American Studies - Session S806-01: Beyond the Nation-State? Borders, Boundaries, and the Future of Democratic Pluralism
My contribution to the session focused on the tangible and intangible borders and boundaries drawn in the urban and rural spaces we inhabit. The built environment reflects but also conditions the ways we work, consume, perform identities, pursue politics, practice social relationships, and participate in social mobility. As such it is a core field through which we can record, uncover, study and undo established and emerging boundaries that undermine equality and pluralism. For example, unequal access to nature and public transport, degradation of life quality because of the presence of industry or mega-infrastructures, the lack of public spaces and social infrastructures such as schools and hospitals, and other spatial parameters create internal divisions within the city. Low and middle-income urban populations are frequently internally displaced because of uncontrolled real estate pressures, as a result of which poor areas are gentrified, land and rent prices go up and tenants are driven out of their neighborhoods – and I referred here to areas such as Exarcheia and Metaxourgeio in Athens, or Sulukule in Istanbul. Meanwhile, rural areas are facing drastic transformation as a result of climate change, pressure from the tourism industry, and depopulation among other things. Here I referred to examples such as the Greek islands, and large scale real estate investment in rural Western Turkey.
Read the op-ed written by Dr. Kalliopi Amygdalou
Dr. Kalliopi Amygdalou is a senior researcher at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. She is an architect and principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant HOMEACROSS.
Photo Credit: Salzburg Global Seminar