David Pinder
As an urban and cultural geographer by background, I am interested in cities and in how urban spaces are produced, imagined, performed and contested. Underlying my research is a concern with the possibilities of urban society and life, and with how these can be reimagined and reconstituted within and against processes of capitalist urbanisation.
One of my main aims has been to rethink and revitalise the concept of utopia for urban studies, especially through addressing 20th century modernist and avant-garde movements as well as critical urban theory. I also have current projects on mobile cities and nomadism, and on artistic practices as means of exploring and intervening in urban spaces. Long-standing interests include psychogeography, walking art, and radical cartographies.
Having taught at Queen Mary University of London for sixteen years, I recently moved to Copenhagen to take up a chair in Urban Studies at Roskilde University (RUC), in Denmark (from August 2015). I have also previously held visiting research positions at Princeton University, and at CUNY Graduate Centre in New York.
At RUC I am part of the Space, Place, Mobility and Urban Studies (MOSPUS) research group. Please get in touch at [email protected] if you would like copies of any of the papers below.
Address: Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change
Roskilde University
Universitetsvej 1, PO Box 260
DK-4000 Roskilde
Denmark
One of my main aims has been to rethink and revitalise the concept of utopia for urban studies, especially through addressing 20th century modernist and avant-garde movements as well as critical urban theory. I also have current projects on mobile cities and nomadism, and on artistic practices as means of exploring and intervening in urban spaces. Long-standing interests include psychogeography, walking art, and radical cartographies.
Having taught at Queen Mary University of London for sixteen years, I recently moved to Copenhagen to take up a chair in Urban Studies at Roskilde University (RUC), in Denmark (from August 2015). I have also previously held visiting research positions at Princeton University, and at CUNY Graduate Centre in New York.
At RUC I am part of the Space, Place, Mobility and Urban Studies (MOSPUS) research group. Please get in touch at [email protected] if you would like copies of any of the papers below.
Address: Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change
Roskilde University
Universitetsvej 1, PO Box 260
DK-4000 Roskilde
Denmark
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Books by David Pinder
At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their projects for an alternative 'unitary urbanism', David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban space and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant's vision of New Babylon, finding within his proposals for future spaces produced through nomadic life, creativity and play a still powerful challenge to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the 'end of utopia', arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself.
CONTENTS
Preface
1. INTRODUCTION
An urban adventure
Underground visions
Utopian spaces past and present
In the wake of utopia?
Utopia, desire and the city
Outline of the chapters
2. RESTORATIVE UTOPIAS
Utopian awakenings
The vision of Ebenezer Howard
Smokeless, slumless cities
The ‘master key’ to socio-spatial reform
Biologically sound cities and bodies
Securing space
3. MODERNIST CALLS TO ORDER
Time and space died yesterday
Le Corbusier and the spirit of construction
Spatial purification
Water-tight formulae
Urban surgery
Political authority and the plan
4. DREAMS OF CITIES AND MONSTERS
Between two journeys
White cathedrals: confronting New York
Of monsters and organic life
Utopian regulation and authoritarianism
Counter-spaces of the surrealists
Destabilising dreams of order
5. SITUATIONIST ADVENTURES
To build the haçienda
The critique of human geography
Environments of abstraction
Bringing fuel to the fire
Never work
Unchaining the city
In quest of new spaces
6. THE GREAT GAME TO COME
A science fiction of architecture
Unitary urbanism and the construction of situations
Passionate environments
Living art of the Imaginist Bauhaus
Games with machines
A camp for nomads
7. LIFE WILL RESIDE IN POETRY
Welcome to New Babylon
Play structures
Paradise on earth
Not yet: utopianism and games to come
For another city and another life
A lived utopianism
Reappropriating cities: urban critique
8. PARTISANS OF POSSIBILITIES
Dark skies
For utopianism
Re-dreaming modernist urbanism
Spaces and times of the avant-garde
Challenges of utopia
Future paths
Notes
Selected bibliography
Illustration credits
Index
* Practical instruction in using one of the main methods of cultural geography (e.g. interviewing, interpreting texts and visual images, participatory methods)
* An overview of a key area of concern in cultural geography (e.g. the body, national identity, empire, marginality)
* A description of the actual application of the theories and methods within a piece of research.
With the addition of boxed definitions of key concepts and descriptions of research projects by students who devised and undertook them, 'Cultural Geography in Practice' is an essential manual of research practice for both undergraduate and graduate geography students.
