{"title":"Rethinking Enclosed Neighbourhoods: Vital Infrastructure for Design Innovation, Civic Engagement, and Biopower in Urban China","authors":"Colleen Chiu-Shee","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.54","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.54","url":null,"abstract":"Capitalist processes of urbanization and privatization have produced a growing number of enclosed neighbourhoods across the world. Critical scholarship often frames these neighbourhoods as products of an overextended neoliberalism and symbols of the fragmentation, segregation, and hierarchization\u0000 of both space and society. This paper expands on these theoretical explanations with a focus on China. As neither neoliberal globalization nor tradition can adequately explain various types of China's enclosed neighbourhoods, a differentiated account suggests that they have evolved in different\u0000 temporal, sociocultural, and political-economic contexts. Nevertheless, they have commonly played vital roles in (re)shaping everyday environments, driving economic restructuring, transforming governance systems, and facilitating normative transformations in China. China's experiences show\u0000 that enclosed neighbourhoods have been, and will remain, the everyday environments that shape citizens' behaviours, values, and social relations. They have also served, and will continue to serve, as the vital infrastructure that enables both civic engagement and biopolitical control –\u0000 an irony that remains to be resolved. Lessons from China suggest that future research and practice on enclosed neighbourhoods in different parts of the world can embrace the heterogeneity, adaptability, and practicability of neighbourhood transformations to inspire design and development innovation,\u0000 enhance social cohesion, and empower citizens.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"104 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140765818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Concept of the 'Neighbourhood' in Crime and Place Theory and Its Influence on Police Strategy","authors":"Hadas Zur","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.95","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.95","url":null,"abstract":"The neighbourhood is a basic unit in police work in the city. Throughout the twentieth and twenty- first centuries, theories of crime and place conceptualized the neighbourhood differently; some emphasized sociological aspects, while others focused on physical aspects. Each theory offers\u0000 different practices for crime reduction and police action strategies in neighbourhoods. This paper shows how the police implement different strategies in a neighbourhood in South Tel Aviv. It argues that the diversity of approaches increases the range and areas of police intervention in the\u0000 neighbourhood and empowers their control and effect on place. It indicates the dominance of physical and microgeographical approaches over sociological approaches. Methodologically, this paper uses a three-pronged approach: 1. In-depth interviews with police officers and other dominant actors\u0000 in space; 2. Ethnographic work with the urban police; and 3. Spatial analysis of policework in the neighbourhood. The conclusion discusses the consequences and shortcomings of the current paradigm in policing and suggests three directions as departure points for new thinking on crime and neighbourhoods:\u0000 rethinking scale; reassessing the subject of concern; and readdressing the entanglement between crime and space.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"33 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140756297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Learning from Informal Settlements Contributes to the Community Resilience of Neighbourhoods","authors":"Jota Samper","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.133","url":null,"abstract":"Urbanization in the twenty-first century has experienced a significant slowdown, particularly in the Global North. However, population growth continues to escalate, with most of this increase occurring in the Global South. Most of that growth manifests in the urban environment as informal\u0000 settlements. These types of neighbourhoods deploy unique strategies to emerge and grow and can teach us much about the value of neighbourhoods as urban units in an uncertain future plagued by the challenges imposed by climate change, political polarization, and urban conflict. However, literature\u0000 on neighbourhoods devotes little time to exploring these urban manifestations as areas of exploration and learning; instead, most of the scholarship focuses on ways to eradicate these places from our cities. As a result of this perspective, I argue that we have overlooked three important lessons\u0000 that can be gleaned from informal settlements: incrementality, sustainability, and self-reliance. These characteristics contribute to the resilience of the communities, making informal settlements the predominant neighbourhoods of the twenty-first century. This paper examines global informal\u0000 neighbourhood practices, unveiling unique community strategies. It reassesses neighbourhood value and offers insights into the urban changes necessary to tackle the next century's challenges.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"224 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140769182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can Neighbourhoods Save the Smart City?","authors":"Alessandro Aurigi","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.152","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, accounts and speculations on the emergence of digitally-augmented environments have suggested utopian, and dystopian, visions of increased spatial fluidities – doing anything from anywhere – in which the role of specific places could become redundant. The emergence\u0000 of smart urbanism, through technocratic visions of central, algorithmic control, could materialize such centrifugal detachment from place and local context, as it operates a shift of agency from space and community to code. Are, therefore, the hyper-local scale, and neighbourhoods, relevant\u0000 entities in our increasingly digital urban environments? This paper makes a case for the smart neighbourhood not as a plain, pre-determined, functional sub-unit of a centrally controlled and automated smart metropolis, but as a radically divergent – yet necessarily complementary –\u0000 dimension of it. The discussion looks at the scales of the locale – and of the hyper-local – as the enablers of a re-combined and re-energized spatial and digital agency. It discusses the importance of local appropriation and contextualization of technology – as opposed to\u0000 the 'off-the-shelf' adoption of civic infrastructural systems and management software, and of enabling significant social innovation and community involvement and participation. However, once the importance of re-combining space, community and technology at the local scale has been explored,\u0000 the paper discusses how the point is not opposing the smart neighbourhood to the smart city through a simplistic bottom-up vs top-down dualist vision, but rather reflecting on how these dimensions should work together. Design and development strategies that aim to conjugate the very bespoke\u0000 and pilot with the scalable, and the qualitative with the quantitative, while enabling local innovation and experimentation, are needed to envisage a grounded, sustainable, and effective smart city.