Welfare states and market actors across the world have transformed what ageing as a process and being old as an embodied identity might be today, through a wide range of equipment, services and infrastructures. This ‘material’, when not ‘materialist’ drive is the object of analysis of the proposals gathered in AJEC‘s 32(1) special issue, which features different case studies aiming to foreground hitherto under-analysed ‘age-related matters’ to offer conceptual and ethnographic proposals to better understand what the editors call ‘landscapes of ageing and pressing gerontological concerns.’ The backbone of this special issue addresses how ‘material culture’ works in anthropology might be affected by what in other neighbouring disciplines like STS and Ageing studies is being addressed as a ‘socio-gerontechnological’ approach: that is, a joint attention to how ageing is a material process, as well as how materials inscribe or support peculiar meanings or ontologies of ageing.
Drawing from the recent experience of teaching the Studienprojekt ‘Ageing Cities: The Crisis of Welfare Infrastructures’ – and particularly reflecting on a field trip where we visited Benidorm and other ageing enclaves in the Costa Blanca (Alicante, Spain) – in my editorial response I wish to take issue with the need to widen this material agenda around ageing bodies and their situated enactments, thinking beyond classic ‘material culture’ objects of study – the home and everyday technologies – and venturing into wider and more convoluted urban arenas, with their variegated scales and material entities. These problematisations, I believe, would force us to provide less metaphorical uses of ecological vocabularies, hence addressing the challenges that these materialised ‘landscapes’ entail for to our conceptions and practices of care: perhaps pushing us to consider the very environmental effects of ageing-friendly modes inhabiting and terraforming, and the new forms of care these landscapes – deeply affecting, in turn, ageing processes — might need?
For the most recent issue of GeoAgenda, the journal of the Swiss Association of Geography, Julio Paulos and Sven Daniel Wolfe have put together a collection of short interventions around the theme “Field Trips as Pedagogical Devices”
The main question they sought to explore was: What are the educational benefits ofurban field trips? This special issue ofGeoAgenda aims to answer this questionthrough a series of stories, experiencesand reflections.
As they suggest in their introduction (p.4):
Field trips are a common unit of study in geographycurricula, and they are widely valued for thevaluable hands-on learning experiences they provide.Nevertheless, they remain peripheral to most geographycurricula. We don’t mean to suggest that fieldtrips should be at the centre of teaching, but that arethinking of teaching formats outside the classroom,and even within the classroom, is necessary to preparestudents for the realities they will encounteronce they graduate or leave academia.Field trips give students (and teachers) a vivid,first-hand understanding of (urban) environments.They allow for an exploration of the complexity, diversity,and multiplicities of urban life in a way thatcannot be conveyed by classroom instruction alone.
This issue highlights these benefits, but also delvesdeeper into the issues of reflecting the standards ofclassroom teaching. In doing so, it calls for a moresituated and experimental rethinking of universityeducation.
Upon the gracious invitation of Julio (to whom I’d like to thank here), together with Micol Rispoli and Patrick Bieler we contribute to it with a short piece called:
Learning with others about neurodiverse spatial practice
In early 2020 Micol Rispoli (architect)and Tomás Criado (anthropologist) wereworking on a design experiment exploringhow neurodiverse spatial practicemight put architectural design practicein crisis. In previous months they hadbeen engaging with a neurodivergentperson and his family. They also hadbeen revising standard architectural approachesto accessible design, in particularwith neurodivergent people. But theyfelt they needed to discuss their predicamentswith someone more experiencedin these issues. Tomás, then, engagedhis colleague Patrick Bieler (anthropologist),an experienced researcher onthese matters, to join the conversation.
What follows is the account of a trip to the sights of Patrick’s fieldwork, where we tried to learn together what neurodiverse spatial practice might do to urban design.
Recommended citation: Rispoli, M.; Criado, T. & Bieler, P. (2023). Learning with others about neurodiverse spatial practice. GeoAgenda, 2023/2: 18-19 | PDF
Next Tuesday 19.07.2022 2:30-4pm (CET) please join us for the presentation of the Studienprojekt Ageing Cities by Maximilian Apel, Erman Dinc, Christine Maicher, Adam Petras, Doreen Sauer, and Anna Maria Schlotmann, the wonderful group of people with whom I have had the immense luck to work with in the last year.
