The Conflicted City

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Jérôme Tadié
Keyword(s):  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
The Poor ◽  
International Policies ◽  
The City ◽  
Alternative Solutions

Abstract As a megacity, Jakarta has enjoyed mixed forms of residential neighbourhoods, in which the kampungs used to prevail. After a period of kampung rehabilitation, relocation programmes intensified in Jakarta in the 1980s, influenced by the Singaporean model and paradigmatic shifts in international policies for housing for the poor. As a reaction, various local NGO s have proposed alternative solutions to what can seem a hegemonic international trend. Starting from the imposition of international models for housing for the poor, this paper studies how local NGO s in Jakarta have tried to negotiate these hegemonic global shifts and to propose other types of solutions. It first analyses the context of urban transformation in the central zones and the eradication of several kampungs. It then addresses the NGO s’ alternative visions of the city and its future, before showing how these visions are deeply rooted in formal and informal networks specific to the Indonesian context.

scholarly journals The European Green Capital Award—Is It a Dream or Reality for Belgrade (Serbia)?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6182
Author(s):  
Marijana Pantić ◽  
Saša Milijić
Keyword(s):  
Urban Transformation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Current State ◽  
Transitional Countries ◽  
Great Hope ◽  
Environmentally Responsible ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

An agreement of cooperation and transmission of knowledge regarding the nomination for the European Green Capital Award (EGCA) was signed between the mayors of Belgrade and Ljubljana (EGCA 2016 winner) in September 2018. The candidacy of Belgrade was finally realized in October 2019. Great hope was placed in this endeavour because internationally recognized awards, such as the EGCA, represent enormous capital for both the city and the state. The EGCA requires serious preparation and significant fulfilment of preconditions. Many economically strong and environmentally responsible cities competed for the award, but did not win. On the other hand, the capital of Serbia does not appear to be an obvious winning candidate, especially as it is differentiated from the previous winners by being a non-EU city and by the fact that it is still undergoing an intense urban transformation, characteristic of transitional countries. Therefore, the main aim of this article is to present a review of the current state of Belgrade’s environmental qualities and its comparison with the EGCA criteria and with Grenoble as one of the winning competitors. The article gives a full overview of the EGCA requirements with certain details on required indicators, gives relevant insight into the procedure, which could be of use for any future candidacy, and discusses potential benefits for winners, losers and repeat candidacies.

The “Unspeakable Blessing”: Street Children, Reform Rhetoric, and Misery in Early Industrial Capitalism

1983 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Bellingham
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
Street Children ◽  
Industrial Capitalism ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Insurmountable Obstacle ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

… surely there would be men enough, willing and glad to contribute to the regeneration of the poor outcasts of the city. It is no longer an experiment since the Children's Aid has removed of this class, in thirteen years, eleven thousand two hundred and seventy two! Who would not rejoice to aid in such an enterprise…? Money only is wanting. Shall that be an insurmountable obstacle in the way of accomplishing such an unspeakable blessing? New York Children's Aid Society, 1866 Annual Report

Oosterweel – from an underground and even underwater road infrastructure plan to an urban transformation project

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Hellemans
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Flow ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Construction Site ◽  
Successful Completion ◽  
Road Infrastructure ◽  
Living Space ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

<p>For the coming ten years, the heart of Europe will turn into a gigantic construction site for works on one of the largest hubs of the continent: Antwerp. The Oosterweel Link is the project whereby the motorway ring around Antwerp is undergoing a metamorphosis to reinvigorate traffic flow and add living space to the City. The project had come to a standstill for several years as a result of protests by assertive citizens, but was given a second lease of life following a large-scale participation project.</p><p>To ensure its successful completion, unparalleled efforts are being made in the field and in the area of digitization. It is therefore with good reason that in Belgium the project is referred to as “the construction site of the century”.</p>

COVID-19 pandemic and the poor in the urban spaces of India with special reference to Mumbai

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujayita Bhattacharjee ◽  
Sanjukta Sattar
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Socioeconomic Crisis ◽  
The City

PurposeThe lives of the poor in the urban spaces of India are filled with hardships. They live amidst poverty and struggle to survive within other problems such as insecure jobs, lack of proper housing, unsanitary conditions and low levels of health immunity. This vulnerable section of the population has been rendered furthermore vulnerable by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that were never imagined before. Taking this into consideration, the purpose of this article is to examine the vulnerability of the poor in the urban settings of India with special reference to Mumbai in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology adopted in the study is based on the analysis of secondary data and content analysis of the existing literature. In addition to this, the study also makes use of certain narratives of the urban poor in Mumbai that have been captured by various articles, reports and blogs.FindingsThe findings of the study reveal how the urban poor of India, with special reference to Mumbai, the financial capital of India, has emerged as the worst sufferers of the socioeconomic crisis caused by the social distancing and lockdown measures imposed for combating the pandemic.Originality/valueThe study tries to explore the reality of the urban poor's right to the city in the wake of the pandemic.

scholarly journals Information Asymmetry and Trust: A Framework for Studying Microfinance in India

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
M S Sriram
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Transaction Costs ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Imperfect Information ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The People ◽  
Financial Transactions

