Metropolitan Periphery Research Articles

The transformation of Chacabuco village: From the pre-columbian to the Metropolitan periphery of Santiago, Chile

The process of transformation of the Province of Chacabuco throughout its history according to historical, cartographic and testimonial background, constitutes the central objective in this writing. The facts that describe the process of territorial occupation and the different forms it has taken over time identifying five settlement impulses that are related to the structures that were formed in the territory, with the objective of understanding in detail the occupation of the territory and explaining the causes that impulse it. Since the 17th century, the territory of Chacabuco had scattered human settlements and a countryside organized under the hacienda system for agricultural and livestock use, with a small population around the houses, which after the appearance of the Santiago- Valparaíso railroad generated an agglomeration of dwellings around the stations. From the seventeenth century until the first half of the twentieth century, the territory lacked housing and was mainly devoted to livestock, agriculture or remained unused. However, in the second half of the 20th century, the settlement had an explosive development, linked to urban expansion processes of the city of Santiago, the main metropolis of the country.

Transportation Networks and the Geographic Concentration of Employment

Abstract This paper examines the effect of expanding transportation networks on spatial industrial growth across the United States from 1953 to 2016. I use a new methodological approach that applies network theory combined with a historic military map to address the two forms of endogeneity present in expanding transportation networks: route placement and construction timing. I find that Interstate counties experienced significant growth in employment and the number of establishments relative to non-Interstate counties. Growth rates are highest within two decades of receiving an Interstate. Results also reveal positive spillovers occurred in later decades among adjacent counties along the metropolitan periphery.

Political ecology and basic sanitation: analysis from the metropolitan periphery of the Rio de Janeiro

Access to water supply and sewerage networks are essential elements of basic sanitation, however, access to these networks is conditioned to exclusionary models and reflects an unequal way of reproducing space. There is a need to critically think about a political ecology that assesses the conditions of this supply and reveals the asymmetries in times marked by neoliberalism, which incorporates, from the new legal framework, new directions for sanitation policy in the country. Thus, the present text aims to present a critical view from the existing realities on the periphery of the outskirts of the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro - extracted from the segment of the Metropolitan Far West - given the current context of privatization (concession) of supply services and wastewater collection. Access data are used based on IBGE and SNIS and a cartography that explains the differences in access to such services in the Far West Metropolitan Fluminense, having its exemplification from the case of the city of Paracambi Key-words: Access to water and sewage, neoliberalism, CEDAE privatization, Inequalities

Industrial competitiveness and FDI opportunities in the metropolitan periphery - product space network analysis of Laval, Canada

This paper investigates the industrial competitiveness and FDI opportunities in the metropolitan periphery embedded in the product space network. Assessing the knowledge complexity and revealed competitive advantage (RCA) of local industries, entrepreneurs and policymakers can identify the most prominent ones and implement competitive strategy accordingly. Complementarily, they can attract FDI inflows in non-RCA structural hole sectors of close knowledge proximity with existing RCA sectors in the product space network. In the case study of Laval, Canada, we conduct quantitative product space network analysis and qualitative thematic analysis on the semistructured interviews with entrepreneurs and policymakers to address these points.

Balancing Act: Preserving Historic Fabric and Enhancing Economic Vitality in Towns in the Metropolitan Periphery

ABSTRACT Towns on the periphery of metropolitan areas face threats from metropolitan growth and the rise of Internet retail. They may be able to play new roles in the regional economy, e.g. as locations for tele-commuting, small-scale manufacturing, artisanal work, or residential development, but such new functions may threaten their historic fabric. This paper describes challenges historic downtowns in the metropolitan periphery perceive and their efforts to address them, as revealed through a national survey. Some towns are receiving new economic activities, but only a small number of their surrounding regions appear to support both the economic vitality and historic physical fabric of these centres.

