Assimilation City: Inclusive Planning and Histories of Exclusion

Posted on March 16, 2023July 5, 2023 Posted in publicationsTagged diaspora, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, ottawaLeave a comment

Canadian Readings of Jewish History: From Knowledge to Interpretive Transmission
D. Maoz & E. Mayer (Eds.)
Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Abstract: Pressing concerns surrounding neighbourhood change, urban inequities, and social movements are burdened with complex histories of exclusion and the complicity of urban planning in reproducing unjust urban landscapes. Ottawa is among the many cities around the world to adopt an “equity and diversity lens” as a tool for tolerance, inclusion, and equity. Within the City’s Official Plan and planning policies, there are pronounced and strange interplays between inclusion and diversity policies and progressive narratives. By tracing the conflation between inclusion and equity in city planning documents and discourse, I reveal how these policies and narrative reinforces normative values and identities of majority groups. By intersecting ontological, theological, and material-spatial analyses, Jewish urban experience unsettles many dominant narratives of place and belonging, whereby place and meaning of place exist in tension with, and in response to, dominant culture. In this paper, I offer a critical autoethnographic case study of looking for and through Jewishness in Ottawa’s urban core. I argue that a deeper interrogation of Jewish histories and experience of and in the city not only offers insights for Jewish cultural studies but might also be placed in meaningful dialogue with other critical urban geographies.

Published: 16 March 2023

ISBN13: 978-1-5275-9003-8

Assimilation City: Inclusive planning and histories of exclusion

Posted on May 26, 2020August 11, 2020 Posted in ConferencesTagged assimilation, city for all, csjs, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, urban inequitiesLeave a comment

26 May 2020 (conference postponed to 2021)
Canadian Society for Jewish Studies Annual Meeting, Ottawa ON

Today’s pressing issues surrounding neighbourhood change, urban inequities, and social movements are burdened with complex histories of exclusion. Ottawa is among the many cities around the world to adopt the “city for all” slogan as an expression of tolerance, inclusion, and equity. Within the City’s Official Plan and planning policies, there are pronounced and strange interplays between inclusion/equity policies and multiculturalism/diversity narratives. By tracing the conflation between inclusion and equity in city planning documents and discourse, I reveal how the “city for all” narrative reinforces normative values and identities.

Continue reading “Assimilation City: Inclusive planning and histories of exclusion” →

Schlemihls and squatters: undesirable urban people and places and utopian imaginaries

Posted on May 24, 2017May 27, 2017 Posted in Conferences, Jewish thoughtTagged diaspora, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, punk, undesirablesLeave a comment

Presented at: Canadian Society for Jewish Studies Annual Conference, Montreal QC

Both Jews and punks are generally (mis)represented as predominantly urban cultural groups—both with histories of being “undesirable” people who occupy marginal and “undesirable” spaces of the city. Yet, little scholarship directly investigates their spatial practices and experience or their relation to dominant city-making processes such as urban planning. What is the relationship between (un)desirable people and (un)desirable spaces? Who controls the definition or creation of urban desirability? Continue reading “Schlemihls and squatters: undesirable urban people and places and utopian imaginaries” →

Sacred Zoning: Spatial Demarcations in Jewish Thought

Posted on May 30, 2016June 30, 2016 Posted in ConferencesTagged antisemitism, dark side of planning, diaspora, diasporic architectures, discriminatory zoning, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, place-making, spatial turn, zoningLeave a comment

Presented at: CSJS annual conference, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2016. Calgary AB.

