Jeffrey Hou (ed) Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities, Routledge, London, 2010. 278 pages. $ 47.95, ISBN: 978-0-415-77966-1.

Insurgent Public Space is an anthology of unauthorized appropriations of city spaces, temporary events and guerrilla actions that resist commercial infestation and social exclusion.The volume was conceived in 2007 at the Sixth Conference of the Pacific Rim Community Design Network, a loosely connected group of community-based activists and scholars who meet approximately every two years to discuss grassroots planning and design.  Their shared perspective is stated at the beginning of the book. Public space is approached as an always contested terrain, as never complete and constantly in a state of emergence. Constructive socio-political processes associated with it, it is claimed, are not innate, but the fruit of concerted struggle.

Setting the book’s tone, Hou’s introductory chapter discusses the historic limitations of public space and life, indicating that it has always been ‘…an ideologically biased and regulated enterprise contrary to the rhetoric of openness’ (page 4).  Subsequently, the author outlines contemporary setbacks, commenting on new forms of public space ownership, commodification and control. The emerging challenge, according to Hou, is not to bemoan the erosion of the public realm, but ‘to think and to act in novel ways in support of a more diverse, just and democratic public space’ (page 12).

Theoretically, the book is informed by a variety of critical viewpoints, which are briefly sketched in the introduction (pages 12-13).  Such perspectives include, among others, Laguerre’s (1994) argument on ‘urban informality’ as a site of power in relation to external discipline and control, and Crawford’s (2008) apprehension of ‘everyday spaces’ as a zone of social transition that carries the potential for new social arrangements. As the volume’s title suggests, however, the most influential perspective comes from Holston and, in particular, from his approach to citizenship. Holston (1999 and 2008) states that the prevalent type of citizenship practiced in today’s democracies is universally inclusive in national membership and strongly non-egalitarian in distributing rights and in sealing socio-economic differences. Cities, he points out are emerging as a principal domain for such renegotiation. Particular forms of popular mobilization and community struggles centering, for example, on housing and land conflict issues create new possibilities for transformative democratic politics by bringing forward the ambiguities and antagonisms of social life.

Insurgent Public Space builds on these arguments. It brings together experiences of scholars, planners, artists and activists who have been vigorously involved in the making of heterogeneous, fluid and dynamic public spaces. Each chapter tells a story related to a different social and cultural context, aiming to inform, instigate and enable instances of insurgent place-making. And there are a lot of examples on offer.

All the twenty-one chapters of this book (including the introduction) suggest the growing variety of actions and practices through which individuals and community groups actively engage in public space contestation and remaking. For the purpose of highlighting particular features and scopes, the book is dived into six thematic sections. The first section, titled ‘Appropriating’, encompasses three case studies from Beijing ( Chen), Los Angeles (Rojas) and San Francisco (Merker). This section focuses on citizens’ and activists’ actions aiming to impart fresh life to existing urban landscapes for, primarily, social and recreational purposes.

Section Two, ‘Reclaiming’ presents ‘informal planning’ and bottom-up projects from Berlin (LaFond) and Tokyo (Aiba and Nishiba) that purse the adaptation of neglected sites for new collective functions. It also includes a chapter that categorizes residual urban spaces and showcases their transformative prospects (Villagomez). Section Three, ‘Pluralizing’, examines examples of ways in which ethnic groups transform the meaning and functions of public space. Cases studies include Latino urbanism in the United States (Rios), Seattle’s Chinatown (Hou), Southeast Asian Immigrant women in Taiwan (Chen and Lin), and Filipino guest workers in Taipei (Wu).

Section Four, ‘Transgressing’, discusses the crossing of official boundaries between the public and  private spheres. This section rests solely on Japan, and the respective chapters focus respectively on Tokyo (Hayashi), Matsudo (Kinoshita), and on rural town attempts to recover and reinvent public space in light of contemporary challenges (Ono, Sato and Nishiyama). Section Five, ‘Uncovering’, refers to the launch of projects and citizens’ actions aiming at rediscovering and renegotiating public space meanings and memories. In this thematic spectrum we have chapters on Seattle (Gendelman, Dobrowolsky and Aiello) and San Francisco (Przyblyski), as well as on Taipei’s Wenminglo landmark (Chiu) and Shezih island (Kang).

The last section of the book, ‘Contesting’,  revisits the theme of struggle over rights, meanings, and identities in the public realm. Case studies include privatization and surveillance in Vancouver and Toronto (Pask), urban farms in Los Angeles and Seattle (Mares and Peña), and vacant land re-utilization in East St. Louis, Illinois (Lawson and Sorensen).

If the editor's aim was to show to the reader that something is happening in the urban realm, challenging normative understandings of urban planning and citizenship, then he makes a good stab at it. The book, which won the EDRA (Environmental Design Research Association) book prize for 2012, is topical and inspiring. It pulls together a large amount of diverse material into a relative cohesive body. The variety of socio-cultural contexts explored and the different scholarly and journalistic approaches adopted by the authors make up troublesome book ingredients. The book could have easily ended up looking like a multi-contributor collection of distinct articles, each one steering the reader to a different direction. The fact that it does not, suggests a number of skillful editorial choices. All chapters are short and to the point; they are written in a reader-friendly manner, with a limited amount of theoretical abstractions and jargon. Furthermore, the case studies are illustrated by a good number of well-chosen and eye-catching photographs.

What I would have appreciated, however, is a richer and more detailed analysis of some of the key concepts presented in the volume.  For example, even the phrase ‘insurgent citizenship’, which is so central to the volume, is not, in my view, adequately explored. This was clearly an editorial choice.  The book centres on praxis. Yet, I still feel the whole effort would have benefitted from further engagement with theory. For example, a concluding chapter that does not attempt to rigidly frame the case study material but builds on it suggesting future research directions would have served this purpose. Furthermore, while Hou’s introduction to the book is global in scope, the subsequent case-studies lean towards the Pacific, bridging North American and East Asian experiences. Although this is a refreshing viewpoint,  I found myself looking for exploratory links to other areas as well, such as Southern Europe and South America. These are places with a rich background in grassroots mobilizations (Castells, 1983) and with an equally dynamic contemporary urban socio-political scene. The fact that I am already thinking in this direction, though, is an indication of the stimulating qualities of this edited collection and its ability to inspire further research on insurgent places. 

References

Castells M (1983) The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movement. London: Edward Arnold.

Crawford M (2008) Introduction. In: J Chase, M Crawford, J Kaliski (eds) Everyday Urbanism. New York: Monacelli Press, pp 6-11.

Holston J (1995) Spaces of insurgent citizenship. Planning Theory 13: 35-51.

Holston J (2008) Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunction of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Laguerre MS (1994) The Informal City Berkeley: University of California Press.