Mobility in a global city: Making sense of Shanghai’s growing automobile-dominated transport culture

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (10) ◽  
pp. 2232-2248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Williams ◽  
Non Arkaraprasertkul
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Chinese Mainland ◽  
Global City ◽  
Financial Capital ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Automobile Culture ◽  
The City ◽  
Metro System

Shanghai continues to position itself as the financial capital of the Chinese mainland economy. The concomitant explosion in wealth, the increasing penetration of consumer culture, the in-migration of vast numbers of non-Shanghainese to the city seeking work and the dispersal of the city to the periphery all have significant implications for mobility. This research poses three questions: 1) How do people move around Shanghai? 2) Why do they move in this way? 3) How does this choice of mobility impact on their being and sense of agency? Adopting a qualitative methodology, we approach mobility as a cultural phenomenon and seek to uncover the meanings that car drivers and transit riders attach to mobility and how this impacts their life and their experience of Shanghai. We found that in spite of the fact that Shanghai now has the most extensive metro system in the world, there is a growing materially, culturally and socially embedded automobile culture. The car has a resilient symbolic appeal for the residents of Shanghai. While the automobile is enabling in some routine functions of daily life, collectively it has diminished the agency of people in Shanghai. Congestion, pollution and psychosocial pressure to buy a car portend a socially unsustainable system of mobility. While the metro enables vast numbers of individuals to perform the functions of daily life, it is becoming overcrowded and is associated with the spatial and class-based segregation of people.

Global Justice at the Municipal Scale

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fonna Forman ◽  
Teddy Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Local Governance ◽  
Global City ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City

Cities or municipalities are often the most immediate institutional facilitators of global justice. Thus, it is important for cosmopolitans and other theorists interested in global justice to consider the importance of the correspondence between global theories and local actions. In this chapter, the authors explore the role that municipalities can play in interpreting and executing principles of global justice. They offer a way of thinking about the cosmopolitan or global city not as a gentrified and commodified urban space, but as a site of local governance consistent with egalitarian cosmopolitan moral aims. They work to show some ways in which the city of Medellín, Colombia, has taken significant steps in that direction. The chapter focuses especially on how it did so and how it might serve as a model in some important ways for the transformation of other cities globally in a direction more consistent with egalitarian cosmopolitanism.

Palestinian Refugees between the City and the Camp

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-621
Author(s):  
Faedah M. Totah
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Urban Refugees ◽  
Old City ◽  
Refugee Experience ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

AbstractThe camp and the city are both important for understanding the relationship between space and identity in the refugee experience of exile. In the Palestinian example, the camp has emerged as a potent symbol in the narrative of exile although only a third of refugees registered with UNRWA live in camps. Moreover, the city and urban refugees remain missing in most of the scholarship on the Palestinian experience with space, exile, and identity. Furthermore, there is little attention to how refugees understand the concept of the city and camp in their daily life. This article examines how Palestinian urban refugees in the Old City of Damascus conceptualized the relationship between the camp and the city. It illustrates how the concept of the camp remained necessary for the construction of their collective national identity while in Syria. However, the city was essential in the articulation of individual desires and establishing social distinction from other refugees. Thus, during a protracted exile it is in the interstice between the city and the camp, where most urban refugees in the Old City situated themselves, that informed their national belonging and personal aspirations.

Connectivity in the Multi-Layered City: Towards the Sustainable City

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-35
Author(s):  
Bob Brown
Keyword(s):  
Global City ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Financial Speculation ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
Development Practice

A new urban paradigm, the global city, emerged in the late 20th Century finding acceptance in discussions of urban development. Tied into a global network of exchange, it exists principally as a place of financial speculation and transaction. It is marked by a parallel economy of culture, which underpins a re-conceptualisation and spatial re-formation of the city. Despite its widespread currency, criticisms have challenged its economic sustainability. Further questions have contested its tendency to impose a singular, homogenized space prioritizing consumption while marginalising other concerns. Post-independence Riga's recent experience provides a platform from which to critique the global city paradigm, which the city embraced as it sought to embed itself in the West not only politically but culturally and economically as well. In opposition to this model's intrinsic singular emphasis and exclusionary tendencies, this text will explore the concept of palimpsest; this proposition understands the city as a multiplicity of layers, within which convergences and divergences offer a site from which to generate synergies. This will be framed in reference to recent discourse on the sustainable city and development practice. Recent design-led inquiry situated in the context of Riga will then provide a lens on palimpsest as an alternative form of praxis.

