Category: Uncategorized
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The Populist Right-Wing Mayors of Europe
Previously governed by mainstream parties since World War II, some cities are now laboratories for small-scale experiments of this radical ideology. Read on at City Lab
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Vienna: A Divided City?
This post originally appeared on the 4 Cities blog On 4 December, Austria went to the polls to vote for their President for the third time in 2016. The first round was held on 24 April, with a second round run-off between the two leading candidates, Alexander Van der Bellen and Norbert Hofer, following on…
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“The Manchester miracle”: how did a city in decline become the poster child for urban regeneration?
This blog originally appeared on CityMetric, the New Statesman’s cities site In an April 2015, a poll commissioned by the Manchester Evening News found that 72 per cent of respondents were in favour of Manchester seceding from the United Kingdom. Like the post-Brexit petition for London independence, perhaps the poll shouldn’t be taken too seriously.…
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Thesis step one: the second version
I’m researching the effect of far-right control of European cities for my master’s dissertation. Two months ago, I posted my first attempt at the outline, including the questions I’d be answering and the approach I’d take. Further research has informed a change of plan, as I outline here. I’ll follow this structure to explain the new…
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The Italian Far-Right Mayor Cleaning Up
In this blog I regularly share excerpts from my research into far-right cities. What happens when parties with non-mainstream, often extreme, policy platforms are given control of urban administrations? Verona elected a mayor from the Lega Nord (Northern League) in 2007. Since then, mayor Flavio Tosi has pursued a distinctive path to change the northern Italian city, one aspect of which is…
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Kindergarten Kulturkampf
As previously discussed in this blog, I’m researching far-right cities for my Master’s Thesis, including the Austrian city of Wels. What happens when parties with non-mainstream, often extreme, policy platforms are given control of urban administrations? Wels elected a mayor from the FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria) in 2015 and therefore offers us insights today. This post will look…
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Refugee Centre Blocked by Austrian Far-Right Mayor
The threat of increasing far-right rule has risen even higher in the media’s long and growing list of global fears this week. Radical parties across Europe have been strengthened by the victory of the successful anti-immigrant Brexit campaign and the near victory of the far-right candidate in the Austrian election. We should remember that far-right power is in fact already…
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Istanbul: the Neo-Authoritarian City in the Age of Neoliberalism
This post originally appeared in June 2016 on The Proto City, an Urban Studies blog run by researchers at the University of Amsterdam. The concept of neoliberalism has revealed similarities between urban developments and resistance movements across the globe, demonstrating the deeper unifying threads of the contemporary configuration of capitalism that connect diverse urban contexts. This…
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The Research Question (part one)
So close and yet so far. This week I managed to identify the problem statement and theoretical framework for my thesis, with the next vital step deciding upon my research question*. Once that signpost is established, I should be on my way: ready to begin the research itself. However, as I’ll explain in this post, I’m stuck at a crossroads, with too many research questions…
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Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina
This post originally appeared in Here & Now, the quarterly magazine from the Academy of Urbanism, in Spring 2015. The AoU is the leading UK organisation for urbanists, covering planning and design, development and globalisation, community and politics, and the arts. I visited Sarajevo in December 2014 as a guest of Remembering Srebrenica, a British charitable initiative raising awareness…
Dr Fred Paxton 