Environmental Regeneration Integrating Soft Mobility and Green Street Networks: A Case Study in the Metropolitan Periphery of Naples

Public space and street networks form a significant and central determinant of urban quality. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has focused their crucial importance in the reorganisation of places that are “safe” because they allow movement through cities with minimal risk of contagion. While addressing the need for social distancing, open air exercise, and mobility without use of public transport, these measures resulted in other environmental and social benefits. Living with the coronavirus pandemic has produced a series of adaptative actions, such as barring or limiting automobile traffic, thereby expanding street space for pedestrians and bicyclists, whose impact is, as yet, difficult to fathom because of their contingent, temporary nature. In this context, this case study proposes a sustainable bicycle network to inform the future, permanent street redesign. Based on topographic, morphologic, and climatic data, it evaluates a series of contiguous road sections, defining redesign capacities and critical conditions to implement sustainable interventions to manage urban runoff, mitigate of extreme heat events, expand pedestrian paths and provide a bicycle network. This holistic approach to sustainable urban design evaluation, supported by reproducible data and parameters, serves as a replicable model for the sustainable redesign of roads in other urban settings. The extent, integration, and complexity of the study engaged an interdisciplinary framework, facilitating detailed planning and design and quantified assessments of environmental outcomes.

Financialization of the pharmaceutical industry and its impact on urban peripheries in the Metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico

The process of financialization is present in the health sector, particularly in the case of large pharmaceutical companies. In the case of Mexico, there has been an expansion of pharmacies with medical offices as a result of capital flows, but also due to the absence of a quality public health system. This paper analyzes how the contemporary processes of pharmaceutical company financialization have allowed the expansion of the medical office-based pharmacy scheme and, to a certain extent, the “substitution” of health services managed by public authorities in the urban peripheries of the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico. Based on information from Farmacias Benavides and Farmacias Guadalajara, issued by the Mexican Stock Exchange, on several indicators on health and pharmacies in Mexico, as well as semi-structured interviews with residents of the metropolitan periphery, it is argued that the exponential growth of pharmacies in the last two decades is linked to the policy of expansion and construction of social housing. These housing projects, largely due to weak regulatory controls, do not develop an adequate health infrastructure both in qualitative and quantitative terms, thus favoring the opening of financial instruments that have allowed large pharmaceutical companies to expand in recent decades.

La activación de la ciudadanía como estrategia para la sostenibilidad turística en lugares patrimoniales cercanos a la gran ciudad. El caso de la región madrileña

Although Cultural Heritage is a recognized source of well‑being, its touristic overexploitation gen‑ erates strong negative impacts, aggravated in large cities due to the concentration of effects in space. This work addresses the case of Madrid, a city that has first‑rate heritage assets in its metropolitan periphery, whose better touristic use would help to mitigate the negative impact on the capital, while contributing to the economic and social development of the periphery. In the research, a dynamic methodological approach was applied with four complementary analysis planes: documentary and networks, qualitative, quantitative and participatory processes. The results show the need to adopt cultural management and tourism planning strategies aimed at rebalancing visitor flows. The activation of the neighbors themselves is revealed as an especially valuable resource to strengthen proximity, experiential and more sustainable tourism. The The impact of Covid‑19, on the one hand, and the declaration of Paseo del Prado and El Retiro as World Heritage Sites, on the other, have made this situation even more topical.

Condomínios populares horizontais fechados: um novo produto imobiliário na periferia metropolitana

Os condomínios populares horizontais fechados são produtos imobiliários desenvolvidos no âmbito do Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida (PMCMV) que se disseminaram em áreas urbanas/metropolitanas brasileiras na última década, sobretudo em porções mais periféricas. Tendo como estudo de caso a cidade de Fazenda Rio Grande, integrante da Região Metropolitana de Curitiba (Paraná/Brasil), o presente trabalho procura compreender as transformações espaciais decorrentes da inserção desses empreendimentos na periferia metropolitana. Para tanto, analisa as características desses condomínios, os locais de implantação e impactos na vida dos moradores. Os resultados demonstram que o forte protagonismo de incorporadores e construtores no desenvolvimento desses empreendimentos favoreceu a expansão urbana e metropolitana e uma série de impactos no cotidiano dos moradores.