In this year we’ve been exploring ethnographically how cities & urban designers are responding to the challenge of population ageing, and how we could understand as ethnographers the social & material transformations underway in their efforts to make ‘ageing-friendly’ cities (check the syllabus of the project)
In this choral presentation we aim to show our findings, searching to answer these questions through specific cases, most of them taking place in Berlin (on variegated issues like intergenerational and intercultural gardens or queer housing projects; the urban activism of the gray panthers; the controversies in public space design, focusing particularly on the conflicts of bike infrastructure; and VR projects to enable urban displacement or travel for older people living in residential care homes).
The course has also included an excursion in April 2022 to Alicante, Benidorm and neighbouring urban enclaves in Costa Blanca (Spain). This is a very relevant area because of how ageing concerns have turned, since the 1960s, into a vector of urbanisation in the region – developing into what some geographers call “the pensioners’ coast.” But also, and perhaps more importantly, they have sensitised urban designers from the area to respond to these intergenerational design challenges in different ways. In a joint endeavour with STS-inspired architectural researchers from theCritical Pedagogies, Ecological Politics and Material Practices research group of the University of Alicante, this visit allowed us to explore different approaches to architectural practice where older people have more active roles in the design and management of ageing cities.
In showing all of this we not only wish to tell specific stories, but want to share our conceptual and methodological explorations, and the many questions this process brought about around the contested scripts and the distinctive intergenerational challenges of late life urbanism projects.
This will be the last session of the Instituskolloquium of the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie (HU Berlin), which this semester had as a theme ‘Collective Access‘.
House of Gossip is an open-source downloadable game (developed by the Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology of the HU Berlin) that stages and creates the grounds for reflection on conflicts regarding housing and the different viewpoints in a volatile real estate market.
A first prototype of the game was developed – in collaboration with colleagues at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZK/U) – in a hackathon together with MA students of the Studienprojekt “The only game in town? Anthropology and the housing markets in Berlin” (2018-2019) at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie (HU Berlin), and showcased in the “Open Form neu denken” exhibition (organized by Z/KU at the Werkstatt of Haus der Statistik in October 25–27 2019). In the last two years we’ve been working on creating a downloadable and playable version of it.
Berlin, late 2010s, all across the city real estate is changing hands fast, the market is hot and many are investing, houses are revaluing. As it tends to happen, this situation has at least two different sides:
Scene 1
– “What about this building? Might you have found a good opportunity here?” – “It indeed looks nice, but have we explored if it’s in good condition?”
– “The architect sent me this report, look, all clear.” – “It certainly looks promising.” – “It’s time to act fast.” – “Ok, yes, let’s go for this house!”
Scene 2
– “Hi, how was your day?” – “Nothing special, yours?” – “I heard rumours, two neighbours speaking in the corridor: the building is finally going to be bought!” – “Yes, there was a letter in the mail, look”. – “But… What will happen to us? Will we have to move if they raise the rent?” – “We have to do something…” – “But we know nearly no one in the house.”
“When an apartment building is to be sold, every single alarm bell sets off for the residents. In view of the horrendous purchase prices, there is a danger of being displaced by higher rents or even conversion into condominiums.”
Rationale
House of Gossip is an open-source downloadable game that stages and creates the grounds for reflection on conflicts regarding housing and the different viewpoints in a volatile real estate market. In the game, you will have the opportunity to play either as a resident of the house or as a covert buyer, acting as one of the house’s residents.
In a process where no one can be certain about anything, gossip abounds: In the game you will have to gather information form alliances and find your way to save (as residents) or buy (as the buyer) the house! Think twice about who and when you want to share your information with!
During the course of the game you will repeatedly encounter your neighbours in the stairway to exchange gossip. Your main goal is not just to understand to whom you’re talking to, but also to perform in front of others and form alliances for one of the two competing purposes of the game: Buying or saving the house.
Those who manage to gather the necessary gossips will in the end win the game. Will the house community manage to resist or could the buyer succeed in acquiring the new property?
In order to build your own House of Gossip board game, you will need the following:
● Box A4 size or 23.5 x 31.5 x 3.7 cm ● Paper cutting knife ● Paper cutting board ● Ruler ● Glue suitable for paper and cupboard ● Printing paper (170 g/m2 and 200g/m2 or higher, eco-paper is advised) ● Ink jet or laser printer filled with black ink
Download the necessary game parts: ● Game Instructions ● Playing Cards ● Board/Box and Tokens
Print out the downloaded parts. You can print all part on the 170 g/m2 or higher eco paper, unless other is stated:
○ Game Instructions It is an A4 double-sided print. Fold it in three parts, following the dashed lines markings at the top and bottom of the paper.
