02-11-15 // BINATIONAL URBANISM – ON THE ROAD TO PARADISE

Bernd Upmeyer’s book on “Binational Urbanism – On the Road to Paradise” got published by the Amsterdam-based publishing house trancityxvaliz.

“Never before was the mobility of individuals higher than it is today. People work and live not only in different places, but often even in different countries. Binational Urbanism examines the way of life of people who start a second life in a second city in a second nation-state, without saying goodbye to their first city. They live in constant transit between two homes, between two countries.
Binational urbanists come from all strata of society, from the highly educated and cosmopolitan creative classes to the working class. Through their continuous change of location, binational urbanists appear to be living in a state that is characterized by a constant longing, or a constant homesickness, for the other city. The author interviewed people of Turkish origin currently living in Germany, who commute regularly between cities in Germany and Turkey. These people live, whether deliberately and consciously chosen or not, an innovative urban way of life. They are not rooted residents of their host country Germany, but are in fact extremely mobile and utilise the best of both cultures.
Binational urbanism has the potential to become one of the most interesting forms of life in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, this book creates a theory of binational urbanism that is developed from these interviews.”

Introduction
Just as bigamists tend to enter into a second marriage before their existing marriage is dissolved, binational urbanists, at some point in time, begin to live in a second city, in a second nation-state, without saying goodbye to their first city. Binational urbanism is thus a special form of transnationalism, a sociological phenomenon, and results from social interactions across the boundaries of nation-states, as well as a special case of multinational urbanism, in which people identify themselves with more than two cities in more than two nations and trigger social interaction between them… continue reading the text in Writings.

Title: Binational Urbanism – On the Road to Paradise
Author: Bernd Upmeyer
Date: August 2015
Publisher: trancityxvaliz
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ISBN: 978-94-92095-06-0
Pages: 224