Patrones de expansión urbana de las megaurbes latinoamericanas en el nuevo milenio

Las políticas neoliberales trastocan la urbanización, ahora ceñida a una lógica de mercado donde el sector inmobiliario adquiere un papel cada vez más importante. En este estudio se analiza la evolución de la densidad de población y la morfología del área urbana de las cuatro megaciudades latinoamericanas: Buenos Aires, Ciudad de México, São Paulo y Río de Janeiro. Se encuentra que la expansión urbana es cada vez más dispersa y segmentada espacialmente. Se vincula este patrón de urbanización a las constructoras privadas que localizan conjuntos habitacionales en la periferia metropolitana, siguiendo una lógica de emplazamiento mercantil que fomenta la fragmentación espacial. Se muestra la imperante necesidad de una planificación territorial efectiva para limitar el uso del territorio no urbanizado y asegurar el desarrollo humano en las nuevas periferias urbanas.

CARTOGRAFIA SOCIAL DA ILHA DE COTIJUBA – BELÉM/PA

O caso da ilha de Cotijuba, município de Belém (PA), é apresentado no texto a partir da visão de movimentos sociais locais sobre as potencialidades e fragilidades da ilha, apontadas em cartografia social, entrevistas e vivências. Observa-se que ações de iniciativa popular apoiam o modo de vida local em contexto de isolamento e controle público da terra, mas tem limitações que só poderão ser devidamente superadas com políticas públicas adequadas e perspectiva de longo prazo, que reconheçam as múltiplas faces e funções da ilha, sem reduzi-la à condição de periferia metropolitana.

“No queers out there”? Metronormativity and the queer suburban

AbstractDespite past projects to “decentre” metronormativity—a societal bias toward queer urban imaginings—in geographical scholarship, attention to suburbia has been limited due, in part, to reliance upon, and reinforcement of, an urban–rural binary that disqualifies the metropolitan periphery. This paper unpacks this binary by reviewing key themes at the intersections of the queer and suburban within the subfields of geographies of sexualities and queer geographies. It begins by outlining the American metronormativities critique and evaluating the claim that the “non‐metropolitan” should be the primary arena for unsettling the queer urban. Four key themes from the Anglo‐American‐Australian literature on the queer suburban are then surveyed: suburbanization processes, suburban relocations, suburban “ways of life,” and suburban home‐making. Having evaluated the current state of the subfield, the paper concludes by pointing to the possibilities of the queer suburban for future urban geography and geographies of LGBTQ+ sexualities scholarship.

Apropiación y control de recursos en la expansión urbana. La periferia metropolitana como espacio de disputa entre actores sociales

En este artículo se presenta a los pueblos originarios y sus lógicas de acción como parte del conjunto de actores que configuran e influyen en el proceso de urbanización en la periferia metropolitana del Valle de México. Ellos son quienes han poblado tradicionalmente estos espacios y han utilizado los recursos básicos del territorio para su asentamiento, empleo y subsistencia. Lo anterior les otorgó históricamente cierto margen de autoridad y control sobre dichos recursos, situación que ha ido cambiando e incluso perdiéndose con el tiempo, dados los procesos de poblamiento y transformación de su entorno inmediato, y la consecuente intervención de otros actores, con quienes hoy disputan estos recursos, especialmente el suelo urbanizable y el agua, elementos indispensables para la urbanización.

