Exposing cybernetic assumptions in urban demographic models: how racial entropy came to shape school segregation and spatial justice

Code of the Streets: Videogames and the City

Performance, anxiety

Urban green spaces, including parks, plazas, and squares, are essential components of healthy and sustainable cities. These areas play a central role in enhancing the wellbeing of citizens, fostering social interactions, and promoting sustainable urban development. This study investigates the multifaceted benefits of integrating green spaces into urban environments, such as improving physical and mental health, facilitating social engagement, and supporting environmental sustainability. Despite these benefits, the development and maintenance of urban green spaces face significant challenges, including limited suitable land, financial constraints, and inadequate access, which can exclude certain populations from enjoying these green havens. The study examines specific case studies, including Linyi People’s Park, Lanshan Youth Park, and Yumin Park, to highlight the factors contributing to the success or failure of these spaces. It also draws inspiration from international examples like New York City’s High Line and Germany’s Emscher Landscape Park, which have successfully transformed neglected areas into vibrant green oases. The findings underscore the importance of adopting principles of spatial justice, resource management, urban policy revision, and access reform to ensure the equitable distribution and accessibility of urban green spaces. The study concludes with key recommendations for urban planning and public health policy, aiming to enhance the wellbeing of citizens and strengthen the harmonious relationship between urban development and the natural environment. This study explores the multifaceted benefits of urban green spaces, including parks and plazas, highlighting their critical roles in enhancing physical and mental health, fostering social interactions, and promoting environmental sustainability. Through in-depth case studies of Linyi People’s Park, Lanshan Youth Park, and Yumin Park, the research identifies key factors contributing to the success and challenges of these spaces. Innovations in the study include a holistic analysis of green space benefits, a focus on spatial justice for equitable access, and comparative insights from international examples like New York City’s High Line and Germany’s Emscher Landscape Park. The research identifies several gaps, including the need for longitudinal studies on health impacts, understanding socioeconomic and cultural variability in green space use, evaluating the effectiveness of policy interventions, exploring technological integration, assessing environmental and economic trade-offs, and developing models for community engagement and ownership. Addressing these gaps will enhance strategies for integrating green spaces into urban environments, ensuring their benefits are accessible to all citizens.

In the context of increasing division and segregation in cities across the world, along with pressing concerns around austerity, environmental degradation, homelessness, violence, and refugees, this book pursues a multidisciplinary approach to spatial justice in the city. Spatial justice has been central to urban theorists in various ways. Intimately connected to social justice, it is a term implicated in relations of power which concern the spatial distribution of resources, rights and materials. Arguably there can be no notion of social justice that is not spatial. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos has argued that spatial justice is the struggle of various bodies – human, natural, non-organic, technological – to occupy a certain space at a certain time. As such, urban planning and policy interventions are always, to some extent at least, about spatial justice. And, as cities become ever more unequal, it is crucial that urbanists address questions of spatial justice in the city. To this end, this book considers these questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Crossing law, sociology, history, cultural studies, and geography, the book’s overarching concern with how to think spatial justice in the city brings a fresh perspective to issues that have concerned urbanists for several decades. The inclusion of empirical work in London brings the political, social, and cultural aspects of spatial justice to life. The book will be of interest to academics and students in the field of urban studies, sociology, geography, planning, space law, and cultural studies.

The paper explores children's claim on spatial justice through play. It develops an interdisciplinary methodological approach grounded in critical thinking that draws on Children's Geographies, Urban Studies and the New Sociology of Childhood, with the aim to engage children as agents in shaping spatial justice. The central argument is that children's play is an everyday spatial practice that can act as a lensto address the complex issue of spatial justice by bringing the voices of a marginalized social group to the fore. Based on ethnographic research with children aged 7–12 in a central neighborhood of Athens, the paper elaborates on three key aspects of their play. First, through play, children produce their own places, thus claiming their visibility. Second, they re-invent the urban space and shape hybrid spaces of negotiation, highlighting the contingency of urban space. Third, they forge multiple connections with play communities, the self, the place, and adults, revealing a web of interconnected rights and responsibilities. The paper concludes that children's claim on spatial justice revives their right to the city, a complex political work that links spatial justice with the “here and now” of childhood.

