Leonieke Bolderman

This paper explores through a case study of Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, how the expansion of an urban environment that seemingly should accommodate women's everyday lives continues to be shaped by gendered challenges. Based on 13 life history interviews with elderly female residents, the analysis shows that (i) urban change is constituted by gendered, embodied, relational, and infrastructural practices of social reproduction, and that (ii) life in this island city is made in place and in movement through relational practices that cross borders. Furthermore, (iii) the life history approach shows the importance of temporal depth for grasping infrastructural urban change across time and generations. Finally, (iv) by bringing island studies into dialogue with social infrastructure scholarship, this paper yields a dual contribution: (1) recognition for invisible labour in islanded urban life, and (2) expanding the relational understanding of social infrastructures.

In this article, the ways murals can become symbols of both heritage and divisive gentrification processes are analyzed in the context of the contemporary media city. Taking the case of Detroit, USA, how is the urban imaginary of the “music city” mediated through street art, and its meaning reconstituted and reframed in the contemporary networked mediasphere? Applying a cultural justice perspective, a selection of Detroit music murals, their Instagram lives, and the public debates surrounding three specific street art projects are analyzed along (1) the symbologies of place the murals represent, (2) the historiographies of space attached to the murals, (3) the social ties and community networks that keep the murals in place or protest their presence. This study shows that the proposed cultural justice framework offers an opportunity to more fully understand how cultural materialities such as murals shape mediated public space in areas of gentrification.