American Urban Centers Research Articles

Global San Francisco and the Irish of the New Pacific

Abstract Following the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in January 1848, San Francisco established itself as the premier city of the western Americas. From the outset, its substantial Irish immigrant population enjoyed the standing of a charter group and exhibited high levels of political power and cultural influence, characteristics that were frequently noted by contemporaries and continued well into the twentieth century. While San Francisco's Irish population shared much in common with their compatriots in other American cities, the Golden City developed its own unique identity and quickly emerged as a truly global Irish city. Key features that account for its experience include the city's distinctive nineteenth-century population composition, which included a large Chinese component; the notable confidence of its Irish-born population compared with that in other American urban centers; and the unique westward orientation of the city and its people that contributed to San Francisco's pivotal role in emerging transnational Pacific networks.

Genome-wide association study of Helicobacter pylori serological status in Latin American children.

Few genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on Helicobacter pylori infection susceptibility have been conducted for admixed populations from developing countries. Here, we performed a GWAS to identify genetic factors associated with H. pylori serostatus in a cohort of admixed children from a large Latin American urban center. A cross-sectional study involving 1161 children from 4 to 11 years old living in poor areas of Salvador, in northeastern Brazil. Logistic regression analysis was performed to detect associations between single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and H. pylori seropositivity, assuming an additive genetic model. Enrichment analyses were conducted using the MAGMA v1.10 software. We found 22 SNVs to be suggestively associated (p < 10-5 ) with H. pylori seropositivity. The most suggestive SNV was the rs77955022 (p = 4.83e-07) located in an intronic region of EXOC3 at 5p15.33. The second most suggestively associated SNV was rs10914996 (p = 8.97e-07), located in an intergenic region at 1p34.3. Furthermore, we were able to replicate three SNVs (p < 0.05) in the Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) cohort: the rs2339212 and rs4795970, both located at 17q12 near TMEM132E, as well as the rs6595814, an intronic variant of FBN2 at 5q23.3. The enrichment analysis indicated the participation of genes and metabolic pathways related to the regulation of the digestive system and gastric acid secretion in the risk of seropositivity for H. pylori. Additional studies are required to validate these association findings in larger population samples and to get insight into the underlying physiological mechanisms.

Early Clinician Exposure to the Physiologic Damage of Firearms: A Feasibility Study

Introduction:In comparison to many nations in the developed world, the United States has more cases of civilian ballistic injuries. Both low and high velocity firearm injuries are frequently encountered in American urban trauma centers, and physicians become familiar with these traumatic injury patterns. Physicians from other nations may rarely encounter such injuries. With an increase in international conflict, there is an increased need for clinicians to participate in international medical aid which may include patients with ballistic injuries. Clinicians with limited familiarity of such injuries may result in under-triage and delayed recognition of injury severity, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality of patients. This study aims to show that a course on ballistic injuries will improve clinician recognition of injury patterns and comfort levels managing these patients.Method:Clinicians participated in a course which was designed to introduce ballistic injury patterns. The course was reviewed and supported by emergency medicine physicians who work in a large level I trauma center in the Southeastern United States and serve in clinical roles with EMS and community law enforcement. Course content included demonstrations of firearm injuries by discharging weapons into gels and models designed to replicate human body tissue. Participants were surveyed prior to and after completing the course regarding their comfort with firearms and firearm related injuries.Results:Participants reported increased comfort level with the management of ballistic injuries. The course requires a full day of expert physician time, approximately US$600 in supplies if performing live demonstrations, and the cost of designated space for safe firearm discharge and use.Conclusion:This course or a similar course with pre-fired demonstration rounds proved to be feasible and beneficial for those who will likely encounter firearm injuries in their clinical environment. There are both quantifiable and perceived benefits for physicians.

There Grows the City: A Long History of Urban Agriculture in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

A dominant interpretation of the twentieth-century U.S. city is one of declension, wherein cities contracted following a number of profound ruptures. At these moments, neoliberalism began its ascent, disconnecting the historical processes that created the city from the current policies and realities of American urban centers. By documenting the histories of urban agriculture in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this essay seeks to complicate this declensionist narrative while highlighting the overlooked role that food production played in the growth of a major urban center—all the while providing a usable history for efforts to renew the twenty-first century city. Even during the height of industrial expansion in Milwaukee, urban agriculture played a significant role in the economic, social, and spatial development of the city. Then, as both deindustrialization and responses to such phenomena began to dramatically affect Milwaukee by the 1960s, urban agriculture remained a viable tool for urban redevelopment, one employed by both public- and private-sector actors well into the twenty-first century.

