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CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios

versão On-line ISSN 2182-3030

CIDADES  no.31 Lisboa dez. 2015

https://doi.org/10.15847/citiescommunitiesterritories.dec2015.031.edit 

EDITORIAL

 

Editorial

 

Pedro CostaI

[I]ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal. e-mail: pedro.costa@iscte.pt.

 

 

This 31st issue of Cidades, Comunidades e Territórios has as its central topic a dossier about musical scenes, communities, identities and urban cultures. The spatial inscription and the territorial embeddedness of cultural and artistic scenes in urban spaces is the core of this thematic section, focusing on the relation between culture, creativity and territory from the specific perspective of the music field. The leitmotiv is to deepen the discussion on the creation and development of musical and artistic scenes all over the world and to discuss its importance in the construction of collective identities and memories, making an approach to the city as context and catalyst of these scenes, as explained in the brief introductory text of the dossier “Cenas musicais, comunidades, identidades e culturas urbanas”, by the organizers Pedro Costa and Paula Guerra, which had promoted an open call for papers on this subject, following the discussion held of these topics on the 1st KISMIF conference in 2014. A selection of the proposals of articles resulting from that call is now presented in this special thematic dossier.

Pierre Raboud’s text, “Faire fondre la banquise: La difficile ouverture des villes suisses aux cultures jeunes” opens the dossier. In a sociohistorical perspective, this article relates the emergence and development of musical scenes on five main Swiss cities (Zurich, Basel, Geneva, Bern and Lausanne) with the consequent processes of integration in their urban landscape and the promotion of change in cultural policies. The authors show how musical scenes have pushed these cities to renew their identities and to rethink their local public policies, evidencing the impact of social scenes on the urban space, and addressing the empowerment of the scenes agents and the processes of openness and assimilation of youth cultures by these urban spaces.

The second text, co-authored by Pedro Quintela and Marta Borges, “Livros, fanzines e outras publicações independentes – um percurso pela ‘cena’ do Porto”, is focused on the universe of fanzines and other DIY independent self-published editorial work, connecting music scenes to other cultural art worlds, such as drawing, illustration and graphic design. The authors study the specific context of Oporto, in Portugal, analyzing their production, distribution and consumption circuits, and the relation with the city as a space of creativity, emerging around a DIY scene.

Lynn Osman, in the article “Are the Streets Still for Dreaming? Punk Rock, Thrash, and Heavy Metal: Unrecorded Blueprint of Beirut’s Urban Landscape”, brings us the sphere of skateboarding, metal, thrash, and punk rock in Lebanon, exploring the specificities of these urban scenes in this city, and the way they challenge punk narratives and sociological approaches to these fields. The author claims a kind of inversion in the cultural identification to ‘Punk’ in this specific context, deciphered on the specificities of Beirut’s local scene, which embodies lifestyles and an urban experience diverging locally as well as regionally from the Middle Eastern underground.

Débora Gomes, in “Imaginários urbanos na música pop: a Nova York de Velvet Underground e Strokes”, leads us through a journey to New York and the way this city is expressed in the lyrics of these two bands, in two clearly distinct moments of its history, as defined by the author: the “degraded, failed and violent city” of the mid-1960s’ Velvet Underground, and the “urban revival” city of the early 2000s’ Strokes. The article explores the way these distinct conjunctures are reflected on the content of their production and the way everyday perceptions of the urban space and links to specific locations are expressed through their music. Assuming both groups have their identities strongly linked to a similar New York City’s raw urbanity, the author highlight the extent of the relationship everyday urban-space-identity and how it can help connect the practice of urbanism with the experience of the urban space.

Finally, Otávio Raposo takes us to the importance of territorial context in molding youth cultural practices. The social complex context of Favelas da Maré, in Rio de Janeiro, stands out by the large number of NGOs to offer artistic and cultural activities for youth, and this setting was crucial to the emergence of one of the most influential groups of break dance in the city. In the article “Laboratório de Cidadania. Criatividade e resistência nas Favelas da Maré”, the author discusses how this artistic expression produces identity and gives its practitioners existential parameters that allow them to break with the fragmentation of urban life and expand their vision of the city, until then conditioned by the limitations of living in a segregated territory marked by violence.

