scholarly journals The Interplay between Urban Densification and Place Change in Tehran; Implications for Place-Based Social Sustainability

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9636
Author(s):  
Vafa Dianati

Recent scholarship on urban social sustainability has redirected its attention to the role of place-based theories and practices in achieving and sustaining social outcomes. The notion of place and its centrality in everyday life of urban citizens could be used as an anchor point to study urbanisation processes and rapid urban changes. This paper employs a place-based framework of urban social sustainability in parallel to a framework of ‘place transformation’ to examine the consequences of soft densification on place attachment at the neighbourhood level in Tehran, Iran. Through analysing sixteen semi-structured interviews with residents, this paper argues that the temporal element of soft densification makes it a place undermining process, eradicating individual and collective place memory through resetting the time of the place. Moreover, the findings highlighted parallel trajectories in the meanings associated to place by residents which underscore the contradiction between ‘lived space’ and ‘conceived space’. Furthermore, it was found that loss of place attachment due to urban densification commonly leads to passive modes of response such changing lifestyle and daily routines, and voluntary relocating to adapt to the new socio-spatial order.

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vibeke Thøis Madsen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges associated with introducing internal social media (ISM) into organizations in order to help them reap the benefits of coworker communication on ISM. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on an exploratory study in ten organizations. The data were collected in semi-structured interviews with ISM coordinators in Spring 2014. Findings According to the ISM coordinators, four challenges were associated with introducing ISM: coworkers could perceive communication on ISM as not work related; coworkers might not understand the informal nature of communication on ISM, and self-censorship might stop them communicating on ISM; ISM was not considered a “natural” part of the daily routines in the organizations; and top managers mainly supported ISM in words, not in action. Research limitations/implications The study is based on the perceptions of ISM coordinators. Further research is called for to explore both coworker perceptions and actual communication on ISM. Practical implications Practitioners introducing ISM should be aware of these four challenges, and should help coworkers to make sense of communication on ISM as work-related communication among coworkers. ISM coordinators’ perceptions of their own role in relation to coworker communication on ISM make a difference. Originality/value The study provides insights into the key challenges associated with introducing ISM, as well as the role of ISM coordinators as community facilitators and sense-givers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
Gang Hong

This paper examines the complex interaction between island histories and island geographies by presenting a case study of Dongzhou Island, Hengyang, China, contextualized through several critical island events. Employing a wide range of methods including archival research, textual and media analysis, field and map observations, semi-structured interviews, and informal interaction, the research is broadly framed in the problematic of geographical memory consisting of hard island memory, soft island memory, and lived island memory. Particular attention is paid to the construction of Dongzhou Island’s cultural trauma based on three difficult island histories: mass killing, radical planning, and uneven development. Findings indicate that these memories coexist on or about the island, in virtual isolation from each other. It is argued that while hard memory constructs the island as a petrified landmark, soft memories murmur about the forgotten or obscured pains of a small island that bears witness to the violence of war and progress. The theoretical and practical implications regarding the role of place memory in rejuvenating local cultures are also proposed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingjing Wang ◽  
Karim Hadjri ◽  
Junjie Huang

This paper explored the role of cohousing model in the UK and discussed the benefits and limitations of cohousing model by exploring cohousing residents’ motivation and daily living. Through case studies in the UK, semi-structured interviews were carried out to establish the environmental and social sustainability in cohousing and understand residents thinking and behaviour. This study found that cohousing can benefit various age groups, and promote residents’ thinking and behaviour change towards sustainable living. The study also found that the financial limitation and new members recruitment are the top two difficulties in cohousing development. The findings of this research will establish a better understanding of UK cohousing and highlight the potentials and possibilities of cohousing communities.


Author(s):  
Elisabetta Risi ◽  
Riccardo Pronzato

This paper focuses on how remote workers experienced their job and everyday life during the Italian lockdown imposed by the national government to contain the spread of COVID-19. Specifically, this contribution focuses on the interdependence of work and everyday life, and the role of digital devices and online platforms during the home-confinement period, and it explores the consequences of social distancing measures on remote workers and on their working and personal conditions. The study draws from 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with remote workers, i.e., individuals which could work from home through digital technologies during the national lockdown. Results highlight that during the lockdown, some participants attempted to cope with the unprecedented triumph of technologically mediated work, others described remote work as liberating and attractive, as it avoids commuting and allow people to organize their activities autonomously, without constraints of space and time. However, their initial enthusiasm decreased after a few weeks of domestic confinement. The experience of remote workers that emerges is a “fractured” one, which appears as a characteristic feature of forced and continuous remote work. Indeed, the coronavirus crisis has accentuated the infrastructural role of digital platforms and intensified the ‘deep mediatization’ of social life and labour, thereby normalizing transmedia work and the ‘extension of already media saturated working conditions’.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110003
Author(s):  
Pablo J Boczkowski ◽  
Facundo Suenzo ◽  
Eugenia Mitchelstein ◽  
Neta Kligler-Vilenchik ◽  
Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt ◽  
...  

