Showing papers on "Urban geography published in 2019"

New scholarly pathways on green gentrification: What does the urban ‘green turn’ mean and where is it going?:

Abstract: Scholars in urban political ecology, urban geography, and planning have suggested that urban greening interventions can create elite enclaves of environmental privilege and green gentrification, an...

Financial geography II: Financial geographies of housing and real estate:

Abstract: Geographers have started studying residential (housing) and commercial real estate (offices, retail, leisure) at the intersection of financial and urban geographies to understand how the built envi...

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies

Abstract: Provides comprehensive coverage of major topics in urban and regional studies Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Anthony Orum, this definitive reference work covers central and emergent topics in the field, through an examination of urban and regional conditions and variation across the world. It also provides authoritative entries on the main conceptual tools used by anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and political scientists in the study of cities and regions. Among such concepts are those of place and space; geographical regions; the nature of power and politics in cities; urban culture; and many others. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies captures the character of complex urban and regional dynamics across the globe, including timely entries on Latin America, Africa, India and China. At the same time, it contains illuminating entries on some of the current concepts that seek to grasp the essence of the global world today, such as those of Friedmann and Sassen on 'global cities'. It also includes discussions of recent economic writings on cities and regions such as those of Richard Florida. Comprised of over 450 entries on the most important topics and from a range of theoretical perspectives Features authoritative entries on topics ranging from gender and the city to biographical profiles of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright Takes a global perspective with entries providing coverage of Latin America and Africa, India and China, and, the US and Europe Includes biographies of central figures in urban and regional studies, such as Doreen Massey, Peter Hall, Neil Smith, and Henri Lefebvre The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies is an indispensable reference for students and researchers in urban and regional studies, urban sociology, urban geography, and urban anthropology.

Knowledge circulation in urban geography/urban studies, 1990–2010: Testing the discourse of Anglo-American hegemony through publication and citation patterns:

Abstract: This article approaches the question of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies by examining publication and citation patterns. The past one or two decades have witnessed critical arguments about ...

Green infrastructure, green space, and sustainable urbanism: geography’s important role

Abstract: This paper is a broad review of green infrastructure theory and practice relative to urban sustainability and the space for geographers in these discussions. We use examples from various urban sustainability plans to highlight ways in which green infrastructure is being conceptualized and implemented. We explore how geography contributes research on green infrastructure as well as the emerging practices as seen within sustainability plans. We identify four areas in which geographers can influence both green infrastructure theory and practice: 1) scale; 2) mapping distribution; 3) sensitivity to place and locale; and 4) equity and access. We conclude that in these areas geographers have tremendous opportunity contribute more deliberately to sustainable urbanism.

Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China

Abstract: Nowhere has the scale and scope of urbanization been larger than in China over the last few decades. We analyze Chinese city development between the years 1996 and 2014 using data for the urbanized components of prefecture-level cities. We show that, despite much variability and fast economic and demographic change, China is undergoing transformations similar to the historical trajectory of other urban systems. We also show that the distinguishing signs of urban economies—superlinear scaling of agglomeration effects in economic productivity and economies of scale in land use—also characterize Chinese cities. We then analyze the structure of economic change in Chinese cities using a variety of metrics, characterizing employment, firms and households. Population size estimates remain a major challenge for Chinese cities, as official numbers are often reported based on the Hukou registration system. We use the information in the residuals to scaling relations for economic quantities to predict actual resident population and show that these estimates agree well with data for a subset of cities for which counts of total resident population exist. We conclude with a list of issues that must be better understood and measured to make sense of present urban development trajectories in China.

Fiscal geographies: “Placing” taxation in urban geography

Abstract: As the state’s primary means of both redistributing wealth and incentivizing private investment, tax plays an outsized role in a range of critical urban processes, including (re)development, gentri...

