romantic. Drawing on literature and film from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (1998), set in 1970s Mexico City, to John Wilson’s How To with John Wilson (2020-2023), set in contemporary New York, this paper will argue that while the former “entrepreneurial” vision has won out in the historical development of cities—”flattening” them the world around—these creative works model a more livable “romantic” vision of the city based in the use of public space, random encounters, and community. These works are motivated by the positive potential of the city described in the liberating ideas of psychogeography brought forth by the Situationists of France between 1957 and 1972, who formulated creative methods for authentic interactions with cities they saw as becoming increasingly consumeristic and capitalistic. Beneath the habituating spectacles famously described by Guy Debord are cities teeming with life.

Biography

Ethan Goldberg completed his PhD in English at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He currently teaches writing at Harvard. His research focuses on the representation of cities in contemporary literature and film.