Out of this thematic dossier, in the permanently open call section, this issue of Cidades, Comunidades e Territórios includes 4 articles, which transport us, in their diversity, through the plurality of modern and contemporary dynamics that challenge the urban realm in different parts of the world.

The article “As descobertas do pré-sal e os desafios competitivos da indústria brasileira do setor de petróleo e gás: uma abordagem prospectiva”, co-authored by Edson Terra Azevedo Filho, Margarida Perestrelo and Manuel António Molina-Palma, studies the oil and gas sector in Brazil, applying strategic prospective analysis to identify the main factors influencing the competitive development of the companies of this sector in the agglomerated territorial production system linked to the gas and oil exploration at Bacia de Campos, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, and analyzing how these factors relate to the dynamics of evolution of its context and how they influence the challenges for this sector in this territory.

Leila Khaldi, in the article “Vernacular Aesthetics in Self-Built Housing in Tunis and Cairo”, takes us to the universe of self-made nonprofessional inhabitant builders, focusing on the specific case of Maghreb countries. Self-built housing is central in urban growth in these countries, as well as in most development countries. Drawing upon her interest, as an architect, in the meaning of vernacular contemporary aesthetics that are free from academic models and urban regulation policies, the author uses photography, graphical analyses and interviews to study various popular neighborhoods of Tunis and Cairo, and to discuss how their inhabitants perceive the outside aspects of the house, and the way it affects its external appearance, particularly its façades.

Christine Bailey and Elizabeth Zenteno, in “Reflexiones en torno a la vulnerabilidad social y residencial de los asentamientos informales de los cerros de Valparaíso”, take us to the discussion of the urban areas situated in high risk areas, studying informal settlements on the hills of Valparaíso, Chile, and arguing that the risk factors are not just linked to geographical conditions, but also to structural and social conditions which accentuate those risks. Their study, based on in-depth interviews to residents of these hills, discuss the conditions that made them inhabit these areas, realizing the process of construction of their homes in high risk areas, and identifying the role of public action, which in an attempt to improve conditions, contrary to their purpose, ends up reinforcing the risks. The authors argue that the risks of natural disasters in the residents of Valparaíso’s hills are thus the result both of social and residential vulnerability and of the actions of the public system.

Finally, José Cabral Dias, in a more historiographic perspective, drives us to Coimbra, Portugal, in the article “A Avenida de Sta. Cruz, em Coimbra: entre a modernidade e a nostalgia”, discussing the way Etienne de Gröer’s Urban Plan for this city, in the 1940’s, and particularly, the outline of this specific Avenue can be seen as a sign of the contradictions and hesitations faced by Portuguese Estado Novo at the time, with the struggle between the more conservative views of the regime and those who aspired to a more modernized society. Specifically, the author wants to refute the hypothesis which points out Etienne Groër as exemplary in the context of a model city fully aligned with the Government ambitions, within the framework of General Urbanization Plans. In this regard, for the author Avenida de Santa Cruz can be seen as a metaphor of the reality which overcomes the avenue itself, since it could assume a significant role on configuration of the urban image in accordance to Estado Novo ideas and also in the understanding of the city space based on car movement.

This issue of Cidades, Comunidades e Territórios is wrapped up with a critical recension of João Seixas’ book “A Cidade na Encruzilhada. Repensar a Cidade e a Sua Política”, prepared by Simone Tulumello. The importance of this work and the challenges it brings to the analysis of contemporary cities and their governance dilemmas is highlighted by the author of the book review. Being a book based in part on the author's practical experience as a consultant for the city of Lisbon opens however a wider and theoretically informed reflection on the challenges of the cities face the dynamics of contemporary restructuring and its effects on their governance and on urban policies.

 

Pedro Costa

Editor

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