City, Culture and Society最新文献

From the mid-1990s, Zimbabwe experienced an escalated economic decline epitomised by de-industrialisation, depressed job and livelihood opportunities and increased aggregate poverty prevalence. This culminated in the growth of street vending, dominated by illegal and unlicensed hawking. Using a mixed methods approach, the study interrogates the response of the government of Zimbabwe to street vending. The study reveals that street vending in Zimbabwe cities is anarchical and thrive on chaotic governance. This presents a locus of conflict between the state's measures of maintaining public order and governability and the citizens' efforts to sustain livelihoods. The presence of exclusionary neo-liberal municipal by-laws have relegated street vendors from the mainstream economy. Military assisted violent evictions, confiscation of wares, torture, arrest and detention of vendors forms part of government's response strategies. The study recommends reform of by-laws and urban planning to entrench vending into the mainstream economy.

Since Richard Florida's theory of the Creative Class was first introduced, many related studies of creativity have been undertaken regarding analyzing the key features and predictors of the knowledge economy. Though the notion of the Creative Class has been popular for over two decades, not many studies have analyzed Creative Class in Japan. The objective of this paper is to analyze the spatial distribution of the Super Creative Class in the Greater Tokyo Area (GTA) to better understand the key predictors that drive the spatial distribution of the Super Creative Class. Based on data from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the spatial distribution of the Super Creative Class seemed highly uneven for the 138 cities and wards of the GTA with significant concentrations in Kawasaki, Tokyo and Tsukuba. A stepwise regression analysis revealed that 60 percent of the spatial distribution in the Super Creative Class by place of work could be best explained by the share of the labor pool. On the other hand, 73 percent of distribution of Super Creative Class by place of residence could be explained by a more traditional human capital predictor. Since a key component of the Super Creative Class differs markedly by place of work and place of residence, it seems geography is a major factor in explaining the distribution of Super Creative Class in the GTA.

This study argues for the significance of the network governance model in bottom-up cultural district development aimed at neighborhood revitalization. This study, employing a multi-level policy design framework in a case study of the Gordon Square Arts District in Cleveland, Ohio, found that having a formalized governance structure and ongoing technical assistance empowered local arts organizations to succeed in advocating and bargaining for their organizational interests and needs as well as the broader needs of their community. Both network governance and technical assistance created more opportunities to achieve a relatively balanced power of cultural and non-cultural actors in decision-making on policy objectives, mechanisms, implementation tools, and solutions against the issue of marginalization caused by displacement via market-driven overdevelopment.

This article analyses the Creative Class localisation and its determinants in the peri-urban areas of Northern Italy.

Florida's hypothesis on the localisation patterns of the creative class, based on the famous 3Ts (Talent, Technology and Tolerance), has been largely debated and sometimes discredited due to the shaky conceptual foundations of some of the variables on which it is based (e.g. the Gay Index) or the excessive focus on urban areas, which gave rise to worrying implications in terms of deepening socio-economic inequalities between urban and non-urban territories.

This paper seeks to deal with some of these limitations by reconsidering Florida's determinants as well as using new innovative means to define them. It also extends the analysis to a yet unexplored territory, the peri-urban areas, which occupies a third of the European territory and attracts creative people whilst still being closely integrated with urban economies.

These new hypotheses have been tested specifically by PCA and spatial regression models to the peri-urban municipalities in the regions of Northern Italy, the most creative regions in Italy. Here, the creative class results unevenly distributed as is greater in the municipalities closest to the urban centres and decreases in the ones furthest away. Its presence is strongly associated with socio-economic determinants (public expenditure, presence of creative and non-creative firms, volunteering), less to cultural amenities and technology. Tolerance has more controversial appealing affects.

The adaptive reuse of cultural heritage contributes to heritage conservation, leveraging on the heritage potential to enable sustainable development and enhance urban livability. Yet, it is seldom applied as intervention. This research furthers the knowledge on the challenges to the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage. Through the case study of Salerno (Italy) and a participatory methodology, this research organized a stakeholder engagement workshop, facilitating the interaction of stakeholders—representing the public, private, civic, and knowledge sectors, while using a theoretical framework based on the six steps of the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape approach to adopt a multi-scale perspective. The content analysis of the data reveals 55 themes encompassing challenges and solutions. These themes are presented in a general overview, followed by an in-depth reporting of the five most discussed themes, i.e. knowledge production and management, participation, valorization, approaches, and cooperation. Besides the contribution to science, this research also offers an overview of challenges and possible solutions for prospective stakeholders in the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage, informing future decision- and policy-making activities towards greater sustainable development within the built environment.