Living ‘La High Life’: Images, Objects, and Words in Motion in Spain and Beyond

From around 1880 to 1920, the term ‘high life’ figured prominently in the press, advertising, literature, and illustrated print media in European and American urban centres and was linked to luxury consumer products and a wealthy lifestyle. The meanings of the expression were flexible and became intertwined across geographic locations. Printed media acted as a non-physical contact zone where a multitude of cultural influences, economic interests, and visual languages intersected. Taking Spanish popular print culture as a point of departure, this article charts how the term emerged in different geographic locations and became associated with both local and international identities. The circulation of the high life brand name reveals how cultural producers, advertisers, and local readers thought about transnational webs of consumerism at the turn of the twentieth century. The expression was decentred from its English origin, even in Anglophone settings, and redefined across local cultures without losing its association with perceived international practices and trends.

YIMBYISM AND THE HOUSING CRISIS IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES: A Critical Reflection

AbstractIn this introductory essay, we provide an overview and theoretical context for this Intervention of seven critical reflections on the recent ‘pro‐housing’ movement YIMBYism (‘Yes in My Backyard’). In cities across the United States and Canada, YIMBYism has become important in local debates about housing and land use; some key North American urban centers are the focus of the commentaries included here. On the whole, academic discussions of YIMBYism have remained focused on local and place‐specific narratives. In this introduction we discuss the essays in this Intervention and resituate the discussion towards a more macro‐level urban theoretical framework, specifically examining the ongoing restructuring of urban neoliberalism, racial capitalism and hyper‐urbanization. We argue that YIMBYism reflects unresolved tensions in the current urban housing crisis that can be seen as connected to the ongoing dismantling of the remnants of Keynesianism and the intensification of neoliberalism and uneven urban development. We note that these shifts relate to how racism and patriarchy suffuse changing regimes of capitalist orders, especially in housing markets and residential geographies. The Intervention as a whole suggests that the YIMBY movement deserves more research attention as a force in the ongoing unfolding of neoliberal urbanism.

Anti-ceramide single-chain variable fragment mitigates radiation GI syndrome mortality independent of DNA repair.

After 9/11, threat of nuclear attack on American urban centers prompted government agencies to develop medical radiation countermeasures to mitigate hematopoietic acute radiation syndrome (H-ARS) and higher-dose gastrointestinal acute radiation syndrome (GI-ARS) lethality. While repurposing leukemia drugs that enhance bone marrow repopulation successfully treats H-ARS in preclinical models, no mitigator potentially deliverable under mass casualty conditions preserves GI tract. Here, we report generation of an anti-ceramide 6B5 single-chain variable fragment (scFv) and show that s.c. 6B5 scFv delivery at 24 hours after a 90% lethal GI-ARS dose of 15 Gy mitigated mouse lethality, despite administration after DNA repair was complete. We defined an alternate target to DNA repair, an evolving pattern of ceramide-mediated endothelial apoptosis after radiation, which when disrupted by 6B5 scFv, initiates a durable program of tissue repair, permitting crypt, organ, and mouse survival. We posit that successful preclinical development will render anti-ceramide 6B5 scFv a candidate for inclusion in the Strategic National Stockpile for distribution after a radiation catastrophe.