Tolerance zones: a pragmatic approach to respond to problems related to open alcohol and drug scenes in Bremen/Germany

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Prepeliczay ◽  
Henning Schmidt-Semisch
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Drug Users ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Related Disorder ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Tolerance Zones ◽  
Drug And Alcohol ◽  
The City

Purpose This study aims to describe and analyse an approach in the city of Bremen (Germany) to establish streetwork-supported tolerance zones for local open drug and alcohol scenes to reduce related disorder and nuisance in public spaces. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative methodology included systematic participant observations at public sites of drug and alcohol use, and problem-centred interviews with different groups of respondents (residents, passers-by, trades people, drug users, experts from addiction help and police). Findings In residential districts, tolerance zones were well accepted by their target group and found to reduce perceived disorder and nuisance in public space. However, their success depends on the social and spatial conditions of the chosen location, its surrounding urban infrastructure, cooperation among local actors and characteristics of drug using groups. Originality/value Usually, policing of open drug scenes focuses on repression and law enforcement. The example of Bremen suggests that streetwork-supported tolerance zones dedicated to the drug scene can substantially reduce disorder and nuisance in public space.

scholarly journals Fóruns Híbridos de Participação: no sentido de melhores práticas para a construção da cidade

Revista Prumo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 60-75
Author(s):  
Maíra Machado-Martins ◽  
Patricia Maya-Monteiro
Keyword(s):  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Landscape Architecture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Collaborative Processes ◽  
University Partnership ◽  
The City ◽  
Design Experience

This article presents the results of a Project process held in the under-spaces of two viaducts in the Laranjeiras district in the city of Rio de Janeiro. This process is part of a community-university partnership project, the “Square, the Street and the District”, which has been developed by students and professors of different fields and courses. This project aims to emphasize the relevance of interventions in the cities are made by a direct mode of popular participation, both in the elaboration and in the implementation of landscape architecture and urban proposals. A collaborative process was shaped to embody the notion that there is a “local knowledge, which is nurtured by the daily life”, as Milton Santos (1997, p.7) argues. Here, we narrate the methodological construction and the process of design experience in this case at the Laranjeiras.district. With this, we expect to demonstrate how the design and building of the city can be developed thorough participative and collaborative processes. The existence of an assembled and well informed project can be an environment to foster discussion so that more just and appropriate solutions may get forge.

scholarly journals Architecture & Legitimacy: Strategies for the Development of Urban Informal Settlements

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel D. Pressick
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poor ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Global City ◽  
The People ◽  
Urban Informal Settlements ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
The City ◽  
Autonomous Development

Currently, 1 in 6 people live in slums, or informal settlements in cities throughout the developing world. They are built illegally and are characterized by lack of proper sanitation, unsafe housing, and crowded living conditions. Despite their appearance, informal settlements are legitimate communities; they are vibrant, with sophisticated social, economic and cultural networks that support the livelihoods of residents who call them home. These communities give the urban poor a physical place within the city, giving them access to the opportunities and advantages that the current age of the 'global city' can offer to any willing participant. As architects who see the responsibility in choosing the informal settlement as a realm for engagement, this thesis proposes that any architectural intervention be mindful of the importance of the networks contained within the streets and buildings of the informal settlement. By preserving the built-fabric of the settlement, the architect legitimizes the settlement's density and scale, while ensuring the urban poor have a physical place in the city. They have managed to develop their own communities without any investment from outside forces, any intervention should only support that autonomous development. These structures, as well as the people and activities with them, are vital to the survival of residents of informal settlements.

scholarly journals Dialectical Design Dialogues: Negotiating Ethics in Participatory Planning by Building a Critical Design Atlas

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-251
Author(s):  
Barbara Roosen ◽  
Liesbeth Huybrechts ◽  
Oswald Devisch ◽  
Pieter Van den Broeck
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Participatory Planning ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
Urban Transformations ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Everyday Reality ◽  
The City

This article explores ‘dialectical design dialogues’ as an approach to engage with ethics in everyday urban planning contexts. It starts from Paulo Freire’s pedagogical view (1970/2017), in which dialogues imply the establishment of a horizontal relation between professionals and amateurs, in order to understand, question and imagine things in everyday reality, in this case, urban transformations, applied to participatory planning and enriched through David Harvey’s (2000, 2009) dialectical approach. A dialectical approach to design dialogues acknowledges and renegotiates contrasts and convergences of ethical concerns specific to the reality of concrete daily life, rather than artificially presenting daily life as made of consensus or homogeneity. The article analyses an atlas as a tool to facilitate dialectical design dialogues in a case study of a low-density residential neighbourhood in the city of Genk, Belgium. It sees the production of the atlas as a collective endeavour during which planners, authorities and citizens reflect on possible futures starting from a confrontation of competing uses and perspectives of neighbourhood spaces. The article contributes to the state-of-the-art in participatory urban planning in two ways: (1) by reframing the theoretical discussion on ethics by arguing that not only the verbal discourses around designerly atlas techniques but also the techniques themselves can support urban planners in dealing more consciously with ethics (accountability, morality and authorship) throughout urban planning processes, (2) by offering a concrete practice-based example of producing an atlas that supports the participatory articulation and negotiation of dialectical inquiry of ethics through dialogues in a ‘real-time’ urban planning process.

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