Socio-spatial Inequalities Research Articles

Does the sun shine for all? Revealing socio-spatial inequalities in the transition to solar energy in The Hague, The Netherlands

With technological advances and decreasing prices, solar energy is a key technology in the urban energy transition. However, the focus on increasing the overall installed capacity has overshadowed energy justice considerations, leading to inequalities in solar energy adoption. This paper adopts an equity perspective to analyse the transition to solar (photovoltaic) energy in the city of The Hague, The Netherlands. Access to solar energy is at the core of the research, encapsulating factors that influence the ability of a household to adopt solar energy. Through a socio-spatial analysis at the postcode level, we identify four distinct groups with varying levels of access to solar energy. Our results show that these groups are not only strongly segregated across the city but also overlap with existing socio-spatial inequalities. The four levels of access to solar energy are then compared to current solar adoption rates and technical rooftop energy potential in the city. Results show that decreasing levels of access to solar energy align with decreasing adoption rates, revealing that current policies fail to provide equitable access to solar energy leading to inequalities in adoption rates. Furthermore, we show that most of the technical potential available in The Hague is in areas where access to solar energy is limited, representing opportunities to exploit a significant amount of untapped technical potential while addressing existing socio-spatial inequalities. Here, we also identify two groups of interest and related leverage points for future policy interventions to address equity in the transition to solar energy in The Hague.

Participação social no planejamento urbano como direito humano

Abstract The article aims to examine the Right to active citizenship in urban planning policies in cities, from a critical perspective. We started from the notion of existing socio-spatial inequalities in order to recognize the illusion / insufficiency of the universal inclusion project. It was concluded that there is a need for instruments for the modal and progressive inclusion of socially excluded groups, taking into account their specificities, from the affirmation of the human right to participation in urban management.

Interlinking the silos: How to stimulate a new debate on more greenery in cities

To address the current and future impacts of climate change on urban inhabitants, the development and benefits of urban green areas have been widely investigated – including parks, open unsealed spaces, residential gardens and street trees. However, the provision of urban green spaces can be used by private developers or private-public partnerships as a marketing tool to increase real-estate values. This presents a disadvantage for low-income households who may not be able to stay where they are or move to buildings or areas less affected by heat waves. Another key challenge reflects land-use conflicts created by the need to plant more trees, as opposed to other urban needs such as more parking spaces. At present, in several cities, policy and planning instruments remain inadequate in providing enough green spaces such as urban trees to lessen the heat stress in cities (for example, in poorer neighborhoods and new urban transformations led by private developers). The need for the proliferation of urban trees faces multiple expectations and challenges from several perspectives: 1) the crucial need for adaptation to climate change; 2) the partial presence (or total absence) of trees in areas undergoing densification and future transformations to readdress within effective planning strategies and tools; and 3) the relevance of social consequences (counteracting socio-spatial inequalities and considering residents’ perspectives) linked to green gentrification and environmental justice. The aim of this paper is to investigate these three perspectives (which are currently independent, for the most part), in order to interlink the silos and address the need for an interdisciplinary perspective of trees in urban areas. We suggest that the integration of these three aspects would help us fill the current knowledge gaps and enable a comprehensive perspective on social and environmental policies required in the complex urban system, and therefore also encourage new research paths, as well as a higher social acceptance by homeowners and renters.

Correlation Between Daily PM10, Nitrogen Dioxide, and Ozone Measurements with the Stringency Index in 15 Different Districts of a Big Metropolis.

Studies have investigated the effects of lockdowns on air quality around the world and found that fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide concentrations decreased due to reduced human activity, while ozone concentrations increased. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the correlation between daily stringency index values of our country and daily PM10, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone measurements in different districts of Istanbul between March 1, 2020, and February 28, 2022. Ministry of Environment and Urbanization and National Air Quality Monitoring Network data on Istanbul air quality monitoring stations were used. The analysis included 15 stations that can monitor at least 75% of the days in a year. PM10, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone were the main pollutants analyzed. There was negative correlation between daily PM10 measurements and daily stringency index values in 3 stations; there was positive correlation in 6 stations. Between daily stringency index values and daily nitrogen dioxide measurements, there was a negative correlation in 3 stations and a positive correlation in 1 station. The daily measurements of 1 station showed a negative correlation with the daily values of stringency index for both PM10 and nitrogen dioxide. In 1 station, while PM10 measures were negatively correlated with stringency index, nitrogen dioxide measurements were positively correlated. This study showed that pandemic limitations could not improve Istanbul's air quality everywhere. For adequate evaluation of impact of the limitations on air quality, it may be more relevant to study the socioeconomic infrastructure of each living area, the sociospatial inequality, industrial employment, the number of households, the density of employee class, and so on with all influencing factors that could have contributed to these various changes.

