Pub Date : 2026-01-12DOI: 10.1177/00420980251393777
Mekarem Eljamal
As we continue to witness the unabating death and destruction of Palestinian lives and spaces, it would be easy to succumb to the bounds of expectations set by the dystopian world around us; however, Palestinians already offer us ways out of and through these unfolding dystopian realities. This article turns to these pathways presented and alluded to in the Palestinian speculative futures of Lyd and Palestine+100 , a science fiction documentary and an anthology of speculative fiction short stories, respectively. This article argues that the ways in which these speculative imaginaries engage with the context and enduring impacts of settler colonialism offer guiding principles for building desired urban futures. The enduring nature of settler colonialism in Palestine is often understood as the ongoing Nakba; Palestinian dispossession and displacement that was part of constructing the Israeli state in 1948 continues today through legal, infrastructural, and political maneuvers. Focusing on how the producers and authors of Lyd and Palestine+100 grapple with the fragmentation and erasure of the ongoing Nakba, what emerges is how these speculative futures are intimately tied to the present, not only through the dystopian elements but more significantly in the enactments of better worlds. In its eliminatory mission, a central component of settler colonialism is to destroy the capacity to imagine an Indigenous future; however, these speculative imaginaries echo the details of desired futures already being enacted in the present.
当我们继续目睹巴勒斯坦人的生命和空间不断遭到死亡和破坏时，我们很容易屈服于我们周围反乌托邦世界设定的期望界限；然而，巴勒斯坦人已经为我们提供了摆脱和穿越这些正在展开的反乌托邦现实的途径。这篇文章转向这些路径，分别在Lyd和巴勒斯坦+100的巴勒斯坦投机未来中呈现和暗示，一个科幻纪录片和一个投机小说短篇小说选集。本文认为，这些投机性想象与殖民主义的背景和持久影响相结合的方式，为构建理想的城市未来提供了指导原则。巴勒斯坦定居者殖民主义的持久性质通常被理解为正在进行的Nakba；1948年，巴勒斯坦人被剥夺和流离失所是以色列建国的一部分，通过法律、基础设施和政治手段，今天仍在继续。关注《Lyd and Palestine+100》的制片人和作者如何应对正在进行的Nakba的分裂和抹去，浮现的是这些投机的未来是如何与现在紧密联系在一起的，不仅通过反乌托邦元素，更重要的是通过更美好世界的制定。在其消灭任务中，移民殖民主义的一个核心组成部分是摧毁想象土著未来的能力；然而，这些推测性的想象与目前已经制定的期望未来的细节相呼应。
{"title":"Realms of possibility: The ongoing Nakba and speculative futures","authors":"Mekarem Eljamal","doi":"10.1177/00420980251393777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251393777","url":null,"abstract":"As we continue to witness the unabating death and destruction of Palestinian lives and spaces, it would be easy to succumb to the bounds of expectations set by the dystopian world around us; however, Palestinians already offer us ways out of and through these unfolding dystopian realities. This article turns to these pathways presented and alluded to in the Palestinian speculative futures of <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Lyd</jats:italic> and <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Palestine</jats:italic> <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">+100</jats:italic> , a science fiction documentary and an anthology of speculative fiction short stories, respectively. This article argues that the ways in which these speculative imaginaries engage with the context and enduring impacts of settler colonialism offer guiding principles for building desired urban futures. The enduring nature of settler colonialism in Palestine is often understood as the ongoing Nakba; Palestinian dispossession and displacement that was part of constructing the Israeli state in 1948 continues today through legal, infrastructural, and political maneuvers. Focusing on how the producers and authors of <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Lyd</jats:italic> and <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Palestine+100</jats:italic> grapple with the fragmentation and erasure of the ongoing Nakba, what emerges is how these speculative futures are intimately tied to the present, not only through the dystopian elements but more significantly in the enactments of better worlds. In its eliminatory mission, a central component of settler colonialism is to destroy the capacity to imagine an Indigenous future; however, these speculative imaginaries echo the details of desired futures already being enacted in the present.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145949858","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-08DOI: 10.1177/00420980251393550
Kate Lowe, Anson Stewart, Gwendolyn Purifoye
Public transit is highly inequitable in hyper-segregated Chicago. After being promised for 50 years, a rail extension is finally poised for construction on the far South Side, a majority Black area lacking metro rail service. Using interviews, we examine how riders and residents perceive the long-awaited Red Line Extension and current riding experiences, focusing on time—waiting for buses routinely and waiting for a long-promised project. While the extension is an important step for equity, it is not reparative planning; doubt and frustration expressed by interviewees reflect that they also see equity planning as falling short.
