Postmodernism and power in urban policy: Implications for sport and cultural policy in the city

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian P. Henry
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Borén ◽  
Patrycja Grzyś ◽  
Craig Young

This article aims to advance the literature on policy mobility by decentring the primacy of mobility itself and focusing on understanding what cities do in order to ‘arrive at’ localized versions of urban policy in relation to globally circulating ideas around creativity. The paper explores the performance of a particular local ‘creative economy’ in terms of institutional and strategic adjustments, key drivers and individuals and events, and the role of long-term local, national and international influences on ‘creative cityness’. It does this through an analysis of cultural and creativity policy and local stakeholders in the cultural policy scene in Gdańsk, Poland, focusing on the local performative aspects of mobile policies and arguing the need to understand the formation of a ‘common local project’ as a form of intra-urban connectedness alongside inter-urban connectedness. The paper extends the range of contexts in which the ‘creative city’ has been analysed to include post-socialist, post-European Union accession Central and Eastern Europe, thus making an original contribution by studying these issues in the context of the complex multi-scalar relations between the city, national government and the supranational European Union and the ideological conflict between national authoritarian neoliberalism and urban and supranational scale (neo-)liberalism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Y. Owusu

This paper examines the dynamics of economic change in the City of Paterson, New Jersey, from the time of its founding in the late eighteenth century to 1990, with emphasis on the post-1945 era. Analysis shows that from the time of its founding to the first half of the twentieth century, Paterson experienced a period of economic growth followed by economic decline in the 1960s, characterized by major changes in its principal industries of cotton, locomotives, and silk. Economic growth in Paterson up to the early part of the twentieth century is attributable to several locational factors, including the availability of water resources, transportation, labor supply, and markets. Its decline in the post-1945 era is attributable to a combination of local, national, and global economic factors including periods of depression, labor discord, product substitution, decentralization of economic activities, and deindustrialization. Economic decline resulted in a high rate of unemployment, poverty, and urban decay. The most significant effort to reverse urban decline in the city is the urban enterprise zone (UEZ) program. The impacts of this program on economic growth in the city, however, remain inconclusive.


Spatium ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 26-30
Author(s):  
Ivana Volic ◽  
Luka Bajic ◽  
Bojana Radenkovic-Sosic

The paper treated the question of cultural policy in the context of Belgrade event ?European Capital of Culture? (ECOC). In accordance with the current nomination for the title of cultural capital of Europe 2020 there are frequent media and political statements about contribution to the socio-economic development of the city and its positioning as an international cultural center. Also, it is assumed that this project can be a strategic tool in creating a new model of cultural policy of the city, with regard to the proposed objectives which coincide with the primary aims of his cultural development. Taking into account studies that represent the effects of the event ?European Capital of Culture? in cities that carried the title in previous years, the paper seeks to highlight the perceived problems and to propose a possible solution in the form of ?cultural planning? which represents holistic and flexible understanding of cultural and urban policy. Such an understanding encompasses the sphere of art, economic, political, social, educational and environmental sphere of the city and seeks a sustainable and comprehensive model based on local identity and character of the city, based on the participatory planning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Ying Long ◽  
Jianting Zhao

This paper examines how mass ridership data can help describe cities from the bikers' perspective. We explore the possibility of using the data to reveal general bikeability patterns in 202 major Chinese cities. This process is conducted by constructing a bikeability rating system, the Mobike Riding Index (MRI), to measure bikeability in terms of usage frequency and the built environment. We first investigated mass ridership data and relevant supporting data; we then established the MRI framework and calculated MRI scores accordingly. This study finds that people tend to ride shared bikes at speeds close to 10 km/h for an average distance of 2 km roughly three times a day. The MRI results show that at the street level, the weekday and weekend MRI distributions are analogous, with an average score of 49.8 (range 0–100). At the township level, high-scoring townships are those close to the city centre; at the city level, the MRI is unevenly distributed, with high-MRI cities along the southern coastline or in the middle inland area. These patterns have policy implications for urban planners and policy-makers. This is the first and largest-scale study to incorporate mobile bike-share data into bikeability measurements, thus laying the groundwork for further research.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Portelli

This article centers around the case study of Rome's House of Memory and History to understand the politics of memory and public institutions. This case study is about the organization and politics of public memory: the House of Memory and History, established by the city of Rome in 2006, in the framework of an ambitious program of cultural policy. It summarizes the history of the House's conception and founding, describes its activities and the role of oral history in them, and discusses some of the problems it faces. The idea of a House of Memory and History grew in this cultural and political context. This article traces several political events that led to the culmination of the politics of memory and its effect on public institutions. It says that the House of Memory and History can be considered a success. A discussion on a cultural future winds up this article.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 23-23
Author(s):  
Christine Sheppard ◽  
Andrea Austen ◽  
Sander Hitzig

