Co-curating the City explores the role of universities in the construction and mobilisation of heritage discourses in urban development and regeneration processes, with a focus on six case study sites: University of Gothenburg (Sweden), UCL East (London), University of Lund (Sweden). Roma Tre university (Rome), American University of Beirut, and Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil. The aim of the book is to expand the field of critical heritage studies in the urban domain, by examining the role of institutional actors both in the construction of urban heritage discourses and in how those discourses influence urban planning decisions or become instrumentalised as mechanisms for urban regeneration. It proposes that universities engage in these processes in a number of ways: as producers of urban knowledge that is mobilised to intervene in planning processes; as producers of heritage practices that are implemented in development contexts in the urban realm; and as developers engaged in campus construction projects that both reference heritage discourses as a mechanism for promoting support and approval by planners and the public, and capitalise on heritage assets as a resource. The book highlights the participatory processes through which universities are positioning themselves as significant institutions in the development of urban heritage narratives. The case studies investigate how universities, as mixed communities of interest dispersed across buildings and urban sites, engage in strategies of engagement with local people and neighbourhoods, and ask how this may be contributing to a re-shaping of ideas, narratives, and lived experience of urban heritage in which universities have a distinctive agency. The authors cross disciplinary and cultural boundaries, and bridge academia and practice.

This book focusses on the developing role that the city currently plays in dealing with the effects of climate change and the instruments that can be utilised to make them truly green. Cities are at the centre of European directives aimed at tackling climate change, representing a key part of the European Green Deal and the National Recovery and Resilience Plans. As such, they provide valuable case studies for other countries grappling with how to address sustainability issues. This book is divided into three parts, with the first analysing Green urban planning and local governments in the European framework. The second examines various thematic aspects relating to this intersection, looking at the National Recovery and Resilience Plans, the right of the city and environmental issues. The third and final part presents case studies from four European cities showing how they are facing this transformation. These include Bologna, Paris, Barcelona and Valencia, each chosen by the Mission climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030. Bringing together leading experts, some of whom have been directly involved in developments, the book presents invaluable comparisons that will be of interest to a wider international readership. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policymakers working in the areas of Public Law, Environmental Law, Urban Law and Governance.

Curated in China: Manipulating the City through the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture provides an in-depth observation of an architecture and urbanism exhibition with transformative objectives. It uses simultaneous narratives to explore scales and perspectives and the layered spatial and political agency that an ephemeral event – the Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture – has gradually established in the city between 2005 and 2019. Encapsulating Shenzhen’s ambitions as a world-class city, the Biennale aims to actively build a relationship between architecture and socio-spatial issues as a device to not only investigate the city’s hypertrophic development, but also manipulate its urban fabric. The spaces transformed by the exhibition convey visual delight and urban extravaganza; they also embody the interlocking of multiple (intellectual, corporate and institutional) actors who exploit the event in the pursuit of different goals. Everybody strolls around and enjoys the spectacle set up in the allegedly pacifying space of the exhibition; nevertheless, what lies behind – and beyond – the event? By addressing students and scholars in the fields of architecture and urban space, the book unpacks the layered frictions between a temporary event’s narrative apparatus and its physical outcomes, questioning the relationship between biennials as theoretical platforms and their agency in real urban spaces.

A Contemporary Archaeology of London’s Mega Events explores the traces of London’s most significant modern ‘mega events’. Though only open for a few weeks or months, mega events permanently and disruptively reshape their host cities and societies: they demolish and rebuild whole districts, they draw in materials and participants from around the globe and their organisers self-consciously seek to leave a ‘legacy’ that will endure for decades or more. With London as his case study, Jonathan Gardner argues that these spectacles must be seen as long-lived and persistent, rather than simply a transient or short-term phenomena. Using a novel methodology drawn from the subfield of contemporary archaeology – the archaeology of the recent past and present-day – a broad range of comparative studies are used to explore the long-term history of each event. These include the contents and building materials of the Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace and their extraordinary ‘afterlife’ at Sydenham, South London; how the Festival of Britain’s South Bank Exhibition employed displays of ancient history to construct a new post-war British identity; and how London 2012, as the latest of London’s mega events, dealt with competing visions of the past as archaeology, waste and ‘heritage’ in creating a vision of the future.