How and why do people still get print newspapers in an era dominated by mobile and social media communication? In this article, we answer this question about the permanence of traditional media in a digital media ecosystem by analyzing 488 semi-structured interviews conducted in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States. We focus on three mechanisms of media reception: access, sociality, and ritualization. Our findings show that these mechanisms are decisively shaped by patterns of everyday life that are not captured by the scholarly foci on either content- or technology-influences on media use. Thus, we argue that a non-media centric approach improves descriptive fit and adds heuristic power by bringing a wider lens into crucial mechanisms of media reception in ways that expand the conceptual toolkit that scholars can utilize to analyze the role of media in everyday life.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 255
Author(s):  
Jingjing Wang ◽  
Karim Hadjri

This paper explored the role of cohousing model in the UK and discussed the benefits and limitations of cohousing model by exploring cohousing residents’ motivation and daily living. Through case studies in the UK, semi-structured interviews were carried out to establish the environmental and social sustainability in cohousing and understand residents thinking and behaviour. This study found that cohousing can benefit various age groups, and promote residents’ thinking and behaviour change towards sustainable living. The study also found that the financial limitation and new members recruitment are the top two difficulties in cohousing development. The findings of this research will establish a better understanding of UK cohousing and highlight the potentials and possibilities of cohousing communities.


Author(s):  
Brit Lynnebakke

Abstract This article discusses two relatively underexplored topics in international migration research: place attachment processes and staying intentions in the new place of residence. The analysis is based on findings from semi-structured interviews with internal and international labour migrants in two rural Norwegian municipalities. In a study that primarily focused on migrants’ local social inclusion and belonging processes, several migrants on their own initiative brought up and elaborated on the importance of local material aspects (nature, climate, and localisation) and lifestyle options for their local contentment and staying aspirations. The interviewee accounts suggest that numerous factors can influence staying intentions, including social ties, work/career opportunities, local materiality, and lifestyle opportunities. By focusing on processes of place attachment, the findings bring to light some of the mechanisms that may lay behind the common proposition within international migration research that length of residence makes return less likely. The findings on these processes highlight how local contentment—and by extension staying aspirations—can change over time, thereby connecting the usually separated fields of migration and post-migration processes. Moreover, the findings show how local place attachment may also influence international migrants’ aspirations/decisions of internal migration within the new country of residence. Finally, the centrality of lifestyle for staying aspirations and place attachment in these labour migrants’ accounts underline a call by lifestyle migration researchers for increased attention to the role of lifestyle in all kinds of migration. The article’s conclusion notes the findings’ relevance also for urban settings.


Author(s):  
Cecilia Zsögön

This paper reports on the ongoing impact of Covid-19 pandemic in daily life in Argentina, highlighting the initial consequences of the quarantine established on March 20th in an attempt to control the outbreak. We focus on the perception of the role of political authorities, the media and the impact on habits in everyday life, which are being re-shaped in this new context. Online interviews were conducted in different cities of the North, Center and South of Argentina, including the capital, Buenos Aires. This is an exploratory analysis of an ongoing public health event whose consequences are presently far from clear, but its current contours have forced people to modify their daily routines, if not their lives. We highlight extreme reactions, ranging from “indifference” to “panic” or “selfishness” with “solidarity” emerging as the desirable and adequate response to the situation of “mandatory social isolation” or quarantine. Amid the uncertainty regarding the present and the future, novel contours emerge that account for the specificity of a South American country marked by recurrent economic and social crises throughout almost its entire history. Argentina was already struggling with financial difficulties, rising poverty and a fragile labour market characterized by high rates of unemployment and informality. This already delicate scenario was worsened by the sudden irruption of the first cases of Covid-19.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-266
Author(s):  
Anthony Killick

It is now widely argued that arts and cultural activities play a significant role in maintaining health and well-being, particularly in later life. At the same time, there are mutual benefits gained by older and younger people who participate in what scholars and cultural practitioners are beginning to call ‘intergenerational shared space’. Drawing on semi-structured interviews carried out with members and organizers of the Ages and Stages theatre group in Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom, this article examines the role of community theatre as an arts practice that facilitates intergenerational relationships. The findings point to a need for a deeper integration of arts and cultural practice, intergenerational practice and urban regeneration schemes.


2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly Hom ◽  
Jonathan Haidt
Keyword(s):  

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