Post-industrial City Research Articles

Linking tree cover change to historical management practices in urban parks

Urban tree canopy (UTC) in parks is shaped by complex interactions between social and ecological processes over decades. To understand UTC change in parks, it is critical to identify and characterize the unique set of social processes that drive long-term change. We sought to uncover the feedbacks between social processes and long-term UTC changes in parks of a post-industrial city that experienced substantial population loss and park disinvestment. Our mixed-methods approach involved quantifying spatiotemporal UTC changes and connecting those changes to historical management practices for three parks in Philadelphia, PA (US). We delineated UTC using aerial imagery between 1959 and 2018, and synthesized information from archival records and semi-structured interviews about historical management practices. We found substantial UTC gains between 1959 and 1980, due to both: (a) budget cuts, mowing cessation, and associated unintended forest emergence; and (b) purposeful tree planting and reforestation activities. While some UTC gains were purposeful, others were unintentional and reflect successional processes on unmaintained lands. Contrary to literature suggesting that financial investment would lead to UTC gain, we saw declining UTC following an influx of new funding post-2000 due to construction and ecological restoration. We found differing pathways leading to convergent outcomes of UTC gains. Across the three parks, differing historical processes and management goals for park landscapes had important ramifications for UTC. Our work suggests that landscape management could benefit from an improved understanding of how historical processes impact land cover over the long-term.

Community engagement, greening, and violent crime: A test of the greening hypothesis and Busy Streets.

Researchers have documented that vacant lot greening can reduce community-level crime and violence. Busy Streets Theory (BST) suggests that residents who are involved in the greening process can help to improve physical environments and build social connections that deter crime and violence. Yet few researchers have explored how community engagement in the greening process may affect crime and violence outcomes. We applied BST to test the effects of community-engaged vacant lot greening compared to vacant lots that received either professional mowing or no treatment, on the density of violent crime around study lots. Using mixed effects regression models, we analyzed trends in violent crime density over the summer months from 2016 to 2018 at 2102 street segments in Youngstown, OH. These street segments fell within 150 meters of an intervention parcel that was classified as one of three conditions: community-engaged maintenance, professional mowing, or no treatment (control). We found that street segments in areas receiving community-engaged maintenance or professional mowing experienced greater declines in violent crime density than street segments in areas receiving no treatment, and more decline occurred in the community-engaged condition compared to the professional mow condition. Our findings support BST and suggest that community-engaged greening of vacant lots in postindustrial cities with a concentrated vacancy can reduce crime and violence.

William Heath Robinson & K.R.G. Browne

When living in tiny apartments without proper ventilation, sunlight, contact with nature, or the possibility of social interaction, people tend to generate creative and flexible design strategies to overcome these difficulties. Private and public spaces can be reconfigured into multifunctional areas by using simple but effective means to create links between home and nature. This text-based essay identifies existing and historical architectural discourse that addresses social, cultural, and perceptual issues as a means to locate conceptual solutions suitable for buildings and flats. An inquiry into William Heath Robinson’s (1872–1944) drawings indicates that these images, while satiric, were inspired by complex issues that crossed disciplinary boundaries, taking architectural narrative into the political, cultural, economic, aesthetic, and social discourse. The satirical engines created by Robinson constitute a socio-political critique through the representation of biting solutions to the difficulties found in new settlements in the post-industrial city. During this period, many people living in the United Kingdom (UK) moved from the countryside to the cities, and consistently found themselves living in small apartments. The difficulties arising from the lack of space were addressed by Robinson’s unbalanced and hypothetical design solutions that included proposing indoor space fabulations that would extend traditional forms of users’ occupation. Though an engineer who identified problems and then invented solutions, his creative work was a strange contraption rooted in impossible ideas. He illustrated the possibilities of bringing life to the common areas of shared housing by transforming tiny apartments by adding mobile solutions with the aim to improve the lives of inhabitants. The concepts behind these creative solutionstraced back one century ago can be seen as a counterpart to contemporary transformative interior design strategies.

