Water and sanitation in the Buenos Aires metropolitan region: Fragmented markets, splintering effects?

This paper discusses the provision of water and sanitation services and the related urban impacts in Buenos Aires circa 2005. The first part of the paper focuses on the metropolitan region (BAMR) which is larger than the area served by the Aguas Argentinas S.A. (AASA) concession (i.e. the capital and its conurbano). It highlights a form of institutional fragmentation that is reflected in the diverse management practices of the numerous service providers and results in differentiated levels of and access to services. The paper discusses the technical, economic and regulatory factors that have historically resulted in this institutional fragmentation. The second part of the article focuses on AASA’s water concession agreement. It demonstrates that, although the agreement had an in-built splintering logic, its implementation led to a more “integrated approach” based on the “reality on the ground”. On the whole, the conclusion regarding the application of the splintering urbanism concept to Buenos Aires is a mixed one and depends on the scale of observation. Although at regional level (BAMR), a form of “institutional fragmentation” would appear to be obvious, it is the result of a long and complex historical process and, while recent neo-liberal reforms in service provisions have “cemented” this fragmentation, they did not actually cause it. If we take the AASA service area in isolation, the trend in the decade following the contracting out of the service has been one of improved service provision and access—although this was not achieved through increased integration of the supply system. Finally, in the case of the Buenos Aires metropolitan region, the splintering urbanism thesis defended by Marvin and Graham needs to be nuanced in several significant ways.     

Job access, location decision, and the working poor: A qualitative study in the Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area

The critical perspective in job accessibility research argues that access to employment opportunities in an urban area is a complex process. This paper explores the role of individual level location decision-making as it relates to job access. In US metropolitan areas, a worker must consider where to live, where to work, and how they will commute between these locations – the residential–commuting–employment nexus. But limited work has been done to understand how this home-work link influences job access. This research interviews thirty working poor individuals in the Columbus, Ohio metropolitan area. One unexpected finding was the spatially transitory nature of these individuals’ lives – frequently changing both jobs and residences. Negotiating the nexus is a process of spatial decision-making determined by their individual urban mobility. Residential choice is made based on mobility options, not work location. They have diverse job commuting experiences as their mobility options change over time, and those mobility options often dictate their capacity to access existing job opportunities. From the experience of these individuals, Columbus has a strong local economy with many low-skilled higher paying jobs, but a weak public transit system. This article also contributes a qualitative based research perspective to a body of literature that historically under utilizes the approach.     

Residential mobility in the Seoul metropolitan region, Korea

The spatial pattern of residential mobility in Korea is found to be one of intraregional rather than interregional movement. Net inmigration has taken place only in the Seoul metropolitan region (SMR) since 1970. People from the Cholla region have formed the main stream of net inmigration into the SMR. The decentralization of population from Seoul to Kyonggi and Inchon has generated a transformation of the Seoul urban fringe since 1970. This metropolitanization process is accompanied by residential and employment suburbanization to 45kms from the center of Seoul. Residential mobility in the SMR is the result of metropolitan job opportunities, availability of housing, and the effects of the various regional policies. Availability of transportation between Seoul and its urban fringe encouraged the wide expansion of the urban areas and population redistribution within the SMR.     

State rescaling and new metropolitan space in the age of austerity. Evidence from Italy

This article presents the changes that are emerging in the Italian national policies mainly through the discussion of the contents both of the recent metropolitan reform initiative, and the national programming documents for metropolitan cities related to European Programming period 2014–2020. In Italy, which faced severe political difficulty and economic stagnation after 2008 global crisis, the production of the new metropolitan scale became one of the tools for the implementation of austerity measures. The paper examines whether the understanding of the new metropolitan scale in the Italian geography of austerity can be strengthened through a careful engagement with the body of literature on state rescaling and on austerity policies. The paper illustrates how that the apparently neutral emphasis on metropolitan city scale, first can be understood as a crucial tool of an austerity measures; second, it implies a rescaling of public power and, third, it neglects the multifaceted notion of the urban and the trans-scalar territorial governance relationships.     