Left-behind neighbourhoods in old industrial regions

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the neighbourhoods and people that have been left behind in the economic transformation of two now-diversified old industrial regions: Geelong (Victoria) in Australia and Oshawa (Ontario) in Canada. Political discontent has found expression in different ways in the two locations. This, we contend, reflects policy frameworks that dampen the extent to which socio-spatial inequality and entrenched disadvantage generate discontent within regions. In assessing the factors producing this outcome, this article clarifies both the who, what and where of ‘left behindness’ and related regional policy responses.

Population health differences in cross-border regions within the European Union and Schengen area: a protocol for a scoping review

IntroductionAlong with European integration and the harmonisation of living conditions, improvements in health have been observed over the past decades. However, sociospatial inequalities within and across member states still exist...

Formation of a territory: the production process of the urban space of São Bernardo do Campo/SP

This article presents some aspects that guided the dynamics of the process of urban occupation of the protection spaces in the springs of the Billings Dam. In this region, the connection between the accelerated process of industrialization, disorderly urbanization, and the increase in population concentration over the years, devoid of adequate actions of planning and territorial ordering, contributed to the intensification of socio-spatial inequalities sustained by a pattern of exploitation and dilapidation of uses and degradation of ecosystems. From this framework, it analysed the occupation of the urban territory of São Bernardo do Campo, especially about the influence of industrialization, disorderly urbanization, and occupation of environmentally fragile areas, as well as sought to contextualize the need for new mechanisms of territorial planning and management to mitigate and reverse the high levels of biophysical vulnerability existing in the fragile spaces of protection of water sources. The approach adopted involved the analysis of data and information from various sources, such as previous studies, technical reports, municipal plans, and other relevant publications. It is hoped that the results found can subsidize the development of new studies, as well as contribute to the formulation of urban and environmental public policies.

Housing abandonment and socio-spatial inequalities: experience from a shrinking inner-city area of Incheon, South Korea

Housing abandonment is one of the most distinct characteristics of urban shrinkage. Previous research has investigated the extent and process of abandonment in the United States and Europe’s former industrialized centers. However, little is known about its features in places that have recently seen rapid urbanization. The study examines the relationship between vacant houses and a variety of urban factors, further expanding it to the perspective of spatial inequality. The multilevel logistic regression model was applied after constructing a new parcel-level dataset of vacant houses in Incheon, South Korea. The findings showed that spatially selective patterns of housing abandonment occurred at the intra-downtown level. Older, smaller, and less-accessible residential buildings were more vulnerable to abandonment. Failed large-scale redevelopment attempts fueled the emergence of vacant housing clusters. Vacant houses were associated not only with the collapse of industrial and commercial activities, but also with an unsustainable population structure. The results suggest the necessity for vacant house management plans tailored to neighborhood characteristics, especially for vacant house clusters, and a greater emphasis on socio-demographic dynamics such as age and generation in relation to urban shrinkage.

“They were chasing me down the streets”: Austerity, resourcefulness, and the tenacity of migrant women’s care-full labour

In this paper, we examine the role of migrant women in civil society in Wales in a triply-hostile environment created by UK government policy since 2010. Drawing on interviews carried out with EU migrants between 2016 and 2017, we outline the active support and care work provided by these women to migrants and others and the way in which they navigated austere and hostile conditions (contrasting the popular construction of migrants passively requiring support and care). Contributing to the literature on resourcefulness, we introduce the notion of tenacity to highlight the exhausting care-full labour of these migrants, who continue despite challenging circumstances and impact on their own wellbeing. We conclude that the care work provided by these women plays an important civil society role in tackling ongoing austerity and hostility but that precarious conditions bring a lack of sustainability which can heighten the socio-spatial inequalities seen across the UK.

