Metropolitan deconcentration, socio-political fragmentation and extended suburbanisation: Brazilian urbanisation in the 1980s and 1990s

The aim of this paper is to discuss the phenomena of socio-political fragmentation of urban space, extended suburbanisation and metropolitan deconcentration, which have been important features of Brazilian urbanisation since the 1980s (metropolitan deconcentration partly since the 1970s). At the beginning it profiles the recent evolution of the country's economy, in order to make sense of the worsening situation in terms of exclusion and violence in big Brazilian cities since the 1980s. Against this background, recent trends both in terms of socio-spatial segregation and social conflict within cities (formation of enclaves dominated by drug trafficking organisations and self-segregation of the élites as a response to this) and in terms of the growing attractiveness of areas outside the biggest metropolises (extended suburbanisation and metropolitan deconcentration) are analysed. The main focus is the socio-political dimension of Brazilian urbanisation in the 1980s and 1990s, which has been undervalued by analysts.     

Situating queer migration within (national) welfare regimes

Building on recent criticisms within the literature on queer migration raised by Andrew Gorman-Murray and Nathaniel Lewis, the article explores ‘unconventional’ trajectories of queer migration: a Global North metropolitan area-Global North metropolitan area one and a Global North metropolitan area-Global North ordinary city one. Two very different migration patterns are analyzed: the movement of young queer ‘creative’ Italians from different metropolitan areas (Rome, Milan, Bologna, Catania, Naples, Padua and Turin) towards Berlin (Germany) and the relocation of young queers from the major Italian cities (Rome and Milan) towards ordinary/small size towns. Aimed at highlighting the complexity of material and immaterial factors leading the decision to migrate in times of crisis, austerity politics and increasing unemployment, the article introduces the role of welfare regimes in shaping migration’s choices. This way, queer migrants and their socio-economic status and possibilities find materially situated within national/local welfare regimes, thus challenging the teleological binarism of the ‘coming-out’ journey always presuming a rural/urban movement for queer subjects. Within such a framework, the ordinary/small size town can become a place for ‘outness’ and self-realization of queer migrants who create bridges and connections with the metropolitan areas, thus queering the provincial contexts.     

Structural and locational evolution of industry in Southern Europe

S European Industry is characterized by the importance of certain branches and by plant size. Traditional branches of consumer goods are dominated by the national bourgeoisie, intermediate goods by oligopolistic (state) enterprises, modern consumer and capital goods by multinational corporations. Industrialization was retarded for various social and physical reasons. For the locational pattern some factors had specific importance (diffusion, shipping traffic for supplies, deficient infrastructure, urbanisation economies, social structure). Economic nationalism and interventionism from the thirties to the late fifties had structural and locational effects. Subsequent opening led to important foreign investment with diverse locational consequences: the large majority of the market-orientated companies concentrated on big cities and induced industrial suburbanisation. Export-orientated plants, relatively often in Portugal, also decided for rural areas and provincial towns. Regional industrial policy which began weakly with fiscal allowances in the fifties and soon adopted the growth pole idea led to results remaining only far beyond expectations. International economic crisis has heavily stroken the countries which turned out to be very dependant.     

Changes in the internal spatial structure of post-communist Prague*

The article overviews the most important changes in the internal urban structure of Prague since 1989. Post-communist urban development has been influenced by government-directed reforms of political and economic system, internationalisation and globalisation, public policies favouring unregulated market development, economic restructuring in terms of deindustrialisation and growth of producer services, and increasing social differentiation. The three most transparent processes of urban change in Prague have been (1) commercialisation of the historical core; (2) revitalisation of some inner city neighbourhoods; and (3) residential and commercial suburbanisation in the outer city. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Migrants, markets and multinationals: competition among world cities for the highly skilled

Urban areas compete with one another for people, goods, capital, ideas and other inputs of economic activity. Under the rubric of globalization, instead of only maintaining or improving the initial stock of assets in a city, the power of a place to attract outside flows of economic activity from elsewhere is increasingly important to economic development. Similarly, global or world cities are characterized as the command and control points through which these global economic flows operate. In response to the heightened mobility of highly-skilled labor across national borders, research has begun to examine the role of international human capital as an economic flow. This paper will examine the role of places in determining where the highly-skilled go in the global economy by viewing global city command and control functions as requiring unique labor flows. By reviewing the evidence found in the literature, we can better understand the potential for urban areas to compete for highly-skilled labor in the global economy. Known indicators of place attractiveness are assessed to examine the relationship between the economic trajectories of cities and their labor requirements. Cities are situated between firms and states as the key place-based actors which influence the mobility of highly-skilled labor. Finally, the paper also examines measurement issues and methodological problems in creating indices of world cities as well as explores possibilities for new research.     

