The landlocked city of Yiwu in Zhejiang Province, China is considered to be the world’s biggest wholesale market for small commodities where low cost consumer goods such as kitchenware, toys, and electronics are traded in bulk before being retailed in (pound)shops around the world. Linked to the rest of the world through a multimodal transport network, Yiwu lies on the ‘backroads of globalisation’ along which minor, low-grade, low-value products travel (Knowles 2014). Building on work by social scientists who question the entanglement of state power, physical infrastructures, and people, this visual essay uses the theoretical lens of infrastructures as well as the lens of cameras to investigate the interdependence of Yiwu’s wholesale and logistics infrastructure and the individuals who work in them to facilitate the global trade of small commodities.
{"title":"Small commodities, big infrastructure","authors":"L. Henneke","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4707","url":null,"abstract":"The landlocked city of Yiwu in Zhejiang Province, China is considered to be the world’s biggest wholesale market for small commodities where low cost consumer goods such as kitchenware, toys, and electronics are traded in bulk before being retailed in (pound)shops around the world. Linked to the rest of the world through a multimodal transport network, Yiwu lies on the ‘backroads of globalisation’ along which minor, low-grade, low-value products travel (Knowles 2014). Building on work by social scientists who question the entanglement of state power, physical infrastructures, and people, this visual essay uses the theoretical lens of infrastructures as well as the lens of cameras to investigate the interdependence of Yiwu’s wholesale and logistics infrastructure and the individuals who work in them to facilitate the global trade of small commodities.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85458626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Between 1929 and 1935, the Bata Shoe Company planned the construction of a series of modern industrial satellite towns in Europe, Asia, and America. By 1935, however, their development was far from advanced, and their original town plans, following a modernist grid, had been replaced with new ones, based on garden city ideas. A transnational explanation of the conditions that complicated their construction and motivated changes in their design remains as a gap in the existing literature on the Bata Shoe Company. The conceptual framework of sociological institutionalism is used to study how questions of meaning and social legitimacy influenced the design and construction of Bata’s industrial towns in the 1930s. The methodology employed involved the triangulation of the study of secondary sources and research into Bata’s archives, with the analysis of how the urban form of the towns changed through time. The research reveals the institutionalization of ideas on urban planning and architecture within Bata’s structure, and the role of external legitimation in justifying their utilization or withdrawal. Finally, this article will posit that interdisciplinary readings on contemporary urban history can bring new insights into the transformation of the built environment by multinational organizations.
{"title":"Urbanism as Myth and Ceremony","authors":"V. M. Sanz","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4735","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1929 and 1935, the Bata Shoe Company planned the construction of a series of modern industrial satellite towns in Europe, Asia, and America. By 1935, however, their development was far from advanced, and their original town plans, following a modernist grid, had been replaced with new ones, based on garden city ideas. A transnational explanation of the conditions that complicated their construction and motivated changes in their design remains as a gap in the existing literature on the Bata Shoe Company. The conceptual framework of sociological institutionalism is used to study how questions of meaning and social legitimacy influenced the design and construction of Bata’s industrial towns in the 1930s. The methodology employed involved the triangulation of the study of secondary sources and research into Bata’s archives, with the analysis of how the urban form of the towns changed through time. The research reveals the institutionalization of ideas on urban planning and architecture within Bata’s structure, and the role of external legitimation in justifying their utilization or withdrawal. Finally, this article will posit that interdisciplinary readings on contemporary urban history can bring new insights into the transformation of the built environment by multinational organizations.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80536009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Newcastle-upon-Tyne has recently seen an expansion in takeaway prepared food thanks to the meal delivery service provided through companies such as Deliveroo. These companies have what they call a “technology platform” that enables customers in certain urban areas to order and purchase a meal which is delivered to their location, usually within thirty minutes. Although a seemingly mundane moment of consumption, the processes underpinning this act compose a distinctly urban manifestation of the broader logistical logics of contemporary capitalism. Delivering a prepared meal from a restaurant to its nearby site of ingestion in the city is symptomatic of the role of logistics in valuation, through achieving the right place at the right time for a given commodity. Such logistics require the emergence of new urban infrastructure and the reconfiguration of existing components through the combination of the technology platform, the restaurant collection point and rider-deliverybox-vehicle assemblage. Building from this infrastructure, Deliveroo are able to extend their operations into food production and supply, whilst also re-organising socio-spatial divisions of labour in food provisioning. Distribution is therefore no neutral mediator between production and consumption, but rather has far-reaching effects, altering existing and generating new spatial practices composing urban economies of food provision.