Erasure

Since 1978, Mainland China has transformed cities into attractive branding engines to satisfy political and economic agendas at an unprecedented speed and scale. However, what is often concealed is that China’s urban growth has been achieved thanks to the invaluable efforts of migrant workers. Treated as undesirable urban aspects and erased from the city due to their rural origins and low education, migrants’ labour has been crucial to the building of new cities and infrastructure. To shed light on these social dynamics, I investigate the representation of migrant workers through visual arts. Informed by semi-structured interviews with contemporary artists and visual analysis, this article offers an insight into the official narrative and the socio-spatial inequalities brought about by urbanisation. Lastly, it contributes to the contemporary visual art discourse, outlining different representational and creative strategies, from erasure to socially engaged works, which evoke migrant workers’ social and transformative potential.

Does automation strengthen the ‘system of automobility’? Critical considerations and alternatives to connected and automated vehicles

ABSTRACT Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are at the centre of considerations for future mobility systems and are seen as a potentially powerful solution to current transport problems. Accordingly, the debate on governance strategies and in engineering is determined by technological possibilities to overcome these problems. However, various studies show that CAVs will solve transport problems under certain conditions only. On the contrary, without respective governance strategies CAVs will (re-)produce and reinforce social and socio-spatial inequalities. Moreover, by reinventing the privately-owned automobile, CAVs could strengthen the societal formation of automobility. Therefore, alternative developments need to be considered, especially those that are not primarily linked to new technologies, but reflect on wider processes of economic, political and cultural transformation. Finally, this leads us to challenge the dominant technocratic approach in the current political debate on the future of mobility.

Sport mega-event fantasies to financialization: the case of Porto Maravilha.

This paper examines the relationship between sport mega-event construction and the financialization of housing in Rio de Janeiro. It focuses on the area of Porto Maravilha, constructed prior to the 2016 Olympic Games, and the particular use of the 2001 federal Statute of City and 1995 Strategic Plan for Rio de Janeiro to create new possibilities for neoliberal-capitalist expansion, initially disguised as democratized access to land yet, in effect, further commoditized land into a form of fictitious capital. To do so, we follow the work of Brazilian architect and author, Raquel Rolnik, and her argument that the legal-institutional emphasis on wealth distribution in urban legislation, propagated at the time of the internationally recognized sport mega-event in Brazil, was not adequately harnessed and instead used to endorse real estate speculation and uneven development in the metropolitan area. The coordination and collaboration between state and nonstate entities in mega-event construction is typically associated with deepened socio-spatial inequities, the privatization of public resource material, and the in/direct displacement of low-income communities. We review pertinent literature to better understand the role of sport mega-event fantasies in the construction of Porto Maravilha-which we come to understand as a speculative logic lubricant for finance. We do this to call attention to future studies to be particularly attuned to financialization in mega-event cities.

Urban electricity governance and the (re)production of heterogeneous electricity constellations in Dar es Salaam

BackgroundElectricity infrastructures in sub-Saharan African cities are characterized by heterogeneous socio-technical constellations, including alternative grid access channels and off-grid systems. These constellations secure access beyond conventional grids but also produce adverse social, environmental, and economic outcomes affecting sustainable energy transition efforts. In fact, interventions aiming to promote energy transitions may be restricted by institutional mechanisms that produce and maintain these heterogeneous constellations. This article explores these institutional mechanisms by focusing on the governance of heterogeneous electricity constellations in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It develops a novel framework on governance modalities to understand and explain the logics, mechanisms, and actors that govern different constellations across diverse neighborhoods as well as to unpack how they limit the potential of sustainable energy transitions and offer specific opportunities for them.ResultsThis article is based on a qualitative case study covering three diverse neighborhood types in Dar es Salaam (i.e., low-income, peri-urban, and affluent areas) that reflect heterogeneous user demands. The research draws on interviews with residents and community leaders to understand local modes of coordination, the participatory observation of technical features and user practices, as well as document sources and semi-structured expert interviews to analyze institutional aspects. Our study demonstrates that heterogeneous electricity constellations in Dar es Salaam are governed by the place-based interplay of four governance modalities: hierarchical, market-based, network-based, and managerial governance. Based on this conceptualization, we identified critical barriers for interventions toward urban energy transitions in the context of infrastructural heterogeneity, namely, conflicting logics that shape conventional grid services, complex and fragmented actor constellations, and diverging, place-based interests among various actors, including different state actors.ConclusionsOur study indicates that heterogeneous urban infrastructure constellations are not merely a response to the considerable socio-spatial inequalities within Southern cities. Rather, their prevailing importance and (re)production must be understood as resulting from the interplay of various governance modalities. The study contributes to debates on urban energy transitions in sub-Sahara Africa by explaining the institutional complexity associated with infrastructural heterogeneity, which can restrict interventions aiming to improve and universalize service provision through heterogeneous urban electricity constellations.

