Within, against and beyond ruins in Buenos Aires: urban resistance, - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Within, against and beyond ‘ruins’ in Buenos Aires: urban resistance, privatization and occupation

Vicky Habermehl

University of Leeds-UK Contested cities research Network http://www.contested-cities.net/ UBA- Buenos Aires

Theoretical impetus

• ‘Forgotten places are not outside history. Rather,

they are places that have experienced the abandonment characteristic of contemporary capitalist and neoliberal state reorganization. Given the enormous disorder that “organized abandonment” (Harvey 1989, 303) both creates and exploits, how can people who inhabit forgotten places scale up their activism from intensely localized struggles to something less atomized and therefore possessed of a significant capacity for self-determination?’ (Gilmore, 2008:33)

• The city is the site of accumulation for this

quintessentially urban crisis- David Harvey

• Financial crisis in Buenos Aires was

experienced by many as a crisis in their own social reproduction, this made collective

• rganising a necessity in order to meet their

needs (Sitrin, 2012).

• ‘Ruins’ are a way of foregrounding spatial

and social contestation in the city, to understand how spaces are ‘produced’ through organized abandonment as well as how these are key sites of resistance

• By using John Holloway’s ‘within against and

beyond’ I am engaging with living in contradiction in the city

Sala Alberdi occupation and eviction

Signs of Struggle and protest in the city

Puerto Madero Gentrification and regeneration of the waterfront

Gentrification of barrios San Telmo and Palermo- resistances

Resistances :

• ccupied empty

homes, and come together to provide and build housing for each other, for example through the MOI (Movimiento de Ocupantes E Inquilinos Palermo San Telmo

Chacarita Barrio

El Galpon Market/ cultural center/ villa

Privatization of green/ public space in the city - Parque centenario