Evaluation of factors influencing road dust loadings in a Latin American urban center

ABSTRACT Vehicle non-exhaust emissions are a major component of particle matter, including the direct wear of tires, brakes, road, and the resuspension of deposited particles. It is suggested that resuspended PM (RPM) emissions can be at the same magnitude or even larger than combustion emissions in urban centers. Factors affecting RPM can be included in four categories: road characteristics, traffic condition, land use, and meteorology. In order to study and evaluate these influencing factors, road dust less than 10 micrometers (RD10) was collected in 41 sites across Bogotá. The sampling points had diverse characteristics. RD10 levels varied between 1.0 and 45.8 mg/m2 with an average of 8.9 ± 8.4 mg/m2. Lower RD10 values were observed when vegetation density was high, pavement condition good, driving speeds fast and construction activities absent. On the contrary, RD10 increased under heavy-duty traffic influence and dry conditions. Among dust mitigation measures, management of land-use variables could be as important as traffic control and road maintenance. Implications: This study documented for the first time in Latin America dust loadings less than 10 micrometers, information that can be used to estimate resuspended particle matter emissions in the region. The influence of meteorology, traffic characteristics, road condition, and land-use variables was analyzed and quantified. The management of land-use variables could be as important as traffic control and road maintenance for road dust mitigation. Further research interests are discussed.

Relationship between African Biogeographical Ancestry and Helicobacter pylori infection in children of a large Latin American urban center.

The relationship between race/ethnicity and Hpylori infection has been extensively reported, with a higher prevalence of infection observed in black individuals. Whether such differences are due to genetic factors underlying African ancestry remains to be clarified. In the present study, we evaluated the association between the proportion of individual African ancestry and Hpylori infection in a sample of 1046 children living in a large Latin American urban center. Estimation of individual biogeographical ancestry was based on 370,539 SNPs and performed using the ADMIXTURE software. Multivariate logistic regression models and mediation analysis considering the influence of previously recognized socioenvironmental risk factors to Hpylori infection were performed. All analyses were conducted using the statistical package STATA v.14.0. Each 10% increase in the proportion of individual African ancestry was positively and independently associated with Hpylori infection in our population (adjusted OR=1.22, 95% CI=1.10-1.36, P<.001). Mediation analysis demonstrated that only 9.23% of the effect of the individual African ancestry on Hpylori infection was explained by factors such as household income, the absence of street paving and crowding. The results suggest that genetic variants that covariate with African ancestry may explain an important part of the racial differences observed for the prevalence of Hpylori infection.

O rebanho de Hobbes

resumo Este ensaio irá discutir como ambientes urbanos afetam a sensação de medo, e a qualidade de vida das pessoas. Estes sentimentos tem sido um importante componente da vida urbana nos grandes centros brasileiros e latino-americanos. Esta será uma reflexão sobre algumas possibilidades de lidar com este problema. Especificamente, trataremos das intervenções de requalificação e revitalização urbanas.

Disability Consciousness on the Frontlines of Urban Struggle

AbstractDrug wars, austerity and gentrification are interwoven social relations in many North American urban centres and are typically met with organising of varying degrees of militancy. Loïc Wacquant characterises many of these sites as highly stigmatised, associated with violence and pathology. In Toronto's downtown east end (DEE), one such stigmatised urban space, disabled activists are far from unfortunate casualties. They tend to refer to the DEE as an “urban battleground”, where disabled people politicise and challenge the DEE's pathology and stigma by linking into emerging radical disability politics across the global North and by developing localised revolutionary disability consciousness. Drawing on oral stories, zines and blogs of disabled activists and workers in Toronto's DEE, this article uses Rachel Gorman's dialectic of disability/disablement to analyse the emergence of revolutionary disability consciousness and the centrality of disabled people on the frontlines of anti‐gentrification and harm reduction organising in Toronto's DEE.

Epidemiological and genomic characterization of community-acquired Clostridium difficile infections

BackgroundClostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in North America and Europe. The aim of this study was to identify epidemiologically-confirmed cases of community-acquired (CA)-CDI in a large North American urban center and analyze isolates using multiple genetic and phenotypic methods.MethodsSeventy-eight patients testing positive for C. difficile from outpatient clinics were further investigated by telephone questionnaire. CA-CDI isolates were characterized by antibiotic susceptibility, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and whole genome sequencing. CA-CDI was defined as testing positive greater than 12 weeks following discharge or no previous hospital admission in conjunction with positive toxin stool testing.Results51.3% (40/78) of the patients in this study were found to have bona fide CA-CDI. The majority of patients were female (71.8% vs. 28.2%) with 50–59 years of age being most common (21.8%). Common co-morbidities included ulcerative colitis (1/40; 2.5%), Crohn’s disease (3/40; 7.5%), celiac disease (2/40; 5.0%) and irritable bowel syndrome (8/40; 20.0%). However, of 40 patients with CA-CDI, 9 (29.0%) had been hospitalized between 3 and 6 months prior and 31 (77.5%) between 6 and 12 months prior. The hypervirulent North American Pulostype (NAP) 1-like (9/40; 22.5%) strain was the most commonly identified pulsotype. Whole genome sequencing of CA-CDI isolates confirmed that NAP 1-like pulsotypes are commonplace in CA-CDI. From a therapeutic perspective, there was universal susceptibility to metronidazole and vancomycin.ConclusionsAll CA-CDI cases had some history of hospitalization if the definition were modified to health care facility exposure in the last 12 months and is supported by the genomic analysis. This raises the possibility that even CA-CDI may have nosocomial origins.

Toward a Native Archive: Chicago’s Relocation Photos, Indian Labor, and Indigenous Public Text

This article is an encounter with a governmentally organized archive, one that underscores how photo and text together describe emerging communities and alternative forms of belonging. Between 1953 and 1957 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) began what it called the “relocation project,” which moved American Indians from rural reservations to major American urban centers. The BIA maintained an archive of photographs of relocatees both before and after relocation and produced pamphlets, internal documents, newsletters, and other bureaucratic material. This article illustrates how a literary historical reading of these images enables new claims on urban American Indian belonging in the United States in the early 1950s. It contextualizes American Indian relocation as an institutionalized but also surprisingly aestheticized endeavor. The project explores an aesthetics of the ordinary that demands rethinking the work of photography in the twentieth century and contributes to ongoing conversations in the construction of Native archives.

Projected diabetes prevalence and related costs in three North American urban centres (2015–2040)

ObjectivesTo explore the future implications of diabetes for urban centres, we projected the prevalence and cost of diabetes from 2015 to 2040 in three very different North American cities: Houston, Mexico City and Vancouver. Study designWe use a simple demographic transition model using existing sources to project future prevalence and financial burden of diabetes. MethodsBased on data from each individual city, projections of the diabetes prevalence and financial burden were created through a three-stage transition model where the likelihood of moving across stages is based on incidence rates for age and gender groups. ResultsAccording to our projections from 2015 to 2040, diabetes prevalence will approximately double in Houston to 1,051,900 people and in Vancouver to 379,778 people and increase by >1 million to 3,080,013 people in Mexico City. Prevalence rates will increase from 8.5% to 11.7% in Houston, from 9.1% to 11.9% in Mexico City and from 7.2% to 11.3% in Vancouver. Associated costs will rise 1.9-fold to $11.5 billion (in US dollars) in Houston, 1.6-fold to $2.8 billion in Mexico City and 2.1-fold to $2.6 billion in Vancouver. ConclusionsUnless actions are taken to decrease its incidence, diabetes is expected to increasingly contribute to the societal and financial burden, particularly for urban areas. Resources and policy actions are needed immediately to promote healthy lifestyles and to implement secondary prevention of diabetes complications.

Residential developments in small-town America: assessment and regulations

This study is part of a comprehensive process in the City of New Bern, North Carolina aimed at drafting a subdivision regulatory framework that promotes sustainable residential developments with a heightened sense of community and vitality. The aim is to develop an objective assessment tool for new subdivision plans. Issues considered in this assessment include intra-and-inter-neighborhood connectivity, walkways, open spaces, the environment, and home architecture. The study highlights the transition from the traditional, open-grid street network and porch-fitted homes to modern suburbs with disconnected streets and garage-dominated homes. It draws on five planning and design criteria (accessibility, walkability, community, sustainability, and variety) to develop a performance-based rating system for development proposals. The rating system allows planners and architects to assign points and identify failings and changes required to encourage the development of well-planned residential subdivisions that complement the small-town appeal of traditional American urban centers.

