Socio-spatial Contexts Research Articles

Investigating contestation around neighbourhood scale active travel infrastructure policy

Active travel infrastructure policy implemented at a neighbourhood scale has generated unexpected levels of socio-political contestation, leading to the removal of some schemes and widespread debates regarding equity and justice. Frequently, such contestation is framed as a discrete transport-centric phenomenon, engendering binary and objective pro-vs. anti-active travel infrastructure narratives, which obfuscate the intersection of policy with wider urban socio-spatial development dynamics. In response, this study adopts a critical urban approach to undertake a detailed investigation of contestation, through analysis of the subjective perspectives shaping contested discourses around neighbourhood scale active travel infrastructure. To achieve this, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders, using London as a case study. Our results show that divergent conceptualisations of sustainability, disparate experiences of decision-making processes, and heterogeneous socio-spatial contexts, all play a role in shaping and mediating contestation. Analysis of these themes highlights how processes of contestation are contingent upon the deployment of top-down technocratic policy. These findings reveal how current active travel infrastructure policy can further entrench, and give rise to, novel, uneven development processes. Thus, this study demonstrates the need for more transformative and strategic policy approaches, which offer truly participatory opportunities and consider active travel infrastructure within wider socio-spatial contexts.

“We are the forerunners in Southern Europe”: Experimenting with Business Improvement Districts in Greater Barcelona

ABSTRACT This paper uses the experimentation with Business Improvement Districts in Greater Barcelona to examine its relational re-making in a rather over-looked Southern-Mediterranean urban, socio-spatial and political-institutional context. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and institutional archives, it offers three intellectual contributions to urban policy mobilities studies. First, the paper argues that the territorial adaptation, mediation and translation of urban entrepreneurial policies hinges upon the differential and inherited nature of welfare regimes, state-market constellations and existing political infrastructures. Second, the paper outlines that policymakers have followed open-ended and multilateral learning approaches through space and time, in which some policy features were (re-)learned, circulated and modified to fit more centralized regimes. Third, and finally, it sketches out the role of government-funded pilot programs as instances through which policies are showcased, experimented and ultimately constituted before and after their institutionalization in specific socio-legal and socio-spatial contexts.

First impressions and the built environment: exploring zero acquaintance judgments in socio-spatial contexts

AbstractThe well-researched sociological concept known as Zero Acquaintance Judgment frames first impression scenarios and highlights their prevalence and importance to our everyday lives, yet sociology so far overlooks how these might be affected by the built environment where first impressions are typically situated. Broadly, spatial discriminatory discourse investigates how spaces can affect social judgments, yet no research has investigated how this dynamic might unfold within a first impression scenario. Using the Zero Acquaintance Judgment concept as a lens of inquiry, a comprehensive review of feminist, queer, racial, and disability frameworks (which comprise spatial discriminatory discourse) was undertaken. From this investigation, three broad theoretical themes were articulated and rationalized as to how the built environment can potentially affect first impressions between strangers. The discussion bears relevance for researchers and designers of spaces where first impressions are paramount to function as well as highlights how the settings of research into first impressions may affect outcomes.

