4 Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia
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Christina Lee
Abstract
In March 2020, when Australia began shutting its borders and non-essential services were restricted due to COVID-19, I took to running outdoors when I could no longer go to the gym. Hitting the pavement at dusk, this ritual would mark the end of my workday. I would follow the same route that would take me past the local McDonald’s, where, without fail, there would be a steady stream of cars at the drive-through. I thought this peculiar given the pervasive fear of community transmission, the government mandate for people to stay at home unless absolutely necessary and tightened household spending in light of escalating unemployment rates and a possible recession. In the face of a pandemic that had left no part of society, and no country, untouched, the queue tellingly indicated daily exhaustion, as well as a desperate holding on to some semblance of normality in a world that had completely changed in a matter of weeks. The activity at the fast-food restaurant was a comic juxtaposition to the No. 212 bus that would, as if on cue on my evening runs, trundle by at that point, carrying no more than a handful of passengers. On some nights, there was only the bus driver.
Extraordinary images of cities appeared in news stories and online videos in the weeks following the start of the pandemic, which showed the impact of lockdowns and partial closures: the cleared skies over Delhi due to decreased air pollution; boars from the mountains roaming deserted roads in Barcelona; and the stillness of Siena’s dormant streets, interrupted by the fullness of voices singing in unison from apartments above.
Abstract
In March 2020, when Australia began shutting its borders and non-essential services were restricted due to COVID-19, I took to running outdoors when I could no longer go to the gym. Hitting the pavement at dusk, this ritual would mark the end of my workday. I would follow the same route that would take me past the local McDonald’s, where, without fail, there would be a steady stream of cars at the drive-through. I thought this peculiar given the pervasive fear of community transmission, the government mandate for people to stay at home unless absolutely necessary and tightened household spending in light of escalating unemployment rates and a possible recession. In the face of a pandemic that had left no part of society, and no country, untouched, the queue tellingly indicated daily exhaustion, as well as a desperate holding on to some semblance of normality in a world that had completely changed in a matter of weeks. The activity at the fast-food restaurant was a comic juxtaposition to the No. 212 bus that would, as if on cue on my evening runs, trundle by at that point, carrying no more than a handful of passengers. On some nights, there was only the bus driver.
Extraordinary images of cities appeared in news stories and online videos in the weeks following the start of the pandemic, which showed the impact of lockdowns and partial closures: the cleared skies over Delhi due to decreased air pollution; boars from the mountains roaming deserted roads in Barcelona; and the stillness of Siena’s dormant streets, interrupted by the fullness of voices singing in unison from apartments above.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
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The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
-
Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front Matter i
- Contents vii
- List of figures and tables ix
- Notes on contributors xi
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
-
Rethinking ruination in the post-crisis context
- Rem(a)inders of loss: a Lacanian approach to new urban ruins 21
- Dignifying the ruins: a former Jewish girls’ school in Berlin 35
- Traversing wastelands: reflections on an abandoned railway yard 53
- Building the new urban ruin: the ghost city of Ordos Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia 73
-
The political economy of urban vacant space
- Nullius no more? Valorising vacancy through urban agriculture in the settler-colonial ‘green city’ 91
- Conflicting rationalities and messy actualities of dealing with vacant housing in Halle/Saale, East Germany 109
- Post-disaster ruins: the old, the new and the temporary 125
- The post-crisis properties of demolishing Detroit, Michigan 145
- Guarding presence: absent owners and the labour of managing vacancy 163
-
Reappropriating urban vacant spaces
- Politicising vacancy and commoning housing in municipalist Barcelona 181
- Spatio-legal world-making in vacant buildings: property politics and squatting movements in the city of São Paulo 197
- (Im)Material infrastructures and the reproduction of alternative social projects in urban vacant spaces 211
- Tracing the role of material and immaterial infrastructures in imagining diverse urban futures: Dublin’s Bolt Hostel and Apollo House 229
- Conclusion: Centring vacancy – towards a research agenda 243
- Index 251
