Emergent Urban Forms,or Emergent Post-Modernisms? A Comparison of Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Post-modern urban theory has problematized the universality of existing models of urban form by focusing on fluidity and complexity in the urban landscape. Urban form is "chaotic," "galactic," and even "random" according to this view. Somewhat lost in this perspective are the emergent urban forms occurring in a wide variety of cities. This paper challenges the universalization of landscape complexity that lies at the core of post-modern urbanism by examining landscape changes in the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The key findings are that landscape complexity vis the mid-20th century city is overstated—not least because the latter was itself quite complicated—and that the unyielding focus on difference deflects attention away from important processes like inner-city revalorization, inner-suburban devalorization, and outer-suburban valorization that are reshaping very different cities in largely similar ways.     

Does Social Learning Lead to Better Natural Resource Management? A Case Study of the Modern Farming Community of Practice in Sweden

This study investigates whether social learning among large-scale farmers in central Sweden leads to better natural resource management in the agricultural landscape. Three different frames of social learning are first identified: social learning as a fundamental social phenomenon, social learning as collaborative learning, and social learning as deeper learning. This article investigates the role of social learning and other factors through semistructured in-depth interviews. Results show that learning among farmers is inherently social, but that this learning does not necessarily improve natural resource management or lead to better environmental governance. The article discusses when social learning can be expected to influence natural resources management, and finds that without the presence of policy, individual leadership, or facilitation, it is not an important factor. Furthermore, the call for social learning based on results from successful instrumental application risks obscuring findings indicating that both social learning and better natural resource management are conditioned on the same external factors.