{"title":"Waiting for minutes and decades: Public transit and opportunities for reparative planning on Chicago’s far South Side","authors":"Kate Lowe, Anson Stewart, Gwendolyn Purifoye","doi":"10.1177/00420980251393550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251393550","url":null,"abstract":"Public transit is highly inequitable in hyper-segregated Chicago. After being promised for 50 years, a rail extension is finally poised for construction on the far South Side, a majority Black area lacking metro rail service. Using interviews, we examine how riders and residents perceive the long-awaited Red Line Extension and current riding experiences, focusing on time—waiting for buses routinely and waiting for a long-promised project. While the extension is an important step for equity, it is not reparative planning; doubt and frustration expressed by interviewees reflect that they also see equity planning as falling short.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2026-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145920056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-29DOI: 10.1177/00420980251396004
Jayaraj Sundaresan
This article examines the relationship between planning, violations and powerlessness in Bangalore. It argues that although planning power is supposed to be produced in the public administration by urban planners and bureaucrats working with and through different protocols, it is never actually produced in reality. Engaging with this paradox and drawing on Latour and Nāgārjuna, this article suggests that planning power has no ontological substance and that planning is performatively constituted in real time by diverse collectives. I argue that the millions of observable everyday practices that mutually constitute the social, political and administrative cannot be explained, criticised or controlled by a single concept of ‘planning state power’ as a structural force. Instead, the article proposes Yojana as a context-sensitive vernacular concept to better understand the practice of planning in India and beyond.
{"title":"Lion in a jungle or lion in a cage? Yojana beyond planning power and powerlessness in Bangalore, India","authors":"Jayaraj Sundaresan","doi":"10.1177/00420980251396004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251396004","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the relationship between planning, violations and powerlessness in Bangalore. It argues that although planning power is supposed to be produced in the public administration by urban planners and bureaucrats working with and through different protocols, it is never actually produced in reality. Engaging with this paradox and drawing on Latour and Nāgārjuna, this article suggests that planning power has no ontological substance and that planning is performatively constituted in real time by diverse collectives. I argue that the millions of observable everyday practices that mutually constitute the social, political and administrative cannot be explained, criticised or controlled by a single concept of ‘planning state power’ as a structural force. Instead, the article proposes <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">Yojana</jats:italic> as a context-sensitive vernacular concept to better understand the practice of planning in India and beyond.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145893674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-26DOI: 10.1177/00420980251396493
Francisco Fernández Romero
The fields of ability and ableism studies advance previous work in disability studies, which shows how disability is socially produced, to focus on how the abilities of non-disabled subjects are also produced. That is, how do social contexts selectively support, enable or enhance the capacities of certain body-minds? Geography can play a key role in these explorations by interrogating the role of space in these processes of ablement. This article aims to uncover the taken-for-granted ways in which urban infrastructures produce a “normal” pedestrian with the illusory ability to roam the city unaided, while simultaneously not enabling and even restricting the mobility of others. To do so, it addresses infrastructures such as sidewalks and street crossing systems which consolidated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An analysis of municipal documents shows how walking was made possible due to these infrastructures, which eliminated environmental obstacles and protected people from traffic. But this enablement did not reach all body-minds, as disabled people were expected to be elsewhere, in segregated institutions or domestic spaces. For this analysis, the article draws from disability geography, ability and ableism studies, science and technology studies, and Foucauldian notions of biopower.
