Lazaros Karaliotas
Email:lazaros.karaliotas@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
BA in Economics (first), University of Macedonia, Greece, 2003-2008.
MA in Development Studies Research Training (Distinction) University of Manchester, 2008-2009.
“There is no such thing as ‘The Port of Balkans’: Urban Élite Configurations and Post-Political Politics in Thessaloniki’s Port Restructuring”
Supervisors: Erik Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika.
Research interests
Political economy, (urban) governance and politics, scalar re-configurations, post-politicization and post-democratization, urban (public) space, urban fantasies/utopias/imaginaries.
The process of urban restructuring since the passage from managerialism to entrepreneurialism has come under close scrutiny in the realms of geography and urban studies. Urban politics, the role of local elite configurations and the significant implications it bares for urban restructuring have constituted central aspects of the debate. However, new light can be shed into the discussion by focusing on the ongoing –always contingent – processes of post-politicization and post-democratization which unravel within and through the urban.
My project is structured around three intertwined axes and through the case of Thessaloniki’s port restructuring will seek to offer an insight on the complex relationship amongst them. Specifically, the processes of rescaling economic activity and institutional/regulatory frameworks – involving processes and networks of policy transfer – are understood to be depicted in and have significant impact upon urban restructuring, being the outcome of power relations and struggles and not a pre-given container of the process. Secondly, in such a context, the role of élite configurations, them being economic, political and cultural; in responding to the changing nature of contemporary capitalism and articulating diverse restructuring strategies, becomes of significant importance. Finally, the changing mode of political practice wherein these configurations operate, that have been characterized as post-political especially concerning the European urban context is influencing and simultaneously being influenced by the twofold rescaling processes and the actions of elite coalitions, rendering it vital in understanding and analyzing the urban restructuring process. It is exactly the interplay between these axes and their representation in and impact upon urban restructuring strategies that is explored.
In this sense, the symbolic construction of Thessaloniki’s port as the ‘Port of Balkans’ is, on the one hand, a central node in understanding the symbolic construction of Thessaloniki’s restructuring as a ‘competitive’, ‘creative’ and ‘sustainable’ city, while on the other, figures as a practice that blurs the economic and political power relations and their articulation within the urban context.
In doing so, my main objectives are:
- To critically engage on the debate around post-politicization and seek to link this discussion stemming from political philosophy/theory to contemporary geographical debates and especially the so-called ‘cultural’ and ‘scalar’ turns.
- To offer an analysis of the process of urban restructuring in Thessaloniki, focusing on the role of élite configurations and the interplay between local and global stakeholders concerning the city’s port restructuring, in order to formulate a grounded historical-geographic trajectory of its development.