Divergent responses to urban transformation projects in Turkey: common sense and state affinity in community mobilization

This article examines the role of state affinity in community struggles against authoritarian, neoliberal urban transformation projects (UTPs) in Turkey. It argues that as neoliberal hegemonic devices, UTPs produce contentious political spaces within which communities negotiate, resist, or comply with state-imposed, pro-market rationales (i.e. common sense). As an alternative to depictions of subaltern communities in mobilization as totally ‘co-opted‘ or ‘victimized‘ in neoliberal renewal or as ’unwilling’ or ’unable’ to produce a collective rights identity, the analysis offers a more complicated picture of community resistance, inactivity, and co-optation. To do this, it adopts a combination of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of production of space and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. The analysis is based on the findings from original ethnographic research on two ethnically distinct working-class neighborhoods under UTP threat in Gebze, a satellite city of Istanbul. It compares communities’ affinity with the state-sponsored ideologies (Sunni-Turkish nationalism, neoliberalism) by looking at their ethnic identities and social histories.     

Resource economies and neoliberal experimentation: the reform of industry and community in rural British Columbia

This paper argues that the current literature on neoliberalism in advanced capitalist societies has concentrated primarily on urban issues, and has thus failed to see resource economies and regions as theoretically significant sites of neoliberal reform. Using research from British Columbia, Canada, we argue that resource regions are often targets of intense neoliberal experimentation. The neoliberal project in British Columbia involves an extreme shift in state policy from a strong Fordist-Keynesian programme to recent efforts to 'liberate' corporate actors from non-market social and spatial obligations (to environment, labour and community). We argue that such policy shifts have exceptional consequences in resource regions due to strong and direct state influence in corporate-resource and community-level economies. We draw several theoretical lessons from this research for the mainstream literature on neoliberal reform.     

苏州老城区衰退邻里居住满意度及影响因素

转型时期中国社会经济经历了巨大转型,居住分异加剧,新城市贫困现象在特定人群和空间集聚,老城衰退邻里就是其中之一。通过对苏州老城区6个典型社区的调查,发现老城区居民居住满意度存在环境类型、空间类型、更新类型和人群分异。居住满意度主要受住房条件、社区环境、配套设施和社会网络影响,其中城市历史社会空间结构奠定了城市环境质量的总体格局,具体设施条件受建成时间、维护水平、人口密度和更新机会的影响;城市更新、原住民比例下降和外来人口迁入导致的人口置换过程破坏了原本良好的社会网络,降低了居住满意度,减少了脱贫机会。从微观社区尺度研究老城衰退邻里的居住满意度及影响因素,不仅能加深对新城市贫困现象的理解,也有利于未来有针对性地制定城市更新规划和扶贫策略。     

Resisting urban renewal in Istanbul

In this article I examine grassroots responses to state-directed urban renewal in two poor neighborhoods in Istanbul. Through detailed analysis of resident perspectives and urban association tactics, I explore various factors that shape the trajectories of resistance to urban renewal, including solidarity networks, levels of participation and trust in local neighborhood associations, strength of neighborhood identity, extra-local support, and the traditions and channels of negotiation with state actors. I argue that these factors are articulated by a distinct “politics of compensation”—a term that I borrow from Ananya Roy—that is particular to the contemporary neoliberal condition. I find that grassroots mobilizations in Istanbul do not necessarily operate in opposition to neoliberalism; in fact, many struggles remain within the conceptual space of neoliberalism and its cost-benefit calculations. These findings contribute to the emerging literature on struggles against urban renewal in the global south.     

Downgrading – An overlooked reality in African cities: Reflections from an indigenous neighborhood of Accra,Ghana

African cities contain a range of low-income ethnic and cultural enclaves that defy conventional ‘slum’ typecasts and intervention guidelines. Further, new forms of urbanization (e.g. gated communities and informal settlements) have received heavy emphasis in recent urban geographic research. Such research emphases have many unintended consequences; one of which is that traditional indigenous neighborhoods in the older city are glossed over. This paper focuses on urban downgrading in Korle Gonno, a prominent and established indigenous community in Accra, Ghana. Using mixed-method data (including surveys), the results illustrate that a traditional neighborhood encounters many of the same dimensions of urban poverty as the more famed slums in the city, yet it experiences different poverty trajectories. We argue that the prevailing slum profiling techniques fall short of capturing these trajectories; more nuanced approaches that capture continuity and discontinuity with past and present socioeconomic processes are necessary. Attention must be rebalanced toward understanding the deterioration of these neighborhoods if policymakers, planners and urban theorists are to obtain a comprehensive picture of poverty dynamics and appropriate interventions in African cities.     