{"title":"Urban infrastructures of ablement: The historical production of the “normal” pedestrian in Buenos Aires","authors":"Francisco Fernández Romero","doi":"10.1177/00420980251396493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251396493","url":null,"abstract":"The fields of ability and ableism studies advance previous work in disability studies, which shows how disability is socially produced, to focus on how the abilities of non-disabled subjects are also produced. That is, how do social contexts selectively support, enable or enhance the capacities of certain body-minds? Geography can play a key role in these explorations by interrogating the role of space in these processes of ablement. This article aims to uncover the taken-for-granted ways in which urban infrastructures produce a “normal” pedestrian with the illusory ability to roam the city unaided, while simultaneously not enabling and even restricting the mobility of others. To do so, it addresses infrastructures such as sidewalks and street crossing systems which consolidated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An analysis of municipal documents shows how walking was made possible due to these infrastructures, which eliminated environmental obstacles and protected people from traffic. But this enablement did not reach all body-minds, as disabled people were expected to be elsewhere, in segregated institutions or domestic spaces. For this analysis, the article draws from disability geography, ability and ableism studies, science and technology studies, and Foucauldian notions of biopower.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145830124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-17DOI: 10.1177/00420980251394539
Maisa Totry
Through an investigation of the socio-spatial development of the Palestinian town of Sakhnin in Israel, this research examines the role of social institutions in shaping informal spatial organization. It investigates how spatial ordering emerges and evolves through the adaptive capacities of social institutions in response to shifts in top-down planning policies and social transformations. Drawing on spatial analysis of the built environment alongside in-depth interviews with residents and professionals from formal planning institutions, the findings reveal the spontaneous forms of communal organization that serve to establish essential urban infrastructures, preserve intergenerational spatial knowledge and enforce social norms under informal conditions. These institutions also operate as collective resistance responses to formalized planning on marginalized communities. The article highlights the enduring interplay between individuals, communities and the state, and underscores the significance of organizational practices in self-organizing informal urbanism.
{"title":"The role of social institutions in informal self-organizing urbanism: The case of Palestinian towns in Israel","authors":"Maisa Totry","doi":"10.1177/00420980251394539","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251394539","url":null,"abstract":"Through an investigation of the socio-spatial development of the Palestinian town of Sakhnin in Israel, this research examines the role of social institutions in shaping informal spatial organization. It investigates how spatial ordering emerges and evolves through the adaptive capacities of social institutions in response to shifts in top-down planning policies and social transformations. Drawing on spatial analysis of the built environment alongside in-depth interviews with residents and professionals from formal planning institutions, the findings reveal the spontaneous forms of communal organization that serve to establish essential urban infrastructures, preserve intergenerational spatial knowledge and enforce social norms under informal conditions. These institutions also operate as collective resistance responses to formalized planning on marginalized communities. The article highlights the enduring interplay between individuals, communities and the state, and underscores the significance of organizational practices in self-organizing informal urbanism.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145765087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-16DOI: 10.1177/00420980251393606
William Lewis, Marta Olazabal, Ana Terra Amorim-Maia, Maria Loroño-Leturiondo
Local priorities shape the way urban adaptation to climate change is envisioned. Yet processes to capture these priorities often overlook the power dynamics behind structural vulnerabilities. Approaches to positive futures thinking that are transdisciplinary offer a way to centre local communities in the process. However, these approaches are often limited as communities struggle to conceive climate change beyond their known realities and lived experiences, creating a disconnect between the present and future. We introduce the concept of ‘urban adaptation imaginaries’ to connect futures thinking to real-world social, political, and environmental contexts. Through a critical review, we argue this concept supports urban adaptation decision-making by emphasising its socio-political and relational dimensions, and by addressing the fragmentation and abstraction common in adaptation discourse about the future. We identify three key contributions: (1) fostering context-sensitive adaptation; (2) prioritising justice and inclusivity; and (3) enabling iterative learning processes. To support this, we highlight creative methods such as arts-based approaches, and storytelling to help make climate futures more accessible, grounded, and transformative.
