Community variations in social vulnerability to Cascadia-related tsunamis in the U.S. Pacific Northwest

Tsunamis generated by Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes pose significant threats to coastal communities in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Impacts of future tsunamis to individuals and communities will likely vary due to pre-event socioeconomic and demographic differences. In order to assess social vulnerability to Cascadia tsunamis, we adjust a social vulnerability index based on principal component analysis first developed by Cutter et al. (2003) to operate at the census-block level of geography and focus on community-level comparisons along the Oregon coast. The number of residents from blocks in tsunami-prone areas considered to have higher social vulnerability varies considerably among 26 Oregon cities and most are concentrated in four cities and two unincorporated areas. Variations in the number of residents from census blocks considered to have higher social vulnerability in each city do not strongly correlate with the number of residents or city assets in tsunami-prone areas. Methods presented here will help emergency managers to identify community sub-groups that are more susceptible to loss and to develop risk-reduction strategies that are tailored to local conditions.     

“[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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Anti-poverty politics in Toronto and Mexico City

In recent years, governments at different scales in both North and South have been experimenting with alternative methods of alleviating poverty, and redesigning social welfare regimes. While these changes are not entirely congruent across regimes in North and South, there are interesting points of overlap and intersection. The article lays out three broad alternatives to “roll-back” neoliberalism: intrusive liberalism; inclusive liberalism, and a renewed version of social citizenship. It then lays out how these alternatives have played out in anti-poverty politics in Toronto and Mexico City, two sites where creative strategies contesting neoliberalism have been pursued. While both cities occupy a critical place within their respective political economies, they are not usually compared because of their very different positions in the North American division of labour. Yet, as we argue, they face similar challenges in the form of poverty reduction strategies at the national scale that are based on neoliberal principles that do little to meet the needs of their inhabitants. In response, both cities have provided a site for mobilising resources behind alternative anti-poverty policies, inspired by the principles of social citizenship.     

Transnational ties and intra-immigrant group settlement experiences: A case study of Indian Bengalis and Bangladeshis in Toronto

Transnational theories have established that, after migrating to a new country, migrants often maintain their pre-existing social, economic, and political ties to their home country. The extent to which however, transnational institutional and social connections may affect the residential location and housing experiences of immigrant and refugee groups, and why and how these experiences differ within broadly defined immigrant groups such as the ‘South Asians’ remains unexplored. Building on transnational theory and previous research on the housing trajectories of new Canadians, this paper examines the housing experiences of two recently arrived ‘South Asian’ subgroups in Toronto–Indian Bengalis and Bangladeshis. By highlighting important intra-immigrant group differences, the study reveals how diverse transnational ties affect their neighbourhood choice and the type, tenure, and quality of housing when they first arrived in Toronto.     

Corporate knowledge transfer via interlocking directorates: a network analysis approach

This paper explores spatial changes to knowledge transfer by Canadian and American corporate networks from 1976 to 1996. Results support facets of a World Cities approach for Canada. Toronto lies at the top of the hierarchy, while Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver fall into a third tier of specialized regional cities. The American knowledge network also possesses facets of the world cities approach. The world city, New York, lies at the top of the hierarchy. Further down, Chicago is a specialized national city, while a number of regional centers have emerged to play a larger role over the twenty-year study period. A third tier of cities has emerged to play the critical role of specialized regional cities. This geographical phenomenon can be explained in terms of industry, headquarters locations, and network maturity. Finance, insurance and real estate, as well as “other manufacturing” are three sectors of the economy that are prominent in the network. In Canada, these sectors have increasingly centralized in Toronto while decentralizing in the United States. Similarly, the headquarters location of American firms is decentralizing from New York and Chicago, while Canadian headquarters continue to be centralized in Toronto. Finally, results indicate that the potential for knowledge transfer depends upon maturity of the system under investigation. The mature US network with a large pool of qualified business individuals is better suited for knowledge transfer at the regional level. The Canadian network is less developed and not appropriate for regional systems of knowledge transfer. The result is a Canadian corporate knowledge threshold that encompasses the entire country while a number of much smaller corporate knowledge thresholds appear across the United States.     

