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Autor(in)
Datum
2019-12-23Typ
- Journal Article
ETH Bibliographie
yes
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Abstract
Cyprus, the third-biggest island of the Mediterranean, situated in close proximity to southern Turkey and Syria, is home to a little more than 1 million inhabitants. Its geography is fragmented into the fertile Mesaoria plains of Nicosia district, the Trodoos mountains in the south, the Pentadaktylos mountains in the north, and 650 kilometres of coastline. Its political history is a micro-version of the conflicted histories of the Middle East. After the end of the British rule in 1960, the young independent state was torn by conflicts; and since the Greek coup d’état in 1974, which was followed by the Turkish invasion of the northern part of the island, Cyprus is divided into a Turkish-speaking North and Greek-speaking South Side. The most important consequence of what is known as the ‘Cyprus dispute’ however, is not only the longest UN-mandate in the world, but also the de facto expropriation of a third of the island’s population in 1974, meaning 162,000 Greek Cypriots and 48,000 Turkish Cypriots.
The unresolved postcolonial conflict is a conflict about property, as about a third of the land seems to have two legal owners, one from a bygone past and one from the present. The conflicted imaginaries of North and South, Muslim and Christian prevail not least because the wealth of the island is grounded in the real estate sector and its mobilization as capital under the guise of ‘development’. First, the development as a global tourist destination in the 1960s, then the development as a global tax paradise in the 1990s, and finally as a shopping destination for EU citizens since 2014.
We had planned our stay in Cyprus in the spring of 2018 years in advance. Once I had finished my PhD,I would take the invitation as a guest professor from the department of architecture, while Kaye would take a three-month sabbatical from his work as an editor of the German architectural magazine Bauwelt. The theme we sought to investigate was the recent processes of financialised urbanism in Cyprus’s coastal cities. After the banking crisis in 2013, the government of the Republic of Cyprus launched a combined sale of EU citizenship in tandem with luxury real estate to boost the economy. An investment of 2 million euros in a luxury apartment by the sea ensures a European passport along with discrete opportunities of tax evasion, the imaginary of sunshine, a sea view, and relative political stability.
If an architectural design studio and the processes of financialization constituted the official framework and leitmotif of our stay, the oral histories of colleagues and friends, everyday routines and touristic visits drew a different picture. They uncovered the relations within which climate change, the commodification of the coastline, global real estate transactions and Cyprus’s violent postcolonial conflict are inseparably imbricated into one another. Instead of investigating the sale of EU passports, I attempted to approach those relations between territories, environments and imaginaries through the chance collection of a diary. Following up on Guattari’s ecosophy between processes of subjectivation, the relation to others and the environment, I left the clear-cut history of the political economy of territorial development behind and followed the detours. Mehr anzeigen
Persistenter Link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000466094Publikationsstatus
publishedZeitschrift / Serie
Writingplace Journal for Architecture and LiteratureBand
(3)Seiten / Artikelnummer
Verlag
nai0I0 publishers; TU DelftThema
ARCHITECTURE; Cyprus; Real estate development; Postcolonialism; Financialisation; Fictional geographyOrganisationseinheit
01071 - MAS ETH Geschichte und Theorie der Arch. / MAS ETH in History and Theory of Arch.
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
Zugehörige Publikationen und Daten
Is part of: https://doi.org/10.7480/writingplace.3
Has part: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000468490
ETH Bibliographie
yes
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