Presented in conjunction with the Kemp Family Symposium on Geography and History, October 2-3, 2014. Follow the link listed under "Web and Social" below for the full symposium schedule of events.

Abstract: Twenty years ago, Professor Mitchell argued the importance of examining how urban space was produced as landscape versus how it was produced as public space. In this talk, he will return to the site of that argument – People’s Park in Berkeley – and examine recent efforts to redevelop it. In doing so Professor Mitchell will elucidate a key argument about the production of space, namely that actually existing spaces develop out of the capitalist tendency to produce “abstract space” (which aligns closely to “landscape”), a tendency countered by struggles to create “differential space.”

Don Mitchell is a Distinguished Professor of Geography in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

The Kemp Family Symposium on Geography and History has been made possible by a generous contribution from the Kemp Family Fund, consisting of four generations of University of Michigan graduates with a lifelong commitment to encourage the study of history; not only as a way to learn about the past, but as a guide to understand the present and to anticipate the future. Additional support from the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, Department of History, International Institute, Rackham Graduate School, and Institute for the Humanities.