Excavating Lefebvre: The right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant

Much current activism and scholarship has raised concern that the various processes of neoliberal restructuring are threatening democracy. More specifically, researchers in geography and other social sciences have stressed that political and economic restructuring in cities is negatively affecting the enfranchisement of urban residents. Much recent research and writing has explored progressive responses to this perceived disenfranchisement in cities. One popular trend has been a fascination with the idea of the `right to the city' as a way to respond to neoliberal urbanism and better empower urban dwellers. I argue that the right to the city holds promise, but that in the literature the idea remains both theoretically and politically underdeveloped. It remains unclear (1) what the right to the city entails or (2) how it might address current problems of disenfranchisement. This paper examines the right to the city in greater depth. It does so by offering a close reading and analysis of the intellectual roots of the idea: the writings of Henri Lefebvre. I suggest that Lefebvre's right to the city is more radical, more problematic, and more indeterminate than the current literature makes it seem. The paper concludes by suggesting that the right to the city does offer distinct potential for resisting current threats to urban enfranchisement. However, the right to the city is not a panacea. It must be seen not as a completed solution to current problems, but as an opening to a new urban politics, what I call an urban politics of the inhabitant.     

Violent morphologies: Landscape, border and scale in Ahmedabad conflict

Conflicts produce violence through death, confinement, torture, and control of spaces of everyday life. This paper investigates how spatial morphologies, like landscapes, borders and scales, are re-ordered and re-imagined to materialize violence. A Hindu–Muslim conflict in the globalizing city of Ahmedabad, India in 2002 is used as a case study. The conflict unfolded in a dying industrial city, now being re-envisioned through neoliberal urban entrepreneurialism into a ‘global city’. During and after the riots, the majority Hindu community, and the local Hindu fundamentalist government, annihilated the life spaces of the minority Muslim community. Through a combination of Hindu rioting and urban renewal, landscapes were destroyed, new spaces produced, borders re-imagined, and new ones imprinted on the landscape, to segregate previously co-existing communities. Local government and Hindu ideologues creatively juxtaposed neoliberal economic polices, global discourses of Islamophobia, local ethnocentrism to alter the spatial morphologies of Ahmedabad. Justice entails the democratization of space by altering the violent morphologies of Ahmedabad.     

临沂市节约集约利用土地思考

全面分析了当前临沂市建设用地利用中存在的主要问题和制约因素,结合临沂市作为全省＂两型＂社会建设改革试点城市这一背景,借鉴国内外土地节约集约利用方面好的做法,提出通过规划计划、城乡统筹、机制创新、舆论宣传4个方面共同推进,走出一条临沂特色的土地节约集约新路子。     

Producing regionalism: regional movements, ecosystems and equity in a fast and slow growth region

Urban development pressures, preservation of environmentally sensitive areas and regional planning are the focus of current debates on regionalism in both fast and slow growth regions. Based on two cases—a campaign to preserve ecological integrity and reduce sprawl on the Oak Ridges Moraine in the Greater Toronto Area and Rochester’s anti-sprawl campaign for regional equity—the paper examines how two anti-sprawl campaigns brought to the fore alternative constructions of regionalism. In the fast growing Toronto region, citizen mobilization and upper tier intervention resulted in a legislative base for regionalism. In the slow growth Rochester region, the city had limited success in gaining regional redistribution. Such divergent outcomes relate to differences in intergovernmental relations, the city’s influence on the region, receptivity of suburbs to smart growth, and the potential for values of nature preservation and justice to mobilize regional coalitions.     

From picket fences to iron gates: suburbanization and gated communities in Phoenix,Las Vegas and Seattle

Suburbanization has been a prominent urban process in the United States since the World War II. It has transformed American cities in profound ways in every single aspect of urban development; from population and wealth distributions, through political organization and affiliations, to the built environment. This paper investigates the link between gated communities and the process of suburbanization in the context of socio-economic inequality. It has been shown time and again in the scholarly literature on suburbanization, that suburban neighborhoods in American cities have been traditionally more affluent and less diverse than central cities. The research on gated communities in the US also shows that they are, on average, more affluent compared to other communities in terms of family income and housing values. Are gated communities then simply a new form of suburban communities? Is the gated community in fact a suburban community with the added element of security features? The paper investigates these questions based on segregation and spatial analyses. The research contributes to the long line of studies on suburbanization, gating and the larger issues of urban inequality.     