Exploring green gentrification in 28 global North cities: the role of urban parks and other types of greenspaces

Although cities globally are increasingly mobilizing re-naturing projects to address diverse urban socio-environmental and health challenges, there is mounting evidence that these interventions may also be linked to the phenomenon known as green gentrification. However, to date the empirical evidence on the relationship between greenspaces and gentrification regarding associations with different greenspace types remains scarce. This study focused on 28 mid-sized cities in North America and Western Europe. We assessed improved access to different types of greenspace (i.e. total area of parks, gardens, nature preserves, recreational areas or greenways [i] added before the 2000s or [ii] added before the 2010s) and gentrification processes (including [i] gentrification for the 2000s; [ii] gentrification for the 2010s; [iii] gentrification throughout the decades of the 2000s and 2010s) in each small geographical unit of each city. To estimate the associations, we developed a Bayesian hierarchical spatial model for each city and gentrification time period (i.e. a maximum of three models per city). More than half of our models showed that parks—together with other factors such as proximity to the city center—are positively associated with gentrification processes, particularly in the US context, except in historically Black disinvested postindustrial cities with lots of vacant land. We also find than in half of our models newly designated nature preserves are negatively associated with gentrification processes, particularly when considering gentrification throughout the 2000s and the 2010s and in the US. Meanwhile, for new gardens, recreational spaces and greenways, our research shows mixed results (some positive, some negative and some no effect associations). Considering the environmental and health benefits of urban re-naturing projects, cities should keep investing in improving park access while simultaneously implementing anti-displacement and inclusive green policies.

Not all brownfields are equal: A typological assessment reveals hidden green space in the city

While the role of urban green space in mitigating environmental hazards and enhancing urban resilience is widely recognised, the current or potential contribution of brownfield land to urban green infrastructure and ecosystem services has been largely overlooked by planning legislation. The perception of brownfield as low value spaces has instead driven a focus on brownfield-first redevelopment, and thus, this dynamic resource is quickly being lost. This research, based on GIS and remote sensing data, develops a novel hierarchical brownfield classification methodology to understand the nature and distribution of brownfield, using k-means clustering of several physical attributes, which can be used for a range of objectives and is widely applicable to post-industrial cities. Application of the methodology to the case study, Greater Manchester, UK, produced a typology of twenty-six brownfield types with distinct characteristics and differing spatial patterns across the city. Land cover analysis reveals that over half (51%) of brownfield land is vegetated (comprising 27% trees and shrubs, 24% grass and herbaceous vegetation), highlighting the significant ‘hidden’ green space present on brownfield. Brownfield sites traditionally perceived as difficult to develop (e.g. those with uneven topography, irregular shapes, or a water body), are particularly highly vegetated. Predominantly pervious types are widely distributed across the conurbation, including in built-up areas, which are a principal target for redevelopment, and thus highly vegetated brownfields are likely being lost undetected. Brownfield land is evidently a valuable dynamic resource in post-industrial cities and redevelopment should be planned at the city-scale to ensure careful strategic selection of sites for redevelopment, greening, or interim use based upon their characteristics and location.

Pathos and Comfort of the City Against the “Torrents of Progress”: Ignatius Reilly’s New Orleans in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces

Viewed from the perspective of the trickster-type main character Ignatius Reilly and his engagement with his surroundings and other characters as citizens in a series of picaresque adventures, the city of New Orleans in the novel A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) becomes a space of pathos and comfort, indicative of Ignatius’s paralysis and inability to leave it, caused by his innate paranoia of the doctrine of progress in the modern age. At a point in history when the postcolonial and postindustrial city is trying to rebrand itself as a tourist haven, the chronotope of New Orleans functions as a place of suspended modernity, offering comfort in the pathos of its entropy, stagnation and nostalgia against the raging torrents of modernity that reign outside its city limits in the rest of the country.

Leaving Blacks Behind in Brooklyn

The Borough of Brooklyn, New York has evolved over the past half-millennium from a sparsely settled, lush woodland, to a bustling super-diverse, post-industrial city of almost three million residents. This essay looks at the experiences of those who, over that long period of time, have made their homes in this territory. The first Brooklynites, of course were Native Americans such as members of the Canarsie tribe, but since them there has been a virtual Roman Fountain of migrants and immigrants from every corner of the nation and the globe. This enormous population movement can easily be characterized as a series of what classical urban ecologists such called “invasions and successions” (Park, et al., 1925). Unfortunately, as a consequence of conflicts and competitions over Brooklyn spaces and resources, there has been an unequal, and inequitable, distribution of public goods to “winners” and “losers.” Here we will address that, periodically troubled, history from a “distributive social justice” perspective, with a special focus on those of African descent (Rawls & Kelly, 2003). that will also be prefaced by the United Nations “17 Sustainable Development Goals” (United Nations, 2022).

