Socio-spatial Organization Research Articles

Chorematic modeling to represent dynamics in the quinoa agroecosystems in Peru.

Our research occurred in the Andean region, one of the eight global centers of domestication of plant species grown for agriculture. The shores of Lake Titicaca (located between Peru and Bolivia), at 3800 meters above sea level, are recognized as the center of origin of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.). In this region, complex societies have emerged, thanks to the development of water and soil management technologies. They have managed to overcome high mountain territories' extreme and variable climatic conditions. These societies have traditionally protected and preserved quinoa as food for present and future generations through their long-standing knowledge and cultivation practices. The fieldwork occurred in the context of Andean family farming, and our study analyzes nature-society dynamics with a chorematic approach and interviews with local communities. The interest of this work is the transformation of the landscape at the scale of the mountain agroecosystem to understand better the impacts of rural development policies. Chorematic modeling was applied to two periods, before and after 1970, a pivotal year in Peru for agriculture, to show how socio-spatial dynamics in the Andean environment are changing, particularly concerning the evolution of quinoa cultivation. The results show that wild quinoa relatives' distribution is strongly linked to the socio-spatial organization of the agroecosystem. Different species of wild quinoa relatives are maintained by villagers for their multiple foods, medicinal and cultural uses in natural areas, grazed areas, on edge, and also within cultivated fields. However, this management is changing under the pressure of global issues related to the international quinoa market, whose requirements imply reducing the presence of wild relatives in cultivated fields.

Benefits of implementing the 15-minute city concept in stimulating the potential of social urban resurgence

The issue presented in the article is a proposal to look at a specific vision of the sociospatial organization of the city, namely the concept of the 15-minute city. In this proposed approach, this concept can become a source of inspiration for urban development, as well as a stimulating factor for the social potential of the urban community, which form the basis for the resurgence of cities after the crisis. In the theoretical realm, the basis for the considerations presented in this text is a socio-spatial perspective, according to which the city is perceived as a socio-spatial structure that is reproduced through daily social practices, reflecting both institutionalized patterns and the material organization of space. This text contributes to the discussion about the potential benefits of applying the 15-minute city concept for the development and resurgence of cities in line with the idea of livable cities, ensuring a high quality of life for their residents.

Future scenarios in the former oil capital: coastal flooding and social vulnerability in Macaé, RJ.

The accelerated urban growth in Macaé had important consequences on socio-spatial organization, especially about housing spaces that became increasingly difficult to be accessed by the low-income population. The most devalued lands, such as mangroves and floodplains, were occupied by the low-income population. The proposal highlighted in this project focuses directly on the problem of rising sea levels and flooding in the urban space of Macaé, which is of social interest. A simulation of future scenarios with sea level rise above the current one, allowing the identification of areas flooded by marine transgression on a time scale of 100years (for the year 2100). For this, the rate was chosen for the simulation: the greenhouse gas scenario RCP8.5, as given in IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of 2014. A radiative forcing that corresponds to more than 700ppm CO2-eq, but less than 1500ppm, the projected increase is 1m to more than 3m (medium confidence) and more than 3m (medium confidence). This assessment is based on the average confidence in the contribution from thermal expansion and low confidence in the modeled contribution modeled contribution of the ice sheets. Therefore, the climate change-induced global mean sea level rise is caused by thermal expansion of ocean water and ocean mass gain, the latter being mainly due to a decrease in land ice mass. The estimated sea-level rise used for the projection of this study is 2.15, as proposed by Grinsted et al. in 2009.

The introduction of African cheetahs to India was planned without considering their spatial ecology

The introduction of African cheetahs to India was planned without considering their spatial ecology

Urban segregation on a micro scale: the consequences for the low-income residents of a socioeconomically mixed neighborhood in Mexico city

ABSTRACT The patterns of socio-spatial organization of differences have changed in Latin American cities, which has transformed the scale of urban segregation. This has led to an increase in socially mixed areas and poverty enclaves in neighborhoods that have attracted the interest of, both, public and private sectors. Although this phenomenon has been widely studied, the consequences for low-income inhabitants living in spaces that are undergoing urban renewal are not clear. This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the implications of these changes by exploring three features: access to social programs; changes in the use and appropriation of public space; and daily practices and the limits of urban sociability. The research method consisted of a qualitative analysis of secondary sources, fieldwork, and interviews. We conclude that the decrease of urban segregation scale affects not just the housing structure, but also access to social programs, public spaces, and urban sociability; these factors are a part of the material and symbolic rearrangements that allow groups with great socioeconomic differences to live close to one another.

Insurgent infrastructures: bottom-up infrastructure-building in gold-mining regions in Colombia and Suriname

ABSTRACT Critical analyses of infrastructural violence have mostly approached infrastructure as a top-down imposition that allows markets and state governments to expand and inflicts suffering on local populations. Here we take as our analytical starting point a different kind of infrastructural harm, namely the one that comes not from building the local environment, but from leaving it unbuilt. From this vantage point, we are foremost interested in local forms of socio-spatial organization that emerge in regions suffering from political abandonment. Drawing on fieldwork in gold-mining regions in Colombia and Suriname, we show that in resource frontiers where people criticize the state for being absent, informal mining stakeholders create their own infrastructures that provide them with a means to gain legitimacy and protest their social exclusion. While these ‘insurgent infrastructures’ take place outside the legal framework, they create the symbolic and material conditions for the state to appear.