The Politics of Eminent Domain: From False Choices to Community Benefits

Large-scale urban redevelopment projects catalyze moments of peril and opportunity. In the wake of the United States Supreme Court's Kelo v. New London decision affirming economic development as a public use under the takings clause of the Constitution, these perils and opportunities have again become a site of major contestation. An unusual alliance of libertarian property-rights ideologues and civil-rights organizations has joined forces to challenge the use of eminent domain in urban economic development. In this article, I analyze the history of these alliances and their implicit reinforcement of deeply reactionary constructions of property. I conclude with an evaluation of two emergent models—community benefit agreements and community equity shares—that provide promising community tools for alternatives to homeowner rule and neoliberal urban renewal.     

Where rights begin and end in Puerto Rico's gated communities

In 1992, Puerto Rico's governor and police superintendent incorporated the National Guard with local police in a militarized battle against crime. Mano dura contra el crimen (strong arm/iron fist against crime) policies led to the gating of 82 public housing communities in the island. Simultaneously, privileged private communities organized and petitioned municipalities to retrofit their neighbourhoods with gates in the name of safety. These enclosures followed the privatized management of all public housing communities in the island only a few years before. Based on ethnographic research, I examine the sociospatial outcomes of these policies, how they reframe community participation and deploy a discourse of self‐responsibility that distributes power unequally across private and public housing communities. While in the privileged communities these policies have cultivated community leaders and invigorated social life as residents take control over public space, the gates in the communities of the poor reflect a skeletal structure of democracy. Private management companies impose increasingly restrictive regulations in attempts to organize the community and the only recourse to participation is to engage in small acts of everyday resistance, from apathy to subversion. As part of larger neoliberal tendencies to retrench the ‘public’ in favour of the ‘private’, the mano dura policies curtail democracy as the voices of the poor are silenced and the scope of efficacy of the rich expands.     

Detecting the dynamics of urban structure through spatial network analysis

Urban spatial structure in large cities is becoming ever more complex as populations grow in size, engage in more travel, and have increasing amounts of disposable income that enable them to live more diverse lifestyles. These trends have prominent and visible effects on urban activity, and cities are becoming more polycentric in their structure as new clusters and hotspots emerge and coalesce in a wider sea of urban development. Here, we apply recent methods in network science and their generalization to spatial analysis to identify the spatial structure of city hubs, centers, and borders, which are essential elements in understanding urban interactions. We use a ‘big’ data set for Singapore from the automatic smart card fare collection system, which is available for sample periods in 2010, 2011, and 2012 to show how the changing roles and influences of local areas in the overall spatial structure of urban movement can be efficiently monitored from daily transportation.

In essence, we first construct a weighted directed graph from these travel records. Each node in the graph denotes an urban area, edges denote the possibility of travel between any two areas, and the weight of edges denotes the volume of travel, which is the number of trips made. We then make use of (a) the graph properties to obtain an overall view of travel demand, (b) graph centralities for detecting urban centers and hubs, and (c) graph community structures for uncovering socioeconomic clusters defined as neighborhoods and their borders. Finally, results of this network analysis are projected back onto geographical space to reveal the spatial structure of urban movements. The revealed community structure shows a clear subdivision into different areas that separate the population’s activity space into smaller neighborhoods. The generated borders are different from existing administrative ones. By comparing the results from 3 years of data, we find that Singapore, even from such a short time series, is developing rapidly towards a polycentric urban form, where new subcenters and communities are emerging largely in line with the city’s master plan.

To summarize, our approach yields important insights into urban phenomena generated by human movements. It represents a quantitative approach to urban analysis, which explicitly identifies ongoing urban transformations.     

Securing the Neoliberal City: Discourses of Creativity and Priority Neighborhoods in Toronto,Canada

This paper examines the convergence between the discourse of the creative city and the discourse on priority neighborhoods within urban policy imaginaries in Toronto, Canada. In particular, it examines the development of a number of arts programs targeted at low-income neighborhoods in the city. The twin objectives of these programs are to (a) foster creative and entrepreneurial subjectivities among “at-risk” youth, and (b) reduce the risk of violence that is presumed to be associated with youths living in poor neighborhoods. The paper analyzes how these two discourses are intertwined in a neoliberal politics devoted to enhancing regional quality-of-life competitiveness and to branding Toronto as an attractive creative-class destination. [Key words: creative city, poverty, low-income neighborhoods, neoliberalism, Toronto.]     

