This blog is a result of the graduate seminar series “Interfacing the (In)formal City” 2021. Rianne Riemens March 17th, 2021 Google is not a good neighbor:   platform presence contested  A new stream of activism contests the commercialization of public urban spaces by tech  companies. This type of activism critiques the rise of platform urbanism: the…

The [urban interfaces] project called Creative Urban Methods (CRUM) can be followed on a new page from now on: CRUM. Make sure to visit this webpage as well!

Written by Bastiaan van Manen   In the context of the current environmental crisis that our planet is facing, more and more disciplines are refocusing their attention on taking what Lupton (2019) has dubbed a more-than-human approach to understanding the world. This perspective involves recognizing the various ways in which the human and the “nonhuman”…

Written by Kas van der Molen     The Wadden Islands – stretching from the northwest of the Netherlands through Germany all the way up to the west of Denmark – are environmentally fragile and protected areas. One of the remarkable aspects of the area is that the sea is completely drained on low tide,…

Written by Nicoleta Cîrlig   Moldovan Traditional Carpet. Source: Diez.md.   Deborah Lupton describes animism as a term used in sociocultural theory to refer to the attribution of life, human characteristics or spirituality to phenomena that are otherwise culturally considered non-living or nonhuman. It is a relational perspective that views humans and nonhumans as interconnected…