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Critical Speculation Spatial Analysis

On Strategies of Spatial Appropriation and Resistance in Palestine

By Ahmad Barclay and Dena Qaddumi This article was originally posted on opendemocracy.net as part of the Cities in Conflict Series. The establishment of the village Bab Al-Shams (“gate of the sun”) on 11 January 2013 represented a new evolution in the unfolding patterns of spatial resistance in Palestine. Conversely, the response of the Israeli […]

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Spatial Analysis

Ramallah: The ‘Transforming City’

by Nura Alkhalili This photo essay was originally published in the Berkeley Planning Journal. It is republished on arenaofspeculation.org with kind permission from the author. The piece, based on a study between May and November 2011, traces the evolution of a wall located between a newly established “Public Fitness Park” in Ramallah city and the […]

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Critical Speculation

This Place They Dried From The Sea: An Interview with Kamal Aljafari

By Nasrin Himada This interview originally appeared on Montreal Serai. It is re-published on arenaofspeculation.org with kind permission. For those based in the UK, the film Port of Memory will be screened in London later this month — including a Q&A with director Kamal Aljafari — as part of the London Palestine Film Festival. Opening […]

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Spatial Analysis

Signposts from a Contested Landscape: A Photographic Archive

Words and images by Diego Segatto In this original article for arenaofspeculation.org, Diego Segatto shares his experiences of reading the conflict through the built and natural landscapes of Israel-Palestine. His photographs are generously shared here on a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Questo articolo è pubblicato anche in italiano. Il testo italiano segue l’inglese. Surveillance […]

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Critical Speculation Spatial Analysis

Weaponized Architecture: A Discussion with Léopold Lambert

The following is an interview with Léopold Lambert (@TheFunambulist_), author of ‘Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence’ (published by dpr-barcelona), a new publication that offers an analysis of Israel’s architecture of colonization in the context of global trends in architecture and urbanism, and uses architectural design as a tool to highlight and subvert the spatial […]

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Critical Speculation

After September? Strategies in Bypass Urbanism

With the much-vaunted month of September 2011 now behind us, and the Palestinian Authority’s statehood recognition drive presently forestalled by UN bureaucracy, perhaps it is a good time to turn our eyes back to the situation on the ground. As yet another settlement expansion receives approval, it is increasingly difficult to square the idea of […]

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Critical Speculation

Decolonizing the Mind: TEDxRamallah Talk by Alessandro Petti

Alessandro Petti, director of DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency), talks about the work and approach of the practice. The talk was a part of the TEDxRamallah event, previously featured on arenaofspeculation.org and supported by contributors to the site. The DAAR office was founded in 2007 with the aim of moving beyond simply describing the spatial […]

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Spatial Analysis

There’s more to Gaza than broken slabs of concrete

By Sami Kishawi This article was originally published by the Electronic Intifada on 7 July 2011 and is republished on arenaofpeculation.org with permission from the author. You can read more of Sami’s dispatches from Gaza on his blog ‘Sixteen Minutes to Palestine’ Many of the people I’ve spoken to in Gaza City don’t object to […]

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Advocacy Physical Intervention

The ‘Housing Intifada’ and Its Aftermath

By Daniel Monterescu This article was originally published under the title “The ‘Housing Intifada’ and Its Aftermath: Ethno-Gentrification and the Politics of Communal Existence in Jaffa” in Anthropology News, December 2008, pg. 21. (Republished on arenaofspeculation.org with permission from the author.) Jaffa, an ethnically “mixed town” located minutes away from Tel-Aviv’s metropolitan center, yet marked as sui generis cultural […]

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Advocacy Spatial Analysis

Makan: The Right to a Spatial Narrative

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, recently published Volume 2 of Makan (meaning ‘Place’ in Arabic), their periodic journal for Land, Planning and Justice. This volume reveals the centrality of spatial planning and urban design in the continued suppression of Palestinian history and memory. Indeed, it is argued that this erasure […]

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Advocacy Spatial Analysis

Advancing the Struggle: Challenging Ethnocracy in Tel Aviv-Jaffa

A new online publication exploring the planning-citizenship relationship in the context of urban space and a particular form of government, the ethnocracy. The case of Tel Aviv-Jaffa is used to illustrate these dynamics and highlight the potential of urban social movements to advance their struggle for urban justice to substantive citizenship.

Categories
Physical Intervention Spatial Analysis

(Self)Urbanization and the Contours of Political Space

by Nasser Abourahme and Sandi Hilal An extract from the forthcoming article: “Political Subjectification, the Production of Space and the Folding of Polarity: the case of Deheishe Camp, Palestine” in James Holston and Teresa Caldeira (eds.) Peripheries: Decentering Urban Theory, University of California Berkeley Press. (Republished on arenaofspeculation.org with permission from the authors.) In discussing […]