A NEW TYPE OF FAMILY HOMELESSNESS: SURVEY FINDINGS,PERCEPTIONS, AND LOCAL POLITICS IN MADISON,WISCONSIN

An increasing number of homeless families in Madison, Wisconsin, have lived in other places before becoming homeless in Madison: these families are the focus of this paper. While their demographic and socioeconomic characteristics fit the generally accepted understanding of homeless families, the reasons explaining their situation differ from those most frequently cited, which suggests that a new type of family homelessness has to be considered. Most families had housing in the places from which they moved. But extremely stressful environments, like the ghettos of Chicago, and the wish to raise the children in a better place, led to the decision to move away. These families intentionally use homeless shelters as a stepping-stone to a new and better life. Families relocating in Madison's homeless shelters comprise only part of an increasing number of poor and black migrants, especially from Chicago. The expected continuation of this influx is changing the racial and class composition of the white, middle-class city. A secondary thrust of this paper examines perceptions and attitudes of Madisonians toward, and the problems of integration for, these migrants and discusses the ensuing conflicts and policy approaches.     

DESIGNER SHELTERS AS MODELS AND MAKERS OF HOME: NEW RESPONSES TO HOMELESSNESS IN URBAN AMERICA

As the number of homeless people grew over the 1980s, so did the number of homeless shelters. Given that these recently established shelters are smaller, more specialized, and tend to assist those segments of the homeless population more likely to be mainstreamed, they are intentionally designed to be a model of a middle-class home for the people they serve. This paper examines the process by which designer shelters became part of the contemporary urban scene. It explores the notion that in and through these institutions poor and homeless people are being told how to live. Evidence of how designer shelters have become a model of a middle-class home, and how designer shelters reproduce this model through their policies and practices, is gathered from various sources. City planning documents and shelter mission statements obtained from Wilmington, Delaware illustrate the process of creating model homemakers out of homeless people. Some of the spatial and social implications of this process are discussed.     

The Sociospatial Stigmatization of Homeless Women with Children1

Homelessness remains highly stigmatized in U.S. society, with homeless persons seen by the public as mentally disabled, criminal, and socially deviant. This paper focuses on homeless women with children and argues that, in addition to the material deprivation of poverty, the sociospatial stigmatization of homeless women constitutes a primary obstacle to their reentry into mainstream, domiciled society. How does sociospatial stigma constrain homeless women with children as they navigate the transition between homeless and homed? How do these women deflect and circumvent the social and spatial boundaries defined by stigmatization? An analysis of semistructured interviews with eight women with children in Orange County, California, highlights the ways that the social identity of women as homeless is reinforced by social service agencies, potential employers, family, and friends, and illustrates how homeless women attempt to circumvent the negative attributes associated with homelessness.     

EMERGENCY SHELTER NETWORKS IN AN URBAN AREA: SERVING THE HOMELESS IN METROPOLITAN TORONTO

A framework for analyzing the structure of urban emergency shelter networks is proposed. The shelter and service network consists of clients, shelters, support services, and a political context shaped by state policies and community attitudes. The example of Metropolitan Toronto shows that, while it might be true that there is a need for more permanent housing, there also exists a real need for emergency shelters. A problem exists for certain groups who might seek temporary shelter in suburban areas because of the unequal spatial distribution of shelters and support services between the inner City of Toronto and suburban municipalities. The recent suburbanization of some shelters has been dominated by shelters for women and children. Patterns of repeat usage of the shelter network suggest that certain client groups might not have access to all the support services they need. The conclusions argue that urban shelter networks offer an opportunity for geographers to consider more closely the links between housing, policy, and political ideologies.     

Homelessness in Canada and New Zealand: A Comparative Perspective on Numbers and Policy Responses

This article provides a comparative perspective on homelessness in Canada and New Zealand, with a focus on three urban regions. It seeks to document homeless numbers in the chosen cities, to evaluate the utility of counting the homeless, and to identify common and divergent approaches in homelessness policy. Research involved document analysis, key informant interviews, and participant observation. Literal homelessness is found to be several orders of magnitude higher in the Canadian cities. In one of the Canadian centers, suburban homelessness is emerging as a significant phenomenon. Efforts to count the homeless allow such trends to be tentatively quantified, and inform policymaking. Policy differences between the countries are stark: Canadian cities are seeking to respond to an emergency, which may call for a radical change of approach in the form of "housing first." In New Zealand, a national program of social housing, combined with cultural factors, reduces pressure to act.     

