New Book: Engaging Comparative Urbanism: Art Spaces in Beijing and Berlin

A new book by Julie Ren is published with Bristol University Press.
Julie Ren investigates the motivations and practices of making art spaces in Beijing and Berlin to engage with comparative urbanism as a framework for doing research, beyond its significance as a critical intervention. Across vastly different contexts, where universal theories of modernity or development seem increasingly misplaced, she explores the ways that art spaces employ creative capital to sustain themselves in a competitive urban landscape. She shows how these art spaces are embedded within a politics of aspiration and demonstrates that aspiration is an important lens through which to understand the nature of, and possibilities for, urban change.
The book is published by Bristol University Press
Image of book: Book jacket © Bristol University Press
Publishers blurb:
“Sets a new standard of comparative method and analysis in global urban studies. Her cases of art spaces in Beijing and Berlin reveal the concept of 'aspiration' as a contradictory feature of art practice and urban change.” Jennifer Robinson, University College London
More news
- Inhabiting Radical Housing
- Upcoming Symposium on Biennials 19-20 May
- Neue Website: www.zueri-urban.com
- Book Launch: Housing in the Margins
- New book: Housing in the Margins
- New Seminar Series: Decentering Urban Climate Finance
- Theorising urban studies on/from China/Asia
- Urban Climate Finance on the edge of viability?
- SoKu Team wins GRC Grant
- New Annotated Bibliography on "Postcolonial Urbanism"
- Conference Presentation at the RAI-RGS conference
- New research project: The Urbanization of Global Climate Finance
- One-day cross-disciplinary symposium
- Call for paper: At home: the domestic city in times of crisis
- New paper out in EPA
- Urban Sustainability as New Financial Fix?
- Open positions