Expanding networks for the urban poor: Water and telecommunications services in Lima, Peru

In many cities of the developing world, poor residents occupy land and build their dwellings before infrastructure is provided. Expanding the infrastructure networks for the poor is a long, expensive and complicated affair. Before the 1990s, the public sector was generally in charge of the basic services; but these services have been liberalized and, in many cases, privatized since then. In this new context, a relevant question is: have these reforms contributed to urban integration? Or, on the contrary, have they contributed to deepen urban fragmentation? This study presents the case of water and telecommunications services in Lima, Peru, the most contested and politically sensitive urban sectors. The objective is to test Graham and Marvin’s claims about the splintering of networked infrastructures expressed in Splintering Urbanism.The findings show that the reforms have improved the situation at aggregate level, but there is still no sustainable solution for the crucial dilemma of cities with high poverty restrictions: self-financed network expansions versus service affordability. The diverging paths of the utilities reform in Lima illustrate that privatization is not the main issue in the discussion to expand the networks for the poor. The main conclusion is that sensible policies complemented with carefully targeted subsidies and continuous regulation can successfully provide water for all. Good governance practices at the urban level help to achieve this goal. Water and telecommunications in Lima also show that are no general solutions for the universalization of the services; each city is different and some sectors are much more complex and problematic than others. This demands careful and continuous technical and political consideration of the local circumstances to reform the utilities.     

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.     

Splintering urbanism in Mumbai: Contrasting trends in a multilayered society

This paper is an examination of the splintering urbanism argument of the relationship between neo-liberal reforms of infrastructure networks and urban cohesion. Based on an analysis of historical and contemporary processes of infrastructure provision (water, sewerage and power) in colonial/post-colonial Bombay/Mumbai, it questions the assumption of a “modern infrastructure ideal” in the context of developing cities. In Mumbai, the historical analysis reveals the contradictions between this ideal and a hierarchical society. From the outset, access to services (particularly water and sewerage) was highly distorted in favour of the elites, even though utilities networks contributed to urban integration through cross-subsidies within and across sectors, and through the setting up of municipal institutions. Second, ongoing sectoral reforms demonstrate contrasting trends as increased differentiation of services produces both positive – better adaptation to users’ needs – and potentially negative – fragmenting – socio-spatial implications. Third, an understudied potential fragmenting threat also lies in the sectoral approach to reforms as it undermines the existing crosssector subsidies and prevents the articulation of utility reforms with other limiting factors, such as land and transport, which are the main constraints for expanding housing and mobility in the city.     

Planning development towns in Kuwait

Kuwait has been characterised by the emergence of a dominating metropolitan center in the last two decades. The new phenomenon led to severe regional imbalance because investments and development programs concentrated around the metropolitan center of Kuwait. To alleviate problems associated with such a phenomenon, to improve urban life, and to achieve regional balance, the country must plan for establishing new towns.This paper is divided into three sections. The first section identifies and discusses the major factors which contributed to the phenomenon of metropolitan dominance. The identified factors are: oil wealth, immigration and population growth, sectoral expansion, i.e. governmental services, the housing sector, commercial activities, industrial growth, and the road network. Discussions in the second section emphasized the different patterns of urban growth and expansion in Kuwait. Four patterns of urban development are identified in this section. The third sections deals with the necessity of town development in Kuwait in light of the growing phenomenon of metropolitan dominance. To evaluate the potentials of town development in the country, four major factors are stressed in this study. They are: planning, size and location, cultural aspirations, and leadership.This is a revised version of an original paper presented at the 77th Meeting of the Association of American Geographers held in Los Angeles, April 1981     

Unbundling Stockholm: The networks, planning and social welfare nexus beyond the unitary city