What graffiti says about contemporary society, and why it demands our urgent attention as a form of civic expression. What is graffiti—vandalism, ornament, art? What if, rather than any of those things, we thought of graffiti as a monument? How would that change our understanding of graffiti, and, in turn, our understanding of monument? In Monumental Graffiti, curator and anthropologist Rafael Schacter focuses on the material, communicative, and contextual aspects of these two forms of material culture to provide a timely perspective on public art, citizenship, and the city today. He applies monument as a lens to understand graffiti and graffiti as a lens to comprehend monument, challenging us to consider what the appropriate monument for our contemporary world could be. Monumental Graffiti unpacks today’s iconoclastic moment, showing us why graffiti demands our urgent attention as a form of expression that challenges power structures by questioning whose voices are included in—and whose are excluded from—public space. Written from twenty years of embedded research on graffiti, the book includes works from graffiti writers such as 10Foot, Delta, Egs, Honet, Mosa, Petro, Revok, and Wombat, alongside those of artists such as Francis Alÿs, Jeremy Deller, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Klara Liden, Gordon Matta-Clark, William Pope.L, Cy Twombly, and many more. Richly illustrated, this study of graffiti as monument and monument as graffiti is as fascinating as it is ethnographically expansive.

Cultural and natural heritage are central to ‘Europe’ and ‘the European project’. They were bound up in the emergence of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where they were used to justify differences over which border conflicts were fought. Later, the idea of a ‘common European heritage’ provided a rationale for the development of the European Union. Now, the emergence of ‘new’ populist nationalisms shows how the imagined past continues to play a role in cultural and social governance, while a series of interlinked social and ecological crises are changing the ways that heritage operates, with new discourses and ontologies emerging to reconfigure heritage for the circumstances of the present and the uncertainties of the future. Taking the current role of heritage in Europe as its starting point, Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe presents a number of case studies that explore key themes in this transformation. Contributors draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives to consider, variously, the role of heritage and museums in the migration and climate ‘emergencies’; approaches to urban heritage conservation and practices of curating cities; digital and digitised heritage; the use of heritage as a therapeutic resource; and critical approaches to heritage and its management. Taken together, the chapters explore the multiple ontologies through which cultural and natural heritage have and continue to intervene actively in redrawing the futures of Europe and the world' Praise for Critical Heritage Studies and the Futures of Europe 'Filled with many fascinating and diverse chapters, this book vividly demonstrates the dynamism and breadth of critical heritage study of, in, and entangled with Europe today' Sharon Macdonald, Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. 'Far from being restrictive, let alone chauvinistic, the multiscalar European focus of this book confirms the breadth and relevance of current critical heritage studies. With contributions addressing such topical issues as climate emergencies, urban landscapes, cultural industries, new media and identity politics – be they written by established scholars or by emerging researchers – it is "Europe" with all its shared grounds and recurrent divergences that comes into sharper relief. From this vantage point, readers of this compelling book will be better positioned for reflecting on and eventually influencing and challenging our heritage futures.' Nathan Schlanger, Professor of Archaeology, École nationale des chartes, Paris. 'This book addresses European heritage realities and futures through new voices, paradigms, and methods. It is a collage of tensions – practically a representation of Europe itself – through which to comprehend contemporary intersections of time, place, things, and meaning. It contributes to new vistas in heritage studies: the offer of design and imagination as methods; reckonings with data and climate change as seemingly uncontrollable actors; and the ongoing negotiation of ‘criticality’ in the making of our responsibilities for the past in the present' Christopher Whitehead, Professor of Museology, Newcastle University.

This book presents a global perspective on the political agency of arts in place. International and leading scholars and artists themselves present critical theory and practice of contemporary art as a politicised force. This book extends thinking on contemporary arts practices in the urban and political context of protest and social resilience and offers the prism of a ‘critical artscape’ in which to view the urgent interaction of arts and the urban politic.

Curation is a term usually used in the art world for the role of imagining and overseeing an exhibition or art experience. However the word is now being adopted by people in alternative worship, as it affords a very different and inventive way of thinking about how to lead a service or praise event. Rather than simply presiding over liturgy or fronting a band, curation involves negotiating between institutions and artists and making do with what is to hand to create something brilliant. The hope is that moments of epiphany will be experienced as God is invited to be and breathe in the space, and people make connections with their own lives and stories. Curating Worship is in two parts. The first considers the kind of thinking, skills and disciplines involved in good curation. The second consists of in depth interviews, which tease out from people who have curated amazing worship experiences around the world, the ideas and theories behind their approaches and the practical processes involved.