As Reformas religiosas e o nascimento da escolarização ocidental

The religious reforms of the 16th century served as the midwives of early modernity. At a time when the Iberian expansion was globalizing the continents, these reforms sparked religious wars and deeply fragmented the European landscape. This confessionalization of society led to the emergence of a more rationalized form of Christianity, represented by various Protestant churches and Tridentine Catholicism, particularly exemplified by the Society of Jesus. Diverging from medieval Christianity, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans invested in creating their own networks of educational institutions, sparking an unprecedented wave of schooling that aimed to solidify the religious practices of their followers. In response, the Catholic Church also equipped itself, establishing parish schools and, notably, a network of Jesuit colleges that spread throughout the Catholic regions of Europe, Asia, and the New World. In 1599, the Society of Jesus unified its educational establishments with the institution of the Ratio Studiorum — a comprehensive set of Jesuit educational rules that became the foundational curriculum for Catholic schooling in the early modern period. This study argues that the religious reforms were instrumental in the birth of Western schooling, emerging from different Christian matrices — both Protestant and Catholic. This represents a historical shift — in the Foucauldian sense — that led to the rise of schooling in the Western world, characterized by modern discipline, manifested through mechanisms such as time control, spatial organization, the arrangement of forces, a climate of competition and student reward, and an emphasis on moral punishments. This issue is examined through three recent historical-sociological works published in Europe and Latin America: Produção da escola/produção da sociedade: Análise sócio-histórica de alguns momentos decisivos da evolução escolar no Ocidente by sociologist André Petitat; Arqueología de la escuela by sociologists Julia Varela and Fernando Álvarez-Uría; and A invenção da sala de aula: Uma genealogia das formas de ensinar by historians Inés Dussel and Marcelo Caruso. This historiographical reflection examines the emergence of Western schooling, aiming to identify common analytical elements across these three books, while also noting differences, particularly those related to theoretical foundations and socio-spatial contexts.

W64 - Nondrug Reward and Recovery From Addiction: Socio-Spatial Contexts, Interindividual Heterogeneity, and Change Over Time

W64 - Nondrug Reward and Recovery From Addiction: Socio-Spatial Contexts, Interindividual Heterogeneity, and Change Over Time

Towards a socially sustainable built environment: a comparative assessment of urban neighbourhoods in Istanbul

PurposeIntegrating and advancing social sustainability is foundational to achieving the urban sustainable development goals. Given the rapid transformation of cities in the Mediterranean region, this study sought to assess residents' evaluation of social sustainability in two socio-spatially diverse neighbourhoods of metropolitan Istanbul.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey, adapted from an empirically well-tested and robust social sustainability framework, was used to collect data from 197 residents from Balat and Rasimpasa neighbourhoods in Metropolitan Istanbul. The study then employed quantitative analytical techniques such as independent sample t-tests and Pearson correlation to analyse the sample data.FindingsIn both neighbourhoods, accessibility and participation were ranked the highest and lowest dimensions of social sustainability, respectively. However, the t-test analysis revealed a statistically significant difference between the two neighbourhoods regarding social networking and interaction, safety and security and participation. The differences align with emerging studies on urban social sustainability in the Mediterranean and European cities that when considered from urban spatial contexts, significant differences emerge from a social network and safety perspective.Practical implicationsOur study invites urban planners and policy makers attention to and emphasise on lowly evaluated social sustainability dimensions such as participation in their efforts to promote sustainable urban development at the neighbourhood level. We reason that opening the decision-making process to include diverse voices and experiences of residents through participatory workshops might offer opportunities for context-specific, citizen-led urban planning and design strategies that are socially sustainable.Originality/valuePrevious studies have not fully accounted for how various socio-spatial contexts at the neighbourhood level shape differential evaluation of social sustainability. This paper extends the emerging work on urban social sustainability by situating residents’ evaluation of social sustainability indicators across two unique neighbourhoods with gridded and organic spatial characteristics in Istanbul. This paper is an important addition to ongoing work on how spatial organisation of neighbourhoods can influence experiences of social sustainability from an urban planning and design perspective.

Follow the commutes: the viapolitics of commuting within infrastructures of agricultural labour migration in The Netherlands and Belgium

Migrant mobilities and infrastructures are often studied in either urban or rural socio-spatial contexts, whereas labour migration is often studied in either labour or non-labour realms. However, a too rigid division between these contexts might obscure a crucial part of migrant workers’ everyday experiences, struggles and aspirations. To overcome these dichotomies, this paper looks at labour migration from the middle and uses migrant commuting as an entry point to grasp the variegated infrastructures, their connections, and migrants’ infrastructuring practices and experiences. It deploys the notion of viapolitics to understand commuting infrastructures not as neutral elements but as relations of materiality, sociality and power. The analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork in two agricultural regions in the Netherlands and Belgium. Following three commutes across long and short distances, with different vehicles, and along variegated routes, the analysis disentangles how these material, spatial and social ingredients produce different articulations of viapolitics as part of the broader infrastructure of agricultural labour migration. The article argues that the different ways migrant workers commute not only reveal a wide array of formal and informal, material and social infrastructures, but also gives insights into different dimensions of migrant workers’ navigations of labour and migration regimes.

