People's Spaces Coping, Familiarizing, Creating [Hardcover]

Who controls space? Powerful corporations, institutions, and individuals have great power to create physical and political space through income and influence. Peoples Spacesattempts to understand the struggle between people and institutions in the spaces they make.

Current literature on cities and planning often looks at popular resistance to institutional authority through open, mass-movement protest. These views overlook the fact that subaltern classes are not often afforded the luxury of open, organized political protest. Peoples Spaces investigates individuals diverse approaches in reconciling the difference between their spatial needs and spatial availability. Through case studies in Southeast Asia, India, Nepal, and Central Asia, the book explores how people accommodate their spatial needs for everyday activities and cultural practices within a larger abstract spatial context produced by the power-holders.

Introduction: Seeing and Acknowledging Peoples Spaces: Deprivations and Challenges 1. Indigenizing the Colonial City: The Ceylonese Transformation of 19th-Century Colombo 2. Feminizing the White-Male City: Women Gaining Access to Colonial Colombo 3. Spaces of Survival: Peoples Adaptation of a War Zone in Sri Lanka 4. From Resistance to Familiarization: Living in the World Heritage Site at Galle Fort (with Sanjeewani Habarakada) 5. Beginning Spaces: Young Peoples Struggles for Dwellings in Tashkent (with Hikoyat Salimova) 6. Spaces of Recovery: Rebuilding Lives after the Tsunami in Kalametiya 7. Defending the Habitat: Redevelopment, Illegibility, and the Strength of Dharavi 8. Spaces of Modernity: Daanchi between Vernacular and Modern - (with Gaurab Kc) 9. Everyday Building: The Production of the Middle-Class Environment in Gangtok (with Sweata Pradhan) 10. Peoples Neighborhood Center: The Handiya in Sri Lanka (with Nirmani Liyanage) Conclusions: Production of Social Space: From Copl#g