Despite its undeniable popularity, the concept of placemaking continues to suffer from a lack of clarity, valid performance indicators and robust data to attest of its effectiveness. Still to this day, understanding what placemaking actually does to people and, in turn, makes them want to do, all the while accounting for its contribution separate from other contextual factors, remains both a practical and scientific challenge. Hence, this experimental study investigates the impact of placemaking on affective and cognitive evaluations, self-congruity, and behavioral intentions across five very different built environments. Results show that environments ‘augmented’ through placemaking generate significantly more positive responses, be it in terms of emotions, perceptions, identification, or intended behaviors. In the process, the study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms by which behavioral intentions are induced through placemaking.

In recent years, dockless bike-sharing programs have been introduced to either substitute or complement docked bike-sharing programs. Riders of these devices always have perceived differences of one system over the other, which could vary across gender. This study applied a text network approach to explore the residents' perceptions of the dockless bike-sharing program across gender. The study used over 700 responses collected between February and March 2018 in Seattle, Washington. The results revealed that ease of use, convenience, safety, pricing, and quality areas make a tremendous difference in the perception of dockless over docked bike-sharing systems. The perception of ease of use and convenience does not vary significantly across genders. On the other hand, male respondents were more aligned on the better pricing scheme and the bikes' quality than female respondents. Conversely, female respondents did care more about safety in terms of helmet use. Moreover, female respondents were more explicit in explaining the negative characteristics of the dockless bike-sharing system over docked ones. Study findings can help policymakers and operators of dockless bikes to provide equity in service for both genders.

In The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) Richard Florida argues that for cities to compete for economic growth in the 21st century, they must appeal to the interests of the creative class. The creative class is said to be drawn to places that have the 4Ts: tolerance, technology, talent, and territorial assets. In Calgary, Alberta, where the volatility of the oil and gas sectors has caused ongoing economic uncertainty, officials have urged a need for economic diversification. This research illustrates that amid ongoing economic challenges in Calgary, the principles espoused through Florida's creative class model have been adopted and integrated into public policy. However, while the City has focused on providing a rich urban experience with quality amenities to appeal to the creative class, the success in attracting and retaining talent thus far has been limited. Instead, efforts have negative consequences, as this approach reflects a practice referred to as state-led gentrification which has fueled new-build gentrification in Calgary's inner-city.

This article addresses the relationship between culture, violence and urban transformation in Tijuana from 2001 until 2017, a period characterized by extreme disruptions to everyday life and the emergence of citizens self-managed cultural initiatives after the border crisis prompted by 9/11 terrorist attacks. While violence was not an extraordinary affair in the city, this period saw a shift in its characteristics and function as a regulating force of the urban network. At the same time, a citizens' drive of the city's cultural life recognizable since the 1990s transformed their objectives, modes of operation and function, in what we will argue became a stabilizing reaction to these disruptions. We will introduce the notion of ‘cultural urban assemblage’ to discuss the role that culture has played in assembling Tijuana during this acute rise of violence.

Urbanization is recognized as one of the megatrends of our society, leading to substantial efforts to create effective and smart cities. The scale of this effort is unsuitable for a single player, instead necessitating joint efforts from multiple stakeholders. The global expansion of smart cities has subsequently led to increased research efforts toward building effective smart cities. In theory and practice, collaboration is pivotal for effective urban development, most often seen through the establishment of public-private partnership (PPP). Past research has explored these partnerships in smart city projects. Although PPP is considered to be an effective means to facilitate smart city development, the concept of smart cities remains rather vague and ideological. PPP for smart cities has been substantiated in several case studies; however, a thorough review is lacking. Therefore, to synthesize the existing literature, we carried out an in-depth integrative literature review. From this basis, we executed a content analysis and four key themes emerged: localness, stakeholder complexity, tension, and trust-building. These four themes form the basis of our proposed model and describe the key elements influencing PPP formation in smart city projects. We argue that the partnerships involved in smart city projects need further refinement to allow for transparency and involvement in various contexts. This paper provides timely contributions to smart city research by synthesizing the extant literature as well as laying the foundation for a future research agenda. Critical perspectives are also offered for future practitioners.