The Last Mosque in Tel Aviv, and Other Stories of Disjuncture

Ruins serve as a poignant reminder of loss and destruction. Yet, ruins are not always physical, and they are not always best understood through visual language—the sense memory of loss extends for displaced people far beyond crumbling monuments. Exploring the sonic element of loss and displacement is key to understanding the way people relate to the spaces they have to leave. This article explores the particular disjuncture of staging and commemorating Arabness in Tel Aviv, the “Hebrew City.” The disjuncture of being Arab in Tel Aviv is apparent to any visitor who walks down the beach promenade, and this article examines the main sites of Arab contestation on the border with Jaffa. Most apparent to a visitor is the Hassan Bek Mosque, the most visible Islamic symbol in Tel Aviv; I describe the process of gaining admission as a non-Muslim, and of discussing the painful and indelible memory of 1948 with worshipers. Delving deeper into the affective staging of ruin, I trace Umm Kulthum’s famous concert in Jaffa (officially Palestine at the time), and examine the way her imprint has moved across the troubled urban border of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. A ruins-based analysis of the urban sites of disjuncture in Tel Aviv, therefore, offers a glimpse into underground sonic subcultures that hide in plain sight.

Cognitive geographies of bordering: The case of urban neighbourhoods in transition

Linking borders to cognition can widen our understandings of space–society relations. In this contribution, border-making will be related to the creation of urban place distinctions and place narratives that create a sense of specific “thereness.” The focus is not on cognitive mappings of urban borders as such. Rather, border-making will be revealed as an intersubjective creation of meaning in the guise of socially communicated narratives of place distinction—stories and knowledges of place that reflect embodied experience of place specificity and relationality with regard to wider urban contexts. I argue that the utility of interpreting urban spaces and places in this fashion lies in understanding why borders within society are created and how they become evident in the process of meaning-making. This perspective also helps us understand the significance of place and why cities and their neighbourhoods are continuously appropriated and reappropriated in social, cultural, and political terms. As borders tell stories, border-making itself involves narratives of change and continuity that can reveal much about how places function—or fail to function—as communities. Developing an approach elaborated by Scott and Sohn, examples of urban border-making will be gleaned from Berlin and Warsaw.

Meetings, disagreements, uses and appropiations in the Colombia- Venezuela urban border space/Encuentros, desencuentros, usos y apropiaciones en el espacio urbano fronterizo colombo-venezolano

El artículo analiza la percepción de la calidad de la vida urbana del centro poblado de la Parada (Villa del Rosario-Colombia, frontera con Venezuela) en función de las características sociodemográficas de sus residentes: género, edad y tiempo de residencia, por medio de la adaptación de la encuesta “índice de percepción de calidad de vida urbana del Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Chile”. Se destaca como hallazgo principal el alto grado de satisfacción de residir en la zona, a pesar de la percepción negativa de la calidad de vida urbana en torno al espacio público, problemas ambientales y servicios básicos, debido a procesos de adaptación y cambios de usos del suelo con el fin de satisfacer las necesidades socioeconómicas del entorno.