‘Living between here and there’: Trans-local coping with urban marginality among internally displaced persons in urban Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in urban areas experience spatial, social and symbolic marginality because of interactions between the processes of displacement and the socio-spatial contexts in which they are relocated. While an increasing body of research has highlighted the agentic possibilities of urban margins, little is known about IDPs’ coping practices beyond the urban contexts that produce their marginality. Drawing on a qualitative study in two urban settlements in Ethiopia, this paper disentangles how trans-local practices of mobilities, connections and attachment, and the circulation of resources support IDPs in coping with disadvantages in urban settings. The findings show first, that constellations of mobilities across different nodal places constitute strategies to diversify the sources of livelihood thereby coping with the effects of spatial disadvantages. Second that, that trans-local connection and attachment preserves a sense of belonging to trans-local ‘homes’ and acts as a symbolic resource against the processes of exclusion and othering. Third, that the trans-local social network facilitates the exchange of material and intangible resources, and expands IDPs’ employment opportunities and social relations. This study contributes to our understanding of forced migrants’ agency to transform places and produce fluid lived spaces to reduce the impact of marginalization in relocation contexts.

“It’s good to show happy cows”: understanding farmer–livestock relations through social media

ABSTRACT The interspecies interactions between farmers and livestock have provided an important conceptual and empirical focus in expanding our understanding of animal geographies, with a burgeoning literature exploring the intricate material and discursive (re)positioning of animals across different socio-spatial contexts. This paper offers a new direction for understanding these human-animal encounters by exploring the ways in which farmer and animal identities are mediated by social media. By drawing on a qualitative analysis of UK farmers’ tweets about their livestock and semi-structured interviews about farmers’ use of social media, this paper examines how social media allows a reworking of the spatiotemporalities of animal-human relations and offers farmers the opportunity to co-construct their identities with their livestock and farming practices. The paper identifies three ways in which farmer–livestock relations are mediated by social media. Firstly, that animals are made visible as actors within farming cultures to those beyond the farm gate. Secondly, that the role of farm animals as subjects and objects is negotiated throughout temporal moments online and thirdly that representations on social media of interactions with animals plays a role in the (re)construction of farmers’ identities.

Joint Effects of Perceived Hazard Risk and Contextual Situation on Responses

This study examined the relationship between risk perception and evacuation behavior, and the sociospatial contexts that affect evacuation. It is argued that risk perception and contextual conditions have a joint effect on evacuation. Data were collected from 3,756 evacuees in sixteen cities and towns affected by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake off the Pacific coast. Using geographic information systems (GIS), data from questionnaires on risk perception and activity diary surveys on behavioral response were combined with geospatial data. The main finding was that high risk perception leads to evacuation behavior, but that the difference between immediate and delayed evacuation depends on the sociospatial context. Delayed evacuation, compared with immediate evacuation, tends to occur in the following contexts: (1) the physical context (e.g., being inland at the time of the disaster impact); (2) the household context (e.g., the need to confirm the safety of household members); and (3) the social context (e.g., the need for assistance with mobility). This study extends the literature on disaster science and cognitive-behavioral geography by considering the relationship between perception and behavior in urban spaces in emergencies. The findings are relevant to the development of disaster preparedness planning to minimize human losses.