Urban geography and scaling of contemporary Indian cities

Abstract: This paper attempts to create a first comprehensive analysis of the integrated characteristics of contemporary Indian cities, using scaling and geographical analysis over a set of diverse indicators. We use data of urban agglomerations in India from the Census 2011 and from a few other sources to characterize patterns of urban population density, infrastructure, urban services, crime and technological innovation. Many of the results are in line with expectations from urban theory and with the behaviour of analogous quantities in other urban systems in both high and middle-income nations. India is a continental scale, fast developing urban system, and consequently there are also a number of interesting exceptions and surprises related to both particular quantities and strong regional patterns of variation. Specifically, these relate to the potential salience of gender and caste in driving sub-linear scaling of crime and to the geography of technological innovation. We characterize these patterns in detail for crime and invention, and connect them to the existing literature on their determinants in a specifically Indian context. The paucity of data at the urban level and the absence of official definitions for functional cities in India create a number of limitations and caveats to any present analysis. We discuss these shortcomings and spell out the challenge for a systematic statistical data collection relevant to cities and urban development in India.

Green cities? Urbanization, trade, and the environment

Abstract: Is urbanization good for the environment? This paper establishes a simple core–periphery model with monocentric cities, which comprises key forces that shape the structure and interrelation of cities to study the impact of the urban evolution on the environment. We focus on global warming and the potential of unfettered market forces to economize on emissions. The model parameters are chosen to match the dichotomy between average “large” and “small” cities in the urban geography of the United States, and the sectoral greenhouse gas emissions recorded for the United States. Based on numerical analyzes we find that a forced switch to a system with equally sized cities reduces total emissions. Second, any city driver which pronounces the asymmetry between the core and the periphery drives up emissions in the total city system, too, and the endogenous adjustment of the urban system accounts for the bulk of the change in emissions. Third, none of the city drivers gives rise to an urban environmental Kuznets curve according to our numerical simulations. Finally, the welfare‐maximizing allocation tends to involve dispersion of cities and the more so the higher is the marginal damage from pollution.

International Migrants in China’s Global City : The New Shanghailanders

Abstract: Long a source of migrants, China has now become a migrant destination. In 2016, government sources reported that nearly 900,000 foreigners were working in China, though international migrants remain a tiny presence at the national level. Shanghai is China’s most globalized city and has attracted a full quarter of Mainland China’s foreign resident population. This book analyzes the development of Shanghai’s expatriate communities, from their role in the opening up of Shanghai to foreign investment in the early 1980s through to the explosive growth after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2000. Based on over 400 interviews and 20 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai, it argues that international migrants play an important qualitative role in urban life. It explains the lifestyles of Shanghai’s skilled migrants; their positions in economic, social, sexual and cultural fields; their strategies for integration into Chinese society; their contributions to a cosmopolitan urban geography; and their changing symbolic and social significance for Shanghai as a global city. In so doing, it seeks to deal with the following questions: how have a generation of migrants made Shanghai into a cosmopolitan hometown, what role have they played in making Shanghai a global city, and how do foreign residents now fit into the nationalistic narrative of the China Dream? Addressing a gap in the market of critical expatriate studies through its focus on China, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of international migration, skilled migration, expatriates, urban studies, urban sociology, sexuality and gender studies, international education, and China studies.

Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California's East Bay

Abstract: Kafui Ablode Attoh. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019. xvi and 155 pp., figures, index. $99.95 cloth (ISBN 9780820354217); $28.95 paper (ISBN 9780820354200).Spring 2019 saw the debut bo...

Innovation-based urbanization: Evidence from 270 cities at the prefecture level or above in China

