Habitat International最新文献

North Korea is one of the world's remaining totalitarian states. Nevertheless, marketization, despite officially being banned, rapidly developed and metamorphosed local society following the severe economic crisis of the mid-1990s. This article examines the transformation of central Pyongyang after 2000 through the lens of socio-spatial inequalities using residential housing as a key criterion. Utilizing historical satellite images, we accurately mapped and traced the evolution of housing stock in central Pyongyang over the past two decades. The coexistence of the market and the legacy of the state's welfare system was found to have kept the slums, quasi-slums and a nomenklatura gated community geographically distinct and socially homogeneous. In contrast, in other parts of central Pyongyang, the active pursuit of middle-size and high-rise residential development, taking forms of housing renovations, redevelopments of industrial sites, and infill development, have rapidly expanded and verticalized the residential urban fabric while intensifying a spatial intermixture of different socio-economic groups. In short, marketization was powerful enough to transform the urban landscape and the patterns of socio-spatial inequality in Pyongyang despite the numerous institutional and administrative barriers that have maintained socio-spatial distance between those at the very top and the very bottom.

In rural areas on the peri-urban fringe of rapidly expanding African cities, urbanization can be interpreted and conceived as an unwelcome change threatening traditional ways of life and personal and community cultural identity of rural areas with customary land tenure arrangements and generally ethnically homogenous populations. In this paper, we examine the relationship between place attachment and residents' perceptions of various aspects of urban life, using Moshi, Tanzania, located in a region long identified with the Chagga people, as a case study. We utilize a survey of approximately 700 respondents, stratified by location, and use principal component analysis to construct variables for place attachment, perceptions of cities, and perceived risks associated with urbanization. Utilizing stepwise regression techniques, we find that there was a significant decrease in levels of place attachment between rural, per-urban, and urban locations. We also find that residents who associate the city with more negative characteristics report higher levels of place attachment. This suggests that urbanization is perceived as a threat to people's sense of place. Finally, we find that place attachment is positively associated with age, while being Chagga, owning land, and being native to the area are associated with greater levels of place attachment.

Both state-led and market-led institutional arrangements have been experimented in China to form collaborative governance among diverse stakeholders in participatory urban regeneration. Relatively less is known about how institutional arrangements as structural constraints impact the formation of collaborative governance. Building upon Giddens' structuration theory and collaborative governance theory, this paper develops a novel framework that converges on the reciprocity between structural and agency elements and applies it to two residential regeneration cases in Shenzhen. The findings reveal that in residential regeneration, the state-led institutional structure has a greater capacity than the market-led structure to create relational links for community participation. Various factors, including variations in land property rights, path dependencies and institutional certainties, explain the findings. The formation of collaborative governance relies on the shaping effect of structural elements on agents' behaviors in institutional design, including not only well-designed rules to regulate sanctions, constitute common meaning and allocate resources proportionally to actors' responsibilities, but also premium-allocated resources in accordance with stakeholders’ responsibilities. These findings contribute to a better understanding of collaborative governance and help improve participatory urban regeneration policymaking in China.

China has made the remarkable achievements in poverty alleviation, but there remains a great challenge to effectively support disadvantaged farmers and mitigate income inequality. The policy of College Graduates Serving as Village Officials (CGVOs), through which reallocates the high-quality talents mostly from large and medium cities to villages, has not received the deserved attention. In this study, we construct the theoretical framework about how CGVOs mitigate Income Inequality within Village (IIV). With a nationally representative panel data, we use Difference in Difference estimator and identify the impact of CGVOs. Main findings are as follows: (1) CGVOs can help mitigate IIV, mainly reflected in increasing farmers' operating income, property income, and transfer income and targeting the disadvantaged farmers. (2) CGVOs play an important role in optimizing production factor allocation, obtaining external resource support, improving the governance transparency, and increasing farmers' access to public service. (3) CGVOs' functions tend to vary in regional endowments and village secretary's characteristics. Finally, we put forward policy suggestions about how to fully utilize CGVOs' roles, which would shed light on village development in other developing countries.

In the past, under the GDP-centered promotion tournament, the growth coalition theory was often used to explain commercial and residential district regeneration in China, which was property-led and profit-driven. However, currently, due to the new domestic and international environment, China is undergoing an unprecedented and profound transformation and entering the inventory land era, leading to significant changes in the assessment system for local officials. Specifically, the new assessment system incorporates a diverse array of indicators beyond mere economic growth, signifying a transition from a GDP-centered to a multi-objective promotion tournament. Consequently, in this new context, the traditional growth coalition is no longer sufficient to theorize current urban regeneration. Additionally, industrial district regeneration, the mechanism of which may differ from commercial and residential district regeneration, was often neglected before and requires further investigation. Through the case study of Chengdu Hi-tech West District, this study explores the transformation of Chinese urban regeneration in this new era. It argues that China's governmental assessment system has adjusted by dismantling the previous promotion tournament model based on economic growth in the new era. Under the multi-objective promotion tournament, local officials now consider other aspects in addition to economic growth. For them, IDR has been treated as an effective approach to protecting cropland, undertaking new enterprises with limited space, and becoming the flagship in promoting economical and intensive land use, all of which are of great concern to the central government. Therefore, local officials are keen on industrial district regeneration now, even though it does not yield direct and immediate economic benefits. In this process, they mobilize other actors and leverage key resources to achieve and balance their multiple goals. Accordingly, the traditional growth coalition is declining, while a new kind of coalition based on high-quality development is emerging.