Integrating multi-agent evacuation simulation and multi-criteria evaluation for spatial allocation of urban emergency shelters

The timely and secure evacuation of residents to nearby urban emergency shelters is of great importance during unexpected disaster events. However, evacuation and allocation of shelters are seldom examined as a whole, even though they are usually closely related tasks in disaster management. To conduct better spatial allocation of emergency shelters in cities, this study proposes a new method which integrates techniques of multi-agent system and multi-criteria evaluation for spatial allocation of urban emergency shelters. Compared with the traditional emergency shelter allocation methods, the proposed method highlights the importance of dynamic emergency evacuation simulations for spatial allocation suitability analysis. Three kinds of agents involved in evacuation and sheltering procedures are designed: government agents, shelter agents, and resident agents. Emergency evacuations are simulated based on the interactions of these agents to find potential problems, for example, time-consuming evacuation processes and road congestion. A case study in Jing’an District, Shanghai, China was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. After three rounds of simulation and optimization, new shelters were spatially allocated and a detailed recommended plan of shelters and related facilities was generated. The optimized spatial allocation of shelters may help local residents to be evacuated more quickly and securely.     

基于GIS的福州应急避难所空间格局评价

日益凸显的突发性自然灾害对城市应急管理提出了更高的要求,应急避难所是其重要基础设施之一.本研究利用福州市社区尺度的人口统计数据建立高精度的人口密度分布图,根据应急避难所的容纳人数与人口密度图动态缓冲区分析计算其服务能力空间范围,对研究区内21个避难所的空间格局进行评价.结果表明,福州城区避难所建设数量不足,空间分布不均,人口服务辐射能力弱.针对福州城区避难所空间分布现状,分析了主要的影响因素,对福州城区应急避难场所选址提出了进一步优化建议,认为在人口分散区的避难所应该增加数量,适当减小规模;而在人口稠密区则可增加规模适中的避难所建设.     

Residential Hyperspace: Building "Convincing Ambiences" for the Middle Classes

Over the past two decades, Dutch housing policy has become more market-oriented and neoliberal. This sea change is reflected in the architecture of owner-occupied houses, whose production has been increasingly accompanied by theming. Theming has often been criticized as an action to maximize profit through the commercialization of spaces and the resulting hyperreal, and hence fake, architecture. In the Netherlands, building professionals also develop theming in order to realize inward-looking, hyperreal residential spaces with an ambience that opposes the surrounding "real" space. Developers invent new strategies to engage with home buyers' unconscious thoughts on manageable community life and feelings of insecurity. References to the traditional small town, whether of Western or non-Western origin, are particularly powerful instruments to appeal to buyers' insecurities. Yet the profit imperative complicates the actual practice of theming. Creating different themed ambiences for disparate target groups strains the capacity of standardized housing production systems, necessitating additional investment. Architects and developers struggle to perfect a "convincing ambience" for prospective residents, while seeking to avoid producing the "fake architecture" that will stigmatize their work among professional colleagues.     

FROM NIMBY TO FAIR SHARE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW YORK CITY'S MUNICIPAL SHELTER SITING POLICIES, 1980-1990

A trajectory of city siting policies for homeless shelters is examined, reflecting either community opposition per se or the city's fear of community opposition. Furthermore, these policies created distinct geographic patterns of shelter siting. New York City's shelter siting history, from the beginning of mandatory shelter provision in the early 1980s to the institution of fair-share planning for the dispersal of city-owned facilities in 1990, is examined. City siting responses—isolation, circumvention, and cooperation—correlate with the type of community opposition being mounted.     