新兴城市类单位社区生活圈的建构路径与特征差异——以深圳为例

有关单位制度与生活圈的讨论多数集中在具有较长计划经济历史与较强国有经济色彩的城市,但是实际上一些新兴城市也存在单位制度实践或类似制度实践.以深圳为例,论文在分析了深圳城市建设与发展过程中的单位制度力量后,选取7个具有单位社区特征的社区,对比商品房社区与城中村社区,从空间行为和社会关系等维度描绘了这些社区居民生活圈的特征...     

Foreign‐Born Status and Geographic Patterns of Tuberculosis Genotypes in Tarrant County,Texas

Regardless of destination, immigrants arrive with health profiles typical of people in their previous surroundings. Thus, immigrants change the epidemiological profile of destination communities, and immigrant neighborhoods may represent islands of infectious disease. Genotyping has emerged as a useful surveillance tool to track the spread of disease at the molecular level. Yet the spatial distribution of infectious disease at the molecular level associated with migration and immigrant neighborhoods has received little attention. Using molecular genotyping to characterize M. tuberculosis isolated from tuberculosis cases, this article analyzes spatial variations of unique molecular M. tuberculosis strains by zip code in Tarrant County, Texas. The results suggest that immigrant neighborhoods have higher rates of unique isolates of tuberculosis (suggestive of remote transmission) compared to neighborhoods occupied by the native‐born. Neighborhoods dominated by the native‐born have higher rates of clustered isolates (suggestive of recent transmission). Therefore, in addition to being culturally distinct, immigrant neighborhoods may also be pathogenically distinct from surrounding neighborhoods.     

Legal Geographies—The Right to Spaces for Social Dancing in New York City: A Question of Urban Rights

As municipalities have enforced laws meant to enhance "quality of life" in gentrifying neighborhoods, controversies have erupted over the legitimacy of such laws. This study investigates one such controversy in New York City. It focuses on how the denial by the courts of social dancing as constitutionally protected mode of expression has led to the judicial endorsement of the municipality's cabaret law regulating the spaces for social dancing, despite the questionable legitimacy of this regulation. The study also draws out two implications for urban activism associated with movements making claims for "the right to the city": first, that we should take seriously activities such as social dancing and the spaces that enable them, which are invaluable to urban life but are not constitutionally protected; and second, that we may use the notion of "urban rights" as a principle to protect these activities and spaces from gentrification and questionable governmental regulations.     

Urban Underclass: The Wayward Travels of a Chaotic Concept

This commentary critically engages with arguments made by Loïc Wacquant in his book Urban Outcasts on the nature of public discourse regarding concentrated urban poverty in the United States. In particular, it elaborates a critical reading of the international circulation of social-scientific analyses of urban poverty—in particular the concept of the "urban underclass"—which rose to prominence through research on Chicago neighborhoods. This concept has subsequently influenced scholarly and public policy approaches to characterizing and combating entrenched urban poverty and long-term unemployment in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. I challenge the appropriateness of the concept as well as the direction of public policymaking that has downplayed, if not ignored, questions of job availability and job quality in urban areas.     

Escapism. Yi-Fu Tuan; Transnationalism from Below. Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo,editors; Race,Place, and the Law 1836-1948. David Delaney; Hurricane Andrew: Ethnicity,Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters. Walter Gillis Peacock,Betty Hearn Morrow,and Hugh Gladwin,editors

In the second half of the 20th century, considerable resources and efforts have been devoted to revitalizing American central cities. In these redevelopment processes, however, the common byproduct of physical upgrading is social upgrading, the displacement of many of the original residents, who are often low-income and minority, from their traditional neighborhoods. This article explores the various processes of physical and social upgrading—including locally driven urban renewal, private sector "blockbusting," and gentrification—occurring in late 20th century Houston, Texas. This research also examines the neighborhood characteristics and demographic patterns that influence the occurrence of specific upgrading processes. One location of particular interest in the study is Houston's historic African American community of Freedmen's Town, which has experienced decades of conflict over land and space. Most recently, Freedmen's Town has been at the focus of Houston's urban revival, where physical upgrading has been accompanied by the displacement of the community's traditional population and the destruction of this historic neighborhood.     