Abstract: With the rapid development of knowledge economy, a number of important shifts are emerging in urbanization pattern across the world. Traditional urbanization theory has become hard to interpret these changes on a global scale, and “innovation” is a core concept to explain the new changes of the urbanization dynamics. As one of the important contents of urban geography, urbanization dynamic needs to turn from the general population flows between rural and urban areas into emphasizing high skilled migrants flow among cities and regions research. Against this background, we propose a conception of innovation-based urbanization. Using this concept, this study analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics of high skilled migrants and cultural diversity on urban innovation in China, based on the data of the sixth census of 270 cities at the prefecture level or above in China. This study measures the extent to which highly skilled migrants and cultural diversity increase urban innovation, by using spatial Durbin method to construct urban innovation regression model, to support the concept of innovation-based urbanization. The result shows that: first of all, the concept of innovation-based urbanization conforms to the development of knowledge economy, which emphasizes the migration process of highly skilled labor to cities. It helps to promote the changes in urban functions and landscapes and the expansion of urban knowledge activities, which undelines new dynamics of urban development, innovative landscape. Secondly, innovation urbanization based on highly skilled migrants flow is an important driving force for the development of Chinese cities, especially for eastern coastal cities and capital cities. Thirdly, the scale of highly skilled migrants flow and the level of urban cultural diversity in China both have been demonstrated of having positive effect on urban innovation output. With other conditions unchanged, a 10% increase in the number of urban highly skilled migrants and urban cultural diversity will directly result in an increase of 3% and 2% in urban innovation output respectively. This research has deepened our understanding and awareness of the openness and dynamics of the regional innovation system, and it has also provided an important theoretical basis for the formulation of urbanization and urban development policy under knowledge economy.

Engaging with “urban science”

Abstract: In this Intervention we discuss possible engagements between an inherently diverse urban geography and an emergent “urban science” dealing with information technology-driven, quantitative analysis ...

High-rise living in the middle-class suburb : a geography of tactics and strategies

Abstract: Within new configurations of the ‘Great Australian Dream’, high-rise living in Australian cities has become not only an acceptable housing configuration for the middle classes but also a desirable one. Enquiring deeply into the tactics and strategies that building inhabitants use to live vertically in the city, this thesis explores the ways in which the design, inhabitation, and maintenance of middle-class high-rise developments are negotiated in Melbourne inner-suburbs. It explores dwellers’ agency in the negotiation of design choices and co-production of high-rise spaces, using mixed qualitative methods combining walking tours and semi-directed interviews. Drawing on the new geography of architecture and on a relational approach to housing and home, the research engages with a theory of practice acknowledging tactical and strategic actions in the city. It argues that dwellers reshape the socio-material configurations and spatial relations of apartment living set by designers, developers and housing technologists. Explicitly recognising of the role of social class in high-rise living, the research suggests that apartment developments are highly contested sites where intended lifestyles and aspirations are negotiated by varied institutions and actors, through a distinctive set of temporal and spatial actions. It finds that competing actors all work towards the co-production of high-rise living spaces and cultures. However, the thesis also shows that housing relations in the practice of middle-class apartment living outline an uneven and changing distribution of power between those who develop strategies and those who craft tactics. More broadly, this research opens up a deeper understanding of how this new kind of vertical city reflects and transforms configurations of status, power and identity in the Australian suburb.

The informal Australian city

Abstract: In recent years, a vibrant literature on urban informality has emerged in urban geography. A key claim of this literature is that informality is not only present in cities in the Global South, and ...

Use and validation of location-based services in urban research: An example with Dutch restaurants

Abstract: This article focuses on the use of big data for urban geography research. We collect data from the location-based service Foursquare in The Netherlands and employ it to obtain a rich catalogue of restaurant locations and other urban amenities, as well as a measure of their popularity among users. Because the Foursquare data can be combined with traditional sources of socio-economic data obtained from Statistics Netherlands, we can quantify, document and characterise some of the biases inherent in these new sources of data in the context of urban applications. A detailed analysis is given as to when this type of big data is useful and when it is misleading. Although the users of Foursquare are not representative of the whole population, we argue that this inherent bias can be exploited for research about the attractiveness of urban landscapes and consumer amenities in addition to the more traditional data on urban amenities.

Exemplary Cities in China: The Capitalist Aesthetic and the Loss of Space

Abstract: Since the late twentieth century, the subject of China becoming urban has appeared in the scholarship across the disciplines while spectacular images of China’s cities, and narratives about...