Green Dreams, Toxic Legacies: Toward a Digital Political Ecology of Silicon Valley

This article examines the ways that geohumanities approaches historical research aids in the study of environmental and urban history in one of the twentieth century's fastest growing American urban centers. It explores how San Jose typified the challenges of Silicon Valley's rapid urbanization and desire to chart a new form of industrialisation predicated on the ‘greenness’ of high-tech manufacturing and development. These issues are examined through a variety of mapping and GIS projects that seek to understand areas of cities threatened by natural hazards, to unveil the growth of cities over time, and how polluted areas introduced environmental hazards to social inequality. The article concludes that studies of urban areas cannot be separated from questions about the environment and its role in social justice, urban planning, and politics.

The Uses of an Inner-City Sport-for-Development Program: Dispatches From the (Real) Creative Class

As a result of a rapidly changing global political economy, deindustrialization, and neoliberalism, a new form of racialized urban poverty has become concentrated in the inner cities of innumerable North American urban centers. In response to these material conditions, various nonprofit organizations, corporate-sponsored initiatives,and underfunded municipal recreation departments continue to provide a range of sport-for-development programs for the ‘urban outcasts’ of the global economy. While sport scholars have widely critiqued these initiatives, little is known about how people experience these programs against the backdrop of actually existing neoliberalism (Brenner &amp; Theodore, 2002) and the new conditions of urban poverty. As part of a three-year urban ethnography in Edmonton, Alberta, this paper examines how a group of less affluent and often homeless young men experienced and made use of a weekly, publicly funded floor-hockey program. In so doing, we explore how this sport-for-development program existed as a ‘hub’ within a network of social solidarity and as a crucial site for marginalized individuals to negotiate, and, at times, resist conditions of precarious labor in a divided Western Canadian city.

Sport and the Shaping of Italian American IdentityGerald R.Gems. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013.

Sport and the Shaping of Italian American Identity Gerald R. Gems. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013.In 1907, Carmine Calabrese left Quadri, Abruzzo, Italy for what would become his new home in a new country. He disembarked at Ellis Island, New York, and a few weeks later settled in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a steel mill town just south of Pittsburgh where he worked as a laborer. He came to America, as did other Italians according to Gerald R. Gems (nee DiBenedetto), ...in hopes of a better future,.. .to settle in a new land.. .to earn enough money to return to Italy in a more comfortable condition (11). Like so many of the Italian immigrants, however, Calabrese never returned to Italy. In 1917, he enlisted in the Army of his new country and served honorably during World War I, even surviving wounds he received during the battle of Meuse-Ar gonne. Following his discharge, Calabrese returned to Clairton, and, in 1919, he married Philomena Pasquarella. Carmine and Philomena Calabrese's first of four children was a daughter, Julia. Julia Calabrese would herself later have two daughters and two sons; the youngest of her sons was I. So, though my last name is Charles, I am the proud son of Julia Calabrese, grandson of Carmine and Philomena Calabrese, and the great grandson of Pietro and Sabia Calabrese and Frank and Maria Pasquarella. I am an Italian American, and the experiences of my mother's family echo throughout the pages of Gems's Sport and the Shaping of Italian American Identity.In honor of my grandparents and my mother, and, in recognition of my relatives' experiences in and contributions to America, I have always admired fellow Italian Americans, especially politicians, actors, entertainers, and athletes. And among the later group, I follow most closely those baseball players and boxers with melodious Italian names. They are a source of pride to me and they anchor part of my sense of self. With my family roots in Pittsburgh, I follow the Pittsburgh Pirates who have had their share of Italian American players-Garagiola, Bartirome, Cimoli, Pagliaroni, Giusti, Mazilli, Mazzaro, and Grilli. I follow(ed) the careers of great Italian American boxers Marciano, LaStarza, LaMotta, Basilio, Antofuermo, Mancini, Pazienza, and Malignaggi. A list of great American basketball coaches sounds like roll call at a Sons of Italy dinner meeting: Auriemma, Calabria, Calipari, Carlisimo, Carnesecca, Del Negro, Fratello, Izzo, Massimino, Pitino, Valvano. Is there more to my affinity for Italian Americans in professional sports and other walks of life than the accident of my birth? In a well-organized, well-re searched, and well-argued presentation, Gerald R. Gems posits answers to two key questions: why [did/do] sports have a particular appeal for Italian-American youth and [what was] the role [sports] played in the assimilation process? (xv). In so doing, through the lens of the Italian-American experience, Gems sheds light more broadly on the American immigrant experience by examining the important role that sports play in the development of a community's identity.To Gems, the development of Italian ethnic identity is more than attaining fame or notoriety in a new land. He connects societal conditions and cultural traditions in Italy to the conditions faced by Italian immigrants in America that had to be overcome in order to permit construction of a unified Italian American identity. Regional and social class distinctions held from Italy, including diverse language dialects, divided Italian immigrants when they settled in the United States. There was little by way of shared identity across the disparate groups of Italian immigrants wherever they found themselves. It is well known that hostilities between the northern and southern regions of Italy carried over to America and led to the establishment of specific region/culture-based enclaves within the Little Italies that emerged in American urban centers. …

