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Lunchtime seminar: Insurgent regeneration: A critical review of notions and practices

12 February 2014, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm

Global South Regeneration

Event Information

Open to

All

Location

G01, Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0NN

Join us for an informal lunchtime seminar on Wednesday 12 February to introduce Dr Beatrice de Carli who will be based at the Bartlett's Development Planning Unit (DPU) and UCL Urban Laboratory as a Bartlett Visiting Research Fellow from now until the end of March.  Beatrice will speak about her project entitled 'Insurgent regeneration: A critical review of notions and practices'.

This roundtable event is aimed primarily at the UCL staff and student community but others are welcome to attend on request, numbers permitting. A public seminar will also be organised at a later stage in the research.'

Summary

The project investigates the notion of 'insurgent regeneration' as a way of looking at the capacity of occupant practices to inform and steer state-led discourses on 'sustainable urban regeneration' in inner city areas of the Global South. As such, the project aims to address two distinct challenges: the cyclical decay and deterioration of cities and their sustainable resurgence and adaptation, and the housing crisis in the Global South - particularly in its manifestation through the informal occupation of vacant and deteriorating buildings and site. This project aims to bridge these typically disparately debated challenges.

Whilst much is argued around the citizen-led transformation of 'informal settlements', there has been little focus on the self-organised reuse and revitalisation of buildings in declining central urban neighbourhoods. Furthermore, there has been little consideration on how the 'urban renaissance' agenda engages in dialogue with such practices, and with the alternative notions of urban development that they convey. In response, this research centres on the links, contradictions and potential alliances between these two parallel areas of knowledge. The primary aim of this baseline study is to develop research methods and interpretive frameworks appropriate for informing a postdoctoral research proposal to be submitted in 2014.

Beatrice, who will be supervised by Adriana Allen (DPU) and Ben Campkin (UCL Urban Lab), completed her architectural studies at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, including a PhD in Architecture & Urbanism developed in collaboration with the University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 2012, she has been actively involved in the development of the EI-funded DPU Heuristics of Mapping Urban Environmental Change platform. During her tenure at UCL, Beatrice's project will investigate the notion of 'insurgent regeneration' as a means to explore the capacity of occupant practices to inform and steer state-led discourses on 'sustainable urban regeneration' in inner city areas of the global South. As such, the project aims to address two distinct challenges: the cyclical decay and deterioration of cities and their sustainable resurgence and adaptation, and the housing crisis in the global South - particularly in its manifestation through the informal occupation of vacant and deteriorating buildings and site.

Lunch will be provided. This session is only for the UCL community to attend. Please confirm attendence on Eventbrite here.