Gastvortrag von Dr. Gruia B?descu (Research fellow, Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz): "Urban Geopolitics in Ordinary and Contested Cities"
Are cities sites of geopolitical projects? This talk builds on the emergence of an urban geopolitics of the everyday, beyond the established focus on states and on conflict, to examine how the reconfigurations of urban space are connected with geopolitics. It interrogates the dichotomy of contested and ordinary cities, and focuses on cities in Southeastern Europe to show that contemporary urban transformations in the region reflect novel processes and alignments that can contribute to the larger project of rethinking urban geopolitics. The talk discusses how allegedly ‘contested’ and ‘ordinary’ cities in the region reflect a reshaping of practices of material and immaterial urban geopolitics, from architecture to performative events, highlighting transnational and global entanglements beyond the East-West and North-South conceptual and geopolitical divides.
Gruia B?descu?s research examines cities after political ruptures, including the aftermath of war and dictatorship. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and before Konstanz, was a lecturer and research associate at the School of Geography at the University of Oxford. One focus of his work is urban post-war reconstruction, particularly in the former Yugoslavia and Lebanon. His publications address reconfigurations of urban space and dealing with the past in Southeastern Europe, also in dialogue with other regions, specifically the Levant and the Southern Cone of Latin America.