Dimitris Venizelos (KCL) - 2018-19 Students
dimitris.venizelos@kcl.ac.uk

Urbanisms of Difference – The Landscapes of Leisure

Space and contextual difference affect the ways processes of global urbanization creatively destroy the socio-material landscapes of late 20th C. Under this hypothesis and drawing from the disciplinary perspectives of critical urban theory, geography and architectural theory, this doctoral research will investigate the role of context and contextual difference in the shaping of the landscapes of tourism. The research will focus on the tourist landscapes of Eastern Mediterranean – and particularly of Greece and Cyprus – as exemplary cases of inextricably connected processes of post-Fordist economic restructuring and environmental reshaping. By exposing the agency of context in these processes, this research wishes to add nuances to theoretical formulations that explicate urbanization as a universal phenomenon; and contribute to a discourse that studies history, materiality, form and space as being part of the production of the urban, and not merely as passive outcomes of it.