The who, the what, and the how of social innovation in inner peripheries:A systematic literature review

This article is a systematic literature review on social innovation in inner peripheries. It investigates what actors (who), processes (how), and topics (what) emerge from the literature on SI in marginalized rural areas. The aim is to understand under what conditions social innovation can be interpreted as a resource in inner peripheries and, at the same time, if inner peripheries offer a fertile ground for social innovation to emerge and develop. A focus on the role of planning in social innovation initiatives is also provided with the objective to recognize whether and how the literature mentions it in supporting or hindering the emergence of social innovation in inner peripheries. Results from the literature review show that social innovation in inner peripheries is frequently promoted by social enterprises and public-private partnerships that work synergically with a wide array of public and private actors, within multi-level and multi-actor governance arenas where different scales, sectors, and actors are connected and combined. The topics covered by social innovation initiatives mainly refer to rural development, with a specific emphasis on farmland and forestry management. In this strain of literature, social innovation is often viewed as a vital component of rural development policies and a means to strengthen collaboration and social learning in lagging communities. Findings suggest that social innovation can be interpreted as a resource in inner peripheries when the effort of the public sector is channeled into multi-level ‘middle-ground’ spaces and positively combined with the external and internal input of actors, and sources of innovation. In the conclusion, we argue the need to advance a ‘context-sensitive’ conceptualization of social innovation able to tackle path-dependent dynamics and address the specific problems and challenges of inner peripheries, preventing the risk that unreflexive innovative initiatives ‘borrowed’ from urban areas exacerbate existing socio-spatial inequalities.

The spatially uneven effects of a desegregation education policy

The spatial, institutional and social configurations of school supply and demand are crucial aspects in understanding the various mechanisms of production and reproduction of socio-spatial inequalities in education. The same policy instruments may have different effects depending on the characteristics of local education markets and the dynamics of supply and demand in each of them. This article investigates how a policy designed to reduce school segregation in the city of Barcelona resulted in uneven effects in different catchment areas of the city, which are socially and educationally diverse. By comparing the effects of the same policy strategy in different territories, the article identifies four mechanisms that mediate and occasionally prevent the effectiveness of the policy instruments or their implementation procedures. Identifying these mechanisms is an important and necessary task when reviewing the existing policy design and adapting it to the particularities of local education markets.

A Space Syntax Approach: Covid-19 and Socio-Spatial Inequalities in Bogotá, Colombia

A Space Syntax Approach: Covid-19 and Socio-Spatial Inequalities in Bogotá, Colombia

Incidence, prevalence and care of type 1 diabetes in children and adolescents in Germany: Time trends and regional socioeconomic situation.

