How do emotional responses associate with urban behavior amid ecological and political disruption? This study explores the emotional, cognitive, and institutional factors associated with urban reactive behavioral intentions during escalating human–wildlife encounters, focusing on wild boars in Haifa, Israel. Using a large-scale survey with visual stimuli designed to evoke emotional responses, we elicited emotions—fear versus empathy and indifference versus curiosity—and measured two outcomes: immediate spatial response and civic reporting (calls to the municipal 106 hotline). Findings show that fear mediates the link between perceived harm and urban reactions, while curiosity and perceived good local governance moderate this relationship. Curiosity, unexpectedly, amplified both fear and behavioral intentions response. Perceived good governance mitigated physical expressions of fear in public space but had limited impact on civic reporting. Emotional responses also shifted depending on visual framing, emphasizing the role of public communication. This research advances understanding of emotional infrastructure in cities and informs adaptive urban governance by linking environmental risk, emotion, and institutional trust.

The lived experiences of those who work at night have been subject to increased attention from both scholars and policy makers; however, there remains limited geospatial and quantitative evidence on the challenges they face and how these unfold across space and time. This gap is most evident in the continued dependence on “daytime” data and assumptions, that presume the traditional “9–5” working day, at the expense of the specific needs of night workers. In this context, lack of access to food has emerged as a critical yet underexplored issue. While recent accessibility models increasingly account for the temporal dynamics of their supply-side components (e.g., service operating hours), they either overlook population dynamics or treat nighttime populations as homogenous, thus masking the distinct service needs of active night workers. This study addresses these limitations by developing the first dynamic food accessibility model that explicitly accounts for the shifting spatial distribution of night workers in Greater London. Leveraging novel mobile phone location data, we provide deeper insights into the spatial and temporal realities of working at night in London. Beyond demonstrating that access to food retail outlets for night workers is markedly poorer than for daytime workers, our proposed (in)sufficient accessibility framework identifies where and when this issue is most acute. Through its empirical insights and methodological innovations, this article therefore contributes to ongoing debates on spatial justice and nighttime urban strategies.

This article examines how neoliberal ideas, investor interests, and institutional design converged in the creation of Opportunity Zones (OZs), a federal tax incentive program marketed as a tool for equitable development but structured to advance capital-friendly outcomes. While many critiques of OZs focus on implementation failures or unintended consequences, this article contends that the program reflects a case of policy capture by design. Neoliberal ideas played a legitimating role, framing deregulatory features such as generous capital gains tax deferrals, investor anonymity, and the absence of reporting or community benefit requirements as necessary for market-led revitalization. These ideas served as “coalition magnets,” helping to secure bipartisan support by reimagining private capital as a vehicle for public good. Drawing on legislative histories, planning documents, and secondary analysis, the article shows how the institutional architecture of OZs steered investment toward already improving areas, sidelining more deeply disinvested communities. Once implemented, ideational commitments to equity and local empowerment quickly faded while core market logic endured, exposing the durable imprint of elite economic interests embedded in federal tax policy. OZs illustrate how neoliberal discourse can operate as an instrumental and ultimately disposable device for legitimizing investor-oriented policy. This case contributes to theories of policy design, neoliberal urban governance, and policy capture by demonstrating how ideas, interests, and institutions align to reproduce inequality under the guise of reform.

Students of urban studies have long recognized cities as key sites, but also as critical actors , of global governance. However, they are only beginning to explore how cities’ infrastructural power can be translated into political influence and a distinct form of recognition within the exclusive fora of multilateral conferences and UN institutions. This research seeks to answer this question by applying a relational framework of global agency drawn from International Political Sociology. I mobilize event ethnography at climate COP28 in Dubai (2023)—where subnational governments gained unprecedented recognition, namely through the Local Climate Action Summit and the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships—to analyze how the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which I define as a subnational community of practice , seeks recognition for itself and its members by deploying “hybrid” diplomatic practices that oscillate between “multilevel” diplomacy and transnational advocacy . By strategically balancing challenges to the centralized structure of multilateral diplomacy with advocacy practices that align with the UN’s binary distinction between “state” and “non-state” actors, the LGMA works to differentiate cities and other subnationals from “civil society” while promoting the redistribution of power and financial resources to the local level. This attempt marks a new phase in the historical mobilization of cities and city networks of great importance for urban studies: a shift from merely seeking “recognition” in global governance to advancing a progressive reform of the multilateral system into a genuinely “multilevel” structure that would empower subnationals as governmental actors and integral components of the “state.”

Urban corridors are commonly conceptualized as linear infrastructures or extensions of metropolitan areas that facilitate economic integration and territorial expansion. This paper presents a theoretical framework that moves beyond infrastructural determinism and planetary logics by conceptualizing urban corridors as contingent socio-material assemblages. Drawing on the principles of assemblage urbanism, it argues that corridors are not fixed spatial forms but rather emergent formations shaped by heterogeneous materialities, unique histories, and multiple structuring forces. This approach challenges dominant perspectives, such as the infrastructural turn and planetary urbanization, which often emphasize structural coherence and top-down governance in corridor urbanization. Instead, this paper conceptualizes urban corridors as continuously territorialized and deterritorialized through processes of situated contestation, negotiation, and alliance. By rethinking urban corridors as relational, processual, and strategic rather than as predefined spatial categories, this article contributes to discussions on the socio-material foundations and implications of corridor urbanization. It highlights the need for more dynamic, open-ended, and context-specific frameworks in the study of urban corridors.