Planning “the Future of the City” or Imagining “the City of the Future”? In Search of Sustainable Urban Utopianism in Katowice

In constantly expanding its fields of application, sustainable development is becoming the basic approach to planning and governing the twenty-first century city. This article examines sustainable urban development policies through the lens of utopian thinking and indicates the opposing scholarly interpretations of modern utopianism. On the one hand, this is approached as dreaming and fantasizing about the future; on the other, it is approached as well-calculated planning activities. More specifically, this article explores how the urban community in a post-socialist, post-industrial city faces the implementation of the challenge of a twenty-first-century sustainable development project. Using the example of the city of Katowice in southern Poland, the article examines three discourses of sustainable urban utopianism. It is first seen as strategic planning for a pursued better future; second, it is seen as an image of the city of the future; and, third, it is seen as a difficult-to-achieve vision for the city of the future in light of specific local barriers to development. Apart from Katowice’s successes in transforming its traditional industrial profile—based on coal mining—this study also draws attention to the successful construction of a new image for economic changes, urban design, and sustainable development, which has been confirmed by numerous recognitions at the national and international scale.

Investigation of pollutant metals in road dust in a post-industrial city: Case study from Detroit, Michigan

Inhalation and/or ingestion of toxic heavy metals enriched in road dust have toxic effects on humans. From inhalation and ingestion of dust, release of readily bioavailable elements sorbed on to dust, could lead to health issues such as lung or skin cancer, kidney dysfunction, hypertension, dermal lesions, peripheral neuropathy, and vascular disease. On 49 road dust and soil samples collected in the Metro Detroit area, we analyzed a suite of trace metals in <63 μm and size-separated fractions to quantify the extent of metal enrichment and contamination status. We evaluated Enrichment Factor (EF), Pollution Index (PI), Geoaccumulation Index (GI), and Pollution Load Index (PLI). The average Chromium (Cr) concentration of 198 ppm is the highest reported for any global city in literature while in ∼80% samples, Barium (Ba), Cr, Lead (Pb), and Zinc (Zn) concentrations exceeded the USEPA limit. The EF for Barium (Ba) was found to be ≥9 in all samples, and for the rest of other elements was >1.5. The PI values for Cr, Ba, Zinc (Zn), Lead (Pb), and Selenium (Se) indicate elevated levels and for Ba, Cr, and Zn up to a moderate level. PLI values in >50% of road dusts were ≥3, indicating many sites are ‘heavily polluted’. The PLI value in Detroit road dust is higher than those reported for some other global cities including Shanghai. Observed strong correlations between Cr-Zn and Cadmium (Cd)-Silver (Ag) likely indicate a common metal source. Cluster analysis of data for Cd, Arsenic (As), Pb, and Zn appears to be distinct between different proximally related clusters, while Nickel (Ni) and Ba are potentially more distinct between property type clusters. In general, metal concentrations of industrial samples are more commonly distinct with over half of metals (≥6 of 11) differing from residential and/or soil samples. Three generalized “groups” were identified from the combination of hierarchical cluster and PCA analyses followed by varimax rotation: Group 1 characterized by Cr, Cd, Ni, Ag, Zn, and Copper (Cu); Group 2 characterized by Pb, As, Mercury (Hg), and minor Ba; and Group 3 characterized by Se. This is the first study to report all four metrics of metal pollution along with rigorous statistical analysis.

THE PRACTICE OF INFORMALITY: Hustling, Anticipating and Refusing in the Postindustrial City

AbstractDrawing upon three years of ethnographic research conducted in drug and alcohol recovery houses and treatment centers in Philadelphia, this article argues that attending to the practice of informality in the subproletariat and precarious working classes of the postindustrial US city helps elucidate the twinned legacies of informality and surveillance in racialized US urban poverty. To do so, it recuperates Bourdieu's practice theory with the invigorating insights of Black studies on the historic legacies of racializing surveillance to theorize the practice of informality in the postindustrial US city. Ultimately, the article argues that informal practice offers a space of concealment forged through the evasion and countersurveillance of racializing surveillance in the postindustrial US city.

