Shrinking ‘Smart’?: Urban Redevelopment and Shrinkage in Youngstown,Ohio

Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of the much-heralded Youngstown 2010 Plan and the enacting of a program of “controlled” or “managed” shrinkage. It is argued that while the program of redevelopment has had an impact on Youngstown and its national image, it represents an exclusionary project that has centered on redeveloping downtown areas and neglected many city neighborhoods which continue to experience high levels of unemployment, vacancy, and crime. The analysis is situated in relation to the contemporary literature on “shrinking cities.” Youngstown's experience raises critical questions regarding the nature of the challenges facing shrinking cities, the constraints on actions available to them due to state and federal funding, and the coherence of the concept of “smart shrinkage.”     

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.     

Transnational Urbanism in Port of Spain: Returning Middle-Class Urban Elites

Port of Spain, Trinidad offers an ideal context in which to analyze pre-retirement return migration to a Global South urban realm, expanding transnational urban research beyond the conventional focus on Global North metropolitan destinations. In this article, we draw on the transnational narratives of a selected sample of relatively youthful Trinidadians, who have spent many years abroad acquiring education and professional experience, but who have then decided to return in mid-career to the capital region of the island nation of their birth, or of their parent(s). Theoretically, we position these returning professionals as members of a "middling" transnational urban class whose return is at least partly motivated by a desire to "make a difference." Our results contribute to a growing literature that documents the role of transnational middle-class urban elites returning elsewhere in the Carribbean: "middling" transnational urbanism is reshaping key facets of urbanization in the Global South.     

Urban Open Spaces in Historical Perspective: A Transdisciplinary Typology and Analysis

Urban open space provides a unique conduit for the sociospatial study of urban history. We propose seven categories to help scholars historically situate and analyze urban open spaces: food production areas, parks and gardens, recreational space, plazas, streets, transport facilities, and incidental space. We use these categories, and the contrast between grey and green space, to compare examples from archaeological, historical, and recent times across a broad geographical range. Top-down and bottom-up actions dialectically intersect in the establishment, use, and reproduction of urban open space, and many open spaces prove to be particularly flexible in serving the general population. These findings can inform comparative urban analysis, and they help contextualize current debates concerning the socioeconomic, political, and urban ecological functions of open and public spaces.     

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.     

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.     

Living austerity urbanism: space–time expansion and deepening socio-spatial inequalities for disadvantaged urban youth in Ireland

After the 2008 financial crisis, Ireland implemented a severe austerity program which drastically reshaped the opportunities and constraints experienced by youth living in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Rising unemployment, reduced social welfare, and funding cuts for support organizations limited the opportunities of urban life for disadvantaged youth. This article uses the experience of austerity urbanism of young adults from Ballymun (Dublin) and Knocknaheeny (Cork), both among the most disadvantaged neighborhoods of their cities, to argue that austerity, through time-space expansion, removes services, facilities and opportunities from deprived urban neighborhoods, thus reinforcing and intensifying socio-spatial inequalities. In an effort to bring State finances under control and to revitalize the economy the whole urban fabric, and the urban population, is managed for the purpose of economic recovery. Urban life becomes restricted as disadvantaged urban youth becomes socially and spatially excluded from vital urban opportunities and amenities.     

Economic segregation in transition China: evidence from the 20 largest cities

Economic segregation in urban areas is important to scholars and policymakers because it is thought to exacerbate inequality in social outcomes such as education, social capital formation, and employment. A growing body of comparative work examines factors associated with higher levels of urban segregation within different countries. Increasingly, this work examines differences between levels of segregation across the income distribution rather than just one measure of segregation per city. China has high levels of income inequality and has undergone a dynamic process of urbanization in recent decades as it transitions from a centrally planned system to one in which markets allocate goods. Using census data from the 20 largest cities in China, we measure the level of economic segregation and examine its determinants. Chinese cities are highly segregated. Segregation levels tend to be higher in larger and richer cities and more pronounced among renters. There is a stronger link between segregation based on housing type and expenditure than between migrant status and expenditures, which leads us to speculate that the pace, timing, and scale of housing development are the dominant drivers of economic segregation.     

Giving an account of oneself: The PBRF and the neoliberal university

The New Zealand Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) has come into being in the last decade in the wider context of the neoliberalising and corporatising of the academy. It is far more than its outward form: that is, an innocent accounting of the research‐related activities of academics for the purposes of determining institutional funding levels. But neither is it only a process that seeks (to use Judith Butler's terms) to constrain, subordinate and discipline individual academics. Drawing on her book, Giving an Account of Oneself (2005), we suggest that the PBRF can also be used to enable and sustain through creating spaces to critique neoliberalising managerialism.     

People’s strategies for perceived surveillance in Amsterdam Smart City

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we investigate people’s perception of datafication and surveillance in Amsterdam Smart City. Based on a series of focus groups, we show how people understand new forms of hypervisbility, what strategies they use to navigate these experiences, and what the limitations of these strategies are. We show how people tried to discern between public and private sector actors, to differentiate who they trusted by building on the existing social contract. People also trusted the objectivity of data in relation to prior experiences of social contexts and discrimination. Lastly, we show how the experiences of some of the inhabitants in our study who were most vulnerable to hypervisibility highlight the limits to strategies based on the neutrality of data. By asking about perceived surveillance rather than emphasising actual practices of surveilling, we show differentiated contexts and strategies, providing empirical grounds to question the dominant technical framing of smart cities.