Pub Date : 2024-09-14DOI: 10.1177/00420980241270953
Prosper Issahaku Korah, Patrick Brandful Cobbinah
Sub-Saharan African cities have experienced significant spatial transformation in recent years. This transformation, in part, has been characterised by the proliferation of new cities and the privatisation of urban spaces. Yet, an understanding of how the growing trend of privatised urbanism is producing marginalisation and exclusion hurdles for the majority of urbanites in the context of self-organisation remains limited. In response to this knowledge gap, this article investigates patterns of self-organisation in new cities. We demonstrate how the production of new cities and the privatisation of urban spaces have shaped land use planning and led to the marginalisation of local communities. Using the Greater Accra Region, Ghana as a case study, fieldwork involving interviews with urban planners, community leaders and key informants was conducted. The findings show that the forms of self-organisation inherent in new cities tend to perpetuate and deepen inequalities and exclusion in the peri-urban area. Rather than being an avenue for the marginalised to intervene in space and realise their ambitions, self-organisation serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful. We conclude that self-organisation may not always be a means to promote an inclusive and just society. Recommendations for creating a more equitable and inclusive urban futures are proffered.
{"title":"Privatised urbanism: The making of new cities and the self-organising mosaic","authors":"Prosper Issahaku Korah, Patrick Brandful Cobbinah","doi":"10.1177/00420980241270953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241270953","url":null,"abstract":"Sub-Saharan African cities have experienced significant spatial transformation in recent years. This transformation, in part, has been characterised by the proliferation of new cities and the privatisation of urban spaces. Yet, an understanding of how the growing trend of privatised urbanism is producing marginalisation and exclusion hurdles for the majority of urbanites in the context of self-organisation remains limited. In response to this knowledge gap, this article investigates patterns of self-organisation in new cities. We demonstrate how the production of new cities and the privatisation of urban spaces have shaped land use planning and led to the marginalisation of local communities. Using the Greater Accra Region, Ghana as a case study, fieldwork involving interviews with urban planners, community leaders and key informants was conducted. The findings show that the forms of self-organisation inherent in new cities tend to perpetuate and deepen inequalities and exclusion in the peri-urban area. Rather than being an avenue for the marginalised to intervene in space and realise their ambitions, self-organisation serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful. We conclude that self-organisation may not always be a means to promote an inclusive and just society. Recommendations for creating a more equitable and inclusive urban futures are proffered.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142231595","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 : 2024-09-07DOI: 10.1177/00420980241264636
Alexandra Flynn, Claire Stevenson-Blythe
This article focuses on the governance of Granville Island, a former industrial stretch of land that operates as an arts destination abutting the City of Vancouver’s waterfront. While Granville Island might look like any other neighbourhood in Vancouver, it is in fact owned and managed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal agency, on behalf of the Government of Canada. This article examines what it means, democratically speaking, for the federal government to operate public space in a city. Public entities are each legally unique, raising questions as to how they and their relationships with other entities can be understood, evaluated and adjudicated. This article animates how public entities are understood under Canadian law by demonstrating the difficulty in crafting inclusive, participatory governance models that respond to the many interests involved in public space, especially spaces that are explicitly identified as ‘innovative’. Drawing on qualitative data and document review, the article highlights the manner in which Granville Island has been structured and operated by the federal government, its singular focus on commerce and tourism and its weak commitments to accountability, transparency and representation. Granville Island is rendered ‘invisible’ in its governance: it blends into the urban form as though part of the City of Vancouver, while at the same time lacking in accountability, transparency and representation. We conclude that while Granville Island governs public space, making it seem like a neighbourhood in a municipality, it cannot be conceptualised as a ‘democratic body’.
