Through a global cross-section of case studies of some of the most important urban upheavals in recent history, this book envisions the future of the successful urban protest as a whole-society movement in which all aspects of a city’s morphology are effectively leveraged.
The chapters in this volume investigate some of the most important urban upheavals in recent history through different political, social and cultural contexts. Through this cross section of case studies from Ukraine, Belarus, Myanmar, Lebanon, Spain, United States, South Korea and Iran, authors envision the future of the successful urban protest as a whole-society movement in which all aspects of a city’s morphology are effectively leveraged. The volume illustrates the ways in which these protests consciously and subconsciously drew lessons from each other’s experiences and integrated physical and virtual tools. Urban environments shape, facilitate, and/or complicate protests and the degree to which protesters recognize and internalize these features is often key to their efficacy. Moreover, emerging protest strategies proliferate and change to fit the context in which they occur. Using interviews, mapping, architectural and planning-scale documentation of urban morphologies, this volume traces the development of important protests and the evolution of protest strategy in balancing the physical and the virtual. It will be of interest to architects, urban sociologists, urban planners, historians, political scientists, journalists, and anyone else interested in how the city shapes resistance.
Introduction: Beyond the Plaza
1. Kyiv: Places of Revolution, 2013-2014
2. Urban Form, Social Control, and Resistance in Belarus
3. Protesting
Underground: SADDs Protests in Seoul Metro Stations
4. Urban Insurgencies:
Forms of Solidarity in Beiruts Central District
5. Shifting Landscapes of
Digital and Urban Dissent in Tehran: Dynamics of Neighborhood Resistance in
the Screen Age
6. From Alternative Protest Tactics to the Digital
Infrastructure of Resistance in Myanmar
7. Racial Territoriality and Protest
8. A Tale of Two Urban Refuges in Spain: How a Daily Rhythm Sustains Durable
Rebellion
Kateryna Malaia is an architectural historian and educator at Kharkiv School of Architecture and the University of Utah. She researches housing under pressure and in times of change. Her first book, Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room was published in 2023. Her book Mass Housing in Ukraine (with Philipp Meuser) was published in September 2024.
Nathan Mark Hutson is an urban planner and currently serves as a Visiting Professor of Urban Studies and Postwar Reconstruction at the Kyiv School of Economics. He also serves as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is a fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and is an active member of the Ro3kvit Coalition for Ukraine and the American Planning Association's Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group.
