Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-30DOI: 10.1177/00420980241301664
Ana Muniz
{"title":"Cleaning up Los Angeles: The construction and non-resolution of a sanitation infrastructure crisis","authors":"Ana Muniz","doi":"10.1177/00420980241301664","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241301664","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing specifically on sanitation services in Los Angeles (LA) City, I examine (1) how various stakeholders socially construct and mobilise around breakdowns in public infrastructure and (2) how technology is used, both practically and politically, to address breakdowns. Through an archival analysis of six years of LA City Council documents and proceedings, supplemented by interviews with four key informants, I demonstrate how, in 2014 Los Angeles, media and political actors constructed a perceived crisis in trash services. In responding to claims of inadequate and biassed services, City sanitation officials blamed technological glitches and deceptive data. To address the crisis, the sanitation department developed a database to track neighbourhood cleanliness and strategically deploy sanitation workers to the areas most in need. Despite local politicians’ and sanitation officials’ presentation of technological innovation as a panacea, the database had little effect and was deactivated after three years. The failure of the database is attributed to two dynamics: first, inverted development wherein LASAN prematurely developed and deployed digital technology before a strong analogue foundation had been established to make the technology functional and efficient; and second, LASAN utilised the cleanliness indexing database as a form of mediatised stopgap technology. Although the database ultimately proved to be of little practical use, LASAN’s public relations strategy around the database effectively intervened in a political crisis and reinforced the agency’s power.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142901892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-30DOI: 10.1177/00420980241305322
Benedikt Schmid
{"title":"The spectre of growth in urban transformations: Insights from two Doughnut-oriented municipalities on the negotiation of local development pathways","authors":"Benedikt Schmid","doi":"10.1177/00420980241305322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241305322","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the ambiguous role of economic growth in shaping urban transformations within two municipalities that are implementing the Doughnut Economics (DE) framework. Doughnut Economics proposes a radical reorientation of economic objectives, prioritising human well-being and ecological limits as the primary goals of economic activity. Adopting an ‘agnostic’ stance on growth, DE does not explicitly oppose economic growth, unlike degrowth approaches, but rather side-lines it. This paper explores the practical implications of this agnostic stance by analysing how DE principles and tools are interpreted and applied in real-world contexts. Empirical insights from two small municipalities – Tomelilla (Sweden) and Bad Nauheim (Germany) – highlight a key tension: while decentring but not rejecting growth allows for the engagement of a broad range of actors in urban transformations, the absence of a robust discussion on growth in these growth-oriented settings enables pro-growth perspectives to persist largely unchallenged. Recognising the challenges this poses for urban transformations beyond growth, the paper advocates for an open but decidedly growth-sceptical approach, replacing Doughnut Economics’ ‘growth agnosticism’ with a ‘secularisation of growth’.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"114 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142901893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-30DOI: 10.1177/00420980241303832
Gertjan Wijburg, Richard Waldron
{"title":"Cities under state capitalism","authors":"Gertjan Wijburg, Richard Waldron","doi":"10.1177/00420980241303832","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241303832","url":null,"abstract":"State interventions in urban development and planning are not new to state capitalism, even though intensifying ‘muscular’ state responses to urban challenges can now be observed across the entire geopolitical and urban landscape. This viewpoint explores this intensifying connection between state capitalism, the capitalist state and urban governance. It argues that for strategic geopolitical and economic reasons states increasingly govern, regulate, manage and own parts of the urban built environment. However, regulatory intervention in the city cannot be mistaken for a return to the post-war development state which strongly focused on promoting spatial development and industrial policy and protecting social welfarism and labour conditions. Rather, the new state capitalism is about proactive market intervention so that states and their partners can profit from the growth, wealth and revenue that cities have to offer. As for that, this commentary concludes with four avenues for future research at the boundaries of state capitalism and urban governance. Examples from cities in the Global North, Global South and Global East are given to illustrate the broader argument. Shifting geopolitics are also discussed as a driver of state rescaling and reterritorialisation.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142908487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-24DOI: 10.1177/00420980241298199
Minjee Kim, Hyojung Lee