{"title":"The governance of public space by legally unique bodies: A case study of Vancouver’s Granville Island","authors":"Alexandra Flynn, Claire Stevenson-Blythe","doi":"10.1177/00420980241264636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241264636","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the governance of Granville Island, a former industrial stretch of land that operates as an arts destination abutting the City of Vancouver’s waterfront. While Granville Island might look like any other neighbourhood in Vancouver, it is in fact owned and managed by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a federal agency, on behalf of the Government of Canada. This article examines what it means, democratically speaking, for the federal government to operate public space in a city. Public entities are each legally unique, raising questions as to how they and their relationships with other entities can be understood, evaluated and adjudicated. This article animates how public entities are understood under Canadian law by demonstrating the difficulty in crafting inclusive, participatory governance models that respond to the many interests involved in public space, especially spaces that are explicitly identified as ‘innovative’. Drawing on qualitative data and document review, the article highlights the manner in which Granville Island has been structured and operated by the federal government, its singular focus on commerce and tourism and its weak commitments to accountability, transparency and representation. Granville Island is rendered ‘invisible’ in its governance: it blends into the urban form as though part of the City of Vancouver, while at the same time lacking in accountability, transparency and representation. We conclude that while Granville Island governs public space, making it seem like a neighbourhood in a municipality, it cannot be conceptualised as a ‘democratic body’.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142152411","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}
Cities, where 60% of the world’s population lives, are particularly vulnerable to global warming. The environmental aspect is therefore an important dimension of sustainable smart cities, as is citizen participation. Based on the Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory, we explore the idea that citizen participation in the smart city is largely conditioned by the environmental consequences and responsibilities they attribute to their behaviour. A survey was conducted among 1670 residents of six major French cities involved in a smart city approach. Based on a model test using the PLS-PM approach, the results, confirm the validity of VBN theory in the French smart city context. More specifically, pro-environmental personal norms positively influence residents’ intention to participate in the smart city. Biospheric and altruistic values promote an ecological vision of the world, which strengthens awareness of environmental consequences and a sense of responsibility, which in turn activates pro-environmental personal norms. In this way, we demonstrate the relevance of mobilising the VBN theory to understand citizen participation in the smart city. Citizen participation in the smart city is ultimately a pro-environmental behaviour in itself. We make suggestions on how to develop citizen participation by strengthening environmental awareness and responsibility.
{"title":"Application of the VBN theory to understand residents’ participation in the smart city: The case of French metropolises","authors":"Norbert Lebrument, Cédrine Zumbo-Lebrument, Corinne Rochette","doi":"10.1177/00420980241269808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241269808","url":null,"abstract":"Cities, where 60% of the world’s population lives, are particularly vulnerable to global warming. The environmental aspect is therefore an important dimension of sustainable smart cities, as is citizen participation. Based on the Value–Belief–Norm (VBN) theory, we explore the idea that citizen participation in the smart city is largely conditioned by the environmental consequences and responsibilities they attribute to their behaviour. A survey was conducted among 1670 residents of six major French cities involved in a smart city approach. Based on a model test using the PLS-PM approach, the results, confirm the validity of VBN theory in the French smart city context. More specifically, pro-environmental personal norms positively influence residents’ intention to participate in the smart city. Biospheric and altruistic values promote an ecological vision of the world, which strengthens awareness of environmental consequences and a sense of responsibility, which in turn activates pro-environmental personal norms. In this way, we demonstrate the relevance of mobilising the VBN theory to understand citizen participation in the smart city. Citizen participation in the smart city is ultimately a pro-environmental behaviour in itself. We make suggestions on how to develop citizen participation by strengthening environmental awareness and responsibility.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142144228","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 : 2024-09-06DOI: 10.1177/00420980241269700
Andreas Wettlaufer, Andreas Farwick
A city’s primary school segregation is closely related to its residential segregation. However, in education systems that allow primary school choice, parental behaviour often boosts school segregation beyond the segregation determined by the families’ place of residence. Taking up previous research, the paper starts by addressing the extent to which parental choice impacts school segregation in a large German city in North Rhine-Westphalia, a German federal state where primary school choice was introduced several years ago. It goes on to analyse which school characteristics are of importance for parents not wishing their children to attend the nearest school, thus boosting school segregation. In doing so, data is used that allows the precise determination of the extent to which children do not attend their nearest school and under which conditions. It becomes clear that, in addition to residential patterns, parental school choice is a significant driver of the uneven distribution of pupils, with the decisions of middle- and upper-middle-class parents particularly contributing to the socio-economic segregation of schoolchildren. A look at various forms of ethnic and religious segregation reveals ambivalent results, inter alia a high level of segregation of Muslim children.
