Reclaiming the City as Commons. Learning from Latin American Housing Movements

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-153
Author(s):  
Stavros Stavrides
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Housing Conditions ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
City Life ◽  
Urban Condition ◽  
Collective Creativity ◽  
Urban Movements ◽  
The City

This paper explores a renewed problematization of contemporary metropolises' dynamics in the light of speci fic efforts to reclaim the city as commons. Building on Lefebvre's theorizations of the city's virtuality and comparing it to contemporary approaches to the urban condition that emphasize the potentialities of contemporary city-life, it suggests that urban commoning is unleashing the power of collective creativity and collaboration. Struggles to appropriate the city as a crucial milieu for sharing transforms parts of city and produces new patterns of urban living. Examples from Latin American urban movements focused on establishing emancipatory housing conditions are used to illustrate the transformative capabilities of urban commoning.

scholarly journals Urban Living Labs, Circular Economy and Nature-Based Solutions: Ideation and Testing of a New Soil in the City of Turin Using a Multi-stakeholder Perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grazia Sveva Ascione ◽  
Federico Cuomo ◽  
Nicole Mariotti ◽  
Laura Corazza
Keyword(s):  
Circular Economy ◽  
Stakeholder Management ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Green Roofs ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
Urban Living ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Living Labs ◽  
Multi Stakeholder ◽  
The City

AbstractIn the attempt to foster circular economy (CE), cities are increasingly adopting urban living labs (ULLs) as sites of co-production aimed at testing alternative solutions based on the reuse of products, reduction of consumption and recycling of materials. Taking this perspective, our study adopts an exploratory research design to discover the pragmatic implications emerging from a case study. The City of Turin joined proGIreg, a European project that entails the regeneration of former industrial districts by means of nature-based solutions (NBS). Ranging from aquaponics to green roofs, seven NBS have been experimented in Turin, which rely on the use of natural systems to tackle social, economic and environmental challenges efficiently and sustainably. Among them, the most promising is related to the production and test of the ‘new soil’, a blend obtained by mixing earth materials coming from construction sites with compost, zeolites and mycorrhizae. The case herein presented is interesting to analyse for the multi-stakeholder management setting used, where public institutions, private companies, research institutions, citizens and associations collaborated in the co-creation and testing phase of the NBS. Consequently, the data collected through participant observation and direct interviews allow researchers to describe multi-stakeholders’ dynamics and how they work. Thus, this paper narrates a micro-contextual experience while providing a critique. Results include an analysis of the unique combination of different stakeholders, which strongly impacted on the management and the effectiveness of the entire project. By consequence, the paper offers both theoretical contributions to the relational branch of stakeholder theory and practical evidence in demonstrating the importance of the relational branch of the theory over a more traditional transactional view.

scholarly journals New Mobility Paradigm and Indigenous Construction of Places: Physical and Symbolic Mobility of Aymara Groups in the Urbanization Process, Chile

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4382
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Salazar ◽  
Paloma González
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Physical Movement ◽  
Rural Municipality ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Geographical Elements ◽  
Construction Of Place ◽  
The City

In the current global scenario, in which mobility has been strongly impacted, it is relevant to highlight certain mobility experiences of Indigenous Latin American peoples, in which new cultural and geographical elements justify revisiting this phenomenon. In this context, the mobility of the Aymara ethnic group offers an opportunity for such a second look. Although the subject has been approached from the perspectives of internal migration processes and physical movement, as in other Latin American cases, studies have omitted some important aspects for its analysis, such as the practices, meanings, and political implications associated with mobility. Based on the new mobility paradigm, this article seeks to strengthen the perspective on mobility by researching rural-urban mobility practices and their meaning regarding the experiences of Aymara people who migrated from the rural municipality of Putre to settle in the city of Arica from the 1950s. At the same time, it is shown that these Aymara mobility practices imply spatiotemporal dynamics that are key for the construction of place, and allow for a widening of base elements that should be considered in the new mobility paradigm. This research is based on five years of ethnography, including mobile accompaniment and semi-structured interviews. This methodological approach has allowed researchers to explore how elements related to physical and symbolic mobility have constantly constructed relational spaces within the Arica and Parinacota region over time. This shows that mobility does not only refer to physical movement, but to politics, emotions, culture, and memory as well. From these results, the article examines and discusses key elements related to physical and symbolic mobility, and their implications in political and intercultural terms.

‘Seeing like a city’, or ‘seeing like a state’ in a city? Paris, capital of femonationalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110025
Author(s):  
Claire Hancock
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Urban Politics ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Local Democracy ◽  
Municipal Policy ◽  
City Life ◽  
Women In Decision Making ◽  
The City

This paper questions the ‘seeing like a city’ vs. ‘seeing like a state’ opposition through a detailed discussion of urban politics in the city of Paris, France, a prime example of the ways in which the national remains a driving dimension of city life. This claim is examined by a consideration of the shortcomings of Paris’s recent and timid commitment local democracy, lacking recognition of the diversity of its citizens, and the ways in which the inclusion of more women in decision-making arenas has failed to advance the ‘feminization of politics’. A common factor in these defining features of the Hidalgo administration seems to be the prevalence of ‘femonationalism’ and its influence over municipal policy-making.

scholarly journals A Proposed Framework for Identification of Indicators to Model High-Frequency Cities

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 317
Author(s):  
Ahmad M. Senousi ◽  
Junwei Zhang ◽  
Wenzhong Shi ◽  
Xintao Liu
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Highway Design ◽  
City Life ◽  
Cultural Affiliation ◽  
Internal Mobility ◽  
The City

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.

Latin American Cities: Aspects of Function and Structure

1962 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Morse
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
New World ◽  
American City ◽  
American Cities ◽  
The City

This essay will advance two interrelated hypotheses about the Latin American city. The first of them has to do with the role of the city in the settlement of the New World. The second suggests certain characteristics of the modern Latin American metropolis.

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