{"title":"Meal delivery logistics and the agencies of distribution in urban economies of food provision in the UK","authors":"L. Richardson","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4562","url":null,"abstract":"Newcastle-upon-Tyne has recently seen an expansion in takeaway prepared food thanks to the meal delivery service provided through companies such as Deliveroo. These companies have what they call a “technology platform” that enables customers in certain urban areas to order and purchase a meal which is delivered to their location, usually within thirty minutes. Although a seemingly mundane moment of consumption, the processes underpinning this act compose a distinctly urban manifestation of the broader logistical logics of contemporary capitalism. Delivering a prepared meal from a restaurant to its nearby site of ingestion in the city is symptomatic of the role of logistics in valuation, through achieving the right place at the right time for a given commodity. Such logistics require the emergence of new urban infrastructure and the reconfiguration of existing components through the combination of the technology platform, the restaurant collection point and rider-deliverybox-vehicle assemblage. Building from this infrastructure, Deliveroo are able to extend their operations into food production and supply, whilst also re-organising socio-spatial divisions of labour in food provisioning. Distribution is therefore no neutral mediator between production and consumption, but rather has far-reaching effects, altering existing and generating new spatial practices composing urban economies of food provision.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91297527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research on the second-hand clothes trade has focused on global value chains and transnational circulations from the Global North to the Global South. This article instead investigates the circulation of a ubiquitous and highly popular second-hand commodity, namely shoes, in the Tunisian capital city Tunis. The second-hand materials – referred to as “fripe” in Tunisia – that arrive in the Tunis cargo port have been donated or discarded in their countries of origin and their commodity value is thus uncertain. In addition, second-hand shoes are officially banned from sale on the Tunisian market. In order to explain how fripe shoes are nevertheless transferred into new commodity situations in Tunis, this article hones in on processes of valuation at the urban scale. Three locations that feature prominently in the urban trajectory of second-hand shoes – a sorting factory, the wholesale quarter, and a specialised market street – are examined as distinct sites for valuation that enable the renewed circulation of fripe shoes in the city. Investigating valuation and circulation with an explicit focus on urban space demonstrates how such processes not only transform fripe objects in circulation, but are also constitutive of socio-spatial relations: At times, valuation becomes manifest in urban form, or situated urban change; At other times, fripe shoe circulations generate linkages and interdependencies that tie seemingly bounded sites of valuation to diverse actors and spaces across the city. As inherently contested commodity form, second-hand shoes thus provide insight into the complex social and political negotiations that define commodity circulation as both contingent and productive urban process.
{"title":"Second-hand shoe circulations in Tunis","authors":"Katharina Grüneisl","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4611","url":null,"abstract":"Research on the second-hand clothes trade has focused on global value chains and transnational circulations from the Global North to the Global South. This article instead investigates the circulation of a ubiquitous and highly popular second-hand commodity, namely shoes, in the Tunisian capital city Tunis. The second-hand materials – referred to as “fripe” in Tunisia – that arrive in the Tunis cargo port have been donated or discarded in their countries of origin and their commodity value is thus uncertain. In addition, second-hand shoes are officially banned from sale on the Tunisian market. In order to explain how fripe shoes are nevertheless transferred into new commodity situations in Tunis, this article hones in on processes of valuation at the urban scale. Three locations that feature prominently in the urban trajectory of second-hand shoes – a sorting factory, the wholesale quarter, and a specialised market street – are examined as distinct sites for valuation that enable the renewed circulation of fripe shoes in the city. Investigating valuation and circulation with an explicit focus on urban space demonstrates how such processes not only transform fripe objects in circulation, but are also constitutive of socio-spatial relations: At times, valuation becomes manifest in urban form, or situated urban change; At other times, fripe shoe circulations generate linkages and interdependencies that tie seemingly bounded sites of valuation to diverse actors and spaces across the city. As inherently contested commodity form, second-hand shoes thus provide insight into the complex social and political negotiations that define commodity circulation as both contingent and productive urban process.