{"title":"Connecting the present to the future: The potential of urban adaptation imaginaries","authors":"William Lewis, Marta Olazabal, Ana Terra Amorim-Maia, Maria Loroño-Leturiondo","doi":"10.1177/00420980251393606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251393606","url":null,"abstract":"Local priorities shape the way urban adaptation to climate change is envisioned. Yet processes to capture these priorities often overlook the power dynamics behind structural vulnerabilities. Approaches to positive futures thinking that are transdisciplinary offer a way to centre local communities in the process. However, these approaches are often limited as communities struggle to conceive climate change beyond their known realities and lived experiences, creating a disconnect between the present and future. We introduce the concept of ‘urban adaptation imaginaries’ to connect futures thinking to real-world social, political, and environmental contexts. Through a critical review, we argue this concept supports urban adaptation decision-making by emphasising its socio-political and relational dimensions, and by addressing the fragmentation and abstraction common in adaptation discourse about the future. We identify three key contributions: (1) fostering context-sensitive adaptation; (2) prioritising justice and inclusivity; and (3) enabling iterative learning processes. To support this, we highlight creative methods such as arts-based approaches, and storytelling to help make climate futures more accessible, grounded, and transformative.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"93 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145759576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-13DOI: 10.1177/00420980251398620
Nathan McClintock, Sophie L. Van Neste, Chantal Gailloux, Florence Barnabé, Caroline Flory-Célini
Greenhouses are becoming a regular feature of the urban landscape, their popularity driven in part by an eco-futurist, techno-optimist vision of “vertical farming” that articulates with entrepreneurial green urbanism. In Montreal (Quebec, Canada), however, urban greenhouses tend to be small-scale, low-tech infrastructures operated by networks of state, non-profit, and community actors, with an equity-oriented mission of working in solidarity with–and providing material support for–marginalized populations. In this article, we characterize the everyday governance of these “solidarity greenhouses” ( serres solidaires ) and examine the conditions that mediate their emergence and success within twin contexts of austerity and entrepreneurial urbanism. Examining three key challenge areas–project definition, municipal regulations, and funding–and how project leaders navigate them, we reveal how everyday governance is a function of relational and differential power between partners and the ability to navigate a shifting funding landscape. Governance is further deeply influenced by Quebec’s unique “community action” model and the ongoing dismantling of a once-robust welfare state.
{"title":"Between state–community partnerships and austerity: The everyday networked governance of Montreal’s solidarity greenhouses","authors":"Nathan McClintock, Sophie L. Van Neste, Chantal Gailloux, Florence Barnabé, Caroline Flory-Célini","doi":"10.1177/00420980251398620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251398620","url":null,"abstract":"Greenhouses are becoming a regular feature of the urban landscape, their popularity driven in part by an eco-futurist, techno-optimist vision of “vertical farming” that articulates with entrepreneurial green urbanism. In Montreal (Quebec, Canada), however, urban greenhouses tend to be small-scale, low-tech infrastructures operated by networks of state, non-profit, and community actors, with an equity-oriented mission of working in solidarity with–and providing material support for–marginalized populations. In this article, we characterize the everyday governance of these “solidarity greenhouses” ( <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">serres solidaires</jats:italic> ) and examine the conditions that mediate their emergence and success within twin contexts of austerity and entrepreneurial urbanism. Examining three key challenge areas–project definition, municipal regulations, and funding–and how project leaders navigate them, we reveal how everyday governance is a function of relational and differential power between partners and the ability to navigate a shifting funding landscape. Governance is further deeply influenced by Quebec’s unique “community action” model and the ongoing dismantling of a once-robust welfare state.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"227 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-12DOI: 10.1177/00420980251393015
Magali de Raphélis, Sandra Mallet
Urban nights in Europe have undergone significant transformations since the 1980s. In order to better understand the origins and consequences of these changes, this paper presents a diachronic analysis of the nightlife scene and its regulation and governance in a French intermediate city and its surroundings areas from the late 1970s to the present day. By distinguishing several periods, it demonstrates that night-time activities have gradually multiplied, diversified and concentrated in urban areas. By placing them alongside changes in regulations and governance, it reveals that these changes have not been driven by a deregulation of licences or a laissez-faire approach associated with the 24-hour-city policies, but have been carried out by a wide range of stakeholders. The national and then local public authorities have set up consultations with these various players to both support and supervise these transformations. This article thus clarifies what the so-called ‘continental European nightlife’ looked like in a French city when British cities were adopting 24-hour-city policies, and how it has evolved since then, and highlights certain factors that could explain the differences observed between the UK and France.
