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The Soviet city as a landscape in the making

Aerial view of Samarkand in 2020 showing the old city (yellow), the colonial city (green), and Soviet-era apartment blocks and micro-rayons (orange). The areas of the city that are not coloured feature a mix of private dwellings, commercial and administrative buildings. The white box indicates the boundaries of the map by Ernst Giese (see Figure 1). Numbers indicate the approximate location of respondents’ houses
(c) Copernicus Sentinel data 2020, modified by the authors.

Following the launch of the mass housing campaign under Nikita Khrushchev, the cityscape of Soviet Samarkand still remains some changes and continuities of it. This paper examines the planning, building, appropriation, and renovation of public and private housing on the level of practices rather than policies and discourses. It relates these practices to the specific temporalities of Samarkand’s landscape, such as the life cycles of inhabitants, the change of seasons, or the timelines of material decay, among others. Continue reading “The Soviet city as a landscape in the making”

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Freshly published: Geoforum Editorial on informalities in urban transport and mobility

This editorial introduces and contextualises the Special Issue on informalities in urban transport and mobility in cities across the Global South, East and North. It identifies a mutual misrecognition between the urban studies literature on informality and research on transport and mobilities, and proposes that urban mobility be understood as a critical site of contestations over (in)formalisation processes. Continue reading “Freshly published: Geoforum Editorial on informalities in urban transport and mobility”

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EXTENDED DEADLINE | Cfc: 2022 RSA Special Sessions on Infrastructural Materialities: Human and Non-Human Interactions

The 2022 RSA Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) conference from 14th to 17th September 2022 in Leipzig is open for your contributions until 30th May. Herewith we invite you to join one of the EEGA special sessions on infrastructure, hosted by Wladimir Sgibnev, Tonio Weicker and Lyubomir Pozharliev: “INFRASTRUCTURAL MATERIALITIES: HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN INTERACTIONS”

Continue reading “EXTENDED DEADLINE | Cfc: 2022 RSA Special Sessions on Infrastructural Materialities: Human and Non-Human Interactions”

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The Journey of the Second Hand Trams

(c) https://aktuell.nationalatlas.de/wp-content/kartographie/22_04_Strassenbahnen/22_04_Strassenbahnen_k1.html

At the end of a long service life, Streetcars do not necessarily end up on the scrap heap in Germany. Some are given a second home in other operations. Since 1990, 49 transport companies have handed over a total of 3,745 discarded streetcars to cities outside Germany. The fascinating complexity of this phenomenon was the motivation for Lukas Adolphi, Wladimir Sgibnev and Tonio Weicker to investigate the destinations and the further use of used streetcar vehicles from German companies in more detail. One result of these investigations are maps showing the manifold travel routes of individual vehicles.

Continue reading “The Journey of the Second Hand Trams”

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Online panel & discussion: Bridging and dividing Europe – Central Europe, Brexit, and Covid 19

The last panel of the free Online panel & discussion series, dedicated on CEE Societies and cultures, will take place On 7th June, 16:30-18:00 CET.  The panelists Stefan Popov, Karolina Wigura, and Špela Drnovšek Zorko will discuss about the connections between Central Europe, Brexit and Covid-19. The panel is part of the RSA CEE pre-conference programme and will be hosted and moderated by Lyubomir Pozharliev.

Continue reading “Online panel & discussion: Bridging and dividing Europe – Central Europe, Brexit, and Covid 19”

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Mobilty Forum: ‘Tensions on Tracks’ and ‘Bike-sharing practice’

The Mobility Forum at TUB invites us to join on 19.05.2022, 10:00-12:00 (Berlin time zone, UTC+1). Topics of the session are going to be Tensions on tracks: The closure of the tramline routes in the course of the opening of the Subway in Sofia, presented by Dr. Lyubomir Pozharliev and Urban growth, transport system and environment: a comparative study of Bike-sharing practice, presented by Bermet Borubaeva (Bishkek School of Contemporary Art). The Lecture is free of charge and open for everyone. You can join the forum online or in room 3116 in ZTG, TU Berlin, no registration needed.

More information here.

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Lecture: Lyubomir Pozharliev on Transport Infrastructure in Socialist Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (1945–1989)

(c) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEuk6MxgvaQ&t=21s

On April 1st Lyubomir Pozharliev was giving a lecture at The Balkan Circle at the University of Texas at Austin. There he was presenting his monography „The Road to Socialism. Transport Infrastructure in Socialist Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (1945–1989)“.
Continue reading “Lecture: Lyubomir Pozharliev on Transport Infrastructure in Socialist Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (1945–1989)”

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EXTENEDED DEADLINE | Call for Contributions: CoMoDe and EEGA special sessions on infrastructure

The 2022 RSA Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) conference “Bridging Old and New Divides: Global Dynamics & Regional Transformations”, 14th to 17th September 2022 in Leipzig is open for your contributions until 30th May.  Herewith we invite you to join one of the EEGA special sessions on infrastructure, hosted by Wladimir Sgibnev, Tonio Weicker and Lyubomir Pozharliev.

Continue reading “EXTENEDED DEADLINE | Call for Contributions: CoMoDe and EEGA special sessions on infrastructure”

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Conference: Public Transport as Public Space (Brussels, 20-22 April 2022)

(c) Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Understanding the publicness of public transport as an understudied field of interests the PUTSPACE project came up with the conference Public Transport as Public Space in Brussels, Belgium. From the 20-22 April 2022 academic researchers, public officials, policy experts, activists and artists are sharing and gathering their knowledge and experiences of public transport under the leading question What makes public transport a type of public space, and for whom. Continue reading “Conference: Public Transport as Public Space (Brussels, 20-22 April 2022)”