{"title":"Upzoning and gentrification: Heterogeneous impacts of neighbourhood-level upzoning in New York City","authors":"Minjee Kim, Hyojung Lee","doi":"10.1177/00420980241298199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241298199","url":null,"abstract":"In light of the calls to relax restrictive density regulations, this paper examines how increasing residential development capacity, i.e. upzoning, may change the demographic, socio-economic and housing characteristics of the affected neighbourhoods. We examine the neighbourhood-level upzonings of New York City to answer this question. We find that upzoning is positively associated with signs of gentrification – upzoned neighbourhoods became whiter, more educated and more affluent in the long run. Upzoning is also associated with increases in housing production, but housing prices also increased. Most importantly, we find that these effects varied significantly by the intensity of upzoning and the pre-upzoning local contexts. Neighbourhoods affected by intense upzonings experienced gentrification more intensely, along with greater housing production, rent growth and housing price appreciation. Black-majority and low-income neighbourhoods experienced gentrification to the greatest extent, while neighbourhoods with high demand for housing saw the greatest increases in housing supply. We discuss different mechanisms of gentrification likely at play for the different types of neighbourhoods.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142879973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On measuring Muslim segregation in urban India","authors":"Arpit Shah, Anish Sugathan, Naveen Bharathi, Andaleeb Rahman, Amit Garg, Deepak Malghan","doi":"10.1177/00420980241296998","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241296998","url":null,"abstract":"The spatial segregation of Muslims in urban India is central to their social, economic and political marginalisation. However, the quantitative characterisation of Muslim segregation has suffered from the lack of readily available demographic data at high spatial and temporal resolution. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of accurately quantifying Muslim segregation in urban India using the latest electoral rolls data from Bengaluru (a megapolis of over 13 million residents) and an improved open-source algorithm to identify Muslim names. Our approach provides significant improvements over past efforts in this regard. We introduce two new metrics (diversity and local divergence) to account for substantial intra-city variation in the spatial segregation of Muslims. Our analysis suggests that the threefold ghetto–enclave–mixed taxonomy that the extant literature has quantified for entire towns can be found within large urban agglomerations such as Bengaluru. Our quantitative framework for Muslim segregation helps uncover the complex relationship between segregation and the ghettoisation of Muslims in urban India. Our measurement framework uses publicly available data and can be applied to study segregation patterns across urban India.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142869840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-19DOI: 10.1177/00420980241295935
Leonie Büttner, Nele Kress
{"title":"(Re)defining the smart city at national level? Coexisting narratives of urban sustainability governance in Germany","authors":"Leonie Büttner, Nele Kress","doi":"10.1177/00420980241295935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241295935","url":null,"abstract":"While the question of how the Smart City (SC) concept is mobilised at global and local levels is well researched, few studies have focused on the national level. In this article, we seek to better understand the role of the national level regarding the embedding and creation of SCs. More specifically, we explore the German Smart Cities Dialogue Platform, established by the German government in 2016 as a place where ways of thinking about and acting on the SC are produced and stabilised. Drawing on key concepts of governmentality, we analyse dominant narratives of the SC in Germany, focusing on how the national SC discourse shapes the governance of urban sustainability. We show that the national level in Germany plays a decisive role in embedding and creating the SC, as it mediates between globally prevailing ideas of the SC and local realities. By linking the SC to nationally prevailing values, norms and political cultures such as sustainability, the common good, civil rights and digital sovereignty, a corrective to globally dominant techno-euphoric narratives of the SC is created. At the same time, the (re)definition at the national level promotes an ecological modernisation approach to sustainable urban development to the exclusion of alternative visions of urban sustainability pathways.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142869842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-19DOI: 10.1177/00420980241293659
I-Ting Chuang, Qingqing Chen
{"title":"Urban street dynamics: Assessing the relationship of sidewalk width and pedestrian activity in Auckland, New Zealand, based on mobile phone data","authors":"I-Ting Chuang, Qingqing Chen","doi":"10.1177/00420980241293659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241293659","url":null,"abstract":"This study empirically examines the adequacy of sidewalk widths in Auckland’s Central Business District in light of increasing active mobility and sustainable urban planning trends. Recognising the need to retrofit street spaces to prioritise pedestrians, we aim to determine whether current sidewalk dimensions meet the diverse requirements of users. We analysed average sidewalk widths and developed four mobility metrics – inflow and outflow travel distance, and density of visitors and locals – using a large-scale mobile location dataset comprising 113 million data points from 1.4 million users. These metrics, reflecting urban vibrancy and sidewalk use, were correlated with sidewalk widths to assess their adequacy. Furthermore, we applied cluster analysis to these mobility metrics, along with the diversity of Points of Interest, to categorise sidewalk segments, uncovering intricate usage patterns. Our findings indicate that sidewalks typically range from 2 to 5 m, catering to varied urban needs. Notably, we observed no direct correlation between sidewalk width and mobility patterns, but significant differences in inflow and outflow travel distances were evident, especially between key urban hubs and quiet residential neighbourhoods. Moreover, we identified seven distinct sidewalk categories, each reflecting unique qualities, suggesting that uniform widths do not define sidewalk utility or character. This highlights the need to rethink current capacity-focused sidewalk design, advocating for a nuanced approach that addresses the intricate demands of urban spaces. Our methodology offers flexibility and can be tailored to suit different urban contexts, providing a versatile tool for urban analysis and planning.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142869844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-16DOI: 10.1177/00420980241295974