Reviewed by: A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers by Jen Jack Gieseking Cyd Sturgess A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers. Jen Jack Gieseking. New York: NYU Press, 2020. Pp. ix+307, black & white illustrations, footnotes. $89.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4798-4840-9. $30.00, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4798-3573-7. When German writer Ruth Margarete Roellig charted the lines of what was arguably the first mapping of lesbian urban space in her work Berlin's Lesbian Women (Berlins lesbische Frauen, 1928), she conceived of queer inner-city experience in terms of "Light" and "Shadow." Plotting the Sapphic sites that existed for women in Weimar Berlin, Roellig positioned queer establishments as "radiant, luminous diamonds" that could reflect their light onto areas of the city otherwise steeped in a "mysterious darkness" (quoted in Meyer, Lila Nächte 1981, 41). The [End Page 102] fragile and dynamic nature of queer urban experience reveals itself accordingly, however, in the "strangely soft light" that Roellig claimed characterized the lesbian bars of interwar Berlin: a light that would "dim momentarily, only to flare up once again in a different color" (41). The spatialization of urban sexuality through a framework of "dimming" and "flaring" light, as well as the thematization of its fragmentary nature, has been revived most recently in Jen Jack Gieseking's latest contribution to the fields of critical and queer geography: A Queer New York: Geographies of Lesbians, Dykes, and Queers (2020). Framed by celestial metaphors of "stars" and "constellations," Gieseking's study offers a timely intervention into narratives of (queer) gentrification and the enduring effects of settler colonialism, as well as a considered examination of the concomitant complexities of engaging in—and resisting—the "myth of neighborhood liberation" (4). Demarcating the districts of Greenwich Village, Park Slope, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Crown Heights as the principal sites for his study, Gieseking carefully weaves the personal stories of forty-seven interview participants, along with their mind maps and "story sheets," into a much wider sociohistorical tapestry of the economic and political dispossession of lesbian and queers in New York between 1983 and 2008. Situating the concept of the "constellation" at the center of his study, Gieseking seeks to "dislodge lesbians and queers . . . from the lgbtq fixation on neighborhood liberation" (198) and to "fuel new geographical imaginations on behalf of social and spatial justice" (230). First conceptualized by German philosopher Walter Benjamin, and later Theodor Adorno, as a way of theorizing the relationship between ideas and objects, the "constellation" metaphor is deployed in A Queer New York to make manifest the ways in which queerness can be enacted onto urban space to "[make] worlds all at once mythical, imaginary, and physical" (xix). Building on Dianne Chisholm's work Queer Constellations: Subcultural Space in the Wake of the City (2005), Gieseking uses his participants' queer mappings to challenge white settler notions of the neighborhood, embarking on a study that is at once highly personal and deeply political. Indeed, Gieseking—a "white, trans, butch dyke" (48)—appears himself as a subject of analysis, identified among the interview participants as "Jack '91." The date following Gieseking's name forms part of the author's attempts to disrupt linear narratives of queer urban experience. While this approach [End Page 103] results in several interesting multigenerational conversations, "coming out" is rarely marked by a singular event or experience, however. (Indeed, Gieseking's inclusion of participant "Janice '79/'91" implicitly acknowledges this point.) Furthermore, in a study that is keenly aware of its own potential for racial and cultural bias, the focus on the year of "coming out" is all the more surprising given that the concept itself is steeped so heavily in white culture. By reconsidering the privileging of Western trajectories of queer experience, Gieseking may have been able to create further opportunities to explore what Asiel Adan Sanchez (2017) describes as the "silences" that shape queer lives in nonwhite urban contexts. After setting the temporal and geographical parameters for analysis, as well as the reflective and playful tone of the book, Gieseking turns his attention in chapter 2 toward one of "the brightest stars in New York's constellations...

Urban diaspora space: Rural–urban migration and the production of unequal urban spaces