Growth and urban differentiation on the urban periphery: A case study from Szeged, Hungary

In late nineteenth century Hungarian cities there were strong contrasts between the inner ‘urban’ core and the rural periphery in terms of housing conditions, accessibility and lifestyle. Rural-urban fringe zones in the Great Plain were quite distinctive because the Turkish period was followed by an outflow of population which resulted in scattered settlement around the urban centres. The fringe could be regarded simply as a zone of transition, but the differences between urban centres and their immediate surroundings were gradually reduced through the industrialisation of the larger towns in the communist period. A study of Szeged examines the expansion of the fringe zone and its gradual urbanisation through the growth of housing as people have moved out from the centre to live among the rural population which increasingly turned from agriculture to commuting. Villages on either side of Szeged's administrative boundary accommodated more migrants from the city during the 1980s and experienced a gradual positive change in the quality of life as people escaped from the decaying residential blocs in the centre. During the years since 1989 there has been further migration, coupled with a growth of small businesses and a big improvement in services (shopping, running water, sewage and telecommunications). Further change may be expected in line with the forces of counterurbanisation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The daily travel of villagers to the city in a case study of Northern Iran

Rural urban migration can often result in decreased agricultural output in countries with scarce land resources. It also can hasten the socio-economic problems associated with the overcrowded cities of the developing world. As only 10% of Iran is arable it is particularly vulnerable to threats to food security and self-sufficiency. This paper examines the daily flow of villagers to a major city near the vital staple crop producing rural district of Lakan, where out-migration is already occurring. Although most discussions of daily travel to cities is typically relegated to commuting, this paper aims to analyze travel for the purpose of access to a variety of facilities and services that villages in the rural district of Lakan lack including secondary schools, post offices, banks, and even telephones and newspaper stands. The paper emphasizes that daily journeys make permanent moves to the city more likely because of the major inconvenience that results from the scarcity of basic facilities within Lakan villages. Travel to a distant city for staple foods at grocery stores or for access to secondary schools, for example, could intensify future out-migration because the heavy inconvenience of constant travel might eventually outweigh the benefits of maintaining residency in villages. The paper utilizes information about daily travel to Rasht to recommend various government construction projects and initiatives to improve the quality of life for villagers and avert future rural–urban migration and the reduction in staple crop production that might result.     

渭河流域先周-西周时代环境和水土资源退化及其社会影响

采取多学科交叉的方法,研究了渭河流域先周-西周时代主要考古遗址的全新世黄土-古土壤剖面,获得了较高时间分辨率的磁化率、粒度成分、总有机碳和CaCO3含量等环境代用指标系列.结合该时期人类活动遗物分布的层位关系、考古断代、历史年代和大量14C年代数据,以及古文献有关环境演变和灾害的记载,形成了对该区域人类活动和环境演变过程的综合断代.各项指标综合反映了从3100aB.P.(1150B.C.)开始,渭河流域气候向着干旱化发展,降水量减少、蒸发量增大、植被退化、土壤生物活动减弱、土壤矿物次生风化强度降低、土壤颗粒变粗、水份减少、CaCO3淋溶减弱、土壤碱性增强,表现出由气候干旱化造成的土壤退化.对于当时旱作农业和游牧业来说,这则是水土资源的自然退化.这个时期发生了游牧民族大规模南移,也发生了周人历史上著名的"古公迁岐"、"文王迁丰"和"平王东迁"等事件.通过深入分析论证,认为环境恶化和水土资源退化是引起周人都邑迁移的主导因素,虽然游牧民族南侵占领也是重要的驱动力,但是引起游牧民族南下的根本原因,也同样是环境恶化和水草资源的退化.     

