Street vending in urban ‘informal’ markets: Reflections from case-studies of street vendors in Delhi (India) and Phnom Penh City (Cambodia)

The increasing dependence on street vending as a source of livelihood for people across urban spaces in countries like Cambodia and India continues to promote exciting areas of research in social sciences. Our study captures the narratives of street vendors (seen as the ‘invisible’ entrepreneurs), working in markets across Delhi (India) and Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and analyzes the inventory logistics of products sold by them, thereby, reflecting the complex nature of an inter-twined, existential relationship between what's classified as ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ in urban economies. The mutual interdependence seen in the governing dynamics of economic exchange (for example, in selling commodities and services across identified markets in Phnom Penh and Delhi), argues for a need to inclusively study urban ecosystems while addressing the needs of street vendors. This paper does so by incorporating ethnographic methods with a specific reference to street vending (as a commercial urban activity). Further, we emphasize on an epistemic need to cross-fertilize thought(s) and method(s) across social science disciplines to produce more of such urban narratives, exploring the inter-twined relationship between the ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ aspects of urban ecosystems.     

Contesting green technology in the city: techno-apartheid or equitable modernisation?

In recent decades, heated debate around green technology and its equitable access has aroused the concern of international scholars. This paper provides a review on the exclusion of green technology referred to as ‘green techno-apartheid’ and examines selected key eco-cities (i.e. Masdar, Songdo IBD and Bangalore) considered in the 2013 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report on ‘City-Level Decoupling’ (2013). Metropolitan planning is a crucial instrument in addressing the challenges of urban social sustainability and is thus considered an important mechanism for developing a platform to approach issues of equitable access to green technology. The study reviews five metropolitan plans: the ‘London Plan’ (London, England), the ‘Municipal Plan 2011 for Greater Copenhagen’ (Copenhagen, Denmark), the ‘Economically Strong and Sustainable Structural Vision: Amsterdam 2040’ (Amsterdam, Netherlands), the ‘Hong Kong 2030: Planning Vision and Strategy’ (Hong Kong, China) and the ‘Metropolitan Plan for Sydney 2036’ (Sydney, Australia). The results of the study suggest that while all these plans focus on promoting green technology within a framework of ecological modernisation, they lack appropriate tools for achieving equitable modernisation and enhancing social equity. Consequently, it is essential that researchers and planners take further steps and develop effective instruments to improve equitable access to green technologies and achieve long-term urban social sustainability.     

Coal,community, town planning and the management of labour: South Wales,c.1900–1920

The current drive to promote high densities in the planning and construction of new communities should not be allowed to obscure the success of low-density new towns. Both Reston in Northern Virginia, and Milton Keynes, in the county of Buckinghamshire, England, planned during the 1960s, have become popular with their residents: they now live in new towns recognized for their overall low densities and suburban ethos. Yet the original planners of these towns had markedly ‘urban’ intentions in mind. They aimed for compact living clusters within a tamed countryside of parks and open spaces. Local employment parks would also obviate the need for large-scale commuting. These intentions, however, were not fully implemented. This was most clearly evident in relation to housing. The original planners had preferred a vision predominantly characterized by late-modern urban housing styles. However, popular tastes within the housing market led the subsequent managers of Reston and Milton Keynes to more fully embrace traditional-vernacular models of suburban domestic architecture. These styles complemented the wider countrified setting of the new towns. The following discussion demonstrates the gentle paradox that Reston and Milton Keynes, planned as alternatives to suburban sprawl, became rationalized and attractive suburban entities. The comparative approach within the article also proves the undoubted popularity of suburban living in both England and the USA.     

‘The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore’: representations of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England

Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England – one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ document) – represent the difference between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ and how they use these representations to justify and naturalize their arguments. Utilizing interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant ‘rural idyll’ is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class, and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the ‘urban sphere’ as an unnatural, ugly, modern, and socially fragmented dystopia. ‘Urban’ areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive ‘Other’ to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as ‘out of place’ within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that ‘development’ is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.     

