Gruia Bădescu
Research Interests: Post-War Reconstruction of Cities, Memory and Memorialization of Difficult Pasts (War, Dictatorship), Legacies of Empire, Urban Geopolitics, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, Cities and Urban Design, Urban Imaginaries, Urban and Architectural History, Entangled History
Urban imaginaries and political ruptures: Three aspiring Parises and their discontents
Historians and social scientists have increasingly traced the circulations of urban models. However, the impact of political ruptures on how cities relate to these models has received less attention. This project examines the development and transformations of such identifications historically, analyzing three cities on different continents which reshaped themselves as “Parises” of their respective regions and then endured political ruptures such as dictatorships and transitions or wars and reconstructions: Bucharest as the “Paris of the Balkans,” Buenos Aires as the “Paris of South America,” and Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East.” By using the lens of the urban imaginary, which comprises the ways in which urban populations understand and represent their city, this project investigates how these reference points were shaped, how they impacted the built environment, and how they endured political ruptures. It traces the endurance and modifications of the Parisian imaginary during and after a civil war (Beirut), a right-wing military dictatorship (Buenos Aires), and a socialist regime (Bucharest) up to today.
The project brings an urban angle to the research on multiple modernities. Moreover, it contributes to our understanding of the limitations and perspectives of circulating urban models such as smart cities and global cities. Finally, through this interdisciplinary approach rooted in historical research, architectural and urban studies, and geography, it showcases the relationships underpinning the triad of cityscape, urban imaginary, and political change.
Gruia Bădescu is a Research Fellow at Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a lecturer and research associate at the University of Oxford before joining Konstanz in 2018. His research examines the relationship between spatial reconfigurations and the transformation of societies in the aftermath of ruptures. He is a founder and co-convener of the Memory, Space and Place and the Memory and Critical Human Rights working groups of the Memory Studies Association.