Analysis of social vulnerability to hazards in China

To improve natural disaster management, it is important to recognize the variability of the vulnerable populations exposed to hazards and to develop location-based emergency plans accordingly. This paper presents a mathematical model to establish a model of social vulnerability index (SoVI), which includes 12 social variables, and the regional social vulnerability to natural hazards was formulated by them. Taking a city as statistical unit, the variability of vulnerability to natural hazards was explored among the 323 cities based on the SoVI. The results indicate that vulnerability is a location-based regional phenomenon, with the most vulnerable cities being located in the southwest of China and the eastern areas being generally less vulnerable. The results will be helpful for policy makers to formulate disaster management plans, which can be beneficial for people in more vulnerable areas who are responding to, coping with, and recovering from natural disasters.     

“[W]e do not lose our treaty rights outside the... reserve”: challenging the scales of social service provision for First Nations women in Canadian cities

Recent work in political geography has emphasised how scale plays a role in constituting relationships and identities. Historically, the Canadian federal government has taken responsibilities for social services for First Nations people on reserves, leaving this responsibility to provinces for First Nations people in cities. This constitutes First Nations women as individuals with Aboriginal rights only on reserves, and as part of mainstream society in urban areas. First Nations women have challenged the definitions of their identities embedded in these scales of service provision. In presenting alternative geographies for organising the provision of services, they demonstrate the importance of paying attention to the diversity of women’s everyday geographies in the city. This is a phrase from Vicki English’s (1993) presentation to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, where she argues that treaty rights to housing, education, medicare and other services should not be confined to the boundaries of reserves. I use the term “First Nations” to refer to people who identify themselves as such, including people who are and are not registered pursuant to the Indian Act. By “Aboriginal peoples” I mean the descendants of the indigenous people in Canada, including First Nations people, Métis and Inuit. The Census of Canada uses the term “North American Indian” to refer to First Nations people, and I employ this terminology for clarity in some cases.

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Immigrants and world cities: from the hyper-diverse to the bypassed

A relationship between globalization, cities and immigration is increasingly apparent. Whether one is trying to understand Dubai, Toronto, or London, immigrants are culturally, economically, and spatially changing cities in significant ways. This study compares the roster of world cities with that of major urban immigrant destinations. The number of major urban immigrant destinations is growing due to the acceleration of immigration driven by income differentials, social networks and various state and local policies to recruit skilled and unskilled labor and replenish population. This study will present urban-level data on the foreign-born for 145 metropolitan areas of over 1 million people. It will focus on the world’s 19 metropolitan areas with over 1 million foreign-born residents. Analysis of the data suggests that there is a range of destination types. Although not all world cities are immigrant gateways, many are.     

No boundaries: exurbia and the study of contemporary urban dispersion

The dream of a house in the country, at the seashore, or near a ski hill, is one shared by many in North American society. But the environmental and social impacts of the realization of this dream by an increasing number of people has created crises and conflict for many communities. The concept of exurbia has traditionally been used to describe settlement patterns simultaneously dispersed from the city yet also connected to urban networks. This paper reviews scholarship across disciplines including geography, ecology, sociology, and political ecology. Exurbia is here proposed to be strengthened as a powerful conceptual approach to capture and discuss the complex processes producing this phenomenon. Previous scholarship has produced excellent but largely disconnected work on the periurban zone around cities, exurban settlement processes, tensions between exurbanites and other rural residents, environmental impacts and habitat fragmentation. Future work on exurbia holds a great deal of promise to think about cultural values supporting the processes that produce these landscapes, working across scales from local to global using interdisciplinary and multi-method study.     