"The Same But Not the Same": The Discursive Constitution of Large Housing Estates in Germany,France, and Poland

Since the 1960s, large housing estates have shaped the geography of suburbia in many Western and Eastern European cities. This paper examines the constitution of the social and spatial meanings of large housing estates within three different national contexts: in Germany, Poland, and France. Employing discourse theory and an empirical analysis of the coverage of major national newspapers, we identify cross-national and specific national patterns of discourses that (re)produce particular social spaces and distinct social orders. Quantitative discourse analysis reveals differences, similarities, and ruptures in various constructions of the meaning of large housing estates. We find that large housing estates in France and Germany are constituted in print media as threatening places and as places of foreignness located "outside" the "proper society." In contrast, Polish large housing estates are framed discursively as threatened places located in the social "inside."     

A modified particle swarm optimization algorithm for optimal allocation of earthquake emergency shelters

Allocation for earthquake emergency shelters is a complicated geographic optimization problem because it involves multiple sites, strict constraints, and discrete feasible domain. Huge solution space makes the problem computationally intractable. Traditional brute-force methods can obtain exact optimal solutions. However, it is not sophisticated enough to solve the complex optimization problem with reasonable time especially in high-dimensional solution space. Artificial intelligent algorithms hold the promise of improving the effectiveness of location search. This article proposes a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to deal with the allocation problem of earthquake emergency shelter. A new discrete PSO and the feasibility-based rule are incorporated according to the discrete solution space and strict constraints. In addition, for enhancing search capability, simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is employed to escape from local optima. The modified algorithm has been applied to the allocation of earthquake emergency shelters in the Zhuguang Block of Guangzhou City, China. The experiments have shown that the algorithm can identify the number and locations of emergency shelters. The modified PSO algorithm shows a better performance than other hybrid algorithms presented in the article, and is an effective approach for the allocation problem of earthquake emergency shelters.     

Utilising volunteered geographic information to assess resident's flood evacuation shelters. Case study: Jakarta

Research on disaster response frequently uses volunteered geographic information (VGI), due to its capability to provide near real-time information during and after a disaster. It is much less commonly used in spatial planning related to disaster management. However, VGI appears to have considerable potential for use in spatial planning and offers some advantages over traditional methods. For example, VGI can capture residents' preferences in a much faster, more timely, and more comprehensive fashion than is possible with, for example, questionnaires and surveys. This research investigates the usefulness of VGI for planning flood evacuation shelters. Using Jakarta, Indonesia, as a case study, we use VGI to capture the locations of flood evacuation shelters based on residents' preferences during flood periods in 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 and compare these with the locations of official shelters. Floods frequently affect Jakarta and the city administration uses VGI in flood emergency responses. Moreover, Jakarta has been identified as having the largest number of active Twitter users among cities worldwide. Thus, Jakarta is an appropriate place to study the use of VGI for planning evacuation shelters. VGI generated by Twitter users was used to identify the shelter locations preferred by Jakarta residents, and more precisely the flood evacuees. Of 171,046 tweets using keywords relating to flood evacuation, the content of 306 tweets indicated that they had been sent from inside or near evacuation shelters. The spatial pattern showed that those tweets were sent from 215 locations, mostly located near flooded areas. The analysis further showed that 35.6% of these shelter locations preferred by residents intersected with the locations of official evacuation shelters. As a general conclusion, our study demonstrates the advantages of using VGI for spatial planning, which mainly relates to the ease of capturing community preferences over a large area.     

Invisible homelessness: anonymity,exposure, and the right to the city

The city of Denver, Colorado recently outlawed camping in all open space. Part of a broad effort to accelerate the profit potential of prime urban land through real estate speculation and commerce, the camping ban has dislocated homeless people from the city’s marginal spaces. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Denver, this article develops a tripartite approach to public space—prime, everyday, and marginal—to analyze challenging ways in which people who are homeless in Denver must now manage their exposure to others in everyday public spaces. In addition to eliminating places of hard-won safety and security, this singular new code disrupts hygiene, mobility, and sociability routines, thus throwing already precarious lives into further disarray by rendering housing status visible. To demonstrate how everyday social justice springs from interaction between different people co-present in public space, we foreground the voices of Denver’s homeless people, those most impacted by quality of life laws. Evicting individuals from marginal spaces and rendering them visibly homeless in everyday and prime spaces, the ban deprives them of a fundamental right to the city: anonymity.     

