Women’s mobility,neighbourhood socio-ecologies and homemaking in urban informal settlements

Abstract

The paper contributes to the growing research on relational thinking about housing and home by exploring the informal homes of rural migrants in Khulna city, Bangladesh. The concept of ‘unbounding’ is used to trace the fluidity and connections established between migrant homes and neighbourhood socio-ecologies. Walking interviews exploring women’s livelihoods reveal that different expendable agencies of the urban environment (e.g. trash, weeds and animal excreta) create conditions for labour in which migrant women hold specific competencies to secure essential resources for home. Unbounding positions home within a socio-ecology of multiple houses that women traverse to support their urban living. The approach offers opportunities to examine the unique ways urban homeless populations strategically as well as affectively engage with under-recognized agencies and actors in informal settlements. Unbounding provides a useful lens with which to raise new conceptual and empirical questions about housing and home in relation to the city that contributes to the homes and livelihoods of marginalized populations.     

‘Urban entrepreneurialism’ in the Post-socialist City: Government-led Urban Development Projects in Kazan,Russia

While the dominance of urban entrepreneurialism, governance and competitiveness in Western cities has been well documented, much less is known about the drivers and mechanisms of urban development in the Russian context. This article examines the role of the local state in urban development under the conditions of post-socialist transition in the Russian Federation. The article focuses on the Special Federal Programme for the Preservation and Development of the Kazan Historic Centre (2001–2005). The study challenges the assumption of a key role of partnership between the public and the private sector. Under conditions of post-socialism, the state may have sufficient economic resources and the capacity to govern which may make the role of public–private partnership less relevant. Other findings are as follows: (i) the local authorities play a leading role in entrepreneurialism; (ii) there is a mismatch between the entrepreneurial rhetoric and reality; (iii) while the authorities in Kazan engage in ‘entrepreneurial urbanism’, the similarities with Western cities are superficial or even deceptive, due to the underlying political and economic conditions of Russian cities.     

The ‘Silent’ Closure of Urban Public Space in Cape Town: 1975 to 2004

This study seeks to show that the closure of urban public space by residents in a South African context is not a recent phenomenon and that successful citizen-driven urban public space closures have been a feature of the urban landscape before the rise of gated communities and monitored urban public space. The primary objective of the study was to analyse and investigate spatio-temporal tendencies relating to the citizen-driven privatisation of urban public space in Cape Town. This objective would be driven by the creation of a comprehensive database of provincially gazetted urban land closures dating from 7 February 1975 to 17 December 2004 within one of the six municipal substructure regions of Cape Town. The secondary objective, but by no means less important, is an identification and analysis of the reasons forwarded, practices employed and techniques utilised by individual citizen-driven applications in two distinctly diverse residential suburbs within the study area.

‘The Common Camp’: temporary settlements as a spatio-political instrument in Israel-Palestine

From their emergence in the 19th century to their current global proliferation, camps have been created extensively by and for different populations under the modern state order. Whether employed by national and colonial powers as instruments of control, or constructed ad hoc by displaced populations as makeshift spaces of refuge, camps are used as a versatile instrument for the rearrangement of people in space. In Israel-Palestine, camps are part of the significant geopolitical changes related to the state-building project and to the mass displacement it caused, providing a core example of similar enterprises of territorial alternation and social engineering. While the Palestinian refugee camps are well recognised and studied, many other types of camps which have appeared in the region over the last century together form a distinctive spatial paradigm. Through its particular manifestations in Israel-Palestine, this article examines the camp as a central instrument by which modern societies and territories are administered, negotiated and reorganised. The identification, understanding and re-definition of the camp’s multifaceted spatial vocabulary allows to better understand this encompassing phenomenon which becomes increasingly relevant and urgent in today’s migration age.     

Urban challengers weaving their networks: between the ‘right to housing’ and the ‘right to the city’

Abstract

The article applies a field theory approach to further the analysis of grassroots movements in an urban context. By employing the theoretical framework of Strategic Action Fields merged with the concept of norm entrepreneurs and combined with an idea of networks of challengers, two parallel but different social movement networks in Poland are analyzed. In this comparison the authors discuss differences in strategy and political – discursive – opportunities mobilized within respective fields between the more established housing movement and an emerging Polish urban renewal movement in the light of on-going change in the urban realm. By comparing the networks of challengers in both fields and simultaneously trying to identify the dominant institutional logics within each, we test the usefulness of the Strategic Action Field approach.     

From informal housing to apartment housing: exploring the ‘new social’ in a gecekondu rehousing project,Turkey

This article engages with the question of the ‘new social’ that emerges in the relocation of the poor in slum renewal projects. Drawing upon both Lefebvre’s theorization of abstract space of capital and social space of people, and the neoliberal framework in which the economic dominates the social, the complex relationship between the spatial and the social embedded in political economy is demonstrated. In the Turkish context, the ‘new social’ is situated at the intersection of spatial transformations, housing representations, neoliberalism and Islam. In the housing estate of the case study, the abstract space was challenged by the bottom-up responses of some residents who tried to create their social space rooted in their previous experiences in the gecekondu; it was reacted by other residents who embraced the higher status of apartment living. The void produced by destroying the gecekondu habitus was filled by religious activities and consumption-inspired everyday practices.     