Trends over time and possible socio-spatial inequalities in the incidence and care of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D) in children and adolescents are important parameters for the planning of target-specific treatment structures. The incidence and prevalence of type 1 diabetes, diabetic ketoacidosis and severe hypoglycaemia as well as the HbA1c value are presented for under 18-year-olds based on data from the nationwide Diabetes Prospective Follow-up Registry (DPV) and the diabetes registry of North Rhine-Westphalia. Indicators were mapped by sex over time between 2014 and 2020, and stratified by sex, age and regional socioeconomic deprivation for 2020. In 2020, the incidence was 29.2 per 100,000 person-years and the prevalence was 235.5 per 100,000 persons, with the figures being higher in boys than in girls in either case. The median HbA1c value was 7.5%. Ketoacidosis manifested in 3.4% of treated children and adolescents, significantly more often in regions with very high (4.5%) deprivation than in regions with very low deprivation (2.4%). The proportion of severe hypoglycaemia cases was 3.0%. Between 2014 and 2020, the incidence, prevalence and HbA1c levels changed little, while the proportions of ketoacidosis and severe hypoglycaemia decreased. The decrease in acute complications indicates that type 1 diabetes care has improved. Similar to previous studies, the results suggest an inequality in care by regional socioeconomic situation.

In what way a ‘Guarantee for youth’? NEETs entrapped by labour market policies in the European Union

ABSTRACT Following the economic crisis of 2008/2009, the European Union developed the Youth Guarantee (YG) Action Plan to tackle youth labour market disengagement by ‘fostering employability’ and ‘removing barriers’ to employment. The current study adopts a Geographical Political Economy approach to analysing the YG's underpinnings and the conditions that differentiate its application on a regional level to explore whether – and, if so, how – the YG helps young people in the Southern EU to enter the labour market. The article introduces the first comparative, cross-regional investigation of the YG programme, targeting the NUTS-II regions of Spain and Italy. It uses mixed methods, supplementing quantitative analysis with in-depth interviews with key informants. We show that in Spanish and Italian regions the YG is closely entwined with socio-spatial inequality and labour precarity, which is reflected in the growing rates of temporary employment and inactive youth. Crucially, we conclude, such outcomes are not simply the result of the institutional/operational misapplications of the YG, as is often assumed. Rather, these misapplications are systematically reinforced by the mechanics of labour flexibilisation within a recessionary and crisis-prone environment, one whose geographical unevenness means that the YG is playing out in quite different ways in different places.

Evaluating the impact of public transport travel time inaccuracy and variability on socio-spatial inequalities in accessibility

Urban accessibility by public transport has been attracting increasing attention from researchers and transport agencies in recent years. Many of the studies rely on public transport scheduled timetables from GTFS data to calculate accessibility indicators, overlooking the ways in which inaccuracies in scheduled levels of service, as well as day-to-day travel time variability, might impact different socioeconomic groups. This might generate unrealistic or biased results when analyzing accessibility socio-spatial inequalities and assessing transport projects. In this study, we consolidate a method to correct timetables of GTFS feeds based on historical GPS data, and use the city of Fortaleza, Brazil, to show how accessibility to work opportunities based on these two accounts can influence the results of accessibility analyses due to two issues: data inaccuracy and day-to-day travel time variabilities. We use 1-month archived GPS data to create new GTFS timetables that represent both a median level of service and a variability-state level of service; then we use these estimated GTFS to examine the impact of travel time inaccuracy and day-to-day variability on accessibility levels. Results show that, due to the problem of data inaccuracy, the scheduled GTFS underestimates accessibility by 1.5% on average, but in some areas accessibility estimates can be over or underestimated by more than 40%, with significant impact in low income regions. We also find that the variability of travel times have a significant impact of 50% on average on accessibility estimates. This impact is unequally distributed both spatially and across income groups, raising accessibility inequality by 30%. The underlying causes of these impacts are related to several factors, including the GTFS feed's quality, the high concentration of jobs in the city center, and higher travel time variability in the corridors that connect lower-income areas to the city center. These results highlight the importance of considering both inaccuracy and day-to-day variability issues in public transport travel times when estimating accessibility levels and evaluating transport projects, particularly from an equity perspective.

Understanding COVID-lockdowns through urban management systems: a novel application of administrative data

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented ‘lockdowns’ and stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of infection. Social scientists have analysed mobility during these lockdowns to understand compliance at a population-level, and whether there were systematic barriers to compliance for certain population groups. Much of this analysis has used mobility data from private companies, gathered via smartphones. In this paper, we consider an unexplored source of such data – urban management administrative data – and demonstrate its usefulness for understanding mobility, and what these patterns might reveal about socio-spatial inequality and local economic activity and suggest greater imagination when analysing such data.