FORMULATION OF "GREEN" ARCHITECTURE IN THE MIND OF THE MODERN STAGE OF THE URBANIZATION PROCESS

The article considers the objects of "green" architecture, which is created to restore the ecological and natural component of urban space. The peculiarities of significant objects of "green" architecture and their role in improving the urban environment and the peculiarities of the formation of objects of "green" architecture in the structure of the post-industrial city are analyzed. The world experience of formation of objects of "green" architecture and their application for restoration of spaces with high-density buildings which have lost a natural component in structure of the post-industrial city is studied. In modern conditions of urbanization, characterized by changing technological epochs, a certain response to the challenges of the industrial period of civilization, among which the heritage of mankind are environmental problems, destruction of natural components, high-density buildings in the structure of major cities, the so-called "green" architecture, which is quite actively integrated into the urban environment. Following a certain path in its formation, "green" architecture today can be defined as one that combines environmental safety, sustainability in the environment, the natural component in any form and is formed on the basis of new technologies. In a highly urbanized urban environment, it often performs a compensatory function in the degradation or destruction of the natural environment. Its creation is also aimed at improving the microclimate of major cities, oxygen saturation, especially in the presence of high-density buildings, and details such as "green" roofs, "green" facades, "green" atriums form a new face of the modern city.

Commercial gentrification in China and its distribution, development, and correlates: The case of Chengdu

Within the Anglo-American literature, commercial, along with residential, gentrification has often been treated as an attendant neighborhood phenomenon. This study aims to uncover the distribution of areas for emerging consumption that indicate the occurrence of commercial gentrification, as well as to explain the development process and spatial correlations of commercial gentrification in Chengdu, a large Chinese city. With the data of points of interest (POIs), the study categorizes new retail places for commercial gentrification and conducts spatial and statistical analyses. The following findings are revealed: First, the distribution of new retail places changed from a monocentric to a polycentric structure in the main urban areas of Chengdu from 2010 to 2020, wherein high-density areas were partially overlapped with traditional commercial centers. Second, commercial gentrification in Chengdu was presented by the fastest growth of the entertainment services in the 2010s. Third, commercial gentrification in Chengdu shifted from a centripetal to a centrifugal development pattern from 2010 to 2020. The geographies of development were variegated, connected with multiple location attributes and impacted by local governments’ urban development strategies. Fourth, commercial gentrification was positively correlated with the growth of knowledge-intensive industries but negatively related to the change in both traditionally secondary and tertiary sectors in the past decade. Finally, changes in housing prices showed no connection with commercial gentrification during the studied period. The study suggests that commercial gentrification should be treated as a phenomenon of industrial gentrification, independent of residential gentrification. The commercial spatial planning in the city should play close attention to the synergic and exclusive relations between new retail industries and the evolution of industrial spaces in the emerging post-industrial city economy.

‘No One Likes Us’: Football, Identity, and Belonging in Post-Industrial London

This article explores the role of Millwall FC as a reference point for a working-class population feeling increasingly marginalised in the post-industrial city. The analysis is framed by, respectively, Sandra Wallman’s continuum between open and closed urban systems, developed in the 1980s, and Edward Soja’s concept of a multi-scalar view that offers an understanding of smaller geographical areas within a wider urban context. Overall, it can be argued that post-industrial dynamics, in particular the loss of industrial, inner-city employment and changes to housing stock and tenure patterns, have triggered a general move towards more open urban systems, thereby challenging the continued relevance of the open–closed continuum. With the closed system still existing in small ‘pockets’ of memories and nostalgia, Millwall fan culture represents one of few remaining closed systems, keeping alive memories of the docklands, and with Millwall support as a ‘blood tradition’, practiced across generations. But it is very much a pocket of the past. Where Millwall emerged as a club of its immediate neighbourhoods, this geographical area is now characterised by widespread gentrification and a rapidly increasing BAME population. With an increasing proportion of Millwall fans now located in Kent, Millwall FC has come to represent a last working-class bastion in South London.

Immigrant Birds

Immigrant Birds

Lead exposure induces nitrative stress and disrupts ribbon synapses in the cochlea.

Environmental exposure to heavy metal lead, a public health hazard in many post-industrial cities, causes hearing impairment upon long-term exposure. Lead-induced cochlear and vestibular dysfunction is well-documented in animal models. Although short-term exposure to lead at concentrations relevant to environmental settings does not cause significant shifts in hearing thresholds in adults, moderate- to low-level lead exposures induce neuronal damage and synaptic dysfunction. We reported that lead exposure induces oxidative stress in the mouse cochlea. However, lead-induced nitrative stress and potential damage to cochlear ribbon synapses are yet to be fully understood. Therefore, this study has evaluated cochlear synaptopathy and nitrative stress in young-adult mice exposed to 2 mM lead acetate for 28 days. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analysis indicated that this exposure significantly increased the blood lead levels. Assessment of hair cell loss by immunohistochemistry analysis and outer hair cell (OHC) activity by recording distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) indicated that the structure and function of the hair cells were not affected by lead exposure. However, this exposure significantly decreased the expression of C-terminal-binding protein-2 (CtBP2) and GluA2, pre- and post-synaptic protein markers in the inner hair cell synapses, particularly in the basal turn of the organ of Corti, suggesting lead-induced disruption of ribbon synapses. In addition, lead exposure significantly increased the nitrotyrosine levels in spiral ganglion cells, suggesting lead-induced nitrative stress in the cochlea. Collectively, these findings suggest that lead exposure even at levels that do not affect the OHCs induces cochlear nitrative stress and causes cochlear synaptopathy.

