BARNARD/COLUMBIA URBAN REVIEW
Letter from the Associate Director of Urban Studies
I am excited to introduce the third issue of the Barnard Columbia Urban Review. The review remains true to its original conception as a forum for student research and interventions in our understanding of urban spaces and places, New York foremost. It is my privilege to work with a group of students who are above all curious, interested, and critical. That they are also collaborative, organized, and dedicated is clearly shown by another excellent issue of BCUR. It may be too easy or too obvious to characterize the contents of this issue in terms of a broad conception of (human) rights to the city and the production of urban space – that risks encompassing nearly everything we do. But I challenge you to find a better one. Bella Barnes’ examination of the historiography of sex work in Buenos Aires points to the ways that bodies moving through urban spaces and regulations that govern them constitute the understandings of those places. Benjamin Pacho and Lola Rael examine housing and houselessness from the perspective of rights discourses in light of different kinds of epidemics, one viral, the other political-economic (both political-economic?), that both reveal the depths of systemic failures to guarantee shelter in advanced economies like the UK and USA. Moreover, the work of various photographers, artists, and architects complements these intellectual interventions by showing us the city as it is and could be. My congratulations to the contributors to this issue and to the staff of the review for all of their work in assembling it. As we wind up another strange year at Barnard and Columbia, in New York, and in the world, the appearance of the BCUR should remind us of the ways that we can work together to make new knowledge and how much that matters. Aaron Passell Associate Director Urban Studies Barnard College | Columbia University April 25, 2022
SPRING 2022 ISSUE 3
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