Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231217391
Yoon-Joo Jung
An urban heat island is defined as an urban area that experiences warmer temperatures than its surroundings. This study examines how Singapore’s planning efforts established after the mid-20th century have affected the thermal environment of the city in association with land transformation, using historical temperature data available from the Meteorological Service of Singapore and some historical studies. Singapore’s planners have carefully regulated the growth of its downtown while promoting expansion in other parts of the city-state. These effects of planning have also unconsciously shaped the location and outline of Singapore’s urban heat island. As a result, new urban heat peaks were found around the centres of newly constructed large-scale new towns compared to industrial areas. This study provides lessons for land planning in mitigating a city’s urban heat island effects.
{"title":"Urban heat islands and the transformation of Singapore","authors":"Yoon-Joo Jung","doi":"10.1177/00420980231217391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231217391","url":null,"abstract":"An urban heat island is defined as an urban area that experiences warmer temperatures than its surroundings. This study examines how Singapore’s planning efforts established after the mid-20th century have affected the thermal environment of the city in association with land transformation, using historical temperature data available from the Meteorological Service of Singapore and some historical studies. Singapore’s planners have carefully regulated the growth of its downtown while promoting expansion in other parts of the city-state. These effects of planning have also unconsciously shaped the location and outline of Singapore’s urban heat island. As a result, new urban heat peaks were found around the centres of newly constructed large-scale new towns compared to industrial areas. This study provides lessons for land planning in mitigating a city’s urban heat island effects.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"36 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139608965","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231217661
Cecilia Alda-Vidal, Alison L Browne, M. Lawhon, Deljana Iossifova
Scholars have called for increased attention to the practices through which residents of southern cities create and use infrastructure. The failures and disruptions of many particular artefacts have meant that people often develop multiple ways to access water, electricity, or transportation, even if all of them have limitations. For sanitation, thinking through heterogeneous infrastructure configurations can help us to see connections between toilets, and the reasons for maintaining access to different types of toilets, given their different risks and benefits. In this paper, we focus on plots in Lilongwe with both indoor flush-toilets and backyard latrines, and the lived experiences of people as they navigate choices about the use of these toilets. The presence of on and off-grid toilets is rooted in colonial urban form, yet is perpetuated – and proliferates in new places – as residents face a number of constraints, including most recently recurrent water shortages due to droughts. We consider both how this configuration challenges official imaginaries of urban sanitation, and how it helps residents to address different risks and sanitation needs. Drawing on the experience of Lilongwe, we reflect on what can be learnt from this heterogeneous infrastructural configuration in terms of planning for more resilient water and sanitation services in Global South cities and beyond.
{"title":"Sanitation configurations in Lilongwe: Everyday experiences on and off the grid","authors":"Cecilia Alda-Vidal, Alison L Browne, M. Lawhon, Deljana Iossifova","doi":"10.1177/00420980231217661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231217661","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have called for increased attention to the practices through which residents of southern cities create and use infrastructure. The failures and disruptions of many particular artefacts have meant that people often develop multiple ways to access water, electricity, or transportation, even if all of them have limitations. For sanitation, thinking through heterogeneous infrastructure configurations can help us to see connections between toilets, and the reasons for maintaining access to different types of toilets, given their different risks and benefits. In this paper, we focus on plots in Lilongwe with both indoor flush-toilets and backyard latrines, and the lived experiences of people as they navigate choices about the use of these toilets. The presence of on and off-grid toilets is rooted in colonial urban form, yet is perpetuated – and proliferates in new places – as residents face a number of constraints, including most recently recurrent water shortages due to droughts. We consider both how this configuration challenges official imaginaries of urban sanitation, and how it helps residents to address different risks and sanitation needs. Drawing on the experience of Lilongwe, we reflect on what can be learnt from this heterogeneous infrastructural configuration in terms of planning for more resilient water and sanitation services in Global South cities and beyond.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"31 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139607873","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231217633
William Conroy
In the context of hotly contested debates within critical urban theory, many scholars have recently attempted (both implicitly and explicitly) to move beyond the relational-dialectical concept of ‘totality’, taking up the notion of ‘the constitutive outside’ in its place. With this in view, this article seeks to (1) develop a critique of the ways in which the concept of the constitutive outside is deployed in these debates; and (2) to sketch another path forward – one that understands capitalist urbanisation as a distinctive moment in the evolution of a world-encompassing and internally related socio-spatial totality, while also attending to well-founded concerns among theorists of the constitutive outside regarding the question of difference and ascriptive hierarchisation. More precisely, this article will pursue a close reading of work on the constitutive outside in critical urban theory, suggesting that it effectively re-articulates longstanding and entrenched tenets of capitalist ideology, positing the image of a ‘space-time of the other’. And it will conclude with a revised conceptualisation of totality for critical urban theory, building on Nancy Fraser’s recent work on capitalism’s racialised, gendered, and ecological ‘hidden abodes’.
