Slums,Ghettos, and Urban Marginality

This paper gathers potent visual images of one city, Los Angeles (L.A.), by examining three contemporary films— L.A. Story (1991), Boyz N the Hood (1991), and Grand Canyon (1991). It argues that popular culture, and in particular popular film, is an integral part of the portrayal of the cultural landscape. This paper primarily uses the assorted visual images of the urban landscape in considering how this one city has been recently depicted. The three films reveal a city shaped by rapid changes in urban America, depicting Los Angeles as an urban area composed of a fragmented landscape divided into many geographies: L.A. as a realm of simulations and void of consequences; L.A. as a city under siege, a place of epidemic violence and fear; L.A. as a place obsessed with security and control; L.A. as an increasingly ambiguous and chaotic place. Far from concluding that cities have become so fragmented that they are ageographic, these films reveal various geographies that are rooted in economic, political, and cultural contexts. Attention to the “restlessness” of cities and the postmodern focus on the instability and chaotic nature of urban experience actually challenge geographers to uncover the multitude of geographies of place. Interpreting the many geographies of Los Angeles shows that film can reveal a uniquely visual catalog of human experience of place, supplementing the ways in which we decipher place image and representation. This paper suggests that film is one way by which previously marginalized groups, such as blacks, can disseminate ideas from the margins and provide alternative experiencesof place. Geographers should add film to the cache of qualitative data that constructs an urban experience through images and representation, widening the discussion of what is place     

Enacting immanent potentialities: Tcheb‐tchib strategies at the centre of the urban fringe in Nouakchott,Mauritania

The urban fringe areas of Nouakchott, the capital city of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, have become virtual epicentres of informal property speculation, as the state‐owned land that people illegally inhabit becomes an increasingly valuable commodity in the wake of urban redevelopment plans and vast infrastructural development projects. By applying ingenious ‘poaching’ strategies based on anticipation, the marginalized, impoverished people inhabiting these areas appropriate and manipulate space in order to survive. In their attempt to counter the state's technologies of governance through what is commonly known as tcheb‐tchib, a form of creative improvisation, they become a driving force in the dynamic and contested reconfigurations of the urban landscape. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork focusing on the strategies of former nomads who are now sedentarized on the urban fringe, this article conceives large‐scale urban renewal as a dynamic process that generates an emergent space of immanent potentiality that the urban poor attempt to strategically appropriate and enact to make the most of a potentially destructive process.     

PRAÇAS,PLACE, AND PUBLIC LIFE IN URBAN BRAZIL*

ABSTRACT. This study interprets critical stages in the changing design and landscape of urban squares, or praças, in Brazil and assesses the circumstances of their cultural‐historical production. Urban squares were shaped by, and in the process contributed to and shed light on, several of the country's major social and artistic movements. The history of the square illustrates a theme of European cultural dominance, especially French, that was a product of the colonial experience and neocolonial influences which were overcome only in the twentieth century through spontaneous creative fusion with indigenous Brazilian elements.     

Urban annexation of the rural: kebun culture in Malaysia

‘Kebun culture’ is a distinctive, emergent form of rural sensibility and social-economic relations in Malaysia. As a contribution to theories of ‘planetary’ or thoroughgoing urbanization, the ethnographic evidence presented in the article illustrate a case of urban annexation of rurality, in which kebun (orchards) are detached from the social organization of rural villages and incorporated into urban-centered Malay society. Kebun, as productive land with non-rice crops, have traditionally been associated with rural kampung (village). In the late twentieth century, thoroughgoing urbanization, driven by both rural-to-urban migration and in situ urbanization of rural kampung, simultaneously produced a social disintegration of Malay kampung and increasingly urban-oriented Malay society. The kebun, which previously was an ancillary part of kampung social ecology has become dissociated from kampung and instead operates as an annex of urban-centered social lives. Kebun are also distinctively individuated rather than communal socio-economic projects. In both reserve lands and kampung areas, urban-based Malays and rural-to-urban return migrants are involved in kebun projects, through which they engage with nostalgic notions of rurality, but without the social entanglements of kampung social relations. At the same time, through kebun projects, urban Malay subjects enter into new social relations, albeit ones marked by commodification.     