This paper focuses on the extent to which recent infrastructure-oriented urban developments in Stockholm concord with various aspects of the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis of Graham and Marvin. This contextualisation allows us to extend their work empirically and conceptually. In the first instance, we study a particular case of the decline of a unitary networked city (in an urban context largely absent from their book). In the second instance, we develop their notion of ‘unbundling’ to capture not just core changes in the organisation of infrastructure provision, but an overarching disjunction of the established nexus between networks, planning and social welfare in the city. This disjunction operates through interlinked transformations concerning, for example, privatisation and outsourcing in network services, separation of infrastructure planning from broader urban planning, contradictions between the environmental and social mandates of infrastructure, and a (prospective) curtailment of the redistributive, social role of essential network service provision. We conclude nonetheless that this ‘destructive’ moment of unbundling has not so far been pursued by more explicitly ‘creative’ urban fragmentation strategies, due largely to the vestiges of a socio-political consensus based around redistribution and equality. In this respect, the Stockholm case pleads for a conception of ‘splintering’ as a dynamic and multi-stage process which is not only always ongoing, unstable and incomplete, but also non-linear and open to resistance/regulation.     

快速城市化背景下的西安市城市水资源安全问题研究

快速城市化为城市发展带来巨大的推动力,但同时也使得城市水资源面对巨大的挑战。本文从水资源安全形势出发,在分析了城市化与水资源安全相互关系的基础上,对西安水资源安全进行测度,结果显示西安在城市化进程中存在水资源安全问题,最后提出解决问题的对策。     

The spatial implications of the functional proximity deriving from air passenger flows between European metropolitan urban regions

Until recently the traditional spatial configuration of the European geography was based upon the core-periphery model. The ‘pentagon’, broadly defined as lying between London, Paris, Milan, Munich and Hamburg, was seen as the core area characterised by having the highest concentration of economic development in the European Union (EU), with the remainder of the European territory viewed as peripheral, albeit to varying degrees. In a number of cases such peripheral areas equated with clear regional disparities. The elaboration of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) (CEC, European spatial development perspective, towards balanced and sustainable development in the territory of the European Union, 1999) challenged this core-periphery model. European spatial planning policies, aimed at encouraging social and economic, and with ever increasing importance, territorial cohesion, seek amongst other aspects to encourage the development of a balanced and polycentric urban system. This paper adopts a network analysis approach to the analysis of air passenger flows between some 28 principal European metropolitan urban regions. The evaluation of these flows contributes to an enhanced comprehension of the spatial dynamics of the European metropolitan territory which goes beyond that deriving from the more standard analyses of the individual components of the urban system. Several indicators are used, deriving from gravitational modelling techniques, to analyse the complexity of the air passenger flows. A multidimensional scaling (MDS) technique is introduced in order to interpret and visualise the resulting spatial configuration and positioning of the different metropolitan centres within the conceptual European ‘space of air passenger flows’, thereby contrasting with the more traditional map-based geographical image of Europe, based upon Cartesian coordinates.

Making the countryside more like the countryside? Rural planning and metropolitan visions in post-quake Chengdu

In 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck southwest China less than 100 km north of Chengdu, the booming capital of Sichuan Province. The city government undertook a massive reconstruction project in its rural hinterlands that was guided by existing policies to develop rural areas through coordinated urban and rural planning. Planners sought to avoid replicating urban settlements in rural areas by developing recognizably “pastoral” villages, an approach that is being widely echoed in the relatively new discipline of rural spatial planning in China. This paper argues that such design concessions evade the key feature of the new villages: the concentration of rural residents. The Chengdu government, though this symbolic and actual de-peopling of rural landscapes, has recast rural space as an environmental amenity and an abstract stock of arable land. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and policy and media documents, the paper analyzes the metropolitan plans that provided the framework for rural reconstruction in post-quake Chengdu, and connects these to a model village site in Chengdu’s rural periphery. The case illustrates the need to understand site-level village planning in the context of regional political economies of land, and highlights the new role that metropolitan governments are playing in rural development strategies.     