Home, Shelter, Trap Experiences of Pandemic Con finement in Bogotá, Colombia

Drawing on data from two distinct ethnographic research projects, in this article I examine the equation of home, house, and security, as implied in the stay-at-home COVID-19 pandemic mandate. My investigation involving domestic workers in Bogotá revealed that the house is not necessarily a safe space and can sometimes even become a trap. Women's everyday lives are constrained by local labour dynamics, gender paradigms, socio-economic diff erentiation, and urban segregation, while their ontological security hinges on the proximity of close social relations. Meanwhile, research in social housing compounds demonstrates that the built environment can contribute positively to low-income residents' wellbeing. These socio-spatial contexts apparently fostered latent communal bonds that were activated during the pandemic crisis. Supported by feminist critique, which underscores the inseparable connection between the domestic and labour sphere, anthropological research that examines the diverse meanings of house and home urban research, elucidating the role of the built environment in our experience of ontological security, I argue that the home is not an independent cell, containing people within brick-and-mortar con fines. Instead, it emerges as a fluid, interlinked, and expansive realm, de fined by processes beyond the physical edi fice. To build more humane cities that off er ontological security and contribute to the wellbeing of all residents, a paradigm shift is imperative: one that situates this expanded concept of 'home' at the centre of conceiving living environments that not only accommodate, but also nurture interpersonal bonds.

The contribution of archaeoparks to cultural heritage awareness: The case of Bursa Hisar

The pressing need to protect archaeological sites amidst rapid urbanization is a global concern. These sites, vital to our cultural heritage, face threats from advancing urban development, especially in historically layered cities. Accurate understanding and contextualization of artifacts from various eras are crucial. Preservation efforts must extend beyond physical continuity and relics to include integration into urban socio-economic and socio-spatial contexts. This holistic approach aids in interpreting layered cities and promoting heritage awareness. This study focuses on the ArchaeoPark initiatives in the Hisar Region, a significant part of Bursa’s cultural landscape. It serves as an example highlighting the importance of preserving archaeological sites and their original artifacts within urban environments. This preservation and display within the city enhance the awareness and understanding of both residents and visitors regarding these valuable cultural assets. Public participation in heritage conservation fosters greater recognition of the importance of these sites, leading to more sustainable preservation efforts. Bursa and its surroundings are key archaeological sites in Anatolia, showcasing a layered urban history. The chosen Hisar region has the potential to unveil this history, becoming a vital cultural heritage area in Bursa. After stressing the importance of urban archaeological heritage conservation, the study delves into pertinent conservation methods. It introduces Bursa as a significant cultural landscape, emphasizing ArchaeoPark activities and excavated artifacts in the Hisar region. Lastly, it offers recommendations to boost the role of Hisar ArchaeoPark in cultural heritage awareness and preservation. This study aims to contribute to efforts focused on increasing cultural heritage awareness, which is a vital aspect of heritage conservation and management, despite being a time-consuming process. The conservation and presentation of archaeological sites within urban areas, exemplified by the ArchaeoPark in the Hisar Region, play a pivotal role in safeguarding our cultural heritage for future generations.

Drawing lessons from mineral and land use policy in Europe: Crossing policy streams or getting stuck in silos?