The incorporation of nature-based solutions into urban planning and development policies has become a pressing issue in many large cities worldwide, aiming to improve the urban environment and the well-being of city-dwellers. However, the establishment and management of urban green infrastructure can be expensive and may lead to spatial injustice or be ecologically inefficient due to the planning decisions. This study focuses on the Spatial Justice-Ecological Efficiency Nexus of urban green infrastructure in large Caucasian cities of Russia, where urbanization rates are rapidly increasing. The hypothesis of this study is that green infrastructure in Russian cities predominantly has an ecological aspect, meaning that it provides a large volume of ecosystem services that are still unavailable to a significant portion of the urban population. To explore this topic, we aim to assess the balance between the social and ecological aspects of green infrastructure in six case study cities, including Makhachkala, Grozny, Nalchik, Maykop, Vladikavkaz, and Stavropol. The assessment framework includes 12 indicators, divided into two categories: spatial justice (6 indicators) and ecological efficiency (6 indicators). The spatial justice indicators assess the availability, accessibility, and distribution of green infrastructure, while the ecological efficiency indicators evaluate the performance of regulating and supporting ecosystem services. The results revealed that despite the common prevalence of ecological side in large Russian cities, the spatial justice side in the southern cities generally dominates over the ecological side, with most cities having an unbalanced nexus. Green infrastructure in the studied cities has a low ecological input, with a mean total score of around 300 points (out of 600), with most cities lacking protected areas and green areas beyond the edge effect. Meanwhile, the social side of the nexus is more developed, with an average score of 400. The study highlights the need for a more integrated approach to urban green infrastructure planning, considering both justice and ecological aspects to ensure a more just and sustainable urban environment. Overall, in this research we introduce a multidimensional approach to understanding the functions and qualities of green infrastructure that will allow for a more comprehensive assessment and planning of the rapidly growing southern cities. This study contributes to the understanding of the complex relationships between urban green infrastructure spatial justice and ecological efficiency, providing valuable insights for urban planners, policymakers, and stakeholders seeking to create more sustainable and equitable urban environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the rural idyll, as urban-dwellers seek greener, safer spaces. If the counter-urban trend appears for novel reasons, it does so along lifestyle mobilities’ well-worn paths. These paths often depend upon spatial inequalities. Yet, despite awareness that inequalities undergird mobilities, spatial inequalities have remained under-theorized in the lifestyle mobilities literature. This article remedies the gap through the concept of spatial justice. Initially asserting the ‘right to’ urban space, spatial justice has been recently re-thought at a regional scale, and is an emerging interpretation of rural marginalization and redress. As a normative concept, however, spatial justice risks simplistically measuring the distribution and presuming sedentarism. By applying spatial justice to lifestyle mobilities pre-pandemic and looking ahead to future shifts, we offer a nuanced, relational perspective on the theory and the field. Through qualitative case studies from rural and peripheral regions in Wales and Ireland, we show how inequalities and mobilities are complex and inter-related, with significant implications for regional sustainability, cohesion and identity. As the discourse of being ‘all in this together' has rapidly unravelled, we argue that theorizing spatial inequalities is an urgent task for futures beyond recovery – and that lifestyle mobilities are deeply implicated.

1.\tШевченко О. Г. Вразливість урбанізованого середовища до зміни клімату / О. Г. Шевченко // Фізична географія та геоморфологія. - 2014. - Вип. 4. - С. 112-120. - Режим доступу: http://nbuv.gov.ua/UJRN/fiz_geo_2014_4_17.
\n2.\tШевченко О. Г. Оценка уязвимости к изменению климата: Украина / О.Шевченко, О. Власюк, И. Ставчук, М. Ваколюк, О. Илляш, А. Рожкова // КФВП и РГ НУО ВИК, 2014 - Myflaer, Киев – 64 с.
\n3.\tHynynen Ari, Juuti Petri, Katko Tapio Water fontains in the worldscape [Text] / А. Hynynen, Р. Hynynen, Т. Katko - International Water History Association and KehräMedia Inc., 2012 - 220 р., http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-98151-8-3
\n4.\tYou Jin. Lee Pyoung Jik. Jeon Jin Yong Evaluating water sounds to improve the soundscape of urban areas affected by traffic noise [Text] / Jin Y., Pyoung Jik P., Jin Yong J - Institute of Noise Control Engineering, 58, Number 5, 1 September 2010, pp. 477-483(7), DOI: https://doi.org/10.3397/1.3484183
\n5.\tFarangis Taheri Impact of Modified Urban Surfaces on Enhancing the Microclimate of Residential Landscape Areas in Hot Arid Environments – Case Study of Jumeirah Village Circle Community, Dubai [Text]: The British University in Dubai (BUiD) : protected 2015 / Farangis Taheri – 2015. – 190 р.; DOI: http://bspace.buid.ac.ae/handle/1234/972
\n6.\tЦерковна О.Г. Вплив зовнішніх факторів на формоутворення фонтанів/ О. Г. Церковна// Сучасні проблеми моделювання. зб. наук. праць, 2018. - Вип. 12. - С. 156-162
\n7.\tSara Kontoff Baker Water and fontens in urban spaces [Text]: master of science in visual studies at the Massachusetts institute of technoloy: protected 1986 / Sara Kontoff Baker. – 1986. – 147 р.
\n8.\tMikles, Emily (2014) "Cashing in on Green: Casino Development and Sustainability," University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development: Vol. 3 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/ubjld/vol3/iss2/5
\n9.\tShakerin, S. (2005). Water fountains with special effects. American Scientist, 93, 444-451 -– Режим доступу: https://search.proquest.com
\n10.\tHitachi, Ltd., Water Business Unit. An incredible display of sustainability [Електронний ресурс] / Hitachi, Ltd., Water Business Unit // Water Business Unit. – 2018. – Режим доступу до ресурсу: http://www.hitachi.ae/eng/