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"695 19","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140782239","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Medium is the Messenger A Quantitative Study on the Relation between Social Media Services and Neighbourhood Social Interactions","authors":"Jan Üblacker, Simon Liebig, Hawzheen Hamad","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.114","url":null,"abstract":"Internet-based social networking services (ISNS) like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others have revolutionized the way people connect, enabling interactions across great distances. This has sparked a debate about the impact of ISNS use on face-to-face contact, particularly within\u0000 neighbourhoods. Some argue that ISNS diminish the significance of local physical place and hinder meaningful interactions, especially among neighbours. Conversely, others view ISNS as tools that foster new forms of connectedness and enhance relationships within neighbourhoods by creating opportunities\u0000 to engage with existing peers. However, there is a significant knowledge gap regarding the varying effects of ISNS on offline social interaction within neighbourhoods. Do different ISNS, including messenger services, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and neighbourhood-specific social networks\u0000 (e.g.nebenan.de), 1 have distinct effects on offline social interaction within neighbourhoods? Are there differences in usage between native residents and migrants? We analyse data from a 2022 postal survey conducted in two German cities (Essen and Cologne), involving 2, 676 residents in 166\u0000 neighbourhoods. The results from our multiple linear regression model show that the impact of different ISNS on social interactions varies. Messenger services and neighbourhood-specific social networks have a positive impact on social interactions within the neighbourhood. However, popular\u0000 social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter do not significantly affect social interactions within the neighbourhood. Additionally, individuals from the native population do have more social interaction with their neighbours compared to those with a migration background.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"83 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140768959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Neighbourhood–Health Nexus: Design, Behaviour and Futures","authors":"T. Hatuka, Gal Elhanan, Amitai Bloom","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.168","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last decade, and more recently with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) pandemic, increased attention has been given to the dynamic between health and urbanism. Features such as city design, the environment, and socioeconomic factors have been studied worldwide. Most studies\u0000 have focused on a single element of the urban environment, making it difficult to understand the possible influence of related urban features. Furthermore, studies have addressed the issue of urbanism and health on different international, national, urban, and local scales, resulting in multiple\u0000 inconsistencies. With the enhanced growth of cities, it is argued that the neighbourhood scale is the ideal scale to understand the built environmental–health nexus. More specifically, the paper reviews studies that focus on neighbourhood design and its influence on health, and studies\u0000 that focus on residents' health-related behaviour. In addition, it maps the key developments in e-health and its expected influence on health services in neighbourhoods. Insights from these reviews are used to offer a preliminary conceptual framework for addressing health in neighbourhoods.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"850 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140787258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Neighbourhood Unit for Equitable Resilience","authors":"Zachary Lamb, Lawrence J. Vale","doi":"10.2148/benv.50.1.185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.50.1.185","url":null,"abstract":"The early twentieth-century concept of the neighbourhood unit aimed to use spatial planning to redress problems associated with that era of urbanization in the US and Europe, including car traffic, pollution, and social alienation. We ask how this influential and controversial concept\u0000 might be adapted to address today's most vexing urban challenges: climate change hazards and widening inequality. Drawing on a diverse array of global case studies, we argue that the neighbourhood can be a unit for 'equitable resilience', but only if we reconceptualize neighbourhoods in significant\u0000 ways. First, 'neighbourhood' must be defined more capaciously to include not just the middle-class enclaves envisioned by Clarence Perry and other early neighbourhood planning advocates, but also places that are home to disadvantaged residents, from mixed-income communities to public housing,\u0000 informal settlements, and manufactured home parks. Second, for neighbourhood interventions to bring lasting equitable resilience, they must be linked to analysis and action on wider spatial and political scales. Finally, to ensure resilience will be equitable, neighbourhood scale interventions\u0000 must link built environment changes to institutional changes that improve conditions in the domains of livelihoods, environmental safety, governance, and security from displacement. In short, to be units for equitable resilience, neighbourhoods must help residents build the power to act in\u0000 the face of climate change and other threats.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":"84 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140758911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bodies Holding up Communities Uncaring Infrastructures in Santiago, Chile and Beyond","authors":"Brenda Parker, Magdalena Rivera, Martín Alvarez","doi":"10.2148/benv.49.4.555","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.49.4.555","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we explore the role of bodies, housing, and mobility as infrastructures of care for low-income women living in peripheral neighbourhoods in Santiago, Chile. Drawing on feminist political economists and urbanists, we describe the way that bodies act as infrastructures, often compensating for inadequate built and social environments. Even as the caring of these women sustains life, livelihoods, and communities, they suff er slow infrastructural violence ampli fied by immobility, isolation, and insuffi cient support. This reinforces and occurs within a broader context of gendered inequality and gendered violence, in a city where socioeconomic segregation is very pronounced. While there are geographic particularities to this case, the lack of infrastructure for care persists in cities and communities across the Global North and South. We provide policy recommendations oriented toward transforming material and social urban infrastructures, simultaneously addressing gendered and intersectional power relations.","PeriodicalId":53715,"journal":{"name":"Built Environment","volume":" 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139136187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}