Changing poverty distribution in Bolivia: the role of rural–urban migration and urban services

Bolivia is a country with high levels of poverty and inequality among its peoples and regions. For the nation and its urban and rural areas, trends in the social and spatial distribution of poverty (and extreme poverty) are identified from 1976 to 2003 using UBN data with minor support where appropriate from poverty lines. The main survey between 1992 and 2001 uses composite and selected UBN to track detailed poverty change for the country’s nine departments, its ten largest cities and a selection of other smaller urban and rural municipalities. Because of rising background increases in population in the various surveyed administrative units, many instances of relative reductions in poverty are accompanied by rising absolute increases. Marked spatial variations in poverty and development in the country over the last several decades are identified as the main driver for the country’s quickening pace of rural–urban migration. As a result, the paper concludes by assessing two different but closely related views. One investigation tests the notion that because more poor people have been living in Bolivia’s cities than in its rural areas since the mid to late 1990s, rapid rural–urban migration has simply shifted the locus of poverty from the countryside to the cities in a process called, the ‘urbanisation of poverty.’ A second, more challenging, investigation assesses the view that the flow of poor rural people to the better serviced urban areas of Bolivia has actually acted to alleviate national poverty levels.     

Is there a step-wise migration in Nigeria?: A case study of the migrational histories of migrants in Lagos

The paper sets out to test whether or not the movement pattern of people in Nigeria is step-wise. It examines the spatial order in the country and the movement pattern of people. It then analysizes the survey data and tests for the validity of step-wise migration in the country. The findings show that step-wise migration cannot adequately describe all the patterns observed. The multistep moves of the people is an indication of the complexity of factors influencing human mobility behaviour. Moreover, the preponderance of circuitory movement pattern is an indication of the socio-cultural life of the people. The urban-urban movement pattern that was observed is used as a basis for advocating for the development of intermediate urban centres, in addition to the rural areas. This is seen as a way of alleviating the increasing convergence of people on Lagos.     

Changes in coastal land use and the reasons for selecting places to live in Banda Aceh 10 years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami

Ten years after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and following a long process of rehabilitation and reconstruction, Aceh has finally recovered. After the tsunami, Aceh experienced a dramatic migration of its coastal population away from the city; however, after 10 years, the population has mostly recovered. As new houses have been built and new economic activities commenced in the coastal areas, there is now concern regarding potential future tsunami risks for the city. The initial rehabilitation and reconstruction plan sought to prevent the construction of any new houses 500 m from the coastline; however, this failed to happen. This paper elucidates the reasons why these new coastal communities chose their new housing areas and examines the coastal land use changes around Banda Aceh 10 years after the Indian Ocean tsunami. Questionnaires were distributed to 457 respondents, and multiple logistic regressions were used to examine the reasons for household location selection and whether a possible future tsunami was a deciding factor. To examine the coastal land use changes, a series of aerial images from the Banda Aceh coastal area were digitised. It was found that tsunami history was not a major factor in new household selection; rather, rents and land prices, distance from work, and family connections were the top three reasons motivating households to select new living places. These changes and new settlements have given the city’s disaster management agency the challenge of building more emergency infrastructure in the coastal areas.     

Reconstructing South African cities: Contemporary strategies and processes in the urban core

In the 1990s, South Africa and its cities have entered an unprecedented era of change. This transition has been characterised by a burgeoning of civil society and negotiation processes around the key policy and development challenges facing the country. Within this context, the beginnings of a new post-apartheid urban reconstruction era has been marked by the dual challenges of neutralising the damaging anomalies created in cities by apartheid urban engineering, and of shaping efficient, functional and well-managed cities for the future. The core areas or central city zones of the major metropolitan complexes — comprising inner city residential components and central business district economic sectors — are now emerging as a priority area in urban reconstruction. This paper briefly outlines the evolution of the South African central city within the context of overall metropolitan morphology, before considering several of the key issues and processes currently shaping inner city and CBD zones.     

Urban greenspace from the inside out: An argument for the approach and a study with city workers

How might the fact that western people now spend so much of their time indoors impact upon techniques for studying urban greenspace experience? This paper takes this question as its starting point before substantiating one possible answer. It does so by using qualitative methods to examine the everyday practices of city professionals in London and what they tell us about the likelihood that this group will ever venture out into the various parks and gardens found around their offices. Many studies have considered which physical arrangements of city greenspace seem to deliver the greatest amounts of human benefit. Yet this kind of endeavour gives us only one part of the puzzle and contextual studies with those now generally found indoors have something important to add. It is with this in mind that the paper discusses how one sample of office workers quite easily forgot about these spaces, how certain social injunctions both pushed them outside and sealed them indoors, and why it sometimes made good sense for them to avoid any areas of local outdoor vegetation during the day. In so doing it highlights contextual dynamics that seem set to make significant impacts on the future of urban environmental experience and offers some novel suggestions about how best to promote positive greenspace relations in cities today.     