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80118034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Geographically dispersed networks of production interact with urban economic development and contribute to shape the built environment and urbanization processes all over the world. However, the global manufacturing of goods and their circulation have not yet been given adequate attention in the field of urban research. This article charts a research framework to study the interplay between urban spaces and globalized industrial production. We argue that a relational perspective on multi-local economic processes as provided by commodity chain approaches, specifically the Global Production Networks (GPN) framework, ought to be integrated into urban research in order to grasp the driving forces and the transnational character of urban development in places of industrial production. In the first section of the article, we discuss the conceptual base and benefits of integrating the GPN approach with an urban research perspective centred on the analysis of the built environment. In the second section, we operationalize these considerations in an analytical framework which we apply to a multi-local and relational case study of clothing manufacturing locations in the Istanbul metropolitan region in Turkey, the South Bulgarian province Kardzhali and the periphery of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Our findings illuminate the site-specific, yet interdependent mutual transformation of global production networks and urban space, giving rise to transnational spatial formations such as dense industry clusters, dispersed production niches or clearly defined enclaves for export processing. At the same time, they underscore the agency of the built environment and urban planning in shaping the geography of globalized production.
{"title":"Globalizing urban research, grounding global production networks","authors":"Anke Hagemann, Elke Beyer","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4622","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4622","url":null,"abstract":"Geographically dispersed networks of production interact with urban economic development and contribute to shape the built environment and urbanization processes all over the world. However, the global manufacturing of goods and their circulation have not yet been given adequate attention in the field of urban research. This article charts a research framework to study the interplay between urban spaces and globalized industrial production. We argue that a relational perspective on multi-local economic processes as provided by commodity chain approaches, specifically the Global Production Networks (GPN) framework, ought to be integrated into urban research in order to grasp the driving forces and the transnational character of urban development in places of industrial production. In the first section of the article, we discuss the conceptual base and benefits of integrating the GPN approach with an urban research perspective centred on the analysis of the built environment. In the second section, we operationalize these considerations in an analytical framework which we apply to a multi-local and relational case study of clothing manufacturing locations in the Istanbul metropolitan region in Turkey, the South Bulgarian province Kardzhali and the periphery of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. Our findings illuminate the site-specific, yet interdependent mutual transformation of global production networks and urban space, giving rise to transnational spatial formations such as dense industry clusters, dispersed production niches or clearly defined enclaves for export processing. At the same time, they underscore the agency of the built environment and urban planning in shaping the geography of globalized production.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80141572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Contemporary production of urban space is increasingly shaped by the circulation of people, information, money and goods across the planet. Urbanization cannot be adequately understood without considering the relatedness of places on multiple scales. The extent to which global connectedness, and its lack or failure, defines everyday life and economic activity in almost any corner of the world, has been put in very sharp focus by the repercussions of the lockdown measures to contain the covid1...
{"title":"Commodity Flows and Urban Spaces. An Introduction.","authors":"Elke Beyer, Anke Hagemann, P. Misselwitz","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4522","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary production of urban space is increasingly shaped by the circulation of people, information, money and goods across the planet. Urbanization cannot be adequately understood without considering the relatedness of places on multiple scales. The extent to which global connectedness, and its lack or failure, defines everyday life and economic activity in almost any corner of the world, has been put in very sharp focus by the repercussions of the lockdown measures to contain the covid1...","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91110690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At the intersection of commodity chains and urban research, this paper engages with Bair and Werner’s “disarticulations perspective” through a conversation with Lefebvre’s “production of space.” I argue that this mix can provide a stronger theoretical lens to explore social differentiation, accumulation by dispossession, and uneven development and with this, shed more light on how the uneven geographies of global capitalism are created and reproduced. I develop my argument fixed analytically in Motul, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan, as I explore the changes that the city experienced in the midst of a maquiladora boom-to-bust cycle. Maquiladoras—a type of Export Processing Zone that were meant to replace the state’s dying agro-based economy—arrived to the region in the 1980s and grew exponentially between the 1990s-2000s. With a historical approach, I draw on discourse analysis and ethnography-inspired fieldwork to unpack how the production of maquiladora space—in the form of the New Frontier—came about at the intersection between discourse, materiality, and effects on everyday life. The creation of the New Frontier unfolded within the logic of a global maquiladora architecture but was carried out by local actors through a double movement of homogenization and differentiation.