Cities worldwide face immense challenges in transitioning to a sustainable future. While being structurally and politically bound to continuous growth, the striving for a constant increase in production and consumption puts enormous pressure on our planet and its ecosystems. Degrowth has been proposed as a pathway to solving this dilemma. Although scholarly attention to urban degrowth has expanded, a central aspect of cities remains partly unexplored: mobility. Urban mobility, being motorized and dependent on fossil fuels, has a substantial environmental and social impact, making it a central issue for sustainability. Within mobility research, urban sustainability has primarily been addressed by problematizing automobility and discussing how to replace the car as the dominant mode of transport. However, the relationship between mobility and growth extends beyond cars and needs to be addressed more generally. This article develops and expands the conversation between the degrowth and sustainable mobility literatures through a theoretical exploration of the concept of “limits.” It proposes a relational conceptualization of limits, providing an analysis of this concept in relation to key vectors of urban mobility: space, speed, and the body. Our study suggests not only that limits should be conceptualized along these vectors but also that these specific limits could be used to tease out what sustainable urban mobility might mean in practice.

This article explores the role of Indonesia’s royal house of Yogyakarta in the development of a site called Ambarrukmo. Originally a royal garden retreat, Ambarrukmo has undergone two significant phases of urbanization: the construction of an international hotel during Indonesia’s immediate post-independence period, and the more recent construction of a large-scale mall. These commercial development projects have been used by the Sultan to defend its royal status in a context of political change. Urbanization processes that are elsewhere neatly accounted for as singular effects of neoliberal globalisation are here realised through the convergent aspirations of national government and a regional monarchy. The Sultanate’s role challenges dominant, western-centric understandings of city building agency, which emphasise the state, the market and civil society.

Over the past 15 years, Mogadishu – the capital city of Somalia – has undergone rapid transformation. As the state was rebuilt following its collapse in the 1990s, the city became a site of diaspora return and investment. In this paper we explore the role of telecommunications companies in the development of urban land in relation to these contemporary, contested processes. We focus on Hormuud Telecommunications Company and its affiliated companies involved in financing, construction, technical training, electricity provision and transnational money transfer. We show that telecommunication companies (telecoms), having expanded far beyond traditional ambits, are playing a central role in urban speculation in Mogadishu, aimed at both global and local audiences. As speculators, telecoms are not only involved in generating imaginaries for the future of the city, but take material and laborious steps to produce them. This is most apparent, we argue, in Darul Salaam, the new city being developed for the diaspora and local elites on the periphery of Mogadishu. Overall, we argue that telecoms engage in the performative work of both market-making and world-making, enrolling diaspora capital towards bold urban imaginaries in ways that are distinct from other economic sectors. While we focus on Somalia and its unique context, telecoms across Africa are growing in wealth and scope, necessitating empirical and conceptual engagement with their role in urban processes.

Exposure to environmental burdens, such as air and noise pollution or a lack of green space, is linked to various adverse outcomes. Prior research shows that poor residents and foreign minorities in European cities often face disproportionate exposure to environmental burdens, yet substantial regional differences within countries remain poorly understood. We address this gap using fine-grained 1 km-by-1 km neighbourhood grid data on air and noise pollution and green space availability, combined with administrative information on poverty rates and the share of foreign minorities for all German cities with at least 100,000 inhabitants in 2017. We examine whether poor residents and foreign minorities experience higher environmental burdens, how patterns of environmental inequality vary across cities, and which contextual factors contribute to account for these differences. Our results indicate that foreign minorities are consistently more exposed to single and multiple environmental burdens, whereas poor residents generally are not. However, the magnitude of environmental inequality varies markedly across cities. The most important factor explaining this variation is the extent to which disadvantaged groups reside in central neighbourhoods, rather than levels of segregation or the overall supply of “clean and healthy” neighbourhoods. Finally, we consider how ongoing inner-city gentrification may shape environmental inequality. We find little to no environmental inequality in more gentrified cities—measured by a higher share of academics in the local labour force—while environmental disadvantages for foreign minorities remain substantial in less gentrified cities.

In light of the challenges of talent loss and industrial decline in peripheral cities, this study examines how some of them are repositioning themselves as creative hubs by leveraging local resources to attract creative talents, and how cultural and creative industries (CCIs) strategies in such cities shape migrants’ mobility and creative practice. Taking the design-craft cluster in Jingdezhen, China as a case study, the research draws on in-depth interviews with 32 migrant artisans. The findings are twofold. First, artisans’ migration is primarily motivated by the pursuit of autonomy. Their migration decisions reflect macro-level pressures, destination-based attractions, and embedded social-productive networks that serve as “anchors” for retention. This dynamic is captured by the proposed Push-Pull-Anchor model. Second, under the governance model of state-owned enterprise-led individual entrepreneurship, municipal CCIs strategies prioritize economic performance while lacking adequate infrastructure and welfare support for individual artisans. Although this approach has stimulated local economic growth, it has also generated productive gentrification and puts artisans’ autonomy at risk.