In South Africa, the state provides low-income housing through subsidies to construct starter homes; however, the effort is insufficient to meet the country's housing demand. Another form of public or subsidised housing provision is the self-help housing model. The extent of the impact of the self-help model is not well reported. To close this gap, this article reports on a study expedited to assess whether the self-help housing model could be revitalised to curb the proliferation of informal settlements, especially in the central region of South Africa. The qualitative research aimed to suggest strategies to increase the use of the self-help housing model in the region. The qualitative (textual) data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions before they were subjected to thematic analysis. The study revealed that challenges encumber the self-help model of housing delivery, although the beneficiaries prefer it because of their involvement in the projects, which leads to bigger units and user satisfaction. The study concludes that the self-help housing policy used in South Africa requires revision to increase the scale of implementation.

China is gradually and directly making rural collective land available on the land market. It is important to understand how stakeholders collectively treat and manage this land, and if this collective action leads to effective and sustainable results. This paper, however, revises Ostrom's framework of collective action by constructing the joint analysis of social capital, trust, and cooperation performance, in order to better capture the distinction between voluntary action and enforced action of stakeholders towards a sustainable goal. We analyze the role of voluntary collective action through higher-order structural equation modeling (HSEM), applied to a database consisting of 324 households in Jiangsu Province, China, collected in 2022 and 2023. The results suggest that social capital effectively promotes villagers' trust in policy implementers by establishing new institutions, increasing actors' trustworthiness, and improving channels of information exchange, and the first two means are more effective than the latter. We also demonstrate the significant positive effect of trust on cooperation performance, with trusting relationships with familiar groups and the credible behavior of policy implementers affecting performance outcomes of collective action. Moreover, social capital drives cooperation performance through the mediating effect of mutual trust that it breeds. With this revised framework and verified hypotheses one can thus create more effective policies to avoid inequality and informality in the land marketization process in China.

This research employs spatial analysis to investigate the intricate relationship between religious affiliations and suicide rates in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of southern Ontario, Canada. As the seventh-leading cause of death in Canada, suicide necessitates targeted prevention strategies, especially in areas with lower suicide rates such as Ontario. To explore spatial patterns of suicide attempts and intentional self-inflicted injuries, individual-level data is collected and generalized to the census tract for rigorous spatial analyses.

Self-Organizing Maps are utilized to build distinct regional clusters based on shared characteristics. These clusters unveil diverse combinations of suicide counts, religious affiliations, income levels, education levels, and immigrant populations, providing comprehensive insights into the multicultural composition of the area.

The study findings reveal specific spatial patterns of suicide attempts associated with particular religious affiliations, shedding new light on the influence of faith and spirituality on mental health outcomes within the context of suicide prevention. The analysis underscores the importance of a nuanced understanding of these factors to guide effective suicide prevention interventions.

Considering the spatial distribution of religious affiliations and suicide rates, this study offers valuable guidance for targeted and culturally sensitive suicide prevention efforts in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region and other similar urban landscapes. The implications of this research extend to the broader mental health field and emphasize the significance of accounting for sociocultural dimensions in devising evidence-based interventions to mitigate suicide effectively.

The decrease in vegetation cover due to urban expansion poses serious challenge to urban sustainability. Protected areas (PAs) are the most effective tools to prevent the loss of urban vegetation cover and to control urban expansion. Hence, this study aims to assess the importance of PAs in protecting urban vegetation and the urban expansion in the mega city of Delhi. For this, Landsat datasets were used for land use and land cover (LULC) mapping and then land cover change rate (LCCR) and land cover intensity (LCI) were calculated. For assessing urban expansion dynamics, mean landscape expansion index (MLEI) and the area-weighted LEI (AWLEI) were calculated. To evaluate the significance of PAs in protecting vegetation cover, kernel density estimation (KDE) was applied to assess the spatial variation and concentration of vegetation cover under different PAs. The result shows that urban expansion in Delhi was initially characterized by edge expansion during 1991–2001, followed by outlying expansion of built-up area during 2001–2021, while infilling of open and vegetated areas by built-up area was consistent during 1991–2021. Vegetation cover on the other hand, has followed a fluctuating trend in the city, but has overall it has declined from 13.36% to 9.30% during 1991–2021. The vegetation cover has declined significantly in eastern, northern, and western parts of Delhi but has increased significantly in central and southern parts, especially during 2001–21. This is because the central and southern parts of Delhi are well planned and have several PAs while the western, northern, and eastern parts of Delhi are unplanned regions and have only a few PAs. The KDE chart shows that the PAs have played an important role in protecting the vegetation cover in Delhi with R² value > 0.70. Hence, this study suggests to give special emphasis on preservation and expansion of PAs in urban planning for the long-term conservation of urban vegetation cover and sustainable urban development.

Through a study of the behaviour of already debt-ridden local governments in response to the Made in China 2025 policy, this paper explores whether local governments prioritized State interests over local interests, when their financial involvement was required. Deploying a panel data analysis for more than 280 prefectural-level cities, this paper finds that, despite having been subject to an “Administrative Subcontract” arrangement under which the Central Government appoints top local officials, local economic/debt interests were prioritized over national policy implementation under fiscal decentralization. Instead of promoting infrastructure development, the Made in China 2025 policy provided an opportunity for local governments to raise capital via Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFV) primarily for debt refinancing, despite the State's numerous attempts to control the growth of local government/LGFV debt. Some policy implications concerning i) the effectiveness of national policy implementation on local levels under “Administrative Subcontract” and ii) the debt situations of prefectural-level Chinese cities and their effects on China's economy in general are then discussed.