{"title":"The production of maquiladora space in Motul, Mexico: from henequen municipality to industrial city","authors":"Claudia Fonseca Alfaro","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.4577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.4577","url":null,"abstract":"At the intersection of commodity chains and urban research, this paper engages with Bair and Werner’s “disarticulations perspective” through a conversation with Lefebvre’s “production of space.” I argue that this mix can provide a stronger theoretical lens to explore social differentiation, accumulation by dispossession, and uneven development and with this, shed more light on how the uneven geographies of global capitalism are created and reproduced. I develop my argument fixed analytically in Motul, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan, as I explore the changes that the city experienced in the midst of a maquiladora boom-to-bust cycle. Maquiladoras—a type of Export Processing Zone that were meant to replace the state’s dying agro-based economy—arrived to the region in the 1980s and grew exponentially between the 1990s-2000s. With a historical approach, I draw on discourse analysis and ethnography-inspired fieldwork to unpack how the production of maquiladora space—in the form of the New Frontier—came about at the intersection between discourse, materiality, and effects on everyday life. The creation of the New Frontier unfolded within the logic of a global maquiladora architecture but was carried out by local actors through a double movement of homogenization and differentiation.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73806764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the local politics around a new private football stadium construction project in Southern Europe, within the frame of urban regime theory. The project aimed at demolishing a recently renovated municipal stadium in Turin, Italy and building a new one for Juventus FC. This new stadium project was the product of an urban regime that governed Turin for some years, an outcome that raises an important issue as, in the US, the explanatory power of regime theory for most stadium projects is in doubt. Using this evidence, the article adds to the ongoing debate on whether US urban politics theories can explain urban affairs in European cities and draws some similarities and differences between European and US urban politics.
{"title":"The Urban Politics of Juventus’ New Football Stadium","authors":"N. Lekakis","doi":"10.4000/ARTICULO.3349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/ARTICULO.3349","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the local politics around a new private football stadium construction project in Southern Europe, within the frame of urban regime theory. The project aimed at demolishing a recently renovated municipal stadium in Turin, Italy and building a new one for Juventus FC. This new stadium project was the product of an urban regime that governed Turin for some years, an outcome that raises an important issue as, in the US, the explanatory power of regime theory for most stadium projects is in doubt. Using this evidence, the article adds to the ongoing debate on whether US urban politics theories can explain urban affairs in European cities and draws some similarities and differences between European and US urban politics.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82850457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This introduction highlights the paradox of the uses and regulation of public spaces by street trading reflected in two interwoven contradictions. The first contradiction is about the massive presence of street trade and the persistent ambiguous regulatory framework. The second contradiction deals with the misconception of street vending as an “unorganized” and “temporary” activity. It illustrates that vague legal and institutional frameworks as well as a hostile operating environment are drivers of conflictual uses of public space, such as streets that are partially fragmented and privatized by traders.
{"title":"Introduction: Contested Street: Informal Street Vending and its Contradictions","authors":"Sylvain Racaud, Jackson Kago, S. Owuor","doi":"10.4000/articulo.3719","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/articulo.3719","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction highlights the paradox of the uses and regulation of public spaces by street trading reflected in two interwoven contradictions. The first contradiction is about the massive presence of street trade and the persistent ambiguous regulatory framework. The second contradiction deals with the misconception of street vending as an “unorganized” and “temporary” activity. It illustrates that vague legal and institutional frameworks as well as a hostile operating environment are drivers of conflictual uses of public space, such as streets that are partially fragmented and privatized by traders.","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89383950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Street Vending Facing Urban Policies. Who owns the streets? Uses, appropriation and mobilization for (commercial) streets","authors":"Sylvain Racaud","doi":"10.4000/articulo.3199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/articulo.3199","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":38124,"journal":{"name":"Articulo - Journal of Urban Research","volume":"110 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80962445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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