While mineral resource extraction is a contested land-use under increased societal scrutiny, it is tremendously important for clean energy transition and societal economic development. Despite increased demand, access to mineral resources is, however, subject to different stakeholder interests often reflected in competing forms of land-use and institutional complexity of two policy streams of minerals and land use planning. During the last decade public policy responses in Europe introduced new instruments such as protection of minerals deposits or valorisation schemes for minerals development, both aiming to link or integrate these two policy streams. While policy studies focus on the mineral and geological background, they lack the contextualisation in the broader (land-) policy and governance discourse. This article closes this gap and contributes to the interface between mineral resources, land policy and spatial planning. It provides insights into 1) what policy instruments are assembled to policy mixes for integrating minerals and land use planning policy, and (ii) in how far these instruments are fit for purpose in the respective land-use planning system. In our analysis we portray the diversity of policy instruments to better integrate policy domains of mineral and LUP, but are only deployed in a 13 European countries. The instruments are assembled to policy mixes combining regulatory, strategies and guidelines, as well as information-based or voluntary instruments with horizontal policy integration representing on average high degrees of integration compared to vertical integration. Considering diversity of European planning systems and different context of mineral resource challenges, we conclude that it is the “contextual match” of what (instruments) works where (land use planning system) that matters. In our research we clearly indicate this contextual match on two levels: First a planning system and decision-making match for vertical integration, and, second, a policy cycle match for horizontal integration, where minerals or LUP topics/issues, respectively, are considered in preparation or design stage of land-use plans, zoning documents or mineral planning documents. For policy decision-makers the array of identified instruments provides solutions fitting to different socio-spatial contexts of mineral and Land use planning policy as well as different planning systems.

Spatial and racial covid-19 disparities in U.S. nursing homes

In many parts of the world nursing home residents have experienced a disproportionate risk of exposure to COVID-19 and have died at much higher rates than other groups. There is a critical need to identify the factors driving COVID-19 risk in nursing homes to better understand and address the conditions contributing to their vulnerability during public health crises. This study investigates the characteristics associated with COVID-19 cases and deaths among residents in U.S. nursing homes from 2020 to 2021, with a focus on geospatial and racial inequalities. Using data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and LTCFocus, this paper uses zero-inflated negative binomial regression models, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and Local Moran's I to generate statistical and geospatial results. Our analysis reveals that majority Hispanic facilities have alarmingly high COVID-19 cases and deaths, suggesting that these facilities have the greatest need for policy improvements in staffing and financing to reduce racial inequalities in nursing home care. At the same time we also detect COVID-19 hot spots in rural areas with predominately White residents, indicating a need to rethink public messaging strategies in these areas. The top states with COVID-19 hot spots are Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Oklahoma. This research provides new insights into the socio-spatial contexts and inequities that contribute to the vulnerability of nursing home residents during a pandemic.

Commuting behaviour and subjective wellbeing

This thesis has investigated the relationship between daily commuting behaviours and long-term subjective wellbeing from a longitudinal perspective. The underlying problem that motivated the thesis is the inconsistent research evidence on the commuting-wellbeing relationship, and more importantly, the insufficient theoretical conceptualisation of this relationship. As a response to the gap between theoretical understandings and empirical research, this thesis used a processual approach to frame the commuting-wellbeing relationship as an interdependent process over time. To operationalise this processual approach, two ways forward were proposed for longitudinal research, namely retrieving the upstream process that leads to changes in commuting behaviours and enriching the contextual understanding of commuting-wellbeing relationships. The upstream process of commuting changes pertains to the reason for people to (not) change their commuting behaviours, while the contextual understanding relates to the commuting-wellbeing relationship as time- and place-specific. Following these two ways forward, the empirical analysis of this thesis drew upon the nationwide panel data from China, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to longitudinally investigate the relationships between commuting behaviours and subjective wellbeing over time. The aim of this thesis is not to identify a unidirectional commuting-wellbeing causality uniform to the general population and across research areas, but to acknowledge, operationalise and better understand the interdependent commuting-wellbeing relationships situated in the life courses of people and the socio-spatial contexts of places.

A Comparative Analysis of the Motivations of Youth Political Participation across Different Types of Activism

AbstractDuring their early political socialization young people start to recognize their agency as political actors and to develop their political identity. This article presents the findings of a comparative study across different types of youth activism in two cities, Athens and Cologne, which differ in their youth cultures of participation and the opportunities they provide to mobilize. Our data derive from in-depth qualitative interviewing, which is considered to be most fruitful for the exploration of the reasons behind activists' trajectories. We identified three groups of influences: micro-, meso- and macro-level influences, with micro-level influences being most visible in the path of social movement-related activism, meso-level influences being dominant in the path of partisan activism, and macro-level influences prevailing in grassroots activism. Finally, the implications of the differential impact of the studied socio-spatial contexts are critically discussed.