非表征理论视角下的城市再生方式——广州创新创业空间案例

以非表征理论为切入点,本文以广州创新创业空间为案例,探讨情感空间和身体等要素在促进城市再生进程中的作用。研究发现：各主体在孵化器/众创空间的建设发展过程中邂逅,通过身体实践作用于物质空间构成创新创意空间关系网络和城市再生体系,重构创新创业空间的文化内涵并培育创新情感和创造行为,为创意产业的发展和地方感的重构提供物质基础以及赋予其多元的地方意义。而后,创意阶层的日常生活实践重塑了社区环境促进微空间的再生产,实现资本积累以完成第一轮时空修复,并随着其社会影响范围的扩大成为新城市文化,促进第二轮时空修复的完成。上述结论回应了非表征理论看待世界的方式和填补了非表征理论在宏观尺度研究上的空缺,为城市再生提供了新的实践切入点。     

Predicting sediment inputs to aquatic ecosystems across England and Wales under current environmental conditions

The awareness of water quality issues has never been higher. As part of its continuing strategic diffuse pollution policy support, ADAS recently undertook to identify catchments across England and Wales that could potentially fail recently proposed suspended sediment yield targets under current environmental conditions. The total suspended sediment loads (SSL) delivered to all rivers were assumed to comprise contributions from diffuse sources in the agricultural and urban sectors, as well as from eroding channel banks and point sources represented by sewage treatment works (STWs). Diffuse agricultural sediment loss to rivers was predicted using the PSYCHIC model. Corresponding inputs from diffuse urban sources were estimated on the basis of an Event Mean Concentration (EMC) methodology. Channel bank sediment inputs were calculated using a prototype national scale model, while point source sediment contributions were based on a register of consented effluent discharges. Modelled SSL were validated (r²=68%) against PARCOM data (1999–2003) for the delivery of sediment to different regions of the UK maritime area. The results of the validation were considered to be realistic for a national scale predictor. The modelling exercise suggested that those catchments currently at risk of exceeding proposed suspended sediment yield critical thresholds are largely confined to upland areas across Wales and northwest England and the chalklands of southern and eastern England.     

Racial Segregation in the (Post) Colonial City: The Case of Indonesia1

Urban society in colonial and early postcolonial Indonesia was stratified along ethnic and class lines. This stratification was given concrete shape in the urban residential landscape. Our article starts from the working hypothesis that under the impact of decolonization the changing social status system was reflected in a changing residential pattern. We offer empirical evidence to weigh the relative validity of the from-race-to-class-segregation thesis during colonization against the class-segregation-throughout-decolonization thesis. On the basis of our findings, we argue that the second thesis presents the more accurate depiction of urban society. Looking at spatial segregation, decolonization was characterized by continuity. Decolonization by itself was therefore insufficient to alter sociospatial inequality in postcolonial Indonesian cities.     

RECONSTRUCTED PRODUCTION LANDSCAPES IN THE POSTMODERN CITY: APPLIED DESIGN AND CREATIVE SERVICES IN THE METROPOLITAN CORE

Applied design and creative services are central to the formation of metropolitan landscapes and urban culture (both in historical and contemporary contexts), as well as to the production of the full range of industrial and consumer goods. More specifically, applied design firms are essential to the development of advanced industrial systems, and facilitate the operation of flexible production regimes by (1) enabling production differentiation in segmented markets, (2) improving productivity, (3) promoting production synergies, (4) enhancing short-run customized production, and (5) contributing to the condensing of longer-run style cycles. A case study of design and creative services firms in Vancouver discloses that such firms exhibit important commonalities with other producer services industries (e.g., intermediate market orientation, clustering propensity, divisions of labor). At the same time, firms engaged in the production of design may be differentiated from “mainstream” business or corporate service firms in terms of (1) location and milieu, with a clear affinity for the CBD fringe and inner city, rather than the CBD proper; (2) function, with an emphasis on creativity as both raison d'etre and operating characteristic; and (3) services-goods interface (design services are not “arms length” from goods production, like most business services, but are directly concerned with the style, configuration, and identity of end products). Finally, the clustering of design and creative service firms exemplifies the “internal specialization of the production spaces of the large metropolis” (Scott, 1988), although empirical evidence from the Vancouver case asserts the significance of sociocultural, as well as economic, features of agglomeration. [Key words: design, production, inner city, clustering, agglomeration.]     