We’re Going to Run This City: Winnipeg’s Political Left after the General Strike by Stefan Epp-Koop

Reviewed by: We’re Going to Run This City: Winnipeg’s Political Left after the General Strike by Stefan Epp-Koop George Melnyk We’re Going to Run This City: Winnipeg’s Political Left after the General Strike. By Stefan Epp-Koop. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2015. ix + 197 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95 cad/ $27.95 usd, paper. Winnipeg is western Canada’s oldest city. It is also the region’s most fabled urban center because of its association with insurrectionary and left-wing events. Some of these events predate incorporation (1873)—the Seven Oaks Massacre of 1816 in which fur traders and settlers clashed and 1869 when Louis Riel and the Métis declared a provisional government that led to the formation of the province of Manitoba shortly thereafter. In 1919 the city experienced a general strike that was broken by the military and the police. It was that strike that provided an impetus for the city’s labor movement to work hard on electoral representation in municipal politics. Epp-Koop’s book is a serious and detailed study of the post-strike period in Winnipeg’s municipal politics, extending into the 1930s. The author concludes that the battles between left and right, the working class and the elite, resulted in a “deeply divided” city. The divisions were not only class-based, they were also ethnic. While Winnipeg did not have the racial divisions that developed in American urban centers, it did share some of the attributes of the new cities formed in the Great Plains. These cities experienced rapid population growth fueled by settlers and immigrants, rampant real estate speculation, and labor exploitation associated with railroad expansion into the West. The study of how these class divisions played out in Winnipeg becomes a reference for understanding similar phenomenon in other cities of the region. In the period between 1920 and 1940 two political parties came to represent the left in Winnipeg—the Independent Labour Party (ilp), which had a moderate social democratic ideology based in English socialism, and the Communist Party of Canada (cpc), which favored a robust proletarian agenda promoted by the Russian Revolution. Both parties vied for voters in Ward 3, whose demographic was solidly working class and ethnic. Eventually ilp candidates were able to win the mayoralty race and a plurality on city council with the aid of cpc representatives. But the results in terms of social change and economic benefits for workers were modest. Nevertheless, the continued presence of the left on city council helped define urban politics for decades. Epp-Koop is a good writer and his narrative is both analytical and persuasive. His portrayal of the personalities who dominated the left in Winnipeg is engaging, while his discussion of municipal election issues is clear and precise. He makes use of numerous sources to bolster his argument. Clearly he is friendly [End Page 339] toward the left. However, the text would have benefited from more lines being drawn between what was happening in urban politics and what was going on provincially and federally for the left. This absence contributes to a certain narrowness. Second, the book would have made a contribution to urban studies rather than just political science by adding a descriptive sociological commentary on working-class life in Winnipeg that would have contextualized the policies advocated by elected representatives of the working class. [End Page 340] George Melnyk Department of Communication, Media, and Film University of Calgary Copyright © 2016 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

From West End to Eastside: The Vancouver HIV/AIDS Epidemic, 1983-2013.

Traditional histories of AIDS have used a few major American urban centres as proxies for the North American epidemic more broadly and have tended to frame the epidemic as a quintessentially gay and American experience. A careful examination of how the epidemic unfolded in Vancouver, British Columbia, however, reveals considerable differences, including the relative absence of local gay activist traditions prior to HIV/AIDS and the relative prominence of interventions such as Insite, North America's first sanctioned needle exchange program and safe injection site. An investigation of such differences emphasizes the local character of the epidemic and adds a Canadian perspective to the existing AIDS historiography.