Negotiating Survival Needs through Ontological In/Visibility: An Exploration of Irregular Migrants’ Lawscapes

This article explores how irregular migrants in/visibilise themselves in socio-spatial contexts in Finland. Drawing upon new materialist thinking, specific strategies of in/visibilisation are interpreted herein as fully part of irregular migrants’ lawscapes, that is, of their ontological movements and the material interplays between laws and spaces, allowing bodies to create their own desired spaces of survival. This article is part of a larger research project using ethnographic methods and a new materialist approach to explore irregular migrants’ everyday lives in Finland. It shows how law is embodied by individuals and, thus, materially influences and affects their movements and emotional activities.

Activity Spaces and Big Data Sources in Segregation Research: A Methodological Review

The activity space approach is increasingly mobilized in spatial segregation research to broaden its scope from residential neighborhoods to other socio-spatial contexts of people. Activity space segregation research is an emerging field, characterized by quick adaptation of novel data sources and interdisciplinary methodologies. In this article, we present a methodological review of activity space segregation research by identifying approaches, methods and data sources applied. First, our review highlights that the activity space approach enables segregation to be studied from the perspectives of people, places and mobility flows. Second, the results reveal that both traditional data sources and novel big data sources are valuable for studying activity space segregation. While traditional sources provide rich background information on people for examining the social dimension of segregation, big data sources bring opportunities to address temporality, and increase the spatial extent and resolution of analysis. Hence, big data sources have an important role in mediating the conceptual change from a residential neighborhood-based to an activity space-based approach to segregation. Still, scholars should address carefully the challenges and uncertainties that big data entail for segregation studies. Finally, we propose a framework for a three-step methodological workflow for activity space segregation analysis, and outline future research avenues to move toward more conceptual clarity, integrated analysis framework and methodological rigor.

Rethinking intoxicated sexual encounters

Social research on alcohol and sexual encounters has tended to be siloed into several different research endeavors, each addressing separate aspects of wanted and unwanted sexual encounters. While sociologists have focused on the patterns of social interaction, status competition, and emotional hierarchies of sexual encounters, they have left the role of alcohol intoxication largely unexamined. Conversely, the two dominant approaches to sexual encounters within alcohol research, the theories of alcohol myopia and alcohol expectancy, while focusing on alcohol have tended to take little account of the socio-relational dynamics and gendered meanings involved in those encounters. Our aim in this theoretical paper is to begin to bring together some of the concepts from these different research strands in examining how the social processes of intoxication potentially impact heteronormative sexual scripts and hence notions of femininity and masculinity among cisgender, heterosexual women and men. Our discussion is focused on the concepts of ritual and scripts; power, status, and hierarchies; and socio-spatial contexts, which are central to an understanding of the gendered and embodied social practices that take place within intoxicated sexual events; the emotional nature of the socio-spatial contexts within which they occur; and the socio-structural conditions that frame these events.

The potentials and perils of prosocial power: Transnational social entrepreneurship dynamics in vulnerable places

Social entrepreneurs can be powerful change agents for alleviating the suffering of the disadvantaged. However, their prosocial motivation and behavior frequently result in detrimental impacts on those they intend to support, especially when their operations span different socio-spatial contexts. We conducted a multiple comparative case study among 12 transnational social entrepreneurs of foreign, domestic non-indigenous, and local indigenous origin, who are seeking to improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities in rural Ecuador. We introduce the concept of prosocial power to social entrepreneurship research and demonstrate how it can work as a double-edged sword in the hands of transnationally embedded social entrepreneurs who operate in vulnerable places. Context-bound variations in social distance, bi-directional learning, reflexive impact measurement, and socio-spatial dominance were identified as being decisive for prosocial power to lead to positive or negative impacts on disadvantaged others.