民间信仰文化景观的时空演变及对社会文化空间的整合——以明至民国初期佛山神庙为视角

明代以来佛山的民间信仰迅速发展,神庙系统庞杂,既有广府民系的属性,又反映出商品经济高度发达的特征,对佛山城市发展产生了影响。从古地图和文献中提取历史时期基本空间数据和神庙等文化景观地理信息,建立佛山历史GIS数据库。通过景观复原、地图再现、空间分析和景观分析等方法,以神庙景观为视角,研究表明:明代至民国初年,神庙景观基本上以祖庙铺和明心铺及其周围地带为核心,呈自南向北逐渐扩展的分布总趋势,并与佛山城市社会空间发展相一致,逐渐形成了以佛山祖庙为中心的北帝信仰文化景观的核心地位。通过对北帝巡游路径空间的解读,反映出佛山民间信仰场域的构成,以北帝信仰为纽带,形成了以祖庙为中心的"中心—四方"空间形式,整合了佛山的城市社会文化空间。     

Are creative workers happier in Chinese cities? The influence of work,lifestyle, and amenities on urban well-being

This paper examines two propositions in the creative-class debate in the context of China’s large cities. The first evaluates Richard Florida’s contention that creative workers enjoy higher level of well-being and are happier than blue-collar workers. The second investigates the influence of urban amenities, lifestyle, and work on creative workers’ happiness. Both propositions are analyzed in relation to China’s post-Socialist, industrial, and mining cities. Based on data from a household survey, the results indicate that Chinese creative workers are indeed happier in post-Socialist, or service-sector oriented, cities. However, creative work does not explain their happiness. Stable social sites that reinforce authentic experience of urban cultural amenities (e.g. the teahouse rather than modern coffeehouses, bars, and theaters) are a significant factor for creative-class happiness in post-Socialist Chinese cities. However, creative work is more likely to explain creative-class happiness in mining cities. Further, our study found that blue-collar workers report a higher level of happiness in those settings with less pronounced inter- and intra-class distinctions at the workplace—in those places where power and status are more evenly distributed.     

Creating public space,creating ‘the public’: immigration politics and representation in two Copenhagen parks

ABSTRACT

Contestations over immigration, citizenship, and belonging play out every day in urban public space. In this article we study the design processes and use of two Copenhagen parks, Superkilen and Mimersparken, to explore the creation of public space and the “public” in Denmark. Who is part of the Danish “public”? What right do immigrant residents have to shape public space and their neighborhoods? How are the boundaries of Danish national identity policed and contested in public space in Copenhagen? The Danish government has increasingly moved toward far-right anti-immigrant stances, even while Copenhagen promotes a multicultural vision of a diverse and cosmopolitan city. Superkilen and Mimersparken illustrate the shortcomings of Copenhagen’s multiculturalism: though Copenhagen celebrates immigration, it left little space for residents to make meaningful decisions as political actors. In the case of Superkilen and Mimersparken, designers’ stylized idea of immigration is more celebrated than the actual presence of immigrant residents.     

Mapping spectral tropicality in The Maid and Return to Pontianak

Contemporary, postcolonial Singapore has tamed, managed, and essentially disavowed its tropicality, aptly captured symbolically as the 'air-conditioned nation'. This essay traces how two recent Singapore horror films, The Maid (2005) and Return to Pontianak (2001), evoke the 'return of the repressed' as a form of haunting that I call 'spectral tropicality'. The films image and imagine this spectral return through unruly bodies (citizen subjects, female domestic workers, ghosts and vampire-ghosts) and uncanny landscapes (the jungle and city). In particular, the films and this analysis examine two sociocultural spectres lurking beneath Singapore as a tropical urban city-nation: the female domestic worker ( The Maid ) and ethnoracial folk beliefs ( The Maid and Return to Pontianak ). The Maid features the Hungry Ghosts Festival in the Chinese religious calendar, ghost marriages and an engagement with yin and yang energies, while Return to Pontianak deals with Malay folk beliefs of semangat ('life force'), and the pontianak, a female vampire-ghost. The Maid attempts to integrate Chinese folk beliefs into contemporary Singapore's cityscape, particularly the architecturally conserved Chinatown shophouses, while Return to Pontianak displaces Malay folk beliefs onto the tropical forest, which is mapped as a threatening other(ed) space and serves as Singapore's tropical doppelganger. Both films suggest that these folk beliefs have an unruly presence within the state's seemingly harmonious and meritocratic ethnoracial ideologies.     