A comparison of scenario-based hybrid bilevel and multi-objective location-allocation models for earthquake emergency shelters: a case study in the central area of Beijing,China

The accurate location and allocation of disaster emergency shelters are key components of effective urban planning and emergency management. Various models have been developed to solve the location-allocation problem, but gaps remain with regard to model realism and associated applicability. For the available location and allocation models of earthquake emergency shelters, uncertainty with respect to earthquake hazard, population exposure, rate of damage to buildings and the effects of evacuee behavior are often neglected or oversimplified. Moreover, modifying the models can be an alternative means of improving the solution quality when the optimization algorithm has difficulty coping with a complex, high-dimensional problem. This article develops a scenario-based hybrid bilevel model that addresses the concerns related to high-dimensional complexity and provides a higher degree of realism by incorporating the uncertainties of population dynamics and earthquake damage scenarios into location-allocation problems for earthquake emergency shelters. A modified particle swarm optimization algorithm combined with a simulated annealing algorithm was applied to derive solutions using the hybrid bilevel model and a conventional multi-objective model, and the solutions obtained using the two models were then compared. The novel features of the study include the hybrid bilevel model that considers the dynamic number of evacuees and its implementation for earthquake emergency shelter location and allocation. The results show that the solutions significantly differ between daytime and nighttime. When applied to the multi-objective model, the optimization algorithm is time consuming and may only find the local optima and provide suboptimal solutions in the considered scenarios with more evacuees. By contrast, the hybrid bilevel model shows more desirable performance because it significantly reduces the dimensionality of the location-allocation problem based on a two-step-to-reach approach. The proposed hybrid bilevel model is proven to be useful for optimal shelter allocation, and the presented results can be used as a reference for balancing the interests of the government and residents during the planning of shelters in Beijing.     

渔民南海生产空间“家”的营建与情感体验——以潭门渔民为例

流动背景下,传统固定的家不断受到挑战,家的定义和内涵也因流动而更加丰富。现有研究多从陆地视角关注流动对家的多维影响,较少探讨海洋语境下流动与家的潜在联系。此外,随着科技的进步,生产空间“家”的营建也成为可能。文章借鉴家的地理学相关理论,基于深入访谈、参与式观察和文本分析等方法,探讨海南潭门渔民在南海耕海实践中生产空间家的营建和情感体验。研究发现,潭门渔民在流动渔船中利用类“家”的功能进行日常生活实践,从而模糊渔船生产空间与家的边界,产生“在家”的体验;在长期的耕海过程中,渔民之间通过彼此之间的关心、照顾、互助等行为增进感情,从而产生家的团结、温暖等情感体验;渔船在长期的海上流动过程中,渔民逐渐对南海的岛礁、物产、边界等自然、人文环境产生熟悉感、安全感和归属感等情感体验,实现了对南海“祖宗海”的家园想象。     

基于应急疏散智能体模型模拟的城市避难所空间配置——以上海市静安区为例

城市应急避难所的空间配置一直是灾害防治和城市安全研究领域的热点问题。本文以城市居民尽快地,尽少拥挤地到达满足容纳需求的应急避难所为目标,整合遥感影像数据、高精度人口分布数据、交通路网数据和专家知识等数据,综合运用智能体模型和多准则决策方法,对城市避难所空间配置开展研究。本文设计了三类与应急疏散相关的智能体：政府智能体、避难所智能体和居民智能体,来实现应急疏散的模拟,并根据模拟结果支持应急避难所的空间选址和配置。选址方法上运用了多准则决策方法和权重敏感性分析,在选址高适宜区域内选定避难所的新建方案。以新的避难所空间布局和配置为条件,执行新一轮的应急疏散模拟过程,实现选址的循环优化,从而获得最终的避难所空间配置方案。本文以上海市静安区的应急避难所空间配置分析为案例,生成了该区域应急避难所的详细空间配置方案,该方案能帮助居民在尽少拥挤风险下尽快疏散到附近的避难所。本文提出的方法充实了中国城市避难所选址的相关理论与可操作性的技术基础,为其他地区开展避难所的配置工作提供借鉴与参考。     