中国城市地质调查总体构想与关键理论技术

近年来,我国在城市群、大城市和中小城镇等不同层面组织开展了大量的城市地质调查,在城市地质资源、地质环境、发展空间的调查评价,以及地质信息服务城市管理制度建设等方面取得了丰富成果,在调查技术方法、成果产品服务、工作协调机制等方面积累了一些经验,但和新型城镇化的需求相比,还存在着工作理念较落后、地质信息更新慢,成果体系没标准、工作机制不完善等诸多不足。国家新型城镇化发展战略提出了全新的城市发展理念,在优化城市结构布局、拓展城市发展空间、推进绿色城市建设、提高城市安全保障水平等方面,对城市地质调查提出了迫切需求。新时期应该以全新的思路开展城市地质调查,要树立大资源、大环境、大数据理念,服务城市规划、建设、运行、管理等多个层面,开展空间、资源、环境、灾害等多要素综合调查,打造地下三维可视化的城市地质模型(透明城市),完善空天地一体化的地质资源环境监测网络,建立开放共享、动态更新的城市地质信息服务与决策支持系统,构建城市地质调查成果服务产品体系、技术标准体系和保障制度体系。为实现这个目标,需要建立城市资源环境承载能力、城市多圈层交互带、地下空间资源协同规划等理论,开展城市地质探测与监测、国土空间开发地质适宜性评价、地下空间开发利用地质安全评价、三维城市地质建模与公共服务等技术攻关。     

“Blind passes” and the production of green security through violence on the Guatemalan border

Guatemalan protected areas have been sites for genocidal massacres, drug trafficking landing strips, and remilitarized “states of emergency,” but these activities are rarely considered in relation to conservation practices. This paper employs a political ecology approach to analyze interpellations of transboundary spaces as security threats, arguing that threat narratives produce insecurity in conservation spaces. Instead of assuming the primacy of neoliberalism in producing protected areas as sites of violence in the service of capitalism, the analysis traces the changing meanings of security in relation to Guatemala’s borderlands, from Cold War National Security Doctrine to discourses of citizen security in the twenty-first century Drug War. It is in the unmanned “blind passes” (pasos ciegos) of the Guatemalan–Mexican border, rendered as insecure spaces through the state’s putative absence, that policing paradoxically seeks to ensure “citizen security” through violence.     

Alcohol-related crime and disorder across urban space and time: evidence from a British city

Using a Police recording system containing new forms of information on the role of alcohol consumption, this paper focuses on the space and time dimensions of alcohol-related crime and disorder, and situates the patterns in the context of the functions of different urban spaces. Data for Worcester in 1999 show that alcohol is noted as a contributory factor in 8% of recorded crime, but that the recorded role of alcohol is far higher for certain crime types: 48% of all harassment crimes; 36% of violent crime and 16% of criminal damage (other). Most recorded alcohol-related crimes occur in the city centre and at night, while at a more detailed level the main urban spaces are the city centre night-time leisure zones, and the spaces which act as routeways for the night-time revellers. The combined crime and disorder data sets, supported by interview evidence, indicate subsidiary alcohol-related daytime clusters in the shopping area and associated with specific city centre functions. By exploring the patterns, important clues to the immediate contributory factors emerge, but a more comprehensive explanation requires further research. Places, particularly in the night-time leisure zone, where alcohol-related crime is less pronounced, are as important to our understanding as those where crime/disorder is clustered. A detailed knowledge of the variety of spaces and times of alcohol-related crime and disorder is key to the development of appropriate urban design, planning and licensing policies, and can be used to inform a more closely targeted policing strategy.     