Abstract Toronto Community Housing (TCH) is the second largest social housing landlord in North America, and is home to over 27,000 older adults, half of whom live in 83 “seniors-designated” buildings. There is inadequate and inconsistent delivery of services in these buildings, negatively impacting tenants’ ability to age in place. We conducted two half-day consultations with service providers (n=74) and tenants (n=100) to identify strategies to improve unit condition, promote stable tenancies (i.e., prevent evictions) and enhance access to health and support services for older adults living in TCH. Through facilitated discussion, participants identified their top two recommendations for each priority area and reflected on the strategies that were hardest and easiest to implement, as well as the ones that would have the most and least impact on quality of life for older tenants. Participants recognized the need for more education as a way to empower older tenants and reduce stigma associated with unit condition issues (e.g., pest problems) and arrears. More frequent touch points with tenants was also recommended as a way to identify older adults at-risk of eviction and work proactively (instead of reactively) to support them. Service providers and tenants believed that system navigators working directly in the buildings would be a key facilitator to building trust and helping older tenants access needed services. Outcomes of the have several program and policy implications for TCH, as they partner with the City of Toronto to design a new integrated service model for the seniors-designated buildings.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110059
Author(s):  
Leslie Quitzow ◽  
Friederike Rohde

Current imaginaries of urban smart grid technologies are painting attractive pictures of the kinds of energy futures that are desirable and attainable in cities. Making claims about the future city, the socio-technical imaginaries related to smart grid developments unfold the power to guide urban energy policymaking and implementation practices. This paper analyses how urban smart grid futures are being imagined and co-produced in the city of Berlin, Germany. It explores these imaginaries to show how the politics of Berlin’s urban energy transition are being driven by techno-optimistic visions of the city’s digital modernisation and its ambitions to become a ‘smart city’. The analysis is based on a discourse analysis of relevant urban policy and other documents, as well as interviews with key stakeholders from Berlin’s energy, ICT and urban development sectors, including key experts from three urban laboratories for smart grid development and implementation in the city. It identifies three dominant imaginaries that depict urban smart grid technologies as (a) environmental solution, (b) economic imperative and (c) exciting experimental challenge. The paper concludes that dominant imaginaries of smart grid technologies in the city are grounded in a techno-optimistic approach to urban development that are foreclosing more subtle alternatives or perhaps more radical change towards low-carbon energy systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 317
Author(s):  
Ahmad M. Senousi ◽  
Junwei Zhang ◽  
Wenzhong Shi ◽  
Xintao Liu

A city is a complex system that never sleeps; it constantly changes, and its internal mobility (people, vehicles, goods, information, etc.) continues to accelerate and intensify. These changes and mobility vary in terms of the attributes of the city, such as space, time and cultural affiliation, which characterise to some extent how the city functions. Traditional urban studies have successfully modelled the ‘low-frequency city’ and have provided solutions such as urban planning and highway design for long-term urban development. Nevertheless, the existing urban studies and theories are insufficient to model the dynamics of a city’s intense mobility and rapid changes, so they cannot tackle short-term urban problems such as traffic congestion, real-time transport scheduling and resource management. The advent of information and communication technology and big data presents opportunities to model cities with unprecedented resolution. Since 2018, a paradigm shift from modelling the ‘low-frequency city’ to the so-called ‘high-frequency city’ has been introduced, but hardly any research investigated methods to estimate a city’s frequency. This work aims to propose a framework for the identification and analysis of indicators to model and better understand the concept of a high-frequency city in a systematic manner. The methodology for this work was based on a content analysis-based review, taking into account specific criteria to ensure the selection of indicator sets that are consistent with the concept of the frequency of cities. Twenty-two indicators in five groups were selected as indicators for a high-frequency city, and a framework was proposed to assess frequency at both the intra-city and inter-city levels. This work would serve as a pilot study to further illuminate the ways that urban policy and operations can be adjusted to improve the quality of city life in the context of a smart city.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2323
Author(s):  
Constantin Nistor ◽  
Marina Vîrghileanu ◽  
Irina Cârlan ◽  
Bogdan-Andrei Mihai ◽  
Liviu Toma ◽  
...  

The paper investigates the urban landscape changes for the last 50 years in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. Bucharest shows a complex structural transformation driven by the socialist urban policy, followed by an intensive real-estate market development. Our analysis is based on a diachronic set of high-resolution satellite imagery: declassified CORONA KH-4B from 1968, SPOT-1 from 1989, and multisensor stacked layers from Sentinel-1 SAR together with Sentinel-2MSI from 2018. Three different datasets of land cover/use are extracted for the reference years. Each dataset reveals its own urban structure pattern. The first one illustrates a radiography of the city in the second part of the 20th century, where rural patterns meet the modern ones, while the second one reveals the frame of a city in a full process of transformation with multiple constructions sites, based on the socialist model. The third one presents an image of a cosmopolitan city during an expansion process, with a high degree of landscape heterogeneity. All the datasets are included in a built-up change analysis in order to map and assess the spatial transformations of the city pattern over 5 decades. In order to quantify and map the changes, the Built-up Change Index (BCI) is introduced. The results highlight a particular situation linked to the policy development visions for each decade, with major changes of about 50% for different built-up classes. The GIS analysis illustrates two major landscape transformations: from the old semirural structures with houses surrounded by gardens from 1968, to a compact pattern with large districts of blocks of flats in 1989, and a contemporary city defined by an uncontrolled urban sprawl process in 2018.


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