Crowded urban traffic: co-evolution among land development, population, roads and vehicle ownership

Abstract: Crowded urban traffic is one of mankind’s greatest past, present, and future challenges, attracting interests from urban planning, urban geography, urban economics and other related disciplines. Although these fields provide some insight into the problem, our understanding of the basic laws determining urban traffic systems’ evolutionary trajectory remains limited given that we do not fully understand the general co-evolutionary mechanisms underlying their complex dynamics. Therefore, a better understanding of the dynamics of urban traffic systems is necessary. The evolution of urban traffic systems appears to be accessible through mathematical descriptions, which involves land development, population, road and motor vehicle subsystems. In this paper, a four-level co-evolution dynamics model is developed to capture the growth trajectory of urban traffic systems. Our aim is to determine the driving force of urban traffic growth, the interactions among the studied subsystems, and whether the “disease” of urban crowding can be effectively predicted. Stability analysis indicates that this model is convergent. Taking two typical Chinese cities (Beijing and Shenzhen) as case studies, it is found that this model can be used to capture the observed co-evolution characteristics and to predict the future development of crowded urban traffic, thus benefitting all cities’ planning and control processes.

Socially Engaged Art and the Neoliberal City

Abstract: What are the social functions of art in the age of neoliberal urbanism? This book discusses the potential of artistic practices to question the nature of city environments and the diverse productions of space, moving beyond the reduction of ‘the urban’ as a set of existing and static structures. Adopting a practice-led approach, each chapter discusses case studies from across the world, reflecting on personal experiences as well as the work of other artists. While exposing the increasingly limiting constraints placed on public and socially engaged art by the dominance of commercial funding and neoliberal frameworks, the author stays optimistic about the potential of artistic practices to transcend neoliberal logics through alternative productions of space. Drawing upon a Lefebvrian framework of spatial practice and using a structuralist approach to challenge neoliberal structures, the book draws links between art, resistance, criticism, democracy, and political change. The book concludes by looking at how we might create a new course for socially engaged art within the neoliberal city. It will be of great interest to researchers in urban studies, urban geography, and architecture, as well as students who want to learn more about place-making, visual culture, performance theory, applied practice, and urban culture.

The political aesthetic of the British city‐state: Class formation through the global city

Abstract: Over the last 30 years of strategic reconfiguration in the British state, we have become confronted with an international revanchist capitalist class across the core states of the world system, and a resurgent domestic metropolitan power, in a manner that is markedly historical, geographical, and political. If we are to contemplate new emancipatory trajectories, this reconfiguration calls for urgent reconceptualization not only of the “inherited metageographical assumptions” of urban sociology (Brenner & Schmid, 2017, p. 187), but also of the social relations that constitute the new conditions of existence in our state-territory. So, what is this new condition? The Conservative Party's rehashing of the One-Nation Britain slogan seems to bear no relation to the country we actually inhabit (Elliott, 2013), with the recent EU referendum result symptomatizing the widening cleavages left by Austerity and a generation of neoliberalization. The dominance of the City of London has hollowed out industry across the country (Jessop, 1994), and has contracted the social skill base (Elliott, 2011), with “generally negative macroeconomic effects on the state territory as a whole” (Agnew, 2005, p. 444). A new generation of boosterish buildings that pepper the world's greatest tax haven has turned our seat of government into “a pastiche of the Gulf economy” (Jenkins, 2013) and has made a mockery of the calls for Austerity. British government seems now to cater for the febrile advantage of financiers, mediacrats, and property spivs avant le deluge, culturally reinforced by an echeloned cadre of ideological apologists of pan-global provenance, whose social, cultural, and political orientations “now link them to other financial centres than to their nominal home states” (Agnew, 2005, p. 444). It is the dominant liberal discourse of the “city,” which assumes London to be a place of productive potency and wealth creation, that I want fundamentally to reconsider as a political apologetic for the domination of metropolitan power positionalities that rather appropriate, command, and dispose the disbursements of capital. As such, it has been forgotten in these discourses that the classical city-state was built on hierarchy, exploitation, slavery, leisure, a profoundly ambiguous and contested imagined community, and a brutal disregard for individual human life (Anderson, 2013, pp. 21–22; Long, 1972, p. 26). The class politics of the city-state differ quite considerably from those of industrial production across the national territory. The mysterious osmosis of trickle-down economics, putatively centrifugal,