{"title":"Constitutive outsides or hidden abodes? Totality and ideology in critical urban theory","authors":"William Conroy","doi":"10.1177/00420980231217633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231217633","url":null,"abstract":"In the context of hotly contested debates within critical urban theory, many scholars have recently attempted (both implicitly and explicitly) to move beyond the relational-dialectical concept of ‘totality’, taking up the notion of ‘the constitutive outside’ in its place. With this in view, this article seeks to (1) develop a critique of the ways in which the concept of the constitutive outside is deployed in these debates; and (2) to sketch another path forward – one that understands capitalist urbanisation as a distinctive moment in the evolution of a world-encompassing and internally related socio-spatial totality, while also attending to well-founded concerns among theorists of the constitutive outside regarding the question of difference and ascriptive hierarchisation. More precisely, this article will pursue a close reading of work on the constitutive outside in critical urban theory, suggesting that it effectively re-articulates longstanding and entrenched tenets of capitalist ideology, positing the image of a ‘space-time of the other’. And it will conclude with a revised conceptualisation of totality for critical urban theory, building on Nancy Fraser’s recent work on capitalism’s racialised, gendered, and ecological ‘hidden abodes’.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"31 20","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139607711","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231214502
Kristina Grange, Nils Björling, Lina Olsson, Julia Fredriksson
Uneven regional development fomented by city-centric growth agendas generates significant challenges for regional peripheries. Placing regional margins and other plural geographies at the centre, in this article we apply a normative framework based on justice theory to uncover the dominance of urban viewpoints in urban regional development policy. Departing from Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional justice theory, we provide a deconstruction of city-centrism by illustrating how regional disparities in two regions in Sweden are not only reproduced by economic maldistribution but also by political misrepresentation and cultural misrecognition. By doing so, we illustrate the fruitfulness of applying a normative justice framework to create a broader understanding of factors that contribute to the political production of uneven regional development and need to be addressed if a transformative and progressive change is to occur.
{"title":"Deconstructing the urban viewpoint: Exploring uneven regional development with Nancy Fraser’s notion of justice","authors":"Kristina Grange, Nils Björling, Lina Olsson, Julia Fredriksson","doi":"10.1177/00420980231214502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231214502","url":null,"abstract":"Uneven regional development fomented by city-centric growth agendas generates significant challenges for regional peripheries. Placing regional margins and other plural geographies at the centre, in this article we apply a normative framework based on justice theory to uncover the dominance of urban viewpoints in urban regional development policy. Departing from Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional justice theory, we provide a deconstruction of city-centrism by illustrating how regional disparities in two regions in Sweden are not only reproduced by economic maldistribution but also by political misrepresentation and cultural misrecognition. By doing so, we illustrate the fruitfulness of applying a normative justice framework to create a broader understanding of factors that contribute to the political production of uneven regional development and need to be addressed if a transformative and progressive change is to occur.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139606566","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231218612
Matthias Bernt, Anne Volkmann
Rampant suburbanisation is one of the most visible changes evidenced in cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the past three decades. In this paper, we analyse how suburbanisation unfolded in East Germany after reunification. We do this against the background of ongoing debates about the usefulness and meaning of the term post-socialism that have questioned the self-enclosed spatiality of the concept and suggest giving the concept of neoliberalisation a more central role in analysing the changes experienced in this part of the world. We show that the suburbanisation process in East Germany rested on three neoliberal policy orientations: (1) extensive investment stimuli for the construction of new rental housing, (2) promotion of home ownership and (3) the privileging of suburban locations through planning gaps. Since all these policies are based on neoliberal ideas, we argue that neoliberalisation and post-socialist reform agendas have appeared as two sides of the same coin. Against this background, we advocate putting the developments that came after socialism at the centre of the research and call for a new generation of studies on post-socialist neoliberalisation.