Age-specific net migration patterns in the municipal formations of Russia

This paper analyses the spatial patterns of internal migration in Russia using data on net migration gain/loss in 2200 municipal formations (MFs) in Russia for the 2012–2013 period. These MFs are grouped into age categories that correspond with different life-course stages. We define 16 classes of MFs with similar migration balance patterns for multiple age groups and characterize the most typical classes. The results of our analysis show that age-specific migration patterns are determined by the spatial characteristics of MFs—in particular, a municipality’s localization in the centreperiphery system and the advantages of the geographic location (e.g., resort area, natural resources). We find that a city’s population size and administrative status are also important migration factors. In addition, we reveal differences in inter-regional and intra-regional migration and define their structural characteristics. An analysis of age-specific net migration contributes to our understanding of internal migration factors and allows us to assess the impact of migration on a municipality’s age structure. In large cities and regional centres, migration results in younger populations, while in peripheral areas, it speeds up population ageing. In most of the MFs that we analysed, the migration of youth and adults ‘moves’ in opposite directions. This factor accelerates the impact of migration on the population age structure in areas of destination and origin and significantly influences a municipality’s current and prospective demographic parameters as well as the population’s patterns of settlement and spatial concentration or de-concentration both nationally and regionally.     

Urban development in Germany — perspectives for the future

The essay portrays urban development in Germany at the end of the 20th century in the transition from Industrial Modernity to the New Modernity. The city of the Industrial Modernity is described as a traditionally closed and mixed city. It corresponds to the classical European model of the compact city with a clearly defined centre and a surrounding area which is unambiguously oriented towards this centre. This urban model is disintegrating in Germany. The essay explains this lingering but fundamental process of change. The inner cities are decreasing in importance in favour of the urban fringe, traditional relationships and connections with our cities are lost, new regional activity areas are emerging in the environs of cities. Although the urban impacts of new communication technologies have not been completely clarified, they are changing previous local relationships in the cities. This is not without consequences for urban neighbourhood relationships. The increasing polarisation in German society also affects urban structure. The social mixture in cities disappears on a small scale, public spaces are losing their functions, undesirable population groups are excluded from participation in urban life in new shopping, leisure and transport facilities. The interaction between private and public agents who influence and determine urban development has changed in recent years, and the civic sense of responsibility for the city must be newly defined. Hopes are put into the debates on the Local Agenda and - in spite of its dangers - into a project-oriented planning approach.     

Evaluation of urban heat island effect in Turkey

Recently, the rate of urbanisation has accelerated due to increasing population density which causes unexpected environmental disturbances and problems. One of the major problems encountered to date is the change in the land use/cover (LULC) structure. Increasing the impervious surface cover has changed microclimatic properties of urbanised areas by altering their thermal characteristics. One of the most important problems facing urban planning today is the phenomena known as the urban heat island (UHI), which is largely due to the changing the character of LULC. In this study, to create a national picture of the UHI structure in Turkey, seven cities, namely Istanbul, Bursa, Ankara, Izmir, Gaziantep, Erzurum and Trabzon, each located in different climatic regions of Turkey, were investigated. The Gaussian fitting technique was applied to characterise the UHI effect in the seven cities in the study. An original contribution of the current study was that the rural reference temperature surface was automatically determined by a proposed algorithm including the automatic masking of input data, as well as the application of iterative Gaussian low-pass filtering during the fitting procedure. Within this context, the daytime and nighttime surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect was modelled and temporally analysed from 1984 to 2011 for all the sub-regions using remote sensing techniques. Furthermore, atmospheric UHI was also investigated using the mobile transect method. The findings from this study suggest that UHI is a major environmental problem in urbanised areas, both atmospheric UHI and SUHI were detected in all cities in the study area, and this problem was found to have rapidly increased from 1984 to 2011. Finally, as inferred from the multiple regression results, it can be concluded that the UHI problem in Turkey might have resulted from the altered LULC structure, as well as anthropogenic pressure on and interference in city planning geometries.