Special issue guest edited by Gillian Jein, Laura Rorato and Anna Saunders
The mainstream imagination of the European city is commonly based around a cultural topography of the ‘centre’: the urban ‘core’ in which power, history and collective social life is performed. These identities are most readily articulated through the stereotypical itineraries of the tourist, and perpetuated in the monikers of Paris as the city of lights and love, Berlin as a city of war and walls and Milan as the city of fashion and food. While these clichés have their roots in the material histories of each city, they become potential tools in the era of neoliberal marketing for the instrumentalisation of the past. This packaging of the past potentially neglects the experience of those who do not conveniently fit the promotional image of the city. But, in its complexity and mobility urban space defies clichés, and as such has continuously been the site of tensions between governmental and planning ideals of coherence, order and continuity on the one hand, and the realities of the city as a complex assemblage of subjectivities, societies and environments in flux on the other.
The three cities—Berlin, Milan and Paris—discussed in this special issue each provide different contexts for the exploration of this complex, multilayered fabric of urban life. As the articles gathered here demonstrate, the question of what it means to live, and what life means in the contemporary European city is often most fiercely debated, contested and decided at the edges of the neoliberal hegemonic centre.
City Margins, City Memories
This new issue contains the following articles:
Introduction: city margins, city memories Gillian Jein, Laura Rorato & Anna Saunders Pages: 405-411 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1381588
Articles
Creating a new community in the ‘zone’: borders, foreignness and the Cité Universitaire in interwar Paris Jehnie Reis Pages: 412-425 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1381586
Remembering on the city’s margins: the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris Nadia Kiwan Pages: 426-440 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1381587
The reconstructed City Palace and Humboldt Forum in Berlin: restoring architectural identity or distorting the memory of historic spaces? Carol Anne Costabile-Heming Pages: 441-454 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1361816
Remembering at the margins: trauma, memory practices and the recovery of marginalised voices at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen memorial Deirdre Byrnes Pages: 455-469 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1361818
The return of Berlin-Kreuzberg. Brought back from the margins by memory Hanno Hochmuth Pages: 470-480 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1361817
City margins as spaces of becoming: inclusions, exclusions and intersections in Milan’s contemporary urban territory Martina Orsini Pages: 481-494 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1339591
Re-writing complexity through fragments: mapping Milan in the twenty-first century Laura Rorato Pages: 495-509 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1339590
Book Reviews
Area studies in the global age: community, place, identity Tony Chafer Pages: 510-511 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1398905
The politics of crisis in Europe Derek Hawes Pages: 511-512 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1401369
The borders of “Europe”: autonomy of migration, tactics of bordering Ali Bilgic Pages: 512-514 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1398906
War stories – the war memoir in history and literature Derek Hawes Pages: 514-515 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1399630
Beschäftigung von Flüchtlingen: Arbeits- und Ausbildungsverhältnisse rechtskonform gestalten Stuart Parkes Pages: 515-516 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1398908
The politics of culture in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus Bahar Baser Pages: 517-518 / DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2017.1400282