responsabili: Francesca Gelli
con Augusto Cusinato, Giulio Ernesti, Chiara Mazzoleni, Simonetta Morini

visiting professor: Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, professor of Law & Theory, LLB, LLM, PhD - director, The Westminster Law & Theory Centre – University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7UW, UK

presenza: 3 mesi -  da giugno a ottobre 2015

durata: 12 mesi

termine previsto: 31 dicembre 2015

finanziamento: 11.500 euro


tipologia: call di dipartimento

fonte di finanziamento: call 2015 Dppac
call straordinaria Linea di finanziamento 2 “Sostegno dell’attrattività internazionale”

background concepts

We are in the Anthropocene, namely the geological epoch determined by the presence of a single species on earth: the human. The term was coined by Crutzen and Stoermer in 2000, and has caused a cross-disciplinary debate on the repercussions of such a geological epoch. The clearest affirmations arising from it is put by Etienne Turpin (2013: 12): “with the arrival of the Anthropocene, this division [between human/nonhuman or nature/culture] is de-ontologized; as such, the separation appears instead as a epistemological product mistakenly presumed as a given fact of being.” The Anthropocene calls into question two of the grandest distinctions that characterise Western thought: the one between human and nonhuman, and the one between ontology and epistemology. In other words, it questions our accepted ways of viewing and constructing reality: reality no longer belongs to us but to the collectivity (which is more than human) that is constructing it. The Anthropocene augurs the de-individualisation of the human in favour of a collectivisation as a geological agent that affects the Earth (Morton, 2010). This collectivity, however, is not one of empowerment but of loss of control. The sheer complexity of the human effect on the earth is beyond easy solutions of intelligent planning and smart design. It posits a much greater challenge: how are we to redefine our position on the earth in such a way that we realise that to be everywhere on the earth does not mean to be central to everything.

In my work (2014), I have called this the responsibility of indistinction between human and nonhuman, as well as material and immaterial discourses. Such demands for responsibility emerge much stronger in the urban context of today’s networked economy. This does not mean that everything is the same. Rather, it means that it is often impossible to tell things apart, because of the intense entanglements in which they participate. At the same time, indistinction does not equal fairness or equality. Quite on the contrary: we know that the world is constructed by unequal bodies with unequal forces.

For this reason, I have proposed a reworking of the concept of Spatial Justice. I have been writing on spatial justice for the last few years, redefining it completely by taking a distance from the standard definitions of regional democracy or distributive justice to be found in the works of David Harvey (1973) or Edward Soja (2010). My purpose is to place the concept and practice of spatial justice in such new, complex environments, where the line between human and nonhuman is blurred, and where a new materiality of thinking and acting has been established, in line with the epoch of the Anthropocene, which challenges the way we have been thinking about the future. I have defined Spatial Justice as the question that arises once a body desires to occupy the space occupied by another body at exactly the same time. Inspired by Spinoza, I define bodies as collectivities, human and nonhuman, material and immaterial. Thus, a body can be a composition of a discourse generated by a group of people in a particular building in a city, connected to other urban discourses across the globe. Spatial justice, defined in this way, lies in the core of all geopolitical disputes, ecological questions of access to resources, claims of urban land, decisions on how to manage a city politically and how to deal with its social complexity, and so on.

content of the project

Through a research on cultural, economic, political and legal practices as mirrored in urban planning and architecture, the proposed project will sketch the specific mechanisms with which the emergence of spatial justice can be facilitated. Spatial justice is a tool of resistance and at the same time creativity (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2010) that has regenerated urban environments in non-traditional ways in terms of economy, innovation, spatial arrangements, property practices, ecological tendencies and so on. Rather than the usual top-down approaches, spatial justice promotes an organic yet organised urban planning of affective co-habitation, where differences and conflicts are not fazed out but integrated in the wider urban fabric. In order to observe these mechanisms, a careful fusion of semantic and material practices will be performed, that will rely on

form of the project

This is a theoretical and applied project that aims to bring together theorists and practitioners working on urban issues of spatial justice. The applied aspect will invite international practitioners from architecture, urban planning, psychology and law to comment on specific urban case studies where spatial justice practices have been implemented, with a special emphasis on alternative narratives and undocumented emergences. The theoretical aspect will attempt to construct a synthesis of urban spatial justice in terms of its philosophical and generally theoretical credentials. The dissemination and funding of the proposed events and publications will also benefit from the existing structures of The Westminster Law & Theory Centre, with its extensive UK, US, Australian and international network.

the project envisages the following outcomes:

- a two-day open international symposium with participants from Italy, Europe and the US (subject to funding) in collaboration with The Westminster Law & Theory Centre, London, on Spatial Justice in the Anthropocene, with the production of podcasts for dissemination. A substantial part of the symposium will be dedicated, with the help of the Phd Programme in Pianificazione e Politiche Pubbliche del Territorio (DrPPT) and the Scuola di Dottorato at Iuav, to the PhD researchers of the Scuola di Dottorato at IUAV, coaching on how to present their work and relate to current theoretical developments, thus giving the opportunity to local doctoral students to take initiatives vis-à-vis international events and, if they so wish, to publish on the online journal Non Liquet of the Westminster Law & Theory Lab.

