Urban Interstices: The Aesthetics and the Politics of the In-between

’In a world of shattered polarities and twisted dichotomies, this important new book about urban interstices provides a unique and much needed roadmap into an emergent new conceptual geography of post-suburban territories.’ Roger Keil, The City Institute at York University, Canada ’Left over or in-between spaces in cities are receiving renewed attention as spaces of possibility, for everything from informal economies and political action to artistic and architectural interventions in the service of public engagement or hipster buzz. This terrific book on urban interstices makes an important contribution to these discussions. The chapters in the book engage with urban interstices not as left over places that simply exist, but as space-times that are constantly in production with complex relationships to events, subjects, laws, technologies, powers, projects and plans. Through engagements with a fascinating variety of places and practices, the authors show us how the possibilities of interstices can be identified and interrogated. Highly recommended.’ Kurt Iveson, University of Sydney, Australia ’Rethinking critically urban space is what social theory and urban studies are trying to do since the spatial turn. What this book suggests is a radical u-turn in both perception of space and analysis. It invites us to rethink the very dialectic between space, time and social situations. It is a reconsideration of the leftover, the apparently ephemeral, the event, the niche, all those marginal spaces that have been too easily discarded as mere cracks in the pavement of urban theory. This book, edited and written by affirmed and soon-to-be affirmed authors, does the job in a convincingly vivid way. The in-betweenness of our life now has its spatial handbook.’ Giovanni Semi, University of Turin, Italy