City, Culture and Society最新文献

The perception that young people and youth orientated venues dominate the nocturnal city has stimulated calls on the part of government to address the exclusion of specific demographics, particularly those who are midlife. Focusing on those now aged 40–65, this paper explores how policies concerned with diversifying nightlife engage with this ageing demographic. Drawing on both scholarly and policy literature, the discussion examines how a discourse of diversity, diversification and vibrancy frame ageing and urban centres after dark. Acknowledging this demographic is under-researched, the paper brings together diverse literatures from urban planning, gerontology and sociology with a view to question the ways diversity, nightlife, and ageing are articulated and deployed in British urban policy. The paper challenges a normative concept of the life course, and a simplistic approach to place on which calls for diversifying nightlife within urban centres often rest. It concludes with a call for a framework for future research which connects place identity and demographic diversity within this cohort to inform future policy initiatives.

Cincinnati, like many mid-sized cities in the U.S., has undergone gentrification in the past few decades. One of the downsides of gentrification is that it supposedly displaces lower-income (often minority) population. This paper examines two census tracts in two neighborhoods in Cincinnati that underwent gentrification between 2000 and 2016 using a combination of census data, interviews with neighborhood Community Development Corporation members, building permits, and Google Street View Analysis. The African-American population in both of these neighborhoods declined by 20.0 percent between 2000 and 2016. It is suggested that the housing crisis of 2008 affected middle-class African-Americans to a greater extent than their white counterparts and led to the exodus of African-Americans from these tracts. Using a gentrification index adapted from Hwang (2015) to measure change in the built environment, it was shown that these two tracts progressed from disinvested in 2007/09 to early stage gentrification by 2016. These changes included the renovation of buildings, the construction of new mixed-use complexes, and changes in the types of businesses in the neighborhoods.

Craft industries in the global south make important contributions to local culture and economic development, yet their organisational dynamics and community development potential are understudied. Moreover, these industries are undergoing rapid change as creative producers adapt to economic liberalisation and globalisation. Focusing on this challenge, this research explores the changing dynamics and economic development potentials of an artistic brassware industry in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The research analyses how key features of the brassware industry including community-specific knowledge and skills, social networking, and identity creation that are tied to long-existing socio-cultural factors such as religion and the caste system are changing. As producers adapt or move away from traditional production techniques and values, the industry has undergone significant change and a resultant downturn. Although not representative of experiences in all global south countries, the findings from this case may contribute to a deeper understanding of craft industries in countries facing similar challenges.

This paper details the contextual and conceptual elements involved in setting up an Urban Lab in the city of Galway, Ireland. The paper specifies the set-up of a lab in the post-industrial area of Nuns' Island, through a detailed reading of pertinent ‘lab-centred’ literatures. It contributes to this literature by (1) analysing a lab in the explicit context of an urban regeneration project and (2) exploring ways in which co-production may be put into practice. Urban Lab Galway is anticipated initially to play a major role supporting the urban regeneration of an area adjacent to a major university, which also owns substantial buildings and land on the site, and is thus not surprisingly supported by the local university in question. The paper motivates and details the reasons supporting co-produced initiatives, critically exploring the potential and difficulties attaching to such practices. The paper ends in a sustained engagement with the concept of ‘creative destruction’ in the context of lab-based engagements.

The technologically endowed Smart Cities take credit for managing the COVID-19 pandemic more effectively than other urban centers. However, Indian smart cities seemed unprepared for the outbreak, with reported highest cases of death and positivity rates. Thus, it becomes essential to understand why these smart cities could not handle the pandemic despite their technologically advanced infrastructures and the citizen’s role in managing it. This paper analyzes the impact of the Smart City Mission (SCM) interventions from a citizen-centric perspective and its influence on pandemic management and citizen inclusivity. The study draws from the right to the smart city framework along with stages of the digital divide. The study conducted a content analysis using secondary sources like published and unpublished papers, policy reports, and news analyses spanning the timeline of 2015-2022. The analysis infers that the lack of initiatives to link marginalized citizens with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) through the SCM policy led to the underutilization of the various initiatives launched during the pandemic, deepening the digital divide. The deduction from the analysis highlights that the ‘chatur citizens’ act as a solution by transitioning their formal access to ICTs into effective access enabling the marginalized communities to bridge the divide.

Many cities in Western Europe have become superdiverse. Yet, even if different ethnic groups live in the same neighbourhoods, they often do not interact. In particular, people without a migration background tend to segregate in multicultural cities and have little contact with people of other ethnic backgrounds. To receive a better understanding of mechanisms underlying processes of segregation in such neighbourhoods, we focus on contexts in which people without a migration background are a numerical ethnic minority while another ethnic group is dominant. Using a vignette survey experiment conducted in Amsterdam (n = 364), we show that certain forms of inclusion indirectly increase the willingness to frequent places in the neighbourhood in which people without a migration background are an ethnic minority. In particular, we examine the effects of a direct (all-inclusive approach) and an indirect (numerical representation) form of inclusion on the feeling of belonging. The results show that the feeling of belonging is increased by a direct sign of inclusion which in turn increases the willingness to frequent the contexts. This article contributes to our understanding of mechanisms underlying processes of segregation from the perspective of people without a migration background in context where they are a numerical ethnic minority.

This paper considers the two concepts: the cultural and creative ecosystem, and the circular economy. It explores superficial commonalities and differences, as well as what can be learned from this ‘cyclical’ thinking (which we later frame as relational and contextual thinking). We lay out the common narratives of circularity in the representation of environmental and cultural sustainability. The aim is to move beyond superficial comparisons and understand the conceptual shifts that underlie them. The paper then seeks to explore what lessons can be learned from this understanding for the creative economy, about which there has been recent debate about its environmental impact. The final section turns to the governance of the (proto-) circular economy, and explores what sort of a ‘fit’ these new ideas have with existing institutions, and what changes are likely to be needed to current institutions and governance.

This research paper aims at contributing to the debate on the crucial role of adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in transitioning towards a circular-human centered adaptive reuse. Through the lens of heritage as a living system (Fusco Girard 2019), this paper explores how the entrepreneurial journey of an award-winning industrial heritage building, namely: De Hoorn in Leuven, Belgium, led to establishing a positive impact real estate developer, namely: Miss Miyagi. This young Belgian start-up initiated another award-winning industrial heritage building and launched an innovative cooperative investment fund. By narrating a positive impact entrepreneurial journey, this paper showcases the role heritage plays as a unique opportunity for commoning, innovation and contributing to the circular perspective. Finally, since the opportunity, entrepreneurial characteristic, and the process are not the only essential ingredients to success, this paper highlights how building an ecosystem and being supported by an enabling environment was also crucial. In the first part of this paper, the living system experience is put into context. In the second part, the author sheds light on the regenerative, generative, and symbiotic capacities of this living system (Fusco Girard 2019). Finally, the last part reflects on this novel experience.