“Urban Farming Is Going High Tech”

Problem, research strategy, and findings: How do traditional forms of urban agriculture and the newer digital urban agriculture converge and diverge from one another in terms of land use and gentrification? I interrogate the subject of digital urban agriculture with data from 82 semistructured interviews and notes taken during public forms and tours of facilities. Respondents were located in Denver (CO; n = 30), New York (NY; n = 26), and San Francisco (CA; n = 26) and held positions ranging from community organizers, investors, local food powerbrokers, and planners to engineers involved in facilitating urban foodways based on vertical farming, automation, and related technologies. I find digital platforms—systems exhibiting characteristics including real-time surveillance, artificial intelligence, and automation—share similarities with traditional urban farming systems. Both platforms have the potential to disrupt dominant political economies and also have links to gentrification and other inequitable land use patterns. Potential divergences include differences in a) social, cultural, economic, human, and built capital barriers and outcomes; b) land use life course; and c) zoning.Takeaway for practice: Digital urban farming systems inhabit a regulatory gray area; respondents encountered agricultural, industrial, or commercial zoning permits. The “digital” aspects of these systems contributed to this ambiguity and are used by powerbrokers to obtain further zoning permission than is possible with traditional urban agriculture. Compared with more traditional urban farming systems, digital urban agriculture taps into different forms of human capital. Finally, my findings are inconclusive on the issue of land use life course. Some data indicate digital farms will remain in urban cores, whereas other evidence points to the eventual migration of these platforms to the metropolitan periphery.

Assessing the Impacts of Urban Sprawl on Suburban Villages in the Bamenda Metropolitan Periphery, North West Cameroon

Man has been and remains mobile, conquering and impacting every space he occupies. Man’s impact on space has been more accentuated since the 20th century than erstwhile in history, owing to demographic explosion and more advanced technological innovations. Urban space and adjoining lands are impacted most compared to the rural milieu. This study examines the ramifications of rapid and disordered urbanisation on peripheral villages to the city of Bamenda. This is crucial in understanding the threats and consequences of the phenomenon of unending urbanisation on contiguous agricultural land. The trend of urbanisation and resultant impacts were ascertained by analysing data drawn from national census figures, LANDSAT satellite images and suitable field surveys. Analyses revealed that a growth of 14.6% of the population between 1973 and 2018 produced a corresponding sprawl of 97.54% of the spatial extent of Bamenda metropolis, which presently covers 40.96 times the spatial area it occupied in 1973. This has grave repercussions for contiguous agricultural land and urban food security. The paper posits that a scrupulous compliance with existing urban master plans and implementation of carefully designed policies to protect agricultural land are inevitable in checking urban growth and its induced effects; and guaranteeing urban food security.

History of the Bukhara branch of the Azov-Don commercial bank

The article investigates foundations of work and functions of the Bukhara branch of the Azov-Don commercial bank. In soviet historiography banks were considered as colonialism tools (both Western and Russian). On the basis of archive data the author proves that finance institutions of the Russian Empire took into account the local specificity and stimulated production of export-oriented goods. The author uses inter-bank correspondence, annual reports of the branch director and materials of the Bukhara branch audit. For the first time active and passive bank transactions were researched, expenses and incomes of the bank were analyzed and personnel of the bank was studied. The author, in contrast to soviet and post-soviet researchers thinks that banks were not monopolists in economy of the Middle East. The Azov-Don bank had got a broad network of branches (4 branches) in the Middle East region. It tried to take in hand the export of cotton and fruit but could not become a monopolist in economic life of Turkestan. The principle cause of ‘failure’ according to the author was the adjustment of the bank to real economic relations in the Turkestan Governorship-General and khanates. Modernization of Central Asia economy, according to banks implied financing of export crops and intermediary between the metropolitan country and periphery. ‘Colonial’ periphery seemed to be an appealing field for investment and super-profit, but speculative nature of Turkestan economy stopped banks’ development. As a result economic modernization of the Middle East slowed down and opened the way to the soviet experiment.

