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The routes of “post-pandemic gentrification” in Amsterdam and Lima

Mirtha Lorena del Castillo Durand (Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation, UvA)

This project sheds light on the ways in which patterns of accumulation of housing and/or urban space are being reoriented in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. By comparing Lima and Amsterdam, we ask where and how a new round of post-crisis urban restructuring is taking place to get a better grasp of what we may call “post-pandemic gentrification”. We look to answer the following questions:

  • What investment strategies are real-estate markets developing to overcome the post-pandemic crisis?
  • What narratives are used to drive the post-pandemic housing accumulation?

The Seed Grant supports the organization of a workshop with experts on European and Latin American Cities (Most notably Amsterdam and Lima), and the participation in the workshop “Dislocating Urban Studies”.

Greenhouse Futures: an ethnography of a complex socio-ecological system

Rebeca Ibáñez Martín (Anthropology of Health, Care and the Body, CUS, UvA)

Attending to greenhouses’ economic expansion, this research will ethnographically study the socio-ecological effects of greenhouse horticultural production in order to characterize critical debates around the Anthropocene. In Europe, the hotspots for horticulture production are the Netherlands and Spain. Both draw on similar infrastructures (greenhouses), and deal with water, waste, crops, and labour as resources to be managed. Living organisms, like plants or resources like water, appearing in the past in the margins of ethnographies are now taken to the centre of our enquiries, providing a new focus on the complex milieu of infrastructures as a multispecies encounter. This project thinks further multispecies conviviality and the value of food within greenhouses ecologies. The Seed Grant supports the organization of a workshop with scholars from multiple disciplines, as well as preliminary fieldwork.

Towards an urban degrowth

Federico Savini (Urban Planning, CUS, UvA), and Angelos Varvarousis (Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona)

The Seed Grant supports the organization of a one half-day international symposium on urban degrowth and the recording, editing, and curating of a video on degrowth and urbanization, using the excerpts of this symposium. The overall aim of the project is to bring together scholars in urban degrowth and degrowth planning, from multiple disciplines that include political-ecology, planning, urban studies, urban sociology, political science, and governance studies. The symposium will be publicly streamed.

Housing Talks and Podcast

Amber Howard (Geographies of Globalizations, CUS, UvA), Vera Vrijmoeth (Challenges to Democratic Representations, CUS, UvA); Junru Cui (Geographies of Globalizations, CUS, UvA), and Marieke van der Star, UvA).

This project aims to organize a series of housing talks through inviting academics from diverse disciplines and stakeholders with different backgrounds to share their knowledge and discuss on big housing topics of the 21st century. In each event, at least one academic and one stakeholder from within the related field debate where problems lie and what potential solutions may be. Topics will include: housing wellbeing, housing and sustainability, housing ethics and justice, housing accessibility and affordability, housing financialization and its economic effects, and housing commons.