Words, River, Changes: Writing Lewiston, Maine

This essay describes and reflects on the central river of a small post-industrial city in Maine (USA), interweaving the author’s experience of place with the voices of three local poets, as a way of considering how the city and its river have been represented—as pastoral, abject, beautiful, and hybrid.

Tourism policy, spatial justice and COVID-19: lessons from a tourist-historic city

In many historic and post-industrial cities, tourism is often positioned as an important component for urban regeneration. Yet, the promise of sustainability and social transformation is often empty as policymakers focus on sustaining tourism over supporting greater social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the pandemic has drawn attention to the unsustainable nature of the neoliberal model of tourism engagement. Due to the paucity of research exploring spatial injustice in urban tourism, this study examines the impact policymaking and governance structures have on urban destinations and the potential inequalities this creates. Drawing on Edward Soja's approach to Lefebvre’s The Right to the City (1968), this research explores how lessons learned during the pandemic in the tourist-historic city of York, UK, could transform tourism in historic urban spaces. Taking an interpretive case study approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with leading stakeholders to understand the spatial dimensions of the lived experiences of policymaking. The hopeful signs emerging from York’s response to the pandemic demonstrate how communities can reclaim voice to build sustainable and purposeful models of engagement. This paper contributes to our understanding by demonstrating the transformative potential that future policymaking could have for reducing the negative impacts of tourism.

Making Place and Community: Contrasting Lesbian and Gay, Feminist and Queer Oral History Projects in Brighton and Leeds

ABSTRACT LGBTQ communities across Britain have created dozens of local history projects, especially in recent years. Springing from distinctive local towns and cities, these oral history projects have mostly, since 2000, been publicly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This article compares the aims, approaches, and structures of queer community history-making over the past thirty years in two English cities, the south coast seaside resort of Brighton, nationally known as a hub of gay life, and the northern postindustrial city of Leeds. It will discuss the formation and objectives of seven LGBT, feminist, and queer oral history projects in these cities, their funding and increasing professionalisation, their local impact, and, finally, the issues raised by the shift in conceptualization from “lesbian and gay” to “queer.” How the projects were formulated and how this has changed over time demonstrates the distinct ways in which community oral history-making has reflected differences in LGBTQ and queer place identity.

Creative Hubs in Hanoi, Vietnam

Creative Hubs in Hanoi, Vietnam

Influence of Source Apportionment of PAHs Occurrence in Aquatic Suspended Particulate Matter at a Typical Post-Industrial City: A Case Study of Freiberger Mulde River

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have received extensive attention because of their widespread presence in various environmental media and their high environmental toxicity. Thus, figuring out the long-term variances of their occurrence and driving force in the environment is helpful for environmental pollution control. This study investigates the concentration levels, spatial variance, and source apportionment of PAHs in suspended particulate matter of Freiberger Mulde river, Germany. Results show that the concentrations of the 16 priority PAHs suggested by USEPA (Σ16PAHs) were in the range of 707.0–17,243.0 μg kg−1 with a mean value of 5258.0 ± 2569.2 μg kg−1 from 2002 to 2016. The relatively high average concentrations of Σ16PAHs were found in the midstream and upstream stations of the given river (7297.5 and 6096.9 μg kg−1 in Halsbrucke and Hilbersdorf, respectively). In addition, the annual average concentration of Σ16PAHs showed an obvious decreasing pattern with time. Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) receptor model identified three potential sources: coke ovens (7.6–23.0%), vehicle emissions (35.9–47.7%), and coal and wood combustion (34.5–47.3%). The source intensity variation and wavelet coherence analysis indicated that the use of clean energy played a key role in reducing PAHs pollution levels in suspended sediments. The risk assessment of ecosystem and human health suggested that the Σ16PAHs in the given area posed a non-negligible threat to aquatic organisms and humans. The data provided herein could assist the subsequent management of PAHs in the aquatic environment.