Contingent Urban Geographies of Violent Crime: Racial Segregation and the Impact of Public Housing in Atlanta

Neighborhood variations in crime incidence rates are most commonly interpreted through the lens of social disorganization theory, or a "communities and crime" perspective. This approach typically articulates explanation for crime by focusing on the characteristics of communities—a unitary scale most commonly equated with neighborhoods. We argue that this perspective fails to recognize the importance of broader urban geographic contexts, and offer an extension that sees geographically contingent processes functioning at multiple scales simultaneously. We develop this perspective applied to the "spread effects" of public housing on violent crime in surrounding neighborhoods: these spread effects are conditioned by the nature of the urban contexts through which they operate. Specifically, deeply divided and racialized patterns of residential segregation at least partially define the contexts that condition public housing's effect on crime. We examine our perspective using early 1990s block group data for the City of Atlanta and find substantial evidence in support of our perspective. In particular, we find that Techwood Homes, the nation's first federally constructed public housing project, exerted different geographic spread effects in predominantly White than in predominantly Black portions of the city. By failing to recognize the complexity and contingency of public housing's geographic effect on crime in surrounding neighborhoods, previous approaches substantially overestimate crime in White areas, and underestimate crime in Black areas.     

迁居意愿、地方依赖和社区认同——北京中关村地区居住选择调查分析

迁居行为及其意愿反映了城市居民对美好生活的向往,揭示了城市居住环境是否能够满足居民的需要。论文从迁居意愿的视角,将地方依赖和社区认同引入迁居研究中,并采用问卷调查和访谈相结合的方法来分析城市居民的居住选择。运用Williams量表,在292份调查问卷和52份深度访谈的基础上,对北京中关村地区展开了调查研究。结果表明：中关村周边社区居民对就业和子女教育具有明显的地方依赖和较高的社区认同感。在292名被调查者中,共有115名居民有迁居意愿,占被调查者总数的39.4%。其中,在就业和子女教育地方依赖程度较低的调查人群中,这一比例分别上升至47.2%和54.2%。此外,有迁居意愿的居民大多社区认同感不高,在115名有迁居意愿的居民中,仅有4人对所在社区具有强烈认同感。论文从地方感的角度丰富了居住空间的研究内容,为理解当代城市居住空间的特点、提升城市空间建设质量提供了参考依据。     

MOZAMBIQUE,NEOLIBERAL LAND REFORM,AND THE LIMPOPO NATIONAL PARK*

ABSTRACT. Central to its transformation from a state‐centered to a neoliberal, free‐market economy, in 1997 the Mozambican state passed a radical new land law that guarantees the rights of individuals and communities to occupy land and transfer land‐use titles, a move seen as necessary for attracting private investment. By comparing how the land law has been applied to the Limpopo National Park and several adjacent villages, I show how it has led to geographically uneven land reform. More specifically, outside the park, the law has enabled the semiprivatization of community lands, in theory protecting community land rights. However, the application of the law within the park has resulted in the further nationalization of this space, which is leading to land dispossession for communities within the park's borders. I thus show how neoliberal land reform is giving rise to a seemingly contradictory type of “neoliberal state space.”     

DECONSTRUCTING VIRTUAL CITIES: FROM UNREALITY TO HYPERREALITY

Taking feminist research as a starting point into the ways in which gentrification shapes gender relations in the city, this article addresses the phenomenon of new-build gentrification in terms of the re-contouring of gendered boundaries of public and private urban life. I examine how a widespread process of condominium development in Toronto is informed by neoliberal policy imperatives such as growth and competition. I also explore the ways in which the neoliberal, political-economic rationality underlying condominium development translates into changes in the ways that a particular group of city dwellers, women condominium owners, conceptualize their relationships to their homes, neighborhoods, and the city at large. This study suggests that condominium living produces a shift in the way that public and private spaces are understood and experienced, and that this shift has contradictory implications for the reshaping of urban gender relations.     

Community and Social Capital in Upper-Income Neighborhoods: An Investigation in Metropolitan Phoenix

This study investigates how upper-income residents respond to neoliberal practices and private governance in forming unusual community relationships in landscapes seemingly devoid of traditional social capital. Based on field work in three communities in metropolitan Phoenix, it was concluded that through private groups and an intrinsic nature to know others, residents create meaningful relationships at scales other than the neighborhood or municipality and focus on nontraditional, privatized community institutions. Whereas these new relationships enhance residents' feelings of connectedness, they generally promote bonding over bridging social capital. Moreover, the draconian effects homeowners or property owners' associations have on normative landscape and behavioral constraints tend to wane considerably as the transition from the developer's idea of place and the residents' vision of place occurs temporally.     

建成环境是否影响居民健康生活方式?——基于北京22个社区的实证分析

健康社区建设是后疫情时代的重要趋势,在促进居民健康状况方面,只有针对各类生活方式进行组合干预才能将个体患病风险降到最低并保证居民身心的全面健康.论文选取了北京22个典型社区,利用2019年北京城市体检问卷调查数据构建了社区居民健康生活方式的评价指标体系,并在此基础上结合社区生活圈内的建成环境空间数据,借助多层线性模型考...