{"title":"Suburbanisation in East Germany","authors":"Matthias Bernt, Anne Volkmann","doi":"10.1177/00420980231218612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231218612","url":null,"abstract":"Rampant suburbanisation is one of the most visible changes evidenced in cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the past three decades. In this paper, we analyse how suburbanisation unfolded in East Germany after reunification. We do this against the background of ongoing debates about the usefulness and meaning of the term post-socialism that have questioned the self-enclosed spatiality of the concept and suggest giving the concept of neoliberalisation a more central role in analysing the changes experienced in this part of the world. We show that the suburbanisation process in East Germany rested on three neoliberal policy orientations: (1) extensive investment stimuli for the construction of new rental housing, (2) promotion of home ownership and (3) the privileging of suburban locations through planning gaps. Since all these policies are based on neoliberal ideas, we argue that neoliberalisation and post-socialist reform agendas have appeared as two sides of the same coin. Against this background, we advocate putting the developments that came after socialism at the centre of the research and call for a new generation of studies on post-socialist neoliberalisation.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"35 17","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139607760","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231215708
João Tonucci
The relationship between the state and informal land development in Global South metropolises has yet not received much attention in urban studies. Concerning that knowledge gap, this paper investigates how the state regulates and inspects irregular and clandestine land subdivisions in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (MRBH). A mixed-methods approach, focused on the inner workings of the land development control policy led by the MRBH Agency between 2009 and 2018, provides new evidence of the relationships between inspectors, developers, and prosecutors, among other actors. By delving deep into the intricate nexus between a changing regulatory landscape and the bureaucratic, street-level, and everyday enforcement practices by officials, the paper reveals how land development control, directly and indirectly, shapes informal land development in the MRBH. Particularly, it sheds light on how land development control unrolls through a contradictory combination of overregulation on one side and tolerance on the other. In light of this, I argue that, as land development control evolves without effectively tackling the land question and the structural drivers of informality, the state becomes paradoxically entangled in the production of the same forms of informality it is expected to curb. Therefore, land development control is better understood as a fragile and ambivalent state compromise between the need to regulate urban expansion and market-driven informal urbanisation. By creating opportunities for rent extraction and capital accumulation which are explored by informal land developers, the state has been crucial for property-led informal urbanisation in metropolitan Brazil.
{"title":"Informality through the state: How overregulation and tolerance shape informal land development in metropolitan Brazil","authors":"João Tonucci","doi":"10.1177/00420980231215708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231215708","url":null,"abstract":"The relationship between the state and informal land development in Global South metropolises has yet not received much attention in urban studies. Concerning that knowledge gap, this paper investigates how the state regulates and inspects irregular and clandestine land subdivisions in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (MRBH). A mixed-methods approach, focused on the inner workings of the land development control policy led by the MRBH Agency between 2009 and 2018, provides new evidence of the relationships between inspectors, developers, and prosecutors, among other actors. By delving deep into the intricate nexus between a changing regulatory landscape and the bureaucratic, street-level, and everyday enforcement practices by officials, the paper reveals how land development control, directly and indirectly, shapes informal land development in the MRBH. Particularly, it sheds light on how land development control unrolls through a contradictory combination of overregulation on one side and tolerance on the other. In light of this, I argue that, as land development control evolves without effectively tackling the land question and the structural drivers of informality, the state becomes paradoxically entangled in the production of the same forms of informality it is expected to curb. Therefore, land development control is better understood as a fragile and ambivalent state compromise between the need to regulate urban expansion and market-driven informal urbanisation. By creating opportunities for rent extraction and capital accumulation which are explored by informal land developers, the state has been crucial for property-led informal urbanisation in metropolitan Brazil.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"39 22","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139608755","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-22DOI: 10.1177/00420980231213280
Chris Hamnett
The changing class structure of cities has been a topic of considerable importance and debate for over a 150 years, since the industrial revolution created a large industrial proletariat in many western cities. But the rise of post-industrial society, the decline of the manufacturing industry, a shrinking industrial working class, and the growth of the professional and managerial class from the 1970s onwards has provoked fresh debate about this, as has the emergence of gentrification in many cities. This paper looks at the changing social class structure of London from 2001 to 2021 using data from the population Census. It shows that the higher professional and managerial class continued its long term growth after a pause in 2001–2011. But the number and proportions of small employers, the self-employed and routine workers have also grown. There is therefore continuing professionalisation but also ‘asymmetric polarisation’. The paper also examines the geography of social class change by borough over the period and shows that while the professional and managerial class grew in all boroughs, suggesting a gradual upward class change across London, it was highest in the most gentrified inner London boroughs. However, the percentage point growth of the self-employed and routine groups was generally higher in the mostly suburban boroughs where professional and managerial class percentage point change growth was smallest (and vice versa) which suggests an intensified social class sorting and divergence across London with the lower class groups growing most rapidly in suburban outer London where housing costs are less.
