scholarly journals The possibilities and limits of political contestation in times of ‘urban austerity’

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (9) ◽  
pp. 2087-2106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crispian Fuller ◽  
Karen West

This paper seeks to provide a conceptual framework in which to examine the social practices of contemporary austerity programmes in urban areas, including how these relate to different conceptions of crisis. Of current theoretical interest is the apparent ease with which these austerity measures have been accepted by urban governing agents. In order to advance these understandings we follow the recent post-structuralist discourse theory ‘logics’ approach of Glynos and Howarth (2007), focusing on the relationship between hegemony, political and social logics, and the subject whose identificatory practices are key to understanding the form, nature and stability of discursive settlements. In such thinking it is not only the formation of discourses and the mobilisation of rhetoric that are of interest, but also the manner in which the subjects of austerity identify with these. Through such an approach we examine the case of the regeneration/economic development and planning policy area in the city government of Birmingham (UK). In conclusion, we argue that the logics approach is a useful framework through which to examine how austerity has been uncontested in a city government, and the dynamics of acquiescence in relation to broader hegemonic discursive formations.

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (15) ◽  
pp. 3044-3059 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Jover ◽  
Ibán Díaz-Parra

Increased international tourism in large European cities has been a growing social and political issue over the last few years. As the number of urban tourists has rapidly grown, studies have often focused on its socio-spatial consequences, commonly referred to as touristification, and have linked this to gentrification. This connection makes sense within the framework of planetary gentrification theories because the social injustices it generates in cities have a global pattern. However, gentrification is a complex process that must be analytically differentiated from tourism strategies and their effects. Whereas gentrification means a lower income population replaced by one of a higher status, touristification consists of an increase in tourist activity that generally implies the loss of residents. Strategies to appropriate and marketise culture to sustain tourism-led economies can also shape more attractive places for foreign wealthy newcomers, whose arrival has been theorised as transnational gentrification. Discussions on the relationship between gentrification, transnational gentrification and touristification are essential, especially regarding how they work in transforming an urban area’s social fabric, for which Seville, Spain’s fourth largest city with an economy specialised in cultural tourism, provides a starting point. The focus is set on the processes’ timelines and similar patterns, which are tested on three consecutive scales of analysis: the city, the historic district and the Alameda neighbourhood. Through the examination of these transformations, the article concludes that transnational gentrification and touristification are new urban strategies and practices to revalorise real estate and appropriate urban surplus in unique urban areas.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Diesselhorst

This article discusses the struggles of urban social movements for a de-neoliberalisation of housing policies in Poulantzian terms as a “condensation of the relationship of forces”. Drawing on an empirical analysis of the “Berliner Mietenvolksentscheid” (Berlin rent referendum), which was partially successful in forcing the city government of Berlin to adopt a more progressive housing policy, the article argues that urban social movements have the capacity to challenge neoliberal housing regimes. However, the specific materiality of the state apparatus and its strategic selectivity both limit the scope of intervention for social movements aiming at empowerment and non-hierarchical decision-making.


Author(s):  
Oleksii Chepov ◽  

The qualitative and clear definition of the legal regime of the capital of Ukraine, the hero city of Kyiv, is influenced by its legislative enshrinement, however, it should be noted that discussions are ongoing and one of the reasons for the unclear legal status of the capital is the ambiguity of current legislation in this area. Separation of the functions of the city of Kyiv, which are carried out to ensure the rights of citizens of Ukraine and the functions that guarantee the rights of the territorial community of the city of Kyiv. In the modern world, in legal doctrine and practice, the capital is understood as the capital of the country, which at the legislative level received this status and, accordingly, is the administrative and political center of the state, which houses the main state bodies and diplomatic missions of other states. It is the identification of the boundaries of the relationship between the competencies of state administrations and local self-government, in practice, often raises questions about their delimitation and ways of regulatory solution. Peculiarities of local self-government in Kyiv city districts are defined in the provisions of the Law on the Capital, which reveal the norms of the Constitution in these legal relations, according to which the issue of organizing district management in cities belongs to city councils. Likewise, it is unregulated by law to lose the particularity of the legal status of the territory of the city. It should be emphasized that the subject of administrative-legal relations is not a certain administrative-territorial entity, but the social group is designated - the territorial community of the city of Kiev, kiyani. Thus, the provisions on the city of Kyiv partially ignore the potential of the territorial community.