Sizing up ‘the box’ in order to fit in

Participants in design processes make an effort to come up with solutions that will be deemed acceptable, while accomplishing to ‘think out of the box’. Thinking ‘outside the box’ is often announced as a challenge to and for design teams. ‘The box’ is a metaphor often used in creative processes, and in organisational practices, as a term for rules and regulations, everyday routines and tacit knowledge of ‘how things usually are’ and ‘what we know about the world’. Such a challenge is meant to encourage participants to approach a situation with an open mind, challenge the most basic assumptions and be willing to do things differently. Basically, something different is being called for. Studies have shown that it is striking, how much the participants orient to actually ‘fit’ the box, even when asked to develop it. This paper shows how participants in design processes are ‘sizing up the box’, while participating in meetings or workshops in order to develop a design. They identify key stakeholders of the designated design project; they share their own expectations of these key stakeholders' possible perceptions, discuss the success criteria and negotiate the values that are to govern the design team in the development process.     

How to Implement Urban Design in China?

With the focus on urban design projects for key urban areas, this paper reviews the evolution and practice of urban design in the United States, and analyzes two different development paths of urban design in China. By comparing specific urban design projects, it expounds similarities and differences between detailed control planning and urban design, hence putting forward recommendations for urban design implementation in terms of statutory status, implementation rules, and team building. The paper intends to clarify the stratified relationship between urban and rural planning and urban design, so as to avoid needless repetition and overlap of design, thereby enhancing the healthy development of the urban design discipline in China.     

Where is the ‘Social’ in Constructions of ‘Liveability’? Exploring Community,Social Interaction and Social Cohesion in Changing Urban Environments

Ongoing changes in the urban environment have renewed interest in the transformation of cities and suburbs as liveable places. This article examines the limitations inherent in a functional (objective) notion of liveability that commonly underpins government policy directions. Through an examination of key debates in the literature we consider how the delivery of the social (subjective) dimension of liveability, linked to community, social interaction and social cohesion, poses unique challenges for policy makers, urban planners and developers. We argue for a deeper understanding of the social constructs of liveability that acknowledges the complexity of changing urban environments in contemporary society.     

‘A Fantasy to Get Employment Around the Area’: Long Commutes and Resident Health in an Outer Urban Master-Planned Estate

The Selandra Rise master-planned estate (MPE) in Melbourne’s south-east growth corridor was designed to create a “healthy and engaged community” through the provision of parks, physical activity opportunities and community facilities. A 5 year longitudinal study researched the impact on residents. Over one third of residents spent 2 to 3 h per day commuting and high levels of dissatisfaction with commutes were found. Longer commute times were associated with poor physical activity and weight outcomes. The paper concludes that provisions for health and wellbeing within an MPE are insufficient when opportunities for local employment are limited and broader locational, connectivity and transport disadvantages are not addressed.     

‘Dig In’ to Social Capital: Community Gardens as Mechanisms for Growing Urban Social Connectedness

This article reports on research undertaken with members of a Melbourne urban community garden to explore the extent to which such a natural amenity provides opportunities for enhancing social capital. It is apparent even from this small qualitative study that membership of ‘Dig In’ community garden offers many benefits to its members. These benefits include increased social cohesion (the sharing of values enabling identification of common aims and the sharing of codes of behaviour governing relationships), social support (having people to turn to in times of crisis) and social connections (the development of social bonds and networks). However, the study indicates that, at least in the early stages of development, such benefits do not necessarily extend beyond the garden setting. This raises a question about the time required to develop high levels of social capital, and points to the need for further research into ‘time’ and ‘space’ aspects of community gardens.     

Urban Planning and the Delimitation of Diversity: Roma as ‘In Place’ and ‘Out of Place’ in Jungbusch,Mannheim

Planning theory is increasingly concerned with how urban planning is engaged in the management of cultural difference and diversity. But there is a need to consider the conditions by which difference is ‘allowed’ in processes of planning and urban development. This paper explores the conditions under which the Roma is admitted into the image of Jungbusch, Mannheim, as a ‘diverse’ neighbourhood, and thereby into the category of diversity in the local discourse of planning. We argue that cultural differences are allowed in the category of diversity to the degree that they contribute to the economic and normative aims of managed diversity.     

Urbanizing villages: informal morphologies in Shenzhen’s urban periphery

The phenomenon of urban villages in China has received much scholarly attention in recent years, mostly about their socio-economic aspects and its role in accommodating rural migrants. While the link between the socio-economic functioning and the morphology of urban villages has been recognized, detailed spatial research, and morphological research in particular, is limited. Morphological research has generally focused on either rural villages or centrally located urban villages and much of the peri-urbanity that constitutes the majority of informal development in China remains under-researched. This paper explores the morphologies of urbanizing villages in Shenzhen’s urban periphery, with a particular focus on the distinctions between the old village core and newly built expansions. The paper opens up a series of questions about the morphology and morphogenetic processes of these villages and establishes a framework for future enquiry. How do we understand the informalized planning mechanisms in urban villages? How do we explain the morphological variation of urban villages? Are the processes that characterize urban villages restricted to the Chinese context or is there scope for regional comparison?     

Muscular strain in ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ building work

In this Finnish study, the causes and frequency of musculoskeletal strain among concrete reinforcement workers and painters on house maintenance are analysed from observations at 30s intervals, from accident report forms and from interviews about unreported minor accidents. Various measures are then suggested to prevent the problems revealed, including careful work planning and site layout, and care over means of access to the work point.