Navigating urban standstill

Abstract

This article is a response to Bob Catterall's call for urban studies ‘able to listen to, read and touch the sounds, sights and textures of the city’ (2004, 309) and a contribution to the debate on navigating urban space that has been recurring in CITY. I argue that an inclusion of places of urban standstill complements the analyses of navigating urban space that focus primarily on movement and that it allows for a more inclusive understanding of urban space in general. In his portrayals of urban life the Polish hip-hop artist Peja presents the most neglected streets of Jez˙yce, one of Poznań's inner-city neighbourhoods. His gaze pierces through backyards, gateways, and street corners, thus revealing an ‘other city’ behind the polished image of Poznań as communicated through municipal media and place marketing. The MC acknowledges the city caught in standstill and the people who inhabit the urban spaces behind the threshold of visibility. The sites of urban standstill dominating Peja's oeuvre are liminal not only because of their literal in-betweenness, but also because of their inherent potential for transition. An avid observer and chronicler of urban decay, social inequalities and paralyzing inertia, Peja holds unrelinquished faith in human endurance.

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