Papers by David Pinder
Récemment, d’intéressantes perspectives sur la question urbaine se sont dégagées au-delà des sphères de recherches, à travers le travail d’artistes et de professionnels de la culture. Dans un échange fréquent avec la théorie urbaine et le militantisme politique, et à l’aide de toute une panoplie de pratiques tactiques, ils se sont impliqués dans les villes et les spatialités de la vie urbaine au quotidien. En général, ils se soucient moins de représenter des thèmes politiques que d’intervenir dans les espaces urbains pour remettre en question, rediriger ou contester les normes et idéologies en vigueur, et pour créer de nouvelles significations, expériences, compréhensions, relations et situations. Il est rare de pouvoir inscrire ces modes interventionnistes dans le champ traditionnel des études urbaines. Toutefois, cet essai défend leur importance en soulignant le potentiel considérable d’une accentuation du dialogue à travers et entre les théories urbaine et spatiale, et les pratiques artistique et culturelle, pour inspirer et élaborer des approches critiques des villes. Ce travail met en avant plusieurs enjeux spécifiques nés de ces interconnexions, significatifs sur le plan politique et pédagogique, et appelant à un débat approfondi.
At the heart of this richly illustrated book is an encounter with the explosive ideas of the situationists. Tracing the subversive practices of this avant-garde group and its associates from their explorations of Paris during the 1950s to their projects for an alternative 'unitary urbanism', David Pinder convincingly explains the significance of their revolutionary attempts to transform urban space and everyday life. He addresses in particular Constant's vision of New Babylon, finding within his proposals for future spaces produced through nomadic life, creativity and play a still powerful challenge to imagine cities otherwise. The book not only recovers vital moments from past hopes and dreams of modern urbanism. It also contests current claims about the 'end of utopia', arguing that reconsidering earlier projects can play a critical role in developing utopian perspectives today. Through the study of utopian visions, it aims to rekindle elements of utopianism itself.
CONTENTS
Preface
1. INTRODUCTION
An urban adventure
Underground visions
Utopian spaces past and present
In the wake of utopia?
Utopia, desire and the city
Outline of the chapters
2. RESTORATIVE UTOPIAS
Utopian awakenings
The vision of Ebenezer Howard
Smokeless, slumless cities
The ‘master key’ to socio-spatial reform
Biologically sound cities and bodies
Securing space
3. MODERNIST CALLS TO ORDER
Time and space died yesterday
Le Corbusier and the spirit of construction
Spatial purification
Water-tight formulae
Urban surgery
Political authority and the plan
4. DREAMS OF CITIES AND MONSTERS
Between two journeys
White cathedrals: confronting New York
Of monsters and organic life
Utopian regulation and authoritarianism
Counter-spaces of the surrealists
Destabilising dreams of order
5. SITUATIONIST ADVENTURES
To build the haçienda
The critique of human geography
Environments of abstraction
Bringing fuel to the fire
Never work
Unchaining the city
In quest of new spaces
6. THE GREAT GAME TO COME
A science fiction of architecture
Unitary urbanism and the construction of situations
Passionate environments
Living art of the Imaginist Bauhaus
Games with machines
A camp for nomads
7. LIFE WILL RESIDE IN POETRY
Welcome to New Babylon
Play structures
Paradise on earth
Not yet: utopianism and games to come
For another city and another life
A lived utopianism
Reappropriating cities: urban critique
8. PARTISANS OF POSSIBILITIES
Dark skies
For utopianism
Re-dreaming modernist urbanism
Spaces and times of the avant-garde
Challenges of utopia
Future paths
Notes
Selected bibliography
Illustration credits
Index
* Practical instruction in using one of the main methods of cultural geography (e.g. interviewing, interpreting texts and visual images, participatory methods)
* An overview of a key area of concern in cultural geography (e.g. the body, national identity, empire, marginality)
* A description of the actual application of the theories and methods within a piece of research.
With the addition of boxed definitions of key concepts and descriptions of research projects by students who devised and undertook them, 'Cultural Geography in Practice' is an essential manual of research practice for both undergraduate and graduate geography students.
Récemment, d’intéressantes perspectives sur la question urbaine se sont dégagées au-delà des sphères de recherches, à travers le travail d’artistes et de professionnels de la culture. Dans un échange fréquent avec la théorie urbaine et le militantisme politique, et à l’aide de toute une panoplie de pratiques tactiques, ils se sont impliqués dans les villes et les spatialités de la vie urbaine au quotidien. En général, ils se soucient moins de représenter des thèmes politiques que d’intervenir dans les espaces urbains pour remettre en question, rediriger ou contester les normes et idéologies en vigueur, et pour créer de nouvelles significations, expériences, compréhensions, relations et situations. Il est rare de pouvoir inscrire ces modes interventionnistes dans le champ traditionnel des études urbaines. Toutefois, cet essai défend leur importance en soulignant le potentiel considérable d’une accentuation du dialogue à travers et entre les théories urbaine et spatiale, et les pratiques artistique et culturelle, pour inspirer et élaborer des approches critiques des villes. Ce travail met en avant plusieurs enjeux spécifiques nés de ces interconnexions, significatifs sur le plan politique et pédagogique, et appelant à un débat approfondi.