Painting the Town Blue and Green: Curating Street Art through Urban Mobile Gaming

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to move beyond the stage of analysis of exclusively physical microclimatic phenomena and extending ourselves to the study of the impact of the microclimate environment on the user behavior in public spaces. This paper will open up new opportunities for the development of urban open spaces and facilitate the decision-making for urban decision-makers, city managers and planners to make the right urban planning decision.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology for identifying the links between microclimatic quality of urban routes and behaviors was developed on the basis of the results obtained from field surveys carried out in nine public urban areas of the city of Biskra, three urban space are located in a traditional urban fabric (the medina) and the other five in new urban areas, in the two climatic seasons (winter, summer) of 2019. For this exploratory research, two types of instruments were used to collect data from environmental and human monitoring.FindingsImproving microclimatic conditions in urban spaces can allow people to spend more time outside, with the possibility of increasing their social cohesion. The overall objective of this research is to better understand the impact of microclimatic characteristics on pedestrian behavior of nine selected public urban spaces in the city of Biskra, Algeria. To characterize this impact, the authors developed an approach based on crossing data of field surveys, including structured interviews with a questionnaire and observations of human activities (video recordings), as well as microclimate monitoring, conducted during the two climatic seasons (winter, summer) 2019. The analysis of the results allowed to verify the impact of the two climatic seasons (winter, summer) on the variation in the density of occupancy of the different urban areas studied and the duration of the user stations. The authors also illustrated that the number of individuals higher in the traditional urban spaces of the city of Biskra or the conditions of climate comfort are more comfortable than the urban spaces in the new urban areas of the city of Biskra during the summer, which is the season most problematic.Originality/valueIn recent years, there has been a proliferation of scientific studies on the subject of control of microclimatic characteristics and, in particular, on the consideration of the thermal comfort of persons by qualitative analysis, prediction and representation of the perception of external environments. Improving microclimatic conditions in urban spaces can allow people to spend more time outside, with the possibility of increasing their social cohesion. This study highlights the importance of climate-conscious urban design and design flexibility. Urban environments can be modified in summer and winter to provide a better outdoor thermal environment for users. In addition, this study also shows the importance of harmony between microclimate and urban design. Such harmony can be achieved by including requirements for a climate-conscious urban design in the planning regulations for cities in arid zones.

This first of three progress reports gives a brief overview of the new field of Black Geographies. It elucidates Black Geographies as a field that not only critiques the erasure of Blackness within the whiteness and coloniality of geographical thought, but also centres Black spatial thought and agency. Thus, Black Geographies is an im/possible undertaking. Nonetheless, Black Geographies speaks not only about the spatialities of Black people but overwhelmingly speaks from the voices of Black geographers: Geography will need to recruit and retain enough Black geographers to make such an undertaking truly possible.

Health and wellbeing in cities - Cultural contributions from urban form in the Global South context

The rapid physical change and increase in density of today’s cities lead to changes in urban space usage and habits in urban life. This change negatively affects the description and use of public spaces as socialisation spaces, which are one of the most significant urban components. As a result, city dwellers satisfy their need for public spaces with the use of different urban spaces. Urban life shifts from urban public spaces to semi-public spaces. Semi-public spaces are qualified and accessible spaces that ensure transition between private spaces (buildings) and public spaces. These spaces gain different attributes according to the characteristics (commerce, housing, tourism, etc.) of the urban spaces they coexist within and to the functions and designs of the structures surrounding them. These attributes determine their configuration as integrated or dissociated with the city and thus specify their relationship with the city. This relationship changes ‘city–space–structure–human’ interaction, and this change affects urban quality with the spatial quality of semi-public spaces. The aim of this study is to present how and related to which characteristics the use of semi-public spaces as urban spaces has changed, to detect the effects of this change on the urban environment and to establish the role of semi-public spaces in terms of urban quality. In conclusion, semi-public spaces with different characteristics located in different urban spaces will be examined as regards physical, schematic, functional characteristics and use within the scope of this study. In accordance with the data obtained by comparative analysis method, approaches to facilitate their use as urban spaces and to ensure their integration with the city will be introduced. Accordingly, criteria that semi-public spaces should possess in order to increase and sustain urban space quality will be determined.