Sverre Bjerkeset
{"title":"Hello, stranger? How attraction trumps interaction in ‘new’ public space","authors":"Sverre Bjerkeset","doi":"10.1177/00420980241295974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241295974","url":null,"abstract":"Chance interaction among diverse strangers is a much-celebrated feature of urbanity. The rise in privately owned and managed public spaces, tending to displace people, activities and exchanges that may threaten business interests, has thus raised broad concerns. However, how such ‘new’, high-profile public spaces of the neoliberal or entrepreneurial city differ from ‘traditional’, everyday ones in terms of spontaneous encounters, is not well covered in the ever-growing public space research. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo, Norway, this article explores the occurrence of peaceful chance interactions among strangers in ‘new’ public space. In the two examined urban squares, representing ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ public space, strangers interact on a regularised versus an episodic basis, reflecting major differences in ‘contact-supporting circumstances’. A close reading of the pertinent scholarly literature indicates that these findings have a broader significance. The article’s key contribution is the detailed documentation and conceptualisation of basic circumstances that distinguish a ‘new’ from an ordinary, everyday public space with regards to chance interactions. Herein, the study points to an important shift in urban governance and planning since the 1980s. A market-led notion of attractiveness in the physical and social environment takes centre stage in prestigious urban developments, at the expense of the disordered exchanges of everyday life.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142831908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-16DOI: 10.1177/00420980241297839
Carl Grodach, Nícolas Guerra-Tão
{"title":"Zoning a productive city? A typology of clustering, diversity and specialisation in Melbourne’s urban industrial areas","authors":"Carl Grodach, Nícolas Guerra-Tão","doi":"10.1177/00420980241297839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241297839","url":null,"abstract":"This research focuses on identifying the nuanced land use dynamics of urban industrial zones. Industrial lands in major Western cities have undergone significant change in the face of increasingly competitive property markets. At the same time, many countries seek to reshore manufacturing and support local industrial activity amid changes in production technologies, global supply chain shocks and geopolitical insecurity. Yet policymakers often fail to seriously consider the contemporary character of industrial zones and research has yet to analyse this in a systematic way. In response, we employ k-means cluster analysis to develop a typology of industrial zones in Melbourne, Australia. The typology captures a range of industrial zone clusters, which vary by industry mix, specialisation and spatial pattern. While some clusters represent traditional industrial areas, others are highly diverse in terms of firm and employment mix encompassing service sector activity and specialised manufacturing industries. These variations underscore the limitations of traditional zoning frameworks focused predominately on use separation and point towards the need for more responsive and context-specific urban economic development and industrial land use policies.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142831910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-13DOI: 10.1177/00420980241293042
Nicholas A Phelps, Ashraful Alam
{"title":"The (re)enchantment of suburbia: Mediation of the production and consumption of Melbourne’s outer suburbs","authors":"Nicholas A Phelps, Ashraful Alam","doi":"10.1177/00420980241293042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980241293042","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary suburban landscapes have developed at scale, in variety, at speed and with ethnic concentrations or superdiversity. These complexities call for the reworking of urban theory and method. In this paper we contribute on both fronts. We develop an interpretative framework that emphasises the mediation of the production and consumption of new suburbs. Methodologically, we analyse on-site billboards as ‘technologies of enchantment’ that provide insight into the symbolic mediation of the production and consumption of new suburbs. We visually inspected 114 billboards and 38 active residential developments in the City of Wyndham – a rapidly growing suburban municipality in Australia. Our research sheds empirical light on how increasingly standardised production and consumption by an increasingly varied profile of residents are reconciled in the symbolic (re)enchantment of suburbanism as a way of life. Our findings indicate the value of future research into: ways of life in systemically produced suburbs; the agency needed to fashion community in extensive mass produced suburbs; and new forms of consumer society-related alienation in suburbia.","PeriodicalId":51350,"journal":{"name":"Urban Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142820655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}