{"title":"A ‘continental European nightlife’? The evolution of nightlife venues and their stakeholders since the 1980s: Urban and rural dynamics around a French intermediate city","authors":"Magali de Raphélis, Sandra Mallet","doi":"10.1177/00420980251393015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251393015","url":null,"abstract":"Urban nights in Europe have undergone significant transformations since the 1980s. In order to better understand the origins and consequences of these changes, this paper presents a diachronic analysis of the nightlife scene and its regulation and governance in a French intermediate city and its surroundings areas from the late 1970s to the present day. By distinguishing several periods, it demonstrates that night-time activities have gradually multiplied, diversified and concentrated in urban areas. By placing them alongside changes in regulations and governance, it reveals that these changes have not been driven by a deregulation of licences or a <jats:italic toggle=\"yes\">laissez-faire</jats:italic> approach associated with the 24-hour-city policies, but have been carried out by a wide range of stakeholders. The national and then local public authorities have set up consultations with these various players to both support and supervise these transformations. This article thus clarifies what the so-called ‘continental European nightlife’ looked like in a French city when British cities were adopting 24-hour-city policies, and how it has evolved since then, and highlights certain factors that could explain the differences observed between the UK and France.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-12DOI: 10.1177/00420980251391666
Michael Osei Asibey, Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
We examine the phenomenon of de-greening urbanism within the context of social imaginaries in informal settlements, focusing on the city of Kumasi (Ghana). De-greening urbanism refers to an urban development process that displaces greenspace, contributing to its decline, deterioration, and loss, closely associated with the negatively changing character of a community. Using mixed research methods, spatiotemporal analysis was undertaken, and surveys and interviews were conducted with city officials, community leaders, and residents to understand the complexity and politics of de-greening urbanism for informal settlements and their environment. The findings reveal a significant loss of urban greenspace (52.4%) in the informal settlements between 2004 and 2024, produced by complex politics of land tenure problems, weak enforcement of planning laws, and poor community–institution collaboration. This de-greening urbanism phenomenon is compounding social inequality, marginalizing informal settlement residents, and fostering socio-environmental segregation across the cityscape. Within the context of social imaginaries, this article underscores the importance of inclusion and collaboration to promote ecological resilience, social cohesion, and the overall urban wellbeing of informal settlement residents.
{"title":"De-greening urbanism and social imaginaries in informal settlements","authors":"Michael Osei Asibey, Patrick Brandful Cobbinah","doi":"10.1177/00420980251391666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251391666","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the phenomenon of de-greening urbanism within the context of social imaginaries in informal settlements, focusing on the city of Kumasi (Ghana). De-greening urbanism refers to an urban development process that displaces greenspace, contributing to its decline, deterioration, and loss, closely associated with the negatively changing character of a community. Using mixed research methods, spatiotemporal analysis was undertaken, and surveys and interviews were conducted with city officials, community leaders, and residents to understand the complexity and politics of de-greening urbanism for informal settlements and their environment. The findings reveal a significant loss of urban greenspace (52.4%) in the informal settlements between 2004 and 2024, produced by complex politics of land tenure problems, weak enforcement of planning laws, and poor community–institution collaboration. This de-greening urbanism phenomenon is compounding social inequality, marginalizing informal settlement residents, and fostering socio-environmental segregation across the cityscape. Within the context of social imaginaries, this article underscores the importance of inclusion and collaboration to promote ecological resilience, social cohesion, and the overall urban wellbeing of informal settlement residents.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"143 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145730890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-06DOI: 10.1177/00420980251390711
Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier
This article discusses the spatial and symbolic politics associated with competing expressions of leadership in the built form of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It does so across two episodes. The first one is the Sangkum era, post-independence, urban modernizations initiated by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Here royal authority gave expression to an emerging nationhood by establishing a landmark urban axis. The second, and more recent, episode sees an alternative urban axis being initiated by the de facto ruler (until 2023), Prime Minister Hun Sen. Using the disciplinary lens of visual culture and new materialism, the article unpacks the resonances between the two episodes and explores how these are distinct process of “dynasty-making,” one royally and nationally framed, the other politically and globally framed, associated with those forms. The article argues that persistent “strongmen” symbolism and “new monarchy” symbolism are woven into the urban fabric, albeit under very different circumstances.
{"title":"Competing axes, rival dynasties: The new Kingdom of Cambodia","authors":"Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier","doi":"10.1177/00420980251390711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980251390711","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses the spatial and symbolic politics associated with competing expressions of leadership in the built form of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It does so across two episodes. The first one is the Sangkum era, post-independence, urban modernizations initiated by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Here royal authority gave expression to an emerging nationhood by establishing a landmark urban axis. The second, and more recent, episode sees an alternative urban axis being initiated by the de facto ruler (until 2023), Prime Minister Hun Sen. Using the disciplinary lens of visual culture and new materialism, the article unpacks the resonances between the two episodes and explores how these are distinct process of “dynasty-making,” one royally and nationally framed, the other politically and globally framed, associated with those forms. The article argues that persistent “strongmen” symbolism and “new monarchy” symbolism are woven into the urban fabric, albeit under very different circumstances.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"123 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2025-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145680207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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