THE FEDERAL RESPONSE TO HOMELESSNESS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICAN CITIES

The beginning of a dramatic rise in homelessness in American cities coincided with the election of a Republican administration under the leadership of Ronald Reagan. This paper examines the response of the Reagan Administration to the crisis of homelessness. The ideology of the Administration, its broad social-expenditure priorities, and its programs for health, housing, income maintenance, and human services which affect the homeless are investigated. The paper argues that the federal government, guided by conservative and individualist ideology, has (1 ) sought broad social-spending reductions and macroeconomic policies that have increased the risk of homelessness and (2) made minimal efforts toward directly ameliorating the situation of the homeless. The implications for American cities and their homeless populations include growth in the numbers of homeless, local fiscal stress, the expulsion of the homeless from skid-row districts, dispersion of the homeless from downtown zones, suburban exclusionary backlash, reinstitutionalization, and urban violence.     

基于疏散行为的震灾避难场所服务效率评价

科学评估避难场所的服务效率是提高城市应急水平的前提。传统对避难场所服务效率的评估多偏重于避难场所空间布局的合理性,缺少对避难者的空间布局和避难行为等避难需求的考虑,这会使评估结果造成偏差,从而容易引起资源配置的低效率。本文构建了多主体模拟模型,模拟避难者灾后对避难场所的选择、奔跑、安置等关键疏散行为过程,量化评估该地区避难场所服务效率。本文对比了两种量化评估指标在同一案例评估的差异性,一种是传统方法中空间可达性(服务半径覆盖率),一种是利用疏散行为模拟计算出的避难成功率;北京市海淀区的实证研究显示两项指标在同一案例区有巨大差异。这一分析结果显示,传统评估仅利用服务半径覆盖率这一指标来分析避难场所布局现状及规划的合理性存在不足。通过避难疏散行为的模拟发现,以下指标的使用有望辅助提高评估的真实性：①避难场所的利用效率。由于设施的利用效率不均衡,会导致避难场所超容或闲置的情况。在充分考虑避难场所的有效服务面积和服务人口的基础上,设计“人均避难面积”等反应利用效率的指标就显得十分必要。②避难标识系统的连通性。避难模拟的实验显示避难标识系统可能对避难者逃生疏散具有分流和引导作用,据此,避难场所与周边居民区的标识系统的连通性也是评价其服务效率的关键指标。     

广州城市流浪乞讨者的空间管治与日常生活实践

以广州流浪乞讨者为研究对象,通过深度访谈等质性研究方法,解读针对流浪乞讨者的空间管治政策与手段,分析流浪乞讨者的日常生活实践与生境协商。研究发现：在地方城市政策对流动性与公共秩序限制的双重压力下,在流浪乞讨者的日常生活实践中,不仅有针对管治行动者而刻意为之的特殊营建,亦有基于程式化生活流程对自我身份认同的重塑与真情实感的展演。地方政府基于空间目标的救助与真实存在的日常生活实践存在着一种张力。研究关注了城市边缘群体日常生活对地理意义的主动塑造过程,对全面理解并规范管理中国城市流浪乞讨现象具有借鉴意义。     

The temporal hierarchy of shelters: a hierarchical location model for earthquake-shelter planning

The problem of emergency facility location is a critical component in evacuation planning. The emergence of geographic information systems (GIS) has provided a useful operational platform to assist this issue. A previously overlooked facet is the consideration of a hierarchical structure in the placement of emergency shelters. Due to the fact that survivors' needs change over time during post-disaster evacuations, shelters have now been categorized on a temporal scale based on their functions at different evacuation phases. This article proposes a three-level hierarchical location model for optimizing the placement of earthquake shelters by taking into account this temporal variance. The article not only scrutinizes the modeling procedure but also implements the model in a planning area with many real-world details. Based on the optimization results derived from a GIS context, we have found that the quality of the earthquake response procedure is not only dependent on the placement strategy of shelters, but more importantly on the financial constraints imposed on the planning and construction of these shelters. A discussion has been proposed to balance the trade-off between budget planning and evacuation efficiency. As the first attempt to model the hierarchical configuration of emergency shelters with specific focus on evacuees' escalating sheltering demands, this article will be of great significance in helping policy makers consider both the spatial and financial aspects of the strategic placement of emergency shelters.