{"title":"Primary school segregation in the context of free primary school choice – More than just a reflection of residential segregation?","authors":"Andreas Wettlaufer, Andreas Farwick","doi":"10.1177/00420980241269700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241269700","url":null,"abstract":"A city’s primary school segregation is closely related to its residential segregation. However, in education systems that allow primary school choice, parental behaviour often boosts school segregation beyond the segregation determined by the families’ place of residence. Taking up previous research, the paper starts by addressing the extent to which parental choice impacts school segregation in a large German city in North Rhine-Westphalia, a German federal state where primary school choice was introduced several years ago. It goes on to analyse which school characteristics are of importance for parents not wishing their children to attend the nearest school, thus boosting school segregation. In doing so, data is used that allows the precise determination of the extent to which children do not attend their nearest school and under which conditions. It becomes clear that, in addition to residential patterns, parental school choice is a significant driver of the uneven distribution of pupils, with the decisions of middle- and upper-middle-class parents particularly contributing to the socio-economic segregation of schoolchildren. A look at various forms of ethnic and religious segregation reveals ambivalent results, inter alia a high level of segregation of Muslim children.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142144232","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 : 2024-09-04DOI: 10.1177/00420980241271003
Erik B Lunke
Mobility research and theory suggests that new parents often develop a car-dependent way of living that runs counter to prevailing climate policies. In this context, the current study investigates the influence of public transport accessibility on car ownership among first-time parents in the Oslo region. Specific attention is paid to how the effect of accessibility varies with different income levels. Linear probability and fixed-effects models are applied to parents and a control group of non-parents to explore these relationships. The results show that public transport accessibility reduces the likelihood of car ownership in the years after family formation, although with larger impacts for some income groups than for others. Households with a high income combine car ownership with high access, whereas others seem to sacrifice one for the other. These findings have several policy implications. First, urban regions with a combination of gentrification in the central city and increasing poverty in suburban areas face a potential conflict between environmental and social sustainability. Finding ways to increase central-city opportunities for low- and medium-income families is a difficult but important step towards greater overall sustainability. Second, the reduction of car ownership among high-income households appears to require supplementary measures. The article ends with a discussion of the findings in the context of broader urban policy development, particularly in relation to the prioritisation of collective consumption.
{"title":"Car ownership after having children: Exploring the impacts of income and public transport accessibility","authors":"Erik B Lunke","doi":"10.1177/00420980241271003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241271003","url":null,"abstract":"Mobility research and theory suggests that new parents often develop a car-dependent way of living that runs counter to prevailing climate policies. In this context, the current study investigates the influence of public transport accessibility on car ownership among first-time parents in the Oslo region. Specific attention is paid to how the effect of accessibility varies with different income levels. Linear probability and fixed-effects models are applied to parents and a control group of non-parents to explore these relationships. The results show that public transport accessibility reduces the likelihood of car ownership in the years after family formation, although with larger impacts for some income groups than for others. Households with a high income combine car ownership with high access, whereas others seem to sacrifice one for the other. These findings have several policy implications. First, urban regions with a combination of gentrification in the central city and increasing poverty in suburban areas face a potential conflict between environmental and social sustainability. Finding ways to increase central-city opportunities for low- and medium-income families is a difficult but important step towards greater overall sustainability. Second, the reduction of car ownership among high-income households appears to require supplementary measures. The article ends with a discussion of the findings in the context of broader urban policy development, particularly in relation to the prioritisation of collective consumption.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142142532","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 : 2024-09-02DOI: 10.1177/00420980241263226
Donald McNeill, Andrea Connor
The centre of major cities is a focus of commuting patterns, and this article sets out how major cities use calculative practices to guide commuters through a complex, multiplanar, volumetric city. It examines how public transport officials, consultants, city planners and property developers interact to move commuters through inter-locking public and private spaces on a journey between underground, surface and high-rise commercial structures. Using a case study of Sydney’s central business district, it presents three areas where the governance of this movement can be observed. First, it considers how underground rail planning has adopted new modes of organising capacity, especially in terms of the use of behavioural psychology in organising platform and escalator crowd behaviour. Second, the article discusses navigation at ground level, where rail commuters emerge onto the pavement to continue their journey. Urban planners, along with specialists in wayfinding and people movement, calculate capacity and make behavioural interventions to influence movement up, down and across surfaces. Third, it explores the relationship between elevator technology, vertical people flow analysis and the floorplate design of offices. The article’s contribution is in its conceptual and empirical illustration of how the rhythms of urban crowds are tracked, calculated and structured by a range of experts; in turn, we can see how these experts have emerged as significant agents in maximising the ability to extract value from the built volume of cities.
