Dancing Youth

Breaking, popping, locking, waacking, and hip-hop dance are practiced widely in contemporary Vietnam. Considering the dance practices in the larger context of post-socialist transformation, urban restructuring, and changing gender relations, Sandra Kurfürst examines youth's aspirations and desires embodied in dance. Drawing on a rich and diverse range of qualitative data, including interviews, sensory and digital ethnography, she shows how dancers confront social and gender norms while following their passion. As a contribution to area and global studies, the book illuminates the translocal spatialities of hip hop, produced through the circulation of objects and the movement of people.

Post-development Practices of Public Space, Between Cohabitation and "Domination" of New Atmospheres

Public space becomes a major issue during urban restructuring. To better understand this specificity, we chose the Rabat’s dock developed as part of the Bouregreg valley development project, as a case study. This space, with its background, has been subjected to a profound restructuring as part of the project. The study of the social uses and practices of citizens through their manifestations in this space makes it possible to identify the evolution of the relationship between the transformation of spatial structures and the production of landscapes representative of the image of the urban area. The transformations brought by this mega-project in our study area show new urbanities. In front of a tendency to micro-appropriation by the upper social classes and the tendency to a smoothed and polished urbanity, is found a more diverse and more complex urbanity which oscillates between a consensual social sharing of public (physical) space and / or maintaining old practices.

Temporary urbanism: a situated approach

Over the past decade, temporary urbanism has emerged as an imaginary and a practice. This chapter introduces the importance of a critical and grounded approach to the phenomenon and outlines the key themes discussed in the monograph. It argues that the roots of temporary urbanism lie in established Western cultural tropes depicting vacancy and temporariness as urban social and spatial alterity. Linking its establishment to dynamics of austerity policymaking and urban restructuring, it contends that temporary urbanism has become a key imaginary in a recurrent urban crisis landscape geared towards greater life and place insecurity. The need for a situated and longitudinal approach undergirds the rationale behind a semi-ethnographic focus on the glamorisation of austerity culture in post-2008 London.

Painting over precarity: Community public art and the optics of dispossession, gentrification and governance in West Oakland, CA

Large-scale arts-led urban regeneration strategies are typically distinguished from the grassroots authenticity of community art projects, but this article examines how the trope of community facilitates gentrification in Oakland, California. Community murals of the 1960s to 1990s played a critical social role by making visible minority concerns and galvanizing movements for social justice, but questions emerge about contemporary community art in relation to neoliberal values and urban precarity. The Black neighbourhood of West Oakland has been resistant to gentrification due to decades of disinvestment and through robust activism against displacement in one of the most progressive cities in the United States. Based on longitudinal ethnographic research and situated visual analysis, I show how neighbourhood resistance was only overcome when change appeared to come from the ‘community’ itself, through the specific imagery and spatiality of community mural projects that resignify the neighbourhood to accommodate gentrification. I critique gentrification as a dualistic insider and outsider dynamic; such structural analysis elides ‘community’ as a contested category that may be complicit with urban restructuring. Real-estate interests also appropriate signifiers of ‘community’ to reshape neighbourhood identity, valorize property, and police public space. I argue that in West Oakland the ‘community mural’ is vertically integrated in municipal and capital logics that serve to dis-embed, rather than support, historic neighbourhood populations.

The well-being of residents in an urban environment: the case of a Russian megapolis

The issue of ensuring the well-being of residents is central to systems of municipal governance. The purpose of our study is to measure the well-being of residents in an urban environment and, based on the obtained results, to identify problem areas that impede the achievement of strategic development goals in the megapolis. We conducted a representative survey of residents in one of the largest industrialized Russian megacities, Ekaterinburg. Based on the survey data, an index of subjective well-being in the urban environment was obtained, which included 4 blocks of assessment indicators: 1) assessment of the current state of the urban environment; 2) assessment of the changes in the urban environment; 3) assessment of personal well-being; and 4) assessment of intentions to live in the city. The study revealed that the most prosperous citizens in the urban environment are: 30-39 years old; married; employed. The problems of low well-being and the absence of youth intent to connect their futures with the city are identified as the main threats to the megapolis’ development. The results of our study are of practical importance for making informed management decisions in urban restructuring planning, urban infrastructure upgrades, and the development of social policy measures aimed at improving the quality of life and well-being of citizens.

From Metropolitanization to Megaregionalization: Intentionality in the Urban Restructuring of Java’s North Coast, Indonesia

This paper examines the intentionality behind the emergence of megaregion in Indonesia’s reinvented developmentalist state tradition. Illustrated by the case of Java, this paper explores the role of regional planning in facilitating megaregion emergence. It reveals that sectoral and ad hoc national planning policies, although not intentionally aimed to guide spatial development, implicitly promote the emergence of this megaregion. This is particularly registered in the construction of megaprojects aimed at increasing regional competitiveness through the improvement of interregional connectivity and facilitating exurbanization through the building of in-between cities.