{"title":"The changing social class structure of London, 2001–2021: Continued professionalisation or asymmetric polarisation?","authors":"Chris Hamnett","doi":"10.1177/00420980231213280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231213280","url":null,"abstract":"The changing class structure of cities has been a topic of considerable importance and debate for over a 150 years, since the industrial revolution created a large industrial proletariat in many western cities. But the rise of post-industrial society, the decline of the manufacturing industry, a shrinking industrial working class, and the growth of the professional and managerial class from the 1970s onwards has provoked fresh debate about this, as has the emergence of gentrification in many cities. This paper looks at the changing social class structure of London from 2001 to 2021 using data from the population Census. It shows that the higher professional and managerial class continued its long term growth after a pause in 2001–2011. But the number and proportions of small employers, the self-employed and routine workers have also grown. There is therefore continuing professionalisation but also ‘asymmetric polarisation’. The paper also examines the geography of social class change by borough over the period and shows that while the professional and managerial class grew in all boroughs, suggesting a gradual upward class change across London, it was highest in the most gentrified inner London boroughs. However, the percentage point growth of the self-employed and routine groups was generally higher in the mostly suburban boroughs where professional and managerial class percentage point change growth was smallest (and vice versa) which suggests an intensified social class sorting and divergence across London with the lower class groups growing most rapidly in suburban outer London where housing costs are less.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"80 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139606115","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}
Pub Date : 2024-01-06DOI: 10.1177/00420980231213204
Andrew Messamore
Coalitions of formal housing, civil rights and anti-poverty organisations play an important role in urban housing movements. However, the extent and dynamics of these ‘housing movement coalitions’ are not well understood. In this article, I document the geography of housing movement coalitions across 148 US cities using leadership networks among 11.8 million civic leaders. I show that cohesive coalitions of formal housing, civil rights and anti-poverty leaders exist in a wide range of US cities, including in conservative states. In terms of change, housing coalitions have only grown in a handful of politically liberal cities since the global financial crisis, and most housing coalitions have stagnated and some have declined. Finally, change score regression models indicate that economic insecurity is associated with housing coalition emergence, but municipal austerity and hostile political environments may weaken the opportunities for coalitions to expand. These findings suggest movement scholars should widen their focus to include housing coalitions in more diverse contexts, and more closely examine how municipal funding shapes housing coalitions and their relationship to grassroots activism.
{"title":"Housing movement coalitions in the United States: Trends from big networks among urban civil society leaders","authors":"Andrew Messamore","doi":"10.1177/00420980231213204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231213204","url":null,"abstract":"Coalitions of formal housing, civil rights and anti-poverty organisations play an important role in urban housing movements. However, the extent and dynamics of these ‘housing movement coalitions’ are not well understood. In this article, I document the geography of housing movement coalitions across 148 US cities using leadership networks among 11.8 million civic leaders. I show that cohesive coalitions of formal housing, civil rights and anti-poverty leaders exist in a wide range of US cities, including in conservative states. In terms of change, housing coalitions have only grown in a handful of politically liberal cities since the global financial crisis, and most housing coalitions have stagnated and some have declined. Finally, change score regression models indicate that economic insecurity is associated with housing coalition emergence, but municipal austerity and hostile political environments may weaken the opportunities for coalitions to expand. These findings suggest movement scholars should widen their focus to include housing coalitions in more diverse contexts, and more closely examine how municipal funding shapes housing coalitions and their relationship to grassroots activism.","PeriodicalId":508536,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"6 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139380639","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}