Abstract: The stereotypical landscape of human settlement in North America is that of an endless grid which was laid down by surveyors and turned land into a commodity that can be traded. On this seemingly neutral pattern, places emerge in which people endow space with meaning: the “other side of the tracks,” the elite suburb, the civic centre, the green oasis. This spatial differentiation is in part governed by public land-use regulations, most often known as zoning. In the process of managing the development and shape of urban environments, zoning imposes structure and limits on the form and function of cities, and by extension on people. Marginalized groups are especially subject to exclusion from the Master Plan. Continue reading “Sacred Zoning: Spatial Demarcations in Jewish Thought” →

Practice space: TEDx ElginSt

Posted on March 22, 2014June 30, 2016 Posted in Walks & TalksTagged bookmobile, impromptu playground, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, park(ing) day, parklet, sukkot, tactical urbanism, TEDx, tedx Elgin StLeave a comment

Talk given at TEDx ElginSt, March 2014

Wandering dwellings: Diasporic architectures

Posted on June 29, 2012June 30, 2016 Posted in ConferencesTagged diaspora, diasporic architectures, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, M.Arch. thesis, place-makingLeave a comment

Presented at: Diasporas: Exploring Critical Issues. 5th Global Conference 2012. Oxford UK.

Abstract: Historically, the Wandering Jew is perceived of as dehumanized and rendered eternally homeless through the Euro-Christian construction of the his self and his home as Other. Rather than a representation of the intrinsic existential condition of the Diaspora, the tragic homelessness experienced by the Wandering Jew is, I argue, a hegemonic construct of Euro-Christian ideology. According to what Daniel Boyarin calls “diasporic consciousness”, the Jewish people identify with a multiplicity of places simultaneously, carrying a sense of the familiar into the foreign. Continue reading “Wandering dwellings: Diasporic architectures” →

Return to a Foreign Home

Posted on June 4, 2010June 30, 2016 Posted in ConferencesTagged diaspora, diasporic architectures, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, M.Arch. thesis, place-makingLeave a comment

Presented at: Homelands: Diasporas Return. Kultrans 2010, University of Oslo. Oslo, Norway.

Abstract: Historically, the Jewish People identified with a multiplicity of places simultaneously, carrying a sense of the familiar into the foreign, and navigating between seemingly contradictory states – interior/exterior, permanent/transient, mind/body, local/foreign. This is what Daniel Boyarin has called the Diasporic consciousness of the Jewish People. In this context home is understood as a mediator in a nuanced existence between the perceived and constructed dualities of life, and facilitator of transition – a journey rather than a rooted existence. Continue reading “Return to a Foreign Home” →

Wandering Dwellings: the Diasporic Home

Posted on October 24, 2007June 30, 2016 Posted in ConferencesTagged diaspora, diasporic architectures, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, M.Arch. thesis, place-makingLeave a comment

Presented at: A Celebration of Jewish Studies in Ottawa 2007. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa ON.

Abstract: Deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, the “Home” becomes the intersection of the transient self and the stationary architecture where the self is free to recollect in its interiority and simultaneously position itself in relationship with the exterior elements. Both the function and form of the architecture of “Home” are understood as a (1) mnemonic device to evoke recollection and (2) facilitator of physical relationship with the other through its openings and transitional spaces. The re-construction of a Jewish home is therefore intrinsically tied to a re-collection of the fragmented cultural and tectonic memories of house images carried by the Diaspora, specifically the importance attributed to the mezuzah, talit, tefilin, the sukkah and eruvim. The Wandering Jew suggests a framework for reinterpreting the relationship between the heimliche (literally the home, rootedness, hidden, or burried), the unheimliche.

Monsters in a Strange House

Posted on November 3, 2006June 30, 2016 Posted in ConferencesTagged diaspora, diasporic architectures, jewish place-making, Jewish thought, M.Arch. thesis, Merchant of Venice, place-making, shylockLeave a comment

Presented at: Envisioning Home. CUNY Graduate Conference 2006. New York, NY.

Abstract: In Jewish mysticism, beth, the Hebrew word for home and second letter of the alphabet, represents the manifests of duality and beginning of plurality, ie. the first ‘other’. The first letter of the Torah, beth, further represents the dualistic nature of creation. The lack of differentiation, however, between ‘home’ and ‘house’ in Hebrew precludes the usual binary connotations of private/public, self/community, now/then, us/them; extending the sense of place beyond the constraints of space. Expanding upon Heidegger’s theories, Christian Norberg-Schulz proposes that man’s ability to identify with place, as it is poetically experienced, is his ability to identify with himself and to feel at home. Continue reading “Monsters in a Strange House” →

Sarah B. Gelbard

Tag: jewish place-making