城市河岸土地利用对河流廊道功能影响初探——以上海苏州河为例

城市河岸土地利用往往改变河岸的自然地理条件,对城市河流功能产生影响。通过总结城市河岸廊道功能以及国内外城市河岸规划土地利用的实践,分析了河岸土地利用对城市河流廊道功能的影响,并以上海苏州河为例进行了实证分析。结果表明,苏州河河岸规划土地利用方式提高了河岸开放带宽度,改善了河岸舒适性,控制了河岸建筑高度,有利于保护和开发苏州河河流的景观、遗产和经济廊道的功能。干流河岸在自然廊道功能方面,仍存在一定缺陷,与支流的部分河段相比仍有差距。     

基于景观孤岛化分析的传统地域文化景观保护模式简

在城镇化、现代化和商业化快速发展的今天,传统文化景观的破碎化已成为传统地域文化景观的重要空间特征和现象,破碎化直接催生了传统文化景观空间的孤岛化现象,直接影响着传统地域文化景观的整体性,成为传统文化景观整体性保护的重要障碍。本文以苏州市甪直镇为例,在分析区域特征及对当地居民进行问卷调查的基础上,通过构造孤岛化评价指数,评价甪直古镇传统文化景观的格局的综合特征和景观孤岛化现象、特征及形成过程。在传统文化景观孤岛化评价的基础上,通过确定保护圈层、构建文化景观遗产廊道和景观生态网络格局,实现传统文化景观空间的拓展、连接和传统文化景观与缓冲空间的有机复合,成为传统地域文化景观区域性整体保护的空间模式。     

Nationalist heritage,sublime affect and the anomalous Icelandic landscape concept

Olwig, K.R. 2015. Nationalist heritage, sublime affect and the anomalous Icelandic landscape concept. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography Vol. 69, 277–287. ISSN 0029-1951.

The idea of landscape has undergone change, as has the physical landscape, under differing historical, technological, ideological and representational contexts. The article is concerned with the way modern imaginaries of landscape have been read back into the past in order to naturalize, essentialize and legitimize a particular imagined political, economic and physical national heritage. The image of Icelandic landnám, understood as the settlement of the naturally bounded, wild, sublime, virginal nature of Iceland encountered by rugged and free Nordic Vikings, speaking a pure Nordic language, played a foundational mythic role in particularly 19th century Nordic and Germanic national romanticism. This was because Iceland provided an apparent means of ground-truthing the nationalism, coupled with economic liberalism, that the national romantics promoted. The article examines the ways that such romantic nativist ideas of national character, as something embedded in a people through the esthetic experience of raw sublime nature, continue to operate on Iceland, and far beyond the boundaries of Norden, in a modern world of freebooting financiers, offshore neoliberal economics and renewed nationalistic fervor. The modern international role of the physical landscape in this ideology is exemplified by a case from Mexico, whereas Iceland exemplifies the continued vitality of this ideational landscape.     

Characterization of neighborhood sensitivity of an irregular cellular automata model of urban growth

The neighborhood definition, which determines the influence on a cell from its nearby cells within a localized region, plays a critical role in the performance of a cellular automaton (CA) model. Raster CA models use a cellular grid to represent geographic space, and are sensitive to the cell size and neighborhood configuration. However, the sensitivity of vector-based CAs, an alternative to the raster-based counterpart, to neighborhood type and size remains uninvestigated. The present article reports the results of a detailed sensitivity analysis of an irregular CA model of urban land use dynamics. The model uses parcel data at the cadastral scale to represent geographic space, and was implemented to simulate urban growth in Central Texas, USA. Thirty neighborhood configurations defined by types and sizes were considered in order to examine the variability in the model outcome. Results from accuracy assessments and landscape metrics confirmed the model’s sensitivity to neighborhood configurations. Furthermore, the centroid intercepted neighborhood with a buffer of 120 m produced the most accurate simulation result. This neighborhood produced scattered development while the centroid extent-wide neighborhood resulted in a clustered development predominantly near the city center.     