The geography of climate change adaptation in urban Africa

Abstract: Part I -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Climate Change, Urban Planning and Sustainable Development in Africa: The Difference worth Appreciating; Michael Addaney and Patrick Brandful Cobbinah -- Part II: Climate Change Adaptation in urban Africa: land tenure, biodiversity conservation and local responses -- Chapter Two: Towards Sustainable Development in Africa: The Challenge of Urbanization and Climate Change; Matthew Ogwu -- Chapter Three: Community-Based Mapping Methodology for Climate Change Adaptation: A Case Study of Quarry Road West Informal Settlement, Durban, South Africa; Bahle Mazeka, Catherine Sutherland, Sibongile Buthelezi and Duduzile Khumalo -- Chapter Four: Urban Residents and Communities Responses to Climate Change Impacts in Tamale, Ghana; Patrick Brandful Cobbinah and Enoch Akwasi Kosoe -- Chapter Five: Urban Farmers’ Perceptions of and Responses to Climate Variability in Ibadan, Nigeria; Bolanle Wahab and Ayobami Popoola -- Chapter Six: Placing Climate Change in Wetland Conservation and Urban Agriculture Contestations in Harare, Zimbabwe; Luckymore Matenga -- Chapter Seven: Heritage Preservation in a Changing Climate: The Potential of Green Infrastructure on the Ile de Saint-Louis, Senegal; Samantha McLean -- Chapter Eight: Competing Interests in Urban Biodiversity Management in the Context of a Changing Climate: A Case Study of the Giba Gorge Environmental Precinct, South Africa; Chuma Banji Chinzila, Andrew Emmanuel Okem, Fathima Ahmed and Urmila Bob -- Chapter Nine: Exploring the Future of Nairobi National Park in a Changing Climate and Urban Growth; Obed Matundura Ogega, Hellen Njoki Wanjohi and James Mbugua -- Part III: Urban Climate Change Adaptation in Africa: Towards Policy and Practice -- Chapter Ten: Connecting climate change to poverty reduction: Poverty Reduction Co-Benefits of Climate Change-Related Projects in eThekwini Municipality, South Africa; Andrew Emmanuel Okem -- Chapter Eleven: Beyond climate change adaptation in urban Africa: A synthesis of urban food (in)security; Bright Nkrumah -- Chapter Twelve: Thinking into the future: Constructing social security law as climate change adaptation strategy in urban South Africa; Ademola Oluborode Jegede and Crystal Mokoena -- Chapter Thirteen: Governing river rehabilitation for climate adaptation and water security in Durban, South Africa; Partick Martel, Catherine Sutherland, Sibongile Buthelezi and Duduzile Khumalo -- Part IV: Climate Change Adaptation Planning and Institutional Responses in Urban Africa -- Chapter Fourteen: Towards Citizen-led Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Ghana: Hints from Japanese “Machizukuri” Activities; Seth Asare Okyere, Stephen Kofi Diko, Matthew Abunyewah, Michihiro Kita -- Chapter Fifteen: Climate Change Adaptation in Ghana: The Future of Spatial Planning; Patrick Brandful Cobbinah and Nelson Nyabanyi N-yanbini -- Chapter Sixteen: Institutional Responses to Climate Change Adaptation: Flood Management at the Metropolitan Level in Accra, Ghana; Prosper Issahaku Korah and Patrick Brandful Cobbinah -- Chapter Seventeen: Adaptation Governance and Building Resilience in the face of Climate Change in African Cities: Policy Responses and Emerging Practices from Accra; Michael Addaney -- Chapter Eighteen: Missed Opportunities: Financing Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Ghana and Uganda; Stephen Diko.

