scholarly journals The interplay of state, market and society in the socio-spatial transformation of “villages in the city” in Guangzhou

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 325-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanliu Lin ◽  
Bruno De Meulder ◽  
Shifu Wang

This paper examines the changes in the ways in which villagers have gained access to resources and services over time in what are now “villages in the city” within the city of Guangzhou. It compares and contrasts three periods: the clan-based traditional villages, the commune period and the period since the 1980s (which includes great economic success in many villages). It also discusses how migrants fit within this, as they have come to form a very large part of the population in these “villages in the city” but are largely excluded from state provision and from the benefits accruing to “villagership”.

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 10-17
Author(s):  
Suzanne M. Hall

This paper explores the documentation of social and spatial transformation in the Walworth area, South London. Spatial narratives are the entry point for my exploration, where official and ‘unofficial’ representations of history are aligned to capture the nature of urban change. Looking at the city from street level provides a worldly view of social encounter and spaces that are expressive of how citizens experience and shape the city. A more distanced view of the city accessed from official data reveals different constructs. In overlaying near and far views and data and experience, correlations and contestations emerge. As a method of research, the narrative is the potential palimpsest, incorporating fragments of the immediate and historic without representing a comprehensive whole. In this paper Walworth is documented as a local and Inner City context where remnants and insertions are juxtaposed, where white working class culture and diverse ethnicities experience difference and change. A primary aim is to consider the diverse experiences of groups and individuals over time, through their relationship with their street, neighbourhood and city. In relating the Walworth area to London I use three spatial narratives to articulate the contemporary and historic relationship of people to place: the other side examines the physical discrimination between north and south London, the other half looks at distinctions of class and race and other histories explores the histories displaced from official accounts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-170
Author(s):  
François Blanciak

Infrastructure has become a relatively established field of inquiry in architectural academia over the last two decades, insofar as it builds on the rational and generative overtones of the term. However, the contrasting possibility that infrastructure might represent an obstacle for the city and its architecture has often been overlooked. Simultaneously, the idea that the city might be considered as a piece of architecture that can be comprehended, controlled, and eventually designed as a whole (whether from scratch or incrementally), has recently resurfaced, echoing Aldo Rossi's concept of ‘primary elements’. In his seminal book The Architecture of the City, Rossi described the way these elements ‘participate in the evolution of the city over time in a permanent way, often becoming identified with the major artefacts constituting the city’. But, he noted: [p]rimary elements are not only monuments, just as they are not only fixed activities; in a general sense they are those elements capable of accelerating the process of urbanization in a city, and they also characterize the processes of spatial transformation in an area larger than the city.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-455
Author(s):  
Timothy Vilgiate

Abstract During major droughts in 1951–1953 and 1958, families from the rural Northeast of Brazil migrated to Santarém do Pará, a port city on the Lower Amazon. Over time, migrants and their descendants developed a significant presence in commerce and local politics, while retaining a multifaceted and complicated identity rooted in the Northeast. This article considers the formation of North-eastern identity in Santarém through an intergenerational lens, examining the stories about migration told by migrants and their descendants, as well as locals. In the city, narratives about migration from the Northeast and North-eastern identities are shaped in response to local conversations about development, national discourses about regional identity, and by intrafamilial and personal responses to the memory and trauma of drought. For the most part, North-eastern migrants in Santarém have embraced their role in bringing development to the city, seeing their triumph over the circumstances of drought and their economic success in the city as a triumph over the prejudices and disadvantages faced by their ancestors.


Crisis ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hideki Bando ◽  
Fernando Madalena Volpe

Background: In light of the few reports from intertropical latitudes and their conflicting results, we aimed to replicate and update the investigation of seasonal patterns of suicide occurrences in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Methods: Data relating to male and female suicides were extracted from the Mortality Information Enhancement Program (PRO-AIM), the official health statistics of the municipality of São Paulo. Seasonality was assessed by studying distribution of suicides over time using cosinor analyses. Results: There were 6,916 registered suicides (76.7% men), with an average of 39.0 ± 7.0 observed suicides per month. For the total sample and for both sexes, cosinor analysis estimated a significant seasonal pattern. For the total sample and for males suicide peaked in November (late spring) with a trough in May–June (late autumn). For females, the estimated peak occurred in January, and the trough in June–July. Conclusions: A seasonal pattern of suicides was found for both males and females, peaking in spring/summer and dipping in fall/winter. The scarcity of reports from intertropical latitudes warrants promoting more studies in this area.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 953-956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne M Boddy ◽  
Allan F Hackett ◽  
Gareth Stratton

AbstractObjectiveTo estimate the prevalence of underweight between 1998 and 2006 in Liverpool schoolchildren aged 9–10 years using recently published underweight cut-off points.Design and settingStature and body mass data collected at the LiverpoolSportsLinx project’s fitness testing sessions were used to calculate BMI.SubjectsData were available on 26 782 (n13 637 boys, 13 145 girls) participants.ResultsOverall underweight declined in boys from 10·3 % in 1998–1999 to 6·9 % in 2005–2006, and all sub-classifications of underweight declined, in particular grade 3 underweight, with the most recent prevalence being 0·1 %. In girls, the prevalence of underweight declined from 10·8 % in 1998–1999 to 7·5 % in 2005–2006. The prevalence of all grades of underweight was higher in girls than in boys. Underweight showed a fluctuating pattern across all grades over time for boys and girls, and overall prevalence in 2005–2006 represents over 200 children across the city.ConclusionsUnderweight may have reduced slightly from baseline, but remains a substantial problem in Liverpool, with the prevalence of overall underweight being relatively similar to the prevalence of obesity. The present study highlights the requirement for policy makers and funders to consider both ends of the body mass spectrum when fixing priorities in child health.


Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Fragoso-Servón ◽  
Alberto Pereira-Corona

The Mexican Caribbean and its main cities have the highest population growth rate in Mexico. This work goal was to analyze the growth of the city of Chetumal and the geopedological characteristics in which it has been developed, to identify potential hazards and thereby improve development programs. The methodology consisted in the study of geopedological characteristics and the analysis of land use changes in the city over time. The main problems of Chetumal are floods and subsidence. Floods are more common in areas where Gleysols soils are found in low-lying areas. The subsidence is associated to Leptosols with a phreatic mantle at a shallow depth where the precipitations favors dissolution of rock. The extrapolation of the relationships between geopedological conditions and the area occupied by the city, allows us to suppose that areas which the current Urban Development Program proposes for future city expansion will develop the same problems of subsidence and flooding as the areas already built in sites with similar conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Safa H. Ashoub ◽  
Mohamed W. Elkhateeb

This article builds on theoretical foundations from enclave urbanism, authoritarian planning and neoliberal urbanisation to explore contemporary socio-spatial transformation(s) happening in Cairo, Egypt. Relying on a nationwide road development project, inner-city neighbourhoods in Cairo are turning into urban enclaves, whereby populations are being separated by a multiplicity of transport-related infrastructure projects. As these rapid planning processes are occurring, our article aims to explain why these developments are crucial and unique in the context of the post-Arab Spring cities. We argue that the new road infrastructure is creating a spatially and socially fragmented city and transforming the urban citizenry into a controllable and navigable body. We use an inductive approach to investigate the effects of the new road infrastructure and its hegemonic outcomes on the city. On a conceptual level, we propose that the enclaving of the city is a containment method that has erupted since the mass mobilisations of the Arab Spring. In doing so, we use qualitative analysis to explain empirical evidence showing how the city is being transformed into nodes of enclaves, where communities are getting separated from one another via socio-spatial fault lines.


2018 ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Karina Orozco Salinas

ResumenEsta investigación parte de la necesidad de poner el foco en los espacios públicos identitarios, en los cuales la constante congregación espontánea y masiva de la ciudadanía, ha construido un patrimonio cultural inmaterial en ellos, a la hora de celebrar colectivamente en la ciudad. Desde este enfoque, se aborda el caso de la Plaza Baquedano en Santiago de Chile, mediante una metodología propia que contrarresta fuentes secundarias, principalmente periodísticas, con fuentes empíricas. Por lo que seaplican encuestas y entrevistas, con el fin de comprender el fenómeno desde el contexto urbano, social, celebración y patrimonio del lugar. Asimismo, lograr la perspectiva interna y externa del estudio de caso.Los resultados obtenidos confirman la existencia del patrimonio inmaterial y el carácter de identidad, que se ha generado con el paso del tiempo en este espacio público y, tanto la visión interna como la externa, consideran que debería ser catalogado como patrimonio cultural del país. Sin  embargo, esta mención no ha sido otorgada por alguno de los  instrumentos vinculantes en Chile. Por lo cual es una discusión abierta,ya que en la opinión de expertos consultados la complejidad de otorgar una figura de protección inmovilizaría el dinamismo que ha constituido a este lugar como tal.AbstractThis research departs from the need to focus in the public identitary spaces, in which the constant congregation spontaneous and massive of citizenship, has built an intangible cultural heritage in them, when it comes to celebrating collectively in the city. From this approach, is addressed the case of Plaza Baquedano in Santiago de Chile, through our methodology that combine secondary sources, mainly journalistic, with empirical sources. So that, surveys and interviews are applied in order to understand thephenomenon from the urban, social, celebration and heritage context’s.In addition, to achieve internal and external perspective of the case. The results collated confirm the existence of heritage and the identity character, which has been generated over time in this public space and both vision internal and external, consider that it should be cataloged as country’s cultural heritage. However, this mention has not been granted by some of the binding instruments in Chile. Therefore it is an open discussion, since in the opinion of the experts consulted the complexity of granting a protection figure would immobilize the dynamism that has built this place as such.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alicia Lawrie

<p>Whangarei City has a dying Commercial Centre. This has resulted from population shifts that have occurred over time. Significant issues have driven movement of people toward much larger cities (seeking better economic, cultural and social outcomes) and more spacious urban fringes (seeking improved environmental outcomes). The Whangarei CBD incorporates both the dying Commercial Centre and a thriving Town Basin which is the centre for Arts and Recreation within the city. The two areas are a juxtaposition. The investigation reveals reasons why two such contrasting areas exist and defines a design solution that seeks to resolve this and leverages the success of the Town Basin to revive the Commercial Centre. The aim of this thesis is to investigate ways that architecture can be used to invigorate Whangarei’s dying Commercial Centre by creating a place of activity, engagement and informal learning and by re-establishing the important connection Whangarei has with its river as well as other positives within the city.   Thesis objectives:  • Identify the reasons for the decline of the Commercial Centre and the success of the Town Basin and how a connection can be established between the two.  • Establish a beating heart within the dying Commercial Centre and provide a life source in the form of people movement into the centre from all parts of the city.  • Provide dynamic spaces which encourage informal learning, social interaction, playfulness and creativity that will engage the people of Whangarei including youth and children.  • Use the natural environment as a means of engaging people of all ages by weaving together water, a restored ecology and architecture.</p>


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