Implementing urban renaissance—problems,possibilities and plans in South East England

This paper explores the concept of urban renaissance and how it applies to the South East of England, the region where pressure for new housing development is at its most extreme and the responses of the planning process in the past have been at their most conservative. The paper initially explores the notion of urban renaissance and its probable alternative—urban malaise. This analysis is contextualised through a review of national policy on planning and sustainability, before the concept is pulled apart and a range of its key constituent dimensions reviewed. This wide-ranging policy and research review subsequently forms the basis for an analysis of South East planning policy in the second half of the paper.Initially the problems and pressures in the South East are explored before a review of the developing regional planning guidance examines how these concerns are being addressed. The key empirical work next reviews development plans from across the region as a means to gauge the extent to which the planning process is already addressing the urban renaissance agenda, and to assess the evolving nature of policy. A final chapter presents the key findings and looks to the future, discussing the role of the development plan in delivering an urban renaissance in the region and offering an agenda to take practice forward. The argument is made that the planning process provides potentially the central focus around which contributions to implementing an urban renaissance may converge. In this role the development plan can have a central co-ordinating and visionary function, although as yet examples of this potential are few and far between.     

State-led Urban Regeneration in Istanbul: Power Struggles between Interest Groups and Poor Communities

From the early 2000s, urban policy-makers in Turkey have promoted ‘urban regeneration’ as the main tool to transform low-income housing areas, along with former industrial estates, disused port facilities and so on, into modern living, working, shopping and entertainment areas. The intention has been to boost land and property values by transforming both the physical appearance and the sociocultural and class composition of selected sites. But while the impact, the rationale and the outcomes of urban regeneration in Turkey are broadly similar to those reported in the substantial global literature on ‘urban regeneration’, a case-study approach shows that a number of crucial context-specific factors have shaped the assumption and responses of key players and collective actors. These in turn have determined how ‘regeneration policies’ are finally translated into practice. This article illustrates this point by describing a particular recent case study in Istanbul: the Tozkoparan Regeneration Project.     

Looking back to see the future: building nuclear power plants in Europe

The so-called ‘nuclear renaissance’ in Europe is promulgated by the execution of two large engineering projects involving the construction of two European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) in Flamanville, France and Olkiluoto in Finland. As both projects have faced budget overruns and delays, this paper analyses their governance and history to derive lessons useful for the construction of future projects. Analysis indicates that the reasons for these poor outcomes are: overoptimistic estimations, first-of-a-kind (FOAK) issues and undervaluation of regulation requirements. These pitfalls have the potential to impact on many other engineering construction projects and highlight fruitful areas of further research into project performance.     

Place and Special Places: Innovations in Conservation Practice in Northern Ireland

The ‘sense of place’ that relates human beings to their environment is under threat from the rising tide of ‘placelessness’ which can result from potentially positive forces such as urban regeneration as well as negative ones such as incremental degradation. The concept of ‘sense of place’, and the need to protect and enhance ‘special places’, has underpinned UK conservation legislation and policy in the post-war era. In Northern Ireland, due to its distinctive settlement tradition, its troubled political circumstances and its centralised administrative system, a unique hierarchy of ‘special places’ has evolved, involving ‘areas of townscape and village character’ as well as conventional ‘conservation areas’. For the first time a comprehensive comparative survey of the townscape quality of most of these areas has been carried out in order to test the hypothesis that too many conservation area designations may ‘devalue the conservation coinage’. It also assesses the contribution that ‘areas of townscape character’ can make in this situation, as potential conservation areas or as second-level local amenity designations. Its findings support the initial hypothesis: assessment of townscape quality on the basis of consistent criteria demonstrates a decline in the quality of more recent conservation area designations, and hence some ‘devaluation of the coinage’. However, the need for local discretion in the protection of local amenity supports the concept of ‘areas of townscape and village character’ as an additional and distinct designation. This contradicts recent policy recommendations from the Northern Ireland Planning Commission and contains valuable lessons for conservation policy and practice in other parts of the UK.     

城市设计中的文化复兴理念

文章“实现中华民族伟大复兴”为线索，讨论了城市复兴如何以城市文化为价值坐标，强调文化复兴与城市复兴之间的联系，并借鉴欧美城市复兴的成功经验，讨论中国未来30年城市复兴的策略和方法，并提出具体建议.     