The Ecological City and the City Effect: Essays on the Urban Planning Requirements for the Sustainable City

Abstract: Preface - the ecological city - reality and mystification. Part 1 A strategy for the modern city - research lines aimed at the identification of "optimal centrality": the definition of the current urban problem two situation typologies in western urban geography the potential alternative solutions the dossier of parameters to be transferred in terms of reference the suggested approach - searching for the optimal centrality the search for optimal centrality and the abstract theories of city economics the imperative research approach the definition of optimal centrality and its constituent parameters the components of centrality as found in the current western urban situation configuring an articulation of optimal centralities conclusion. Part 2 The degradation of the urban environment - the planological approach: general considerations on the degradation of the urban environment the degradation of the urban environemnt in relation to its factors (or causes) urban degradation in relation to any city topology urban degradation in relation to the stages of urbanization the degradation of the urban environment from the point of view of the goals of "environmental well-being" the urban eco-system evaluation the planological approach - programme structure and urban indicators. Part 3 Centralities and peripheries - a new strategy for the recovery of the urban environment: the city and its public spaces the decline of public spaces and the disequilibrium of loads two typical, inadequate responses - zoning and traffic engineering the loss of centrality in small and medium-sized towns outlines of a new policy of recovery of the urban environment the question of "modernity" in urban planning. Part 4 Urban planning and ecology - what relationship?: urban planning and ecology - a promised marriage never consummated or a case of hermaphroditism planning and ecology - some postulates the methodological prerequisites in the planning of the ecological city application to the case of a policy of urban "sustainability". Part 5 The "urban mobility integrated basin" - a prerequisite of rational planning: the "urban mobility integrated basin" (UMIB) the policy-oriented demand or urban transport general approach to the definition of urban planning objectives the UMIB accessibility system operational specification of objectives - the use of multi-criteria decision-making analysis concluding remarks. Part 6 The urban labour basin - misleading formulations: an interpretative definition of the labour market basin an operational definition of the labour market basin a definition of the labour market basin on the basis of an integrated approach the measurement of the integrated objective-function the optimal dimension of the labour basin the "urban" labour basin functional to labour management. Part 7 The land-use/resources matrix - an instrument for environmental planning: why a land-use/resources matrix (LURM)? (Part contents)

Southern urbanism or a world of cities? Modes of enacting a more global urban geography in textbooks, teaching and research

Abstract: Despite growing attentiveness to cities in the global south, questions remain as to how to enact a more global urban studies. We analyze five contemporary textbooks as a lens into how south...

Land Squandering in the Spanish Medium Sized Cities: The Case of Toledo

Abstract: A process of land squandering began in Spain in the mid 1990s until the great crisis of 2008. The intensive production of urban land affected the Spanish medium-sized towns. They were characterized by their compact nature and then they underwent an intense diffuse urbanization. However, in some cases there had been previous examples of urban sprawl. In this article, we study one of them, the unique and historic city of Toledo, in the Centre of the Iberian Peninsula. We will show how the city has experienced the land squandering and has been extensively widespread throughout the hinterland, consisting of their peripheral municipalities. We will also check how Toledo has had a previous internal dispersion process in the last quarter of the 20th Century through the called Ensanche (widening). We will use the urban estate cadaster as a fundamental source for evolutionary and present analysis of the city and its hinterland. The field and bibliographic work complete the methodology. The final conclusion is that there have been remarkable urban increments in Spanish medium-sized cities such as Toledo, in external and peripheral districts, under the logic of speculation and profit, resulting in a disjointed space.

Time, Waste, and the City: The Rise of the Environmental Industry

Abstract: In many US cities, especially those in the Rust Belt, the environmental goods and services (EGS) industry has played a significant role in restructuring local economies to promote new, flexible, and “creative” forms of service-based labour. And yet much of the environmental work conducted in these cities has been directed at an industrial past, cleaning up the waste left over from long-departed manufacturing sectors. Returning to David Harvey’s earlier work on the urban process, this paper develops a theory of waste switching that situates EGS within a larger renegotiation of space and time across city landscapes. This theory is fleshed out in case studies of the EGS industry in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee, where new cycles of accumulation have been built on refuse, toxins, and dead labour. These “toxi-cities” and their cleanup challenge traditional conceptions of urbanisation as spatially—but also temporally—bounded.