{"title":"The logistical governance of vertical commuting in the central business district","authors":"Donald McNeill, Andrea Connor","doi":"10.1177/00420980241263226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241263226","url":null,"abstract":"The centre of major cities is a focus of commuting patterns, and this article sets out how major cities use calculative practices to guide commuters through a complex, multiplanar, volumetric city. It examines how public transport officials, consultants, city planners and property developers interact to move commuters through inter-locking public and private spaces on a journey between underground, surface and high-rise commercial structures. Using a case study of Sydney’s central business district, it presents three areas where the governance of this movement can be observed. First, it considers how underground rail planning has adopted new modes of organising capacity, especially in terms of the use of behavioural psychology in organising platform and escalator crowd behaviour. Second, the article discusses navigation at ground level, where rail commuters emerge onto the pavement to continue their journey. Urban planners, along with specialists in wayfinding and people movement, calculate capacity and make behavioural interventions to influence movement up, down and across surfaces. Third, it explores the relationship between elevator technology, vertical people flow analysis and the floorplate design of offices. The article’s contribution is in its conceptual and empirical illustration of how the rhythms of urban crowds are tracked, calculated and structured by a range of experts; in turn, we can see how these experts have emerged as significant agents in maximising the ability to extract value from the built volume of cities.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142123491","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 : 2024-08-30DOI: 10.1177/00420980241267246
Yonah Slifkin Freemark
Investment in publicly subsidised social housing units – designed to ensure long-term access to dwellings for households with low and moderate incomes – is a strategy that cities around the world leverage to increase housing affordability. But the availability of such affordable units varies tremendously between cities, even within the same country. To what degree is this variation the product of local politics expressed through voter or policymaker preferences? To answer this question, I examine the inclusion of social housing in major development projects planned in hundreds of municipalities across the Paris, France, metropolitan region. Through a series of multiple regression analyses, I demonstrate that in cities with left-wing councils, shares of social housing units in new projects are an average of 7–11 percentage points higher than in cities with right-wing or centrist councils, after controlling for the ideologies of local residents, preexisting levels of social housing and community demographics. Though voters’ political preferences are closely associated with city-level social housing shares, elected officials’ partisan affiliations explain variations in the provision of social housing in newly approved projects. I reaffirm these findings by using a series of regression discontinuity tests to examine differences between communities with close elections. These results show how the partisan affiliations of local leaders affect urban planning choices in their communities.
{"title":"Politics in affordable housing provision: How partisan control of local councils influences planning choices","authors":"Yonah Slifkin Freemark","doi":"10.1177/00420980241267246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241267246","url":null,"abstract":"Investment in publicly subsidised social housing units – designed to ensure long-term access to dwellings for households with low and moderate incomes – is a strategy that cities around the world leverage to increase housing affordability. But the availability of such affordable units varies tremendously between cities, even within the same country. To what degree is this variation the product of local politics expressed through voter or policymaker preferences? To answer this question, I examine the inclusion of social housing in major development projects planned in hundreds of municipalities across the Paris, France, metropolitan region. Through a series of multiple regression analyses, I demonstrate that in cities with left-wing councils, shares of social housing units in new projects are an average of 7–11 percentage points higher than in cities with right-wing or centrist councils, after controlling for the ideologies of local residents, preexisting levels of social housing and community demographics. Though voters’ political preferences are closely associated with city-level social housing shares, elected officials’ partisan affiliations explain variations in the provision of social housing in newly approved projects. I reaffirm these findings by using a series of regression discontinuity tests to examine differences between communities with close elections. These results show how the partisan affiliations of local leaders affect urban planning choices in their communities.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142100642","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}