○ Playing Cards It is an A4 double-sided print. Advised paper thickness for this element is 350 g/m2, but if you don’t have such paper, use the 170 g/m2 or higher eco paper. Cut the cards following the black markings on the sheet. In the end, you must have cards that are 59 x 92 mm big.
○ Board/Box and Tokens It is an A4 one-sided print. All the prints, except the file called “HoG_Staircase-Cutout_A4_ENG.pdf” can be printed on the 170 g/m2 or higher eco paper. The file “HoG_Staircase-Cutout_A4_ENG.pdf” should be printed on 200/220 g/m2 or higher eco paper. This will ensure the stability and longevity of the board. After all the parts are printed, do the following:
A. Glue the “HoG_Box-Top_A4_ENG.pdf” file on the top of your box. You can adjust it in the middle if the box is bigger than A4. B. Glue the “HoG_Box-Top-Inside_A4_ENG.pdf” file on the inner side of the top part of the box. C. Glue the “HoG_Box-Back_A4_ENG.pdf” file on the outer back part of the box. D. The files “.pdf” and “.pdf” need to be cut out following the black lines markings, while the dashed line markings are for folding (in order to have an easier folding, you can first use the paper cutter and applying not full, but medium pressure, prepare the paper for folding). For the more detailing step-by-step instruction on the staircase assembly, following the pictures (video, in case applicable).
Contribuciones de / Contributions by Ibiye Camp, Brendan Cormier, Noortje Marres, Hamish McIntosh, Simone C. Niquille / Technoflesh, Marina Otero Verzier, Tomás Sánchez Criado, Brenton Alexander Smith, Lara Lesmes + Fredrik Hellberg (Space Popular), Liam Young.
[ES] Viviremos todos juntos, eso es inevitable. Pero la llegada de los vehículos autónomos al entorno urbano plantea otra cuestión urgente: ¿cómo se integrarán estos coches sin conductor en la vida cotidiana? Las industrias tecnológicas y del automóvil que desarrollan estos vehículos también están diseñando el futuro de nuestras ciudades. Sus visiones muestran calles que incorporan tecnologías autónomas y donde los humanos deambulan, despreocupados, por un espacio público donde máquinas automatizadas circulan a alta velocidad. Estas visiones se proyectan en un tiempo lejano, y al hacerlo, ignoran las cuestiones que la llegada de estos vehículos plantean en el futuro inmediato.
En respuesta a tal descuido, este ensayo, y las reflexiones que lo acompañan, exploran los conflictos inminentes asociados a esta tecnología y como estos transformaran nuestras calles, con una hipótesis en mente: el despliegue de la tecnología sin conductor, rápida y disruptiva, no conlleva una solución urbana integrada, más bien plantea preguntas y exige imaginar como responderlas. Este libro identifica algunas, responde a otras y, sobre todo, imagina cómo humanos y maquinas podrán influir en las decisiones sobre el ecosistema urbano, colectivamente.
[EN] We are on the verge of sharing our cities with autonomous vehicles. Recent developments in driverless technologies are having an impact on our urban environment, raising questions about how self-driving vehicles could be integrated into our daily lives. Automotive and technological industries are not only developing the vehicles but also envisioning the future of our cities, a future where streets have seamlessly integrated driverless technologies and humans wander about, unconcerned by the presence of new automated machines circulating at high speeds through public space. These visions skip to a distant time and ignore the issues that these vehicles raise in the immediate future.
In response to such an oversight, this essay and the accompanying meditations explore the conflicts soon to be unleashed by this new technology and the transformation of our streets it will trigger. The current implementations of driverless technology, which are fast and disruptive, do not suggest an eventual integrated urban solution. Yet this book allows us to imagine how humans and cars might collectively influence the urban environment.
In my contribution to the volume I share a provocation on the project of urban unification of ‘smart city’ initiatives: What if rather than trying to contribute to urban unity, contemporary urban planners and designers relearnt, through different techniques and procedures (algorithmic, sensor-based, DIY or otherwise), to be affected by an uncommon city? In other words, the processes whereby cities are treated not as places of homogeneity but of divergence.
Published as Criado, T.S. (2021). Uncommoning the city | Hacer la ciudad poco común. In G. Fernández-Abascal & U. Grau (Eds.), Aprendiendo a vivir juntos: Solidaridad entre humanos, coches y bordillos / Learning to Live Together: Cars, Humans, and Kerbs in Solidarity (pp. 123-130). A Coruña: Bartlebooth | PDF EN & PDF ES