‘Straightening’ space and time? Peripheral moral panics in print media representations of Canadian LGBTQ2S suburbanites, 1985–2005

ABSTRACT This paper adopts a spatial-temporal lens to examine mainstream print media representations of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) suburbanites in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas in the 1990s. Due to major changes in Canadian gay rights legislation, the 1990s were a decade when the spatial and temporal reproduction of heteronormativity was contested, including in suburban areas. Through a focus on the metropolitan periphery, this paper argues that LGBTQ2S people and their politics were discursively positioned in print media coverage as spatially unexpected and temporally disruptive of heteronormativity. Drawing upon a suburban LGBTQ2S print-media database from 1985 to 2005 (n = 1300), an analysis of aggregate patterns is provided and three exemplary case studies of suburban ‘moral panics’ detailed from within case-study metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The paper concludes that the greatest public debate in the print media was generated when queers intruded upon institutions that were central to the reproduction of heteronormative futures, that is, the institutions that are the very foundation of suburbia such as recreational spaces, religious institutions and schools.

Invisibilidade social e produção do espaço subordinado em Belém (PA)

As dificuldades históricas de aproximação entre a lógica ambiental e o planejamento urbano favoreceram práticas de exclusão socioambiental na expansão urbana de Belém, na medida em que novos arranjos espaciais e sociais ‘naturalizaram’ mudanças ambientais que afetam grupos sociais de menor renda oriundos da várzea (caboclos e ribeirinhos). A releitura da expansão de Belém revela uma progressiva desarticulação entre homem, modo de vida e base biofísica na produção da cidade; onde a supressão de vegetação, adensamento construtivo e localização dos rios contaminados com lançamentos de esgoto inviabilizaram práticas tradicionais e contribuíram para alterações no microclima urbano. Os dados empíricos indicam que na periferia metropolitana coexistem grupos sociais, desde os que dependem da natureza (agricultores e extrativistas urbanos) até típicos moradores da periferia da cidade capitalista, um ponto cego para as políticas urbanas que tendem a homogeneizar o espaço sem atenção ao potencial de soluções que a diversidade oferece aos desafios da exclusão social e do risco ambiental. Cartografias da ocorrência da água e vegetação, análises morfológicas e pesquisas de campo procuram revelar os potenciais positivos da resistência das velhas práticas para Belém e para a cidade brasileira em geral, mas principalmente para as cidades amazônicas, que ainda tomam a metrópole como referência de ‘civilização’.

Identifying Employment Subcenters: The Method of Exponentially Declining Cutoffs

The standard method of identifying subcenters is due to Giuliano and Small. While simple, robust and easy to apply, because it uses absolute employment density and employment cutoffs, it identifies “too few” subcenters at the metropolitan periphery. This paper presents a straight forward modification to this method aimed at remedying this weakness. The modification entails using cutoffs that decline exponentially with distance from the metropolitan center, thereby giving consideration to the employment density of a location relative to that of its locality. In urban studies, there is a long history of estimating employment density “gradients”, the exponential rate at which employment density declines with distance from the metropolitan center. These density gradients differ substantially across metropolitan areas and across time for a particular metropolitan area. Applying our method to Los Angeles, Calgary and Paris, we have found that using cutoffs that decline exponentially at one-half the estimated density gradients achieves an appealing balance between subcenters identified close to the metropolitan center and those identified at the metropolitan periphery. Many other methods of subcenter identification have been proposed that use sophisticated econometric procedures. Our method should appeal to practitioners who are looking for a simple method to apply.

Jornalismo no “país da periferia”

A crise da mídia de referência determinou a busca de superação de suas próprias limitações através da tentativa de aproximação do que tem sido definido como público “Classe C”, habitante da periferia metropolitana e provocativamente denominado de “ralé”. Nossa reflexão tenta perceber até que ponto a alteridade está internalizada nas narrativas jornalísticas de televisão que dele buscam aproximar-se ou se, por outra, ela é incorporada ainda de maneira superficial e apenas amparada no apelo de figuras midiáticas que atuam como repórteres. Ao estudar três projetos telejornalísticos distintos – em TV aberta, TV por assinatura e TV web –, indagamos até que nível estão incorporados os valores da identidade social de militantes populares de periferia na construção da identidade discursiva das matérias jornalísticas que protagonizam e que engendram um “jornalismo de periferia”. Nossos resultados apontam que as características noticiosas do entre-lugar engendrado transitam entre a ambivalência e a liminaridade.