Introduction: immigrants and transnational experiences in world cities

Today, in the early 21st century, goods, information, services, financial capital and human beings are flowing across national borders at an ever-accelerating rate. In this context, transnationalism has become a key paradigm in the study of international migration and urbanism. This theme issue on “Immigrants and transnational experiences in world cities” explores these new trends in contemporary international migration, with respect to transnational communities and geographies, in articles grouped according to four themes: international migration and world cities; highly-skilled and low-skilled immigrants; economic impacts; and immigrant experiences in world cities.     

Review: Urban groundwater issues and resource management,and their roles in the resilience of cities

The relationships between cities and underlying groundwater are reviewed, with the aim to highlight the importance of urban groundwater resources in terms of city resilience value. Examples of more than 70 cities worldwide are cited along with details of their groundwater-related issues, specific experiences, and settings. The groundwater-related issues are summarized, and a first groundwater-city classification is proposed in order to facilitate a more effective city-to-city comparison with respect to, for example, the best practices and solutions that have been put in practice by similar cities in terms of local groundwater resources management. The interdependences between some groundwater services and the cascading effects on city life in cases of shock (e.g., drought, heavy rain, pollution, energy demand) and chronic stress (e.g., climate change) are analyzed, and the ideal groundwater-resilient-city characteristics are proposed. The paper concludes that groundwater is a crucial resource for planning sustainability in every city and for implementing city resilience strategies from the climate change perspective.

     

Becoming “Hispanic” in the “New South”: Central American immigrants’ racialization experiences in Atlanta,GA, USA

For many migrants from Latin America, “Hispanic/Latino(a)” is an identity that they encounter in the United States with which they were unfamiliar in their home countries and must negotiate in their everyday lives in a new context. Specifically, immigrants from Central America are unlikely to see themselves as “Hispanic” or “Latino(a)” prior to living in the United States, more often identifying with their home country, city, town, village, or neighborhood. This paper draws on racialization theory and twenty-seven in-depth interviews with Central American immigrants in Atlanta, GA to examine this process of identity negotiation across the traditionally black/white racialized landscapes of a “New South” city. Interview participants adopt a racialized Hispanic identity through a complex process involving the interplay between how they think of themselves and their perceptions of how native-born Atlantans view them. The interview analysis presented herein demonstrates that although Central American immigrants actively negotiate a Hispanic racialized moniker, they do so within an urban context dominated by native-born residents whose racialized assumptions lump Spanish-speaking, brown skinned individuals into a monolithic “Mexican” category. Thus the ways in which racialized difference is constructed in contemporary Atlanta for recent Central American immigrants is very much bound up in such false presumptions of national identity and cultural group belonging.     

The emotions of racialization: examining the intersection of emotion, race, and landscape through public housing in the United States

This paper analyzes racialization—the social construction of ‘race’ as a normative dimension of everyday life—and shows that emotion plays a central role in this process. My focus is the representation of post-World War II public housing, a key site of white-black racialization in the United States. Representations of filth, decay, and danger separate African-Americans from mainstream, white society as disturbingly different. I argue that this particular representation carries heavy emotional value, specifically that of disgust and fear. It is disgust and fear that racializes this landscape, giving meaning and force to an ideology that views African–Americans as inherently inferior to whites. Policy is framed by these emotions, impacting decisions made about public housing. I explore these ideas through contemporary representations of public housing by federal officials in Washington, DC and by newspapers in Charlotte, North Carolina as well as the federal program HOPE VI.     

A safer city centre for all? Senses of `community safety' in Newcastle upon Tyne

In recent years, many city authorities in Europe and North America have sought to attract people back to city centres for leisure, shopping, business and residence. The planning measures commonly adopted take explicit account of issues of crime and safety. The concept of `community safety' as applied to the city centre is problematic, however, as users have diverse lifestyles, interests and values which impact on their own and others' safety. This paper reports on a study of the experiences and perceptions of safety of different groups of city centre users in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. While social identities and roles shaped the extent of concern and subsequent impacts on people's use of the city centre space, the research suggested that many concerns are genuinely shared. The paper investigates the congruence of a range of planning strategies with city centre users' safety concerns. Situational measures were viewed with scepticism, as fear centres on the presence and behaviour of others.     

