London Calling: Paul Gilroy, Dick Hebdige, and British Multiculturalism

Black man gotta lot a problems But they don't mind throwing a brick White people go to school Where they teach you how to be thick White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own White riot - I wanna riot White riot - a riot of my own - “White Riot” by the Clash The winds of imperialism blow two ways. While we often focus on the impact of the colonizer on the colonized, in recent years, more and more writers have begun to also consider what colonialism has meant for imperialists on the domestic front.   Few places provide a window into this reciprocity than 1970s London.  Postwar immigration from former colonies to Britain resulted in an increasingly diverse …

The Best Style: Car Culture in Pakistan

The cultural genius of Pakistan is evident not only in its mosques and musical traditions, but also in its people's embrace of the single greatest car ever made: the Suzuki Cultus.  This beautiful subcompact was marketed in North America as the Suzuki Swift and the Geo Metro, which was my first car.  A triumph of populist design, the Cultus has been maligned by car snobs and other garden-variety ignoramuses who fail to appreciate the gossamer charms of a lightweight “econobox” that can hyperefficiently move a nation of 180 million from point A to point B while fitting into almost any overstuffed motorway or sliver of a parking space.  The more affluent in Pakistan may opt for a …

Activating Alternative Historical Narratives: The Black Arts Collective of Philadelphia Visits South El Monte

SEMAP Interview from Henry Pacheco on Vimeo. For Activate Vacant, the South El Monte Arts Posse invited artists to transgress space by creating installations in abandoned, un-used, and, often, fenced of lots. Carribean Fragoza’s two word self-titled poem installation/billboard “ay corazon,” made entirely of white plastic grocery bags, interrupted the monotonous landscape and functioned as an emotional holograph for El Monte’s commuters. Christopher Anthony Velasco’s “Let It Sparkle,” invited bus riders and the SEMAP team to cover the adjacent abandoned car garage and parking lot with yarn. Lastly, Jennifer Renteria’s rendering “The Uncultivated Park,” allowed residents …

Debunking the Mythical Discourse Surrounding Public Housing: Part IV of the UHA 2012

In ToM's final installment of its 2012 UHA coverage, our correspondents present a detailed report regarding one of the conference's perpetually most popular subjects: public housing. With a packed house in attendance, the UHA’s six roundtable presenters provided a coherent and compelling argument against prevailing myths regarding public housing.  Considering the success of documentaries like The Pruitt Igoe myth in recent years, new interpretations of public housing’s legacy have come to the fore. Leading figures in urban housing including Kenneth Jackson and Alexander Von Hoffman among others attended, making for a lively post presentation discussion.   From Le Corbusier influenced …

Steel Towns, Motor Cities, and Cuban Refugees: Part III of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the third installment of ToM's four part coverage of the 2012 UHAs.  You'll detect a clear bias in favor of aged/renewed rust belt cities with a flourish of transnationalism at the end via the Cuban Revolution and post WWII Miami.  If you missed Part I click here and for Part II here. Panel – Rust Belt Cosmopolitanism Joshua Akers – Settling the City: Urban Homesteading and the Construction of Markets in Detroit “It stands out on the highway like a creature from another time/ It inspires the babies’ questions for their mothers as they ride/ But no one stopped to think about the babies or how they would survive/ We almost lost Detroit, this time.” - …

Crime in the City and the Curious Case of Philadelphia: Part II of the 2012 UHA

"Is their such a thing as Philadelphia exceptionalism?" asked one observer at this year's UHA.  Undoubtedly, over the past two UHA's (2010, 2012), Philadelphia has enjoyed the attentions of more than a few historians. With this in mind, ToM correspondents provide a glimpse at some of the work being done on the City of Brotherly Love.  Crime and policing emerged as another area of increased interest at this year's conference.  San Francisco's Chinatown, New York's Washington Heights, and yes, West Philadelphia provide case studies focusing on crime's influence on political mobilization, urban renewal, race relations and community activism. For part I of ToM's 2012 UHA coverage click …

Impending Hurricanes, Alternative Sexualities, and Tourism – Part I of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the 2012 Urban History Conference.  Hurricane Sandy loomed over the event like depression in a Tim Burton film, and ToM's editors and contributors send our best wishes to everyone on the Eastern seaboard. Much like our 2010 coverage, we did our best to cover an array of topics but inevitably the conference’s size and density placed limits on our correspondents. Nonetheless, ToM's endeavored to bring you several snapshots from the conference. Consider these imagistic academic instagrams rather than a comprehensive take on the event itself. Part I – Sex and the City   Panel - The Sexual City in the Americas: Tourism, Migration, and Race in Mexico City, Miami, and New …

Time, Fate, and the History of the Future in “Looper”

You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal. Time travel has not yet been invented but 30 years from now, it will have been. I am one of many specialized assassins in our present called loopers. So when criminal organizations in the future need someone gone, they zap them back to me and I eliminate the target from the future. Loopers are well paid. We live the good life and the only rule is never let your target escape, even if your target is you. My furtive love for the dystopian sci-fi genre is no secret to regular readers of ToM.  Children of Men is, to me, the superlative example of how to explore contemporary social issues and cultural anxieties by telling stories about …

State Space and Victor Serge: Midnight in the Century

Continuing my series of posts on the novels of Victor Serge at my personal blog site For the Desk Drawer, I focus now on what Richard Greeman has recognized as the "cycle of resistance" in the second informal trilogy comprising Midnight in the Century [1939], The Case of Comrade Tulayev [1942], and The Long Dusk [1946]. If earlier novels in the "cycle of revolution" capture the conquest of space, notably Conquered City, then the later novels in the "cycle of resistance" convey the statification of space. This refers to the production of political space through meaningful architectural forms; symbolic representations of state power; the organisation of territory and geography; and …

On Victor Serge and Red Petrograd: Conquered City

Following on from my previous posts, one of the most striking features of Victor Serge’s writings has to be the way he captures spatial arbiters that shape the practices of empowerment and containment within the territorial form of the city. Flowing across his documentary or witness novels, his political writings, his poetry, or his memoirs as a revolutionary is a sense of the political processes shaping urban society, the space of the city, and the possibilities of revolution rising up from the streets. Nowhere is this more evident that in his novel Conquered City [1932] set in the years of the Russian Civil War (1919-1921) in the frontline city of Red Petrograd. Written just prior to …