For architecture and urban space to have relevance in the 21st Century, we cannot merely reignite the approaches of thought and design that were operative in the last century. This is despite, or because of, the nexus between politics and space often being theorized as a representation or by-product of politics. As a symbol or an effect, the spatial dimension is depoliticized. Consequently, architecture and the urban are halted from fostering any systematic change as they are secondary to the event and therefore incapable of performing any political role. This handbook explores how architecture and urban space can unsettle the unquestioned construct of the spatial politics of governing. Considering both ongoing and unprecedented global problems – from violence and urban warfare, the refugee crisis, borderization, detention camps, terrorist attacks to capitalist urbanization, inequity, social unrest and climate change – this handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focused on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space. Volume I starts by pointing out the need to explore the politics of spatialization to make sense of the operational nature of spatial oppression in contemporary times. The operative and active political reading of space is disseminated through five thematics: Violence and War Machines; Security and Borders; Race, Identity and Ideology; Spectacle and the Screen; and Mapping Landscapes and Big Data. This first volume of the handbook frames cutting-edge contemporary debates and presents studies of actual theories and projects that address spatial politics. This Handbook will be of interest to anyone seeking to meaningfully disrupt the reduction of space to an oppressive or neutral backdrop of political realities. Chapters 1 and 23 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Table of Contents:
PART I: Introduction 1. Spatialization of oppression: Contemporary politics of architecture and the urban NIKOLINA BOBIC & FARZANEH HAGHIGHI PART II: Violence and War Machines 2. Introduction to violence and war machines WILLIAM M. TAYLOR 3. The rise of zoöpolitics: On urbanism and warfare LIEVEN DE CAUTER 4. 2015 Paris Terrorist Attack: A threat to urban life and territorial integrity JOHN HANNA 5. Whose vision, which city? Planning and unseeing in urban Asia REDENTO B. RECIO, ISHITA CHATTERJEE, LUFTUN NAHAR LATA & NEERAJ DANGOL 6. Architecture as Infrastructure: The spatial politics of extractivism HÉLÈNE FRICHOT & SEPIDEH KARAMI 7. Manus prison: The brutality of offshore detention DANIEL GRINCERI PART III: Security and Borders 8. Introduction to security and borders ANOMA PIERIS 9. Dialogic dilemmas: Citizen participation in built environment alterations in Malmö, Sweden GUNNAR SANDIN 10. Regenerating Shanghai through urban spatial design? The limits to experimentalism and participation YUNPENG ZHANG & WEILUN ZHANG 11. The city and the camp: Destabilizing a spatial-political dichotomy IRIT KATZ 12. Architectures of motion at the US Mexico border THOMAS NAIL 13. Belfast’s ‘peace walls’: How the politics and policy of 1969-1971 shaped the city’s contemporary ‘interface areas’ JAMES O'LEARY PART IV: Race, Identity and Ideology 14. Introduction to race, identity and ideology STEPHEN F. GRAY & ANNE LIN 15. The Space of Labor – Racialization and ethnicization of Port Kembla, Australia MIRJANA LOZANOVSKA 16. The Audit: Perils and possibilities for contesting oppression in the heritage landscape CATHERINE D'IGNAZIO, WONYOUNG SO & NICOLE NTIM-ADDAE 17. The Persistent design-politics of race: Power and ideology in American public housing redevelopment LAWRENCE VALE 18. The Socialist past is a foreign country: Mass housing and uses of heritage in contemporary Eastern Europe MAROŠ KRIVÝ 19. Collectivity and privacy in housing: Path dependencies and limited choices TAHL KAMINER PART V: Spectacle and the Screen 20. Introduction to spectacle and the screen FRANCESCO PROTO 21. A ‘Crisis’ of indeterminacy in the architectural photograph: Architectural spectacle and everyday life in the photography of Lacaton & Vassal’s Coutras House ROBIN WILSON 22. Mediated spectacles: Urban representation and far-right propaganda in crisis Athens AIKATERINI ANTONOPOULOU 23. Street protest and its representations: Urban dissidence in Iran FARZANEH HAGHIGHI 24. Western fantasy and tropical nightmare: Spectacular architecture and urban warfare in Rio PEDRO FIORI ARANTES & CLÁUDIO REZENDE RIBEIRO 25. The political construction of Medellín’s global image: Strategies of replacement, erasure and disconnection via urban and architectural interventions CHRISTINA DELUCHI PART VI: Mapping Landscapes and Big Data 26. Introduction to mapping landscapes and big data ATE POORTHUIS 27. The socio-cultural construction of urban wasteland: Mapping of the Antwerp Southside CECILIA FURLAN & MANOLA COLABIANCHI 28. Brownfields as climate colonialism: Land reuse and development divides SHILOH KRUPAR 29. The bomb, the circle and the drawing undone ENDRIANA AUDISHO & FRANCESCA HUGHES 30. Infrastructures of urban simulation: Digital twins, virtual humans and synthetic populations FARZIN LOTFI-JAM 31. Posthuman urbanism: datafication, algorithmic governance, and Covid-19 IGNAS KALPOKAS PART VII: CONCLUSION 32. Intermission: Critical mapping of spatial politics and aesthetics STEPHEN WALKER