Housing affordability in the Netherlands: the impact of rent and energy costs

Energy costs have been rising as well as rents, both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, leading to situations commonly described as ‘housing poverty’ and ‘fuel or energy poverty’. A dwelling may be unaffordable on at least two counts: rents or energy costs that are ‘too high’ in relation to income (excluding cases of ‘too low’ income). This paper measures comprehensively for the first time housing affordability of tenants in the Netherlands with respect to rent and fuel in order to gain insight in the ways this ongoing budgetary commitment can be calculated. Starting point is the expenditure-to-income ratio, which is usually used in the Netherlands to represent the affordability of housing consumption. For 2012 its components—incomes, rents and fuel costs—are separated out. The absence of a socially acceptable benchmark for ‘affordable’ versus ‘unaffordable’ housing and the fact that lower-income households pay relatively more on rent and energy than those with a higher income (Engel’s Law) call for an alternative method to measure affordability. The residual income approach is shown to be useful in identifying households with housing and energy affordability problems, once social norms have been established for the relationship between income, rent and energy expenses. It is concluded that even energy expenses by themselves can push households over the affordability threshold, in the situation where rents are considered as affordable.     

Application

The shape of the rooms, the behaviour of the ceiling to the angle of sound, the number of people accommodated in a given space—all these factors are discussed by the author in relation to measurements taken in offices in Europe and Scandinavia. The generic term ‘open-plan’ is used to describe the offices, since not everyone agrees on what consititutes a truly landscaped office. The author is a consultant with the Acoustic Advice Bureau, IR.VMA Peutz BV, of the Netherlands.     

Restorative wildscapes at work: an investigation of the wellbeing benefits of greenspace at urban fringe business sites using ‘go-along’ interviews

Abstract

The potential well-being benefits associated with the use of privately owned greenspaces in working environments have received little research attention. Given the growing evidence on the restorative benefits of urban greenspace, and the fact that many people spend most of their daily hours at the workplace, the question of whether physical access to green environments from workplaces can promote well-being is a pertinent one. Person–environment relationships in peri-urban business sites were investigated in a series of semi-structured ‘go-along’ interviews with employees at Scottish science parks. Workers described a range of well-being benefits from outdoor breaks and associated these with qualities of the environment. Semi-natural and informally landscaped areas were most strongly associated with restoration during the working day. The implications of the findings for the planning and design of business sites at the urban fringe are explored.     

英格兰乡村规划与保护

回顾英格兰乡村发展历程,在讨论“城”“乡”差别的基础上,明确了政府对乡村的定义。依据英格兰乡村产业模式、人口组成、环境土地等统计数据,讨论乡村在英格兰国家发展战略中的地位。在讨论英格兰乡村规划体系的基础上,理顺乡村景观和环境保护区以及相应法律文件和保护目的。讨论乡村保护主管部门变迁脉络以及各类乡村保护民间或专业组织。最后小结讨论英格兰乡村发展面临的挑战以及政府将如何应对。     

Spatial variations in US poverty: beyond metropolitan and non-metropolitan

Because poverty in rural and urban areas of the US often has different causes, correlates and solutions, effective anti-poverty policies depend on a thorough understanding of the ruralness or urbanness of specific places. This paper compares several widely used classification schemes and the varying magnitudes of poverty that they reveal in the US. The commonly used ‘metropolitan/non-metropolitan’ distinction obscures important socioeconomic differences among metropolitan areas, making our understanding of the geography of poverty imprecise. Given the number and concentration of poor people living in mixed-rural and rural counties in metropolitan regions, researchers and policy-makers need to pay more nuanced attention to the opportunities and constraints such individuals face. A cross-classification of the Office of Management and Budget’s metro system with a nuanced RUDC scheme is the most effective for revealing the geographical complexities of poverty within metropolitan areas.     

International comparison of the changing dynamics of governance approaches to land development and their results for public value capture

A difference exists between public and private governance approaches to land development, also called ‘active’ and ‘passive’ approaches. These approaches change over time and interact with institutional, financial and environmental factors. This article evaluates how these factors influence governance approaches and compares the results of different approaches by analysing how they capture the economic value increase that accrues from urban development and how this affects the governances' intrinsic rationales. After categorising value capture tools, this article investigates the embedment and functioning of these tools into three different governance approaches in three different countries (England, Spain, and the Netherlands), ordered from more passive to more active approach: developer obligations in private land development and in land readjustment, and public land acquisition and development in public governance approaches. The studied cases suggest a general trend towards passive approaches and a sharpening and regularisation of the public value capture instruments embedded in them.     