- one co-authored journal article with a colleague from Iuav, building on the two fields of the Anthropocene and spatial justice in an urban context. It is aimed that the article will be published at either Planning Theory, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, or Emotion, Space and Society

- an exploration of the possibility of applying for a European Union funding scheme on the Anthropocene and the cities in a way that would involve our two institutions as well as a host of other European centres of research.

- finally, the long-term potential of a co-edited volume between myself and colleagues from Iuav, containing selected papers from the symposium, entitled Spatial Justice in the Anthropocene, published with Routledge, London and New York, under the series Space, Materiality and the Normative which I am directing.

distinct contribution of the project to the department

The project will aim at an intensification of the process of internationalisation of the existing potential of the Department of Planning of Complex Environments. The sheer amount of novel and original research that takes place in the department needs to find a clearer international voice. It is my aim to put the Department, and the IUAV in general, on the map of the Anglophone academia, in which the immense research potential of the University is not as known and well-reputed as I believe it ought to be. At the same time, I am interested in pursuing a project of internationalisation of the PhD programme (DrPPT), which I have already begun two years ago, by providing and facilitating links between DPPAC-IUAV and Westminster. Finally, it is my hope that by intimately involving PhD and post-doc researchers in the project, stronger links between that body of intense intellectual production, and the rest of the staff in the department will be forged.

suitability of the visiting professor

Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is Full Professor at the University of Westminster, London UK, Permanent Guest Professor at the Centre for Politics, Management and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, and an internationally acclaimed academic who has lectured around the world. He is also the Founder and Director of The Westminster Law & Theory Lab, an internationally-reputed centre for cross-disciplinary research based in London, and the Editor-in-Chief of Non Liquet journal, the Westminster Law Review and the Routledge Book Series Space, Materiality and the Normative. He is the author of three books and editor of five. He has recently been invited by MIT Press to author a monograph on Material Justice. His research is radically interdisciplinary, focusing on urban theory, including economics, sociology, political theory, psychology, literature, art, law, architecture.

He is well connected with Iuav and several other Italian universities, due to his November 2009, one-month stay at IUAV Urbanistica following an invitation by Professor Marco Dugato; his 2014 one-month stay at the Department of Design and Planning in Complex Environment (Iuav); his regular collaboration with Professor Augusto Cusinato which has resulted in an edited collection published by Springer; his collaboration with the leading article on the Spatial Justice special issue of Mondi Migranti, edited by Iuav’s Elena Ostanel and Adriano Cancellieri; his regular involvement with the Dottorato DRPPT while in Venice; his supervision of three DrPPT doctoral students (Miriam Tedeschi, Francesca Ansaloni, Paola Piscitelli) who are spending their research time abroad at the University of Westminster and whose progress is manifestly exceptional (Tedeschi and Ansaloni have published an article, influenced by the work done by the candidate and in close collaboration with him, in the international journal Planning Theory); and finally the fact that he can begin his three-month collaboration with the department immediately, since he is currently, at the time of applying, in Venice and already working with the Department.

He is fluent in and gives lectures in Italian, as well as English, French, Spanish and Greek. In 2011 he was awarded the Oxford University National Award for the University Teacher of the Year, and has since joined the Judging Committee for the Award.

descrizione del progetto didattico

A two-day open international symposium with participants from Italy, Europe and the US (subject to funding) in collaboration with The Westminster Law & Theory Centre, London, on Spatial Justice in the Anthropocene, with the production of podcasts for dissemination. A substantial part of the symposium will be dedicated, with the help of the Phd Programme in Pianificazione e Politiche Pubbliche del Territorio (DrPPT) and the Scuola di Dottorato at Iuav, to the PhD researchers of the Scuola di Dottorato at IUAV, coaching on how to present their work and relate to current theoretical developments, thus giving the opportunity to local doctoral students to take initiatives vis-à-vis international events and, if they so wish, to publish on the online journal Non Liquet of the Westminster Law & Theory Lab.