Identifying determinants of urban growth from a multi-scale perspective: A case study of the urban agglomeration around Hangzhou Bay,China

Analyzing the spatial determinants of urban growth is helpful for urban planning and management. In a case study of urban agglomeration around Hangzhou Bay (China), four landscape metrics (total area, total edge, landscape shape index and aggregation index) were used to describe the landscape characteristics of the urban growth at two block scales (4 km and 7 km) during two temporal intervals (1994–2003 and 2003–2009). Spatial autocorrelation regression was employed to identify the geographic determinants of the urban landscape changes. The results indicated that the urban landscapes became more dominant, unstable, irregular and compact, especially in the centers of cities. These changes exhibited notable spatial variations and spatial autocorrelation at the two block scales. The distances to national and provincial roads influenced the urban pattern changes. The impacts of the urban centers on urban expansion gradually declined with the urbanization progress. The slope factor was the most influential determinant of urban growth. Our study emphasized the importance of considering the autocorrelation and scale effects when analyzing the determinants of urban growth. These findings may help land planners create policies and strategies for future urban development.     

广西贵港市城市建成区景观格局动态变化研究

以高分辨率QulckBird卫星影像及航片为数据源,借助GIS技术平台获得广西贵港市4个时期城市景观类型图;运用景观格局指数定量分析城市景观格局的时空变化特征。分析结果表明,近40a来贵港市城市景观趋于有序多样化,表征城市综合发展水平的公共设施用地、市政公用设施用地和工业用地的斑块数和面积均逐年上升;建成区用地规模在经历了扩展过快和扩展不足的波动后,最近10a趋于合理,但仍存在一定程度的土地资源闲置现象;城市化过程中,城市主要景观要素（公共设施用地、工业用地、居住用地和农田）的空间形状表现出规则整齐的特征,而主要景观要素的空间分布特征具有明显的波动变化趋势。     

Object-based spatial cluster analysis of urban landscape pattern using nighttime light satellite images: a case study of China

Previous studies have demonstrated urban built-up areas can be derived from nighttime light satellite (DMSP-OLS) images at the national or continent scale. This paper presents a novel object-based method for detecting and characterizing urban spatial clusters from nighttime light satellite images automatically. First, urban built-up areas, derived from the regionally adaptive thresholding of DMSP-OLS nighttime light data, are represented as discrete urban objects. These urban objects are treated as basic spatial units and quantified in terms of geometric and shape attributes and their spatial relationships. Next, a spatial cluster analysis is applied to these basic urban objects to form a higher level of spatial units – urban spatial clusters. The Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) is used to represent spatial proximity relationships among urban objects. An algorithm based on competing propagation of objects is proposed to construct the MST of urban objects. Unlike previous studies, the distance between urban objects (i.e., the boundaries of urban built-up areas) is adopted to quantify the edge weight in MST. A Gestalt Theory-based method is employed to partition the MST of urban objects into urban spatial clusters. The derived urban spatial clusters are geographically delineated through mathematical morphology operation and construction of minimum convex hull. A series of landscape ecologic and statistical attributes are defined and calculated to characterize these clusters. Our method has been successfully applied to the analysis of urban landscape of China at the national level, and a series of urban clusters have been delimited and quantified.     

沈阳市城市扩展与土地利用变化多情景模拟

利用基于遥感手段获取的沈阳市城市扩展与土地利用变化历史数据,对SLEUTH城市扩展模型进行校正,对未来(2005~2030年)不同管理情景下的城市扩展与土地利用变化过程进行模拟,并对其发展变化趋势和生态环境影响进行分析与比较。结果显示,在三种管理情景下,未来的沈阳市城市建设用地都将持续增加,大量的耕地资源被侵占;但不同管理情景下,城市景观格局和区域面临的景观生态风险却表现出明显差异。SLEUTH模型的模拟结果较好地反映了沈阳市不同土地利用政策、规划方案等对未来城市扩展和土地利用变化以及区域景观生态风险的潜在影响,同时也指出了当前城市增长管理政策中存在的不足之处。