Environment and regeneration in the Czech Republic

This article addresses the issue of environmental regeneration in the Czech Republic with special emphasis on Northern Bohemia; reference is also made to parallels in former East Germany and in Poland. In much of Eastern and Central Europe there are gross environmental problems which have created tensions for the emergent politics of the region and for the capacities of local planning systems. The ‘environmental deficit’ of 40 years of communist rule is exampled in the exploitation of brown coal reserves on a massive and massively polluting scale. The now democratically elected national and local governments have a critical role in an effective response to the situation, but solutions are prescribed by the politics of the government, the availability of finance and the expertise of the planning systems. The centre‐right national government of the Czech Republic is committed to the free market and to the reduction of the role of the state; local municipalities are likewise subject to pressures for ‘market solutions’. However there is a lively ‘green’ opposition and a realization of the need for radical action—unfortunately without a sound understanding of the demands of development in a capitalist system. Given the massive flow of investment from the West, the parallel with eastern Germany is not helpful. In Poland the problems are similar, but the new left‐wing government is attempting a more ‘regulated’ approach; the parallels will be interesting. Technical help from the West, including the UK, will be important and is already coming through in cooperation initiatives. The need overall is for a political will, at all levels, to manage development pressures in an appropriate manner; bowing to the dictates of the market will create uneven and inequitable development favouring the environmentally preferred areas and leaving devastated areas such as Northern Bohemia to their fate.     

Land Policy and Urban Renaissance: The Impact of Ownership Constraints in Four British Cities

This article explores the potential contribution of four types of land policy to delivering an urban renaissance. These four types are regulatory, financial and developmental land policy measures and the provision of information and guidance for the land market. Although such measures are implicit rather than explicit in recent visions of urban renaissance, the article reveals that between 1991 and 1995, ownership constraints disrupted plans to use, market, develop or purchase 64 of 80 large redevelopment sites investigated. Such constraints need to be the target of a specific urban land policy and not the by-product of broader urban renaissance policies.     

Contemporary tendencies in Colombian urban planning: the case of the ‘Planes Parciales’ in Medellín

After decades of internal conflict, Colombia is experiencing economic growth and urbanization. It remains, however, one of the most socially unequal countries in Latin America. Medellín, acclaimed the most innovative city, implemented large-scale transport infrastructures to link socially excluded areas to the city; new educational and cultural facilities; new public spaces and housing projects, rooted in the Barcelona model. This so-called ‘social urbanism’ has shifted local perceptions, though its socio-economic impact has been questioned. This paper focuses on the less analysed transformations in planning policy and management through two instruments: the Land Use Plan (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial – POT) and the ‘Plan Parcial’. The research, based on a desktop review, interviews and site visits, examines the application of these instruments in Medellín, reflecting on how they contribute to achieving the aims of ‘social urbanism’. The paper explores the differences between ‘rhetoric’ and practice that are reflected in those between the city’s overarching plan (POT) and the implementation of ‘planes parciales’, focusing on redevelopment, urban renewal and urban expansion. Such differences mirror the deficiencies in the adaptation of the ‘urban project’ Barcelona model in Medellín, and provide the basis for a call to develop ‘social urbanism’ that is genuinely more socially, territorially comprehensive and inclusive.     

Housing First: Considering Components for Successful Resettlement of Homeless People with Multiple Needs

‘Housing First’ programmes in the US involve the provision of mainstream scatter sited permanent housing at the initial stage of support for homeless individuals with multiple needs. This is in contrast to dominant approaches (in the US and Europe) that assert the need for successful progress towards treatment goals (usually whilst living in temporary congregate accommodation) prior to resettlement. Evaluations of Housing First indicate, however, that even those considered farthest from being housed can, with help, successfully maintain a mainstream tenancy of their own. It is asserted here that one locally based agency managing both the housing and assertively providing holistic non time-limited support packages may be important factors in the success rate of Housing First programmes. However, a caveat is added—to robustly assess the effectiveness of Housing First (and homelessness policy per se) requires continued consideration as to what ‘success’ refers to in the resettlement of formerly homeless people.     

Entitlement and justice

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with people living and working in ‘disadvantaged’ Australian suburbs, this article focuses on how disadvantaged people must prove ‘entitlement’, most often through a stylised performance of ‘undeserved’ suffering which in turn reinforces a definition of need based upon character. These stylised narratives of suffering, and the stories of heroism which complement them, emerge from a local ‘war of words’. The article argues that these stories are a complex and difficult resource for urban analysts and that other, more submerged, narratives must also be incorporated in any account of poverty and injustice.