Crisis

From the document presented by Athens group in Berlin NMM seminar:

"9. Crisis
Bearing in mind that the current (another) crisis is ongoing and affecting several cities, we think that attempting to understand its causes and its different impacts on socio-spatial conditions and on everyday life should be incorporated in the project in a clear way. Leaving Shumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism behind, the current situation is yet another metropolitan crisis that echoes Soja’s comment about a ‘restructuring-generated crisis’ several years ago.

Through the pretext of ‘crisis’ we can observe attempts of ‘normalising’ and pushing for initiatives and policies that would otherwise face strong opposition. Through the ‘emergency’ of this crisis, rights are violated; political systems become more and more authoritarian; a ‘politics of fear’ is becoming the dominant mode of representing reality while simultaneously turning social groups against Others (usually the weaker Others); while the emergency becomes the rule rather than the exception.

As such, the discourses of the crises with their ‘emergency’ framework substantially transform cities, the way policies and projects are decided and endorsed and the overall decision-making. Tracing and mapping the different levels of these crises, the relevant processes and spatial transformations might be useful for our common project.

Competition amongst cities as providing the motives for the attraction of international investment (through various mega-event, mega-projects etc), as well as changes (if there are) within the rhetoric of the Neoliberal Urban Mainstream should be revised within the conditions of the current economic crisis".

[http://urbanrise.net/ URBANRISE. Crisis regime and emerging social movements]

Michael Edwards, The rent and the crisis, Athens critical geography seminar, 8th march 2013