Author(s):  
Aled Davies

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802098100
Author(s):  
Mark Ellison ◽  
Jon Bannister ◽  
Won Do Lee ◽  
Muhammad Salman Haleem

The effective, efficient and equitable policing of urban areas rests on an appreciation of the qualities and scale of, as well as the factors shaping, demand. It also requires an appreciation of the factors shaping the resources deployed in their address. To this end, this article probes the extent to which policing demand (crime, anti-social behaviour, public safety and welfare) and deployment (front-line resource) are similarly conditioned by the social and physical urban environment, and by incident complexity. The prospect of exploring policing demand, deployment and their interplay is opened through the utilisation of big data and artificial intelligence and their integration with administrative and open data sources in a generalised method of moments (GMM) multilevel model. The research finds that policing demand and deployment hold varying and time-sensitive association with features of the urban environment. Moreover, we find that the complexities embedded in policing demands serve to shape both the cumulative and marginal resources expended in their address. Beyond their substantive policy relevance, these findings serve to open new avenues for urban criminological research centred on the consideration of the interplay between policing demand and deployment.


Author(s):  
Minh-Tung Tran ◽  
◽  
Tien-Hau Phan ◽  
Ngoc-Huyen Chu ◽  
◽  
...  

Public spaces are designed and managed in many different ways. In Hanoi, after the Doi moi policy in 1986, the transfer of the public spaces creation at the neighborhood-level to the private sector has prospered na-ture of public and added a large amount of public space for the city, directly impacting on citizen's daily life, creating a new trend, new concept of public spaces. This article looks forward to understanding the public spaces-making and operating in KDTMs (Khu Do Thi Moi - new urban areas) in Hanoi to answer the question of whether ‘socialization’/privatization of these public spaces will put an end to the urban public or the new means of public-making trend. Based on the comparison and literature review of studies in the world on public spaces privatization with domestic studies to see the differences in the Vietnamese context leading to differences in definitions and roles and the concept of public spaces in KDTMs of Hanoi. Through adducing and analyzing practical cases, the article also mentions the trends, the issues, the ways and the technologies of public-making and public-spaces-making in KDTMs of Hanoi. Win/loss and the relationship of the three most important influential actors in this process (municipality, KDTM owners, inhabitants/citizens) is also considered to reconceptualize the public spaces of KDTMs in Hanoi.


TERRITORIO ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 171-177
Author(s):  
Alessandra Giannini

- Country life is (and has been) the object of utopian visions, set against the rise of urban living. The paradigms of the myth of rural life can be traced back to Howard's Garden City and to Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City. These examples of the paradigm blend into a broader and trans-disciplinary contemporary discourse on the myth of rural living. Since the end of the 1990s, the subject of the relationship between the rural and the urban has developed into plans that could be called ‘country utopias'. The system of agricultural production and the countryside is evolving today towards new forms of integration and hybridisation with urban areas. Planning practices are emerging today in the definition of the characters and traits of urban agriculture designed to create town and country interaction particularly in marginal areas, strips located on the borders between town and country. These modifications are leading to the definition of new rural figures, together with plans capable of giving new life to liminal and marginal areas between town and country by creating new models of ‘rururban' living.


Author(s):  
Ewa Waryś

The article presents the contemporary cultural landscape of the historical workers’ settlements, located within the current administrative boundaries of the city of Katowice. Selected building complexes are standardized in terms of typology and building design, but differ in terms of the conservation status and forms of protection. The aim of the discussion is to show the relationship between the artistic and architectural aesthetics and public spaces related to the industry. The subject matter is an attempt to draw attention to the problem of the conservation status of most parts of the historical complexes of residential buildings in Upper Silesia, their untapped potential and declining values.


Author(s):  
Ilaria Geddes ◽  
Nadia Charalambous

This project was developed as an attempt to assess the relationship between different morphogenetic processes, in particular, those of fringe belt formation as described by M.R.G. Conzen (1960) and Whitehand (2001), and of centrality and compactness as described by Hillier (1999; 2002). Different approaches’ focus on different elements of the city has made it difficult to establish exactly how these processes interact or whether they are simply different facets of development reflecting wider socio-economic factors. To address this issue, a visual, chronological timeline of Limassol’s development was constructed along with a narrative of the socio-economic context of its development.  The complexity of cities, however, makes static visualisations across time difficult to read and assess alongside textual narratives. We therefore took the step of developing an animation of land use and configurational analyses of Limassol, in order bring to life the diachronic analysis of the city and shed light on its generative mechanisms. The video presented here shows that the relationship between the processes mentioned above is much stronger and more complex than previously thought. The related paper explores in more detail the links between fringe belt formation as a cyclical process of peripheral development and centrality as a recurring process of minimisation of gains in distance. The project’s outcomes clearly show that composite methods of visualisations are an analytical opportunity still little exploited within urban morphology. References Conzen, M.R.G., 1960. Alnwick, Northumberland: A Study in Town-Plan Analysis, London: Institute of British Geographers. Hillier, B., 2002. A Theory of the City as Object: or how spatial laws mediate the social construction of urban space. Urban Des Int, 7(3–4), pp.153–179. Hillier, B., 1999. Centrality as a process: accounting for attraction inequalities in deformed grids. Urban Des Int, 4(3–4), pp.107–127. Whitehand, J.W.R., 2001. British urban morphology: the Conzenian tradition. Urban Morphology, 5(2), pp.103–109.


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