The new retail trade and services and their emerging location pattern in St. Petersburg

The system of factors affecting the spatial distribution of the retail trade and service establishments has changed dramatically since socialist times. The administrative regulation lost its almost complete dominance and turned into one of the market forces. In contrast, the impact of the urban environment under very free market conditions substantially increased. We show the main directions of this influence. Two generalized indicators that we use describe macro trends in the development of the spatial system of retail trade and services. One of them, which we call the urban morphology, is of a concentric effect, another – transportation pattern – adds the sectoral component to the retail trade and services geography. Five systems of spatial attractions differently affect the distribution of different branches.     

Lead isotopes as tracers of anthropogenic pollution in urban topsoils of Mexico City

A survey was performed to trace the main source of anthropogenic Pb pollution in Mexico City through Pb isotopic signatures (²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁴Pb, ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb, ²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁷Pb, and ²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁷Pb) from 103 urban topsoil (0–5 cm) samples. Those were collected in the metropolitan area of Mexico City and compared with isotopic compositions of leaded gasoline (LG), domestic Pb ores (DLO) and parent rock (PR). The isotope ratios (IRs) of Pb were determined by inductively coupled plasma quadrupole mass spectrometry (ICP-QMS) and total Pb concentration analyzed by wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF). The range of Pb concentrations levels in urban topsoil samples was 15–473 mg/kg. The IR values obtained for these samples were 37.965–39.718 (²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁴Pb), 18.375–19.204 (²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁴Pb), 1.177–1.218 (²⁰⁶Pb/²⁰⁷Pb) and 2.443–2.496 (²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁷Pb). Analyzed topsoil samples with low Pb content (<50 mg/kg) displayed high dispersion in ²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁴Pb values, which are determined by different natural sources. Samples with 51–200 mg/kg Pb content, shown low dispersion that revealed the mixing between the natural Pb and anthropogenic Pb. The assessment of the IR values shown that, as Pb concentration increases, a trend toward gasoline IR data has been observed. The results obtained by this research suggest that although the use of leaded petrol had been banned in Mexico since 1997, the Pb pollution in the urban topsoils due to the historical use of Pb in petrol is still significant.     

Water and power networks and urban fragmentation in Los Angeles: Rethinking assumed mechanisms

Los Angeles is often described as the epitome of urban fragmentation, a notion which in this context is frequently connected to, or even conflated with urban sprawl. At the same time, the city features integrated water and power networks which have been under public ownership for over 70 years. We thus have an apparent paradox in the context of the debate on ‘splintering urbanism’, between socio-spatial fragmentation and the integration of networks. In discussing the idea that deregulation of infrastructural networks exacerbates urban fragmentation, the authors use the case of Los Angeles in order to highlight the central role of private interests in management decisions concerning infrastructure networks. The authors carry out their analysis in an historical perspective, revealing that network integration and universal access can often serve private interests more than the public good. Urban fragmentation in Los Angeles, they conclude, is the result of a complex process of instrumentalisation of network development and management.     

Kenya’s Secondary Cities Growth Strategy at a Crossroads: Which Way Forward?

Kenya has been promoting equitable urban and regional development since the 1970s despite the lack of a clearly formulated national urban policy or an urban and regional development policy. A key element of the country’s equitable urban and regional development effort is the promotion of secondary cities that would relieve population pressure in the countryside, help to better integrate the country’s rural and urban economies, help to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life in the metropolitan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, and help increase the modernization spin-off which urban centers provide to the surrounding rural areas. Using recent census and economic survey data, this paper examines the current state of Kenya’s secondary cities in the context of its urban and regional development strategies. The paper finds that: (1) the country’s urban and regional development strategies have failed to work as planned largely because of insufficient devolution of power and fiscal responsibility to municipal and other local government units, (2) the country’s secondary cities are faced with immense challenges that undermine their ability to live up to expectations, (3) some of these cities have significantly grown economically over the last four decades despite immense challenges, and (4) Nairobi’s dominance of Kenya’s economy continues because of policies that unwittingly concentrate investments there. The paper concludes with strategies that could enhance the country’s urban and regional development programs and, in the process, aid the development of its secondary cities.