In recent times, microfinance has emerged as a major innovation in the rural financial marketplace. Microfinance largely addresses the issue of access to financial services. In trying to understand the innovation of microfinance and how it has proved to be effective, the author looks at certain design features of microfinance. He first starts by identifying the need for financial service institutions which is basically to bridge the gap between the need for financial services across time, geographies, and risk profiles. In providing services that bridge this gap, formal institutions have limited access to authentic information both in terms of transaction history and expected behaviour and, therefore, resort to seeking excessive information thereby adding to the transaction costs. The innovation in microfinance has been largely to bridge this gap through a series of trustbased surrogates that take the transaction-related risks to the people who have the information — the community through measures of social collateral. In this paper, the author attempts to examine the trajectory of institutional intermediation in the rural areas, particularly with the poor and how it has evolved over a period of time. It identifies a systematic breach of trust as one of the major problems with the institutional interventions in the area of providing financial services to the poor and argues that microfinance uses trust as an effective mechanism to address one of the issues of imperfect information in financial transactions. The paper also distinguishes between the different models of microfinance and identifies which of these models use trust in a positivist frame and as a coercive mechanism. The specific objectives of the paper are to: Superimpose the role of trust in various types of exchanges and see how it impacts the effectiveness of repeated transactions. While greater access to information fosters trust and thus helps social networks to reduce transaction costs, there could be limits to which exchanges could solely depend on networks and trust. Look at the frontiers where mutual trust cannot work as a surrogate for lower appraisal costs. Use an example in the Canadian context and see how an entity that started on the basis of social networks and trust had to morph into using the techniques used by other formal nonneighbourhood institutions as it grew in size and went beyond a threshold. Using the Canadian example, the author argues that as the transactions get sophisticated, it is possible to achieve what informal networks have achieved through the creative use of information technology. While we find that the role of trust both in the positivist and the coercive frame does provide some interesting insights into how exchanges with the poor could be managed, there still could be breaches in the assumptions. This paper identifies the conditions under which the breaches could possibly happen and also speculates on the effect of such breaches.

Urban Transformation and De-Ottomanization in Greece

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 213-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yorgos Koumaridis
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which nationalism transformed Greek urban space during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through urban planning, architecture, archaeology, the destruction of Ottoman material remains and the promotion of Ancient Greek and (later) Byzantine heritage, urban space was gradually hellenized and cleansed of its Ottoman past. Specific examples, including the case of Thessaloniki, where the strong Ottoman character of the city was gradually effaced, are examined so as to outline the aims and the patterns of this transformation.

Age and gentrification in Berlin: urban ageing policy and the experiences of disadvantaged older people

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Dale ◽  
Josefine Heusinger ◽  
Birgit Wolter
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Socially Disadvantaged ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Chapter 5 examines the impact of gentrification processes in Berlin, Germany, on the distribution of older people across the city as well as the everyday experiences of ageing in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The chapter concludes with an overview of developments in the context of political processes, where urban transformation driven by economic interests generates growing conflict and contradiction with the needs of an ageing and increasingly less affluent population.

scholarly journals Urban social movements in South Africa today: Its meaning for theological education and the church

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

In the past decade, significant social movements emerged in South Africa, in response to specific urban challenges of injustice or exclusion. This article will interrogate the meaning of such urban social movements for theological education and the church. Departing from a firm conviction that such movements are irruptions of the poor, in the way described by Gustavo Gutierrez and others, and that movements of liberation residing with, or in a commitment to, the poor, should be the locus of our theological reflection, this article suggests that there is much to be gained from the praxis of urban social movements, in disrupting, informing and shaping the praxis of both theological education and the church. I will give special consideration to Ndifuna Ukwazi and the Reclaim the City campaign in Cape Town, the Social Justice Coalition in Cape Town, and Abahlali baseMjondolo based in Durban, considering these as some of the most important and exciting examples of liberatory praxes in South Africa today. I argue that theological education and educators, and a church committed to the Jesus who came ‘to liberate the oppressed’, ignore these irruptions of the Spirit at our own peril.

scholarly journals Representing ‘Place’: City Climate Commissions and the Institutionalisation of Experimental Governance in Edinburgh

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Creasy ◽  
Matthew Lane ◽  
Alice Owen ◽  
Candice Howarth ◽  
Dan Van der Horst
Keyword(s):  
Urban Governance ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Urban Transformation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Key Industries ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

Against the backdrop of increasingly fragmented and poly-centric urban climate governance, this article examines the establishment of city climate ‘commissions’ as an experimental means of addressing the challenge of climate change at the city-scale. In doing so it addresses the question: What constitutes diversity in voices and perspectives when trying to represent the city as a place for climate action? To answer this question, the article presents an analysis of the Edinburgh Climate Commission’s establishment, drawing on participatory ethnographic research carried out by a researcher embedded within the project team. The account of how this new mode of urban governance was both conceptualised and then put into practice offers a new institutional angle to the literature on urban ‘experimentation.’ Through our reflective analysis we argue that aspirations to ensure pre-defined ‘key’ industries (high carbon emitters) are accounted for in commissioner recruitment, and an over-emphasis on capturing discernible ‘impacts’ in the short term (by involving organisations already pro-active in sustainable development) hindered an opportunity to embrace new perspectives on urban futures and harness the innovative potential of cities to engage with the multifaceted nature of the climate challenge. Furthermore, new insight into the relationship between local authorities and other ‘place-based’ agents of change opens up important questions regarding how to balance the attainment of legitimacy within the political status quo, and the prospect of a new radical politics for urban transformation.

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