Characteristics of post-socialist urban transformation in East Central Europe

The development of the post-socialist city has already been characterised by substantial restructuring processes. Particular emphasis should be drawn to the take-off of the tertiary sector and the comprehensive blight phenomena in the previously industrial areas. The urban housing sector has witnessed increasing housing affordability problems, a marginalisation of communal housing stock, an increase of segregation and an intensification of the decay in the old housing stock. In all East Central European states the spatial development processes of industry and services within the cities basically show clear parallels to the pattern of urban development in continental Europe. In Hungary housing policy, tenure structure and the level of segregation already show relatively closer similarities to the neoliberal, Anglo–American pattern of development. The other ECE states show closer similarities to the corporatist welfare states of continental Europe. As far as medium-term urban development in East Central Europe is concerned, it is to be assumed that – regardless of the specific path of further development – overall solutions shall not be found for the fundamental problems which are the legacy of the socialist era – the decay of old housing stock, large scale derelict industrial areas and the extent and deficiencies of high-rise housing estates. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Power and privilege in alternative civic practices: Examining imaginaries of change and embedded rationalities in community economies

Community economies can be considered as examples of the diverse economies growing outside common capitalist logics of private accumulation and profit, seeking to bypass or reconfigure dominant global trends of societal and economic organization. Yet, these communities seem to fit quite well under a neoliberal program in which responsibilities are shifting downwards, favoring multi-level governance over State intervention and accountability. This binary character makes imperative an open and critical discussion on the development of community initiatives, including on the motivations and visions of citizens practicing alternative ethical consumption. This article explores the neoliberal rationalities embraced by community members within the imaginaries of change they frame and examines how these rationalities contribute to (re)producing neoliberal conditions and forms of governance. Our analysis builds on semi-structured interviews conducted among the members of 11 initiatives in 5 EU countries and on participant observation. We argue here that communities articulate an “alternative imaginary” of change that appears imprinted by core neoliberal rationalities around questions of individual responsibility, the role of the State, and civic participation and equity. It is an imaginary related to the construction of CBEs to by-pass existing socio-political and economic configurations. This imaginary more often than not responds to neoliberal promises of individual freedom and autonomy and seems to undermine CBEs' more radical possibilities at the same time obscuring more diverse voices of transformation.     

‘A place for everything’: Moral landscapes of ‘swiftlet farming’ in George Town,Malaysia

This paper is based on 6 months of ethnographic, multi-sited research in Malaysia, and investigates the relatively recent phenomenon of edible birds’ nest farming in urban areas (‘swiftlet farming’). Swiftlet farms are typically converted shophouses or other buildings which have been modified for the purpose of harvesting the nests of the Edible-nest Swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus). I use the controversy over urban swiftlet farming in the Malaysian city of George Town, Penang, to examine discourses used by key stakeholders to shape debates over the place of non-human animals in cities. By considering everyday experiences of urban swiftlet farming, I explore how this burgeoning industry is perceived amongst residents, and how it is deemed to be (in)appropriate within the political, economic and cultural landscape of George Town. Yet, I also consider how farmers have sought to contest these discourses on ideological and normative grounds. In so doing, I place the cultural animal geographies literature in conversation with emergent literature on landscape and urban political ecology. Such a framing allows for a critical evaluation of the controversies surrounding this case, and their implications for human-animal cohabitation in cities. The paper reflects on the implications of this case for how we regulate human-animal relations and live in contemporary cities, and the crucial role of animals in altering urban form, aesthetics and everyday life, particularly in non-Western contexts.     

Rethinking graduated citizenship: Contemporary public housing in Singapore

The ways in which citizenship and housing are implicated in states’ global city aspirations demonstrate significant path dependency and local contingency. This paper serves to broaden the literature that has been dominated by the Western neoliberal context. First, I argue that The Pinnacle@Duxton – a one-of-a-kind public housing project in Singapore – represents the developmental state’s attempt to graduate its homogeneous public housing landscape, providing for and subsidizing the aspirations of a segment of its increasingly affluent middle class to buy into the ideology of the global city. Second, I show how the graduation of public housing coupled with the exaggerated demand for such exclusive projects validates consumer preference pricing in contemporary public housing. This results in a geographical graduation of citizenship, where the bulk of the population is relegated to lesser options on the edges on the island, unable to fulfil their aspirations for global living. In so doing, I make two contributions to extant literature on housing and citizenship in the global city. One, graduating citizenship is not always a case of states realigning their relationship with their citizens to fit the terms of the market. Two, the denial of citizenship to the global city does not always manifest in terms of substantive rights. Appreciating the unique histories and ideologies underpinning housing policies in global cities is instrumental if the variegated meanings of global cities and the citizenships within are to be elucidated.