The Writ of Amparo and Indigenous Consultation as Instruments to Enforce Inclusive Land Management in San Andrés Cholula, Mexico

In 2019, residents of the rural district of San Rafael Comac in the municipality of San Andrés Cholula, Mexico, challenged the implementation of the 2018 Municipal Program for Sustainable Urban Development of San Andrés Cholula (MPSUD), a rapacious urban-planning policy that was negatively affecting ancestral communities—pueblos originarios—and their lands and traditions. In 2020, a legal instrument called the writ of amparo was proven effective in ordering the repeal of the MPSUD and demanding an Indigenous consultation, based on the argument of self-recognition of local and Indigenous identity. Such identity would grant them the specific land rights contained in the Mexican Constitution and in international treaties. To explain their Indigenous identity in the writ of amparo, they referred to an established ancient socio-spatial system of organization that functioned beyond administrative boundaries: the Mesoamerican altepetl system. The altepetl, consisting of the union between land and people, is appointed in the writ of amparo as the foundation of their current form of socio-spatial organization. This paper is a land-policy review of the MPSUD and the writ of amparo, with a case-study approach for San Rafael Comac, based on a literature review. The research concludes that Indigenous consultation is a key tool and action for empowerment towards responsible land-management in a context where private urban-development impinges on traditional land uses and customs, and could be beneficial for traditional communities in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Collectivisation, paradox and resistance: the architecture of people’s commune in China

The people's commune [人民公社], an all-encompassing socio-political, economic, and spatial model of collectivisation in China during the 1950s and the 80s, played a fundamental role in the country's pursuit of modernity. Through the correlation between political forces and spatial production, the commune architecture articulated and enforced the construct of collective subjectivities. The coupling of collective canteens with the abolishment of family kitchens formalised a practice of everyday life that aimed to collectivise the socio-economic functions of dwelling and destabilise social ties formed in the extended family and the patriarchal clan system. The tensions between the modern state and family tradition led to the inherent paradox of the commune architecture: it spatially resembled and renewed the old structures it set out to destruct. The negotiation between the two regimes of power finds its embodiment in materialised details through implementation: the adapted ancestral temple as collective canteen and the renewed traditional three-jian [三开间, three-bay] principle in commune housing. Fieldwork spanning several years in the realised commune settlement of the then Shigushan Production Brigade in Wuhan [石骨山大队] reveals embodied conflicts, resistance, and readjustments of the people's commune as well as how it has become a constitutive part of China's rural society today. An essential addition to the non-canonical architectural histories outside the Western traditions and epistemologies, the architecture of people's commune in China opens up new ways to think about the socio-spatial organisation of networks of care and intergenerational living beyond the nuclear family.

Relaxed territoriality amid female trickery in a solitary carnivore

Territoriality (the defence of exclusive home ranges) is a strategy utilized within mammal populations to maximize individual fitness by monopolizing available resources. There is a trade-off, however, between acquiring the resources necessary for survival and reproduction and the cost of defending their exclusive use. Clarifying the sociospatial organization of wildlife populations is vital for understanding intraspecific competition and reproductive behaviour and, ultimately, conserving vulnerable or endangered species. We evaluated territorial behaviour in a solitary carnivore, the African leopard, Panthera pardus, under high-density conditions. We also assessed the influence of resource availability, sex-specific mating tactics and kinship on space sharing within the observed sociospatial structure. Both male and female leopards exhibited relaxed territoriality, with considerable intrasexual overlap occurring among both sexes, indicative of a risk aversion strategy. The risk of serious injury or death due to frequent territorial altercations in such a high-density system negated the benefits of strict spatial boundaries. Space sharing occurred more frequently in resource-rich areas: males overlapped more commonly in areas with high female density, and males and females overlapped more commonly in areas of high prey density. Males competed for access to females rather than monopoly of their home ranges; we hypothesize that the extralimital mating excursions undertaken by female leopards probably reduce the benefit of female monopoly (and consequently, of female defence) in this polygamous species. Space sharing among females was primarily driven by kinship; related females exhibited greater overlap than unrelated females, suggesting kinship benefits to space sharing among mother–daughter pairs. The contributions of resource availability, sex-specific mating tactics and kinship towards creating conditions permitting relaxed territoriality illustrate the complexity of ecological, demographic and behavioural factors involved in the sociospatial organization of solitary carnivores. • Male and female leopards display relaxed territoriality indicative of risk aversion. • Considerable intrasexual overlap occurred among male and female leopards. • For males, space sharing occurred more often in areas with high female density. • Males competed for access to females rather than monopoly of their home ranges. • Space sharing among females was primarily driven by kinship.

Covid-19: magnifying pre-existing urban problems

The effects of the transformations that have been experienced during the Covid-19 global crisis have the potential to endure beyond the frame of the pandemic. This could become a time when a new world order, which emerges out of this crisis, oscillates between socialism and authoritarianism. Meanwhile, cities are the first ground where transformations caused by a crisis find places to manifest. Pandemics, economic recessions, terrorist attacks, and other crises, all leave their traces on the socio-spatial organization of cities and related urban experiences. In this context, this study conducts a critical review of existing conflicting possibilities, where each has the potential to produce changes in urban space and to affect the ways urban space is experienced. The article critically reviews these concepts via the two major interlinked types of non-pharmaceutical mitigation strategies against the pandemic within urban contexts: first, those that restrict movement and interaction, and second, those that concern digital space. The review shows the potential for two alternatives, oscillating between new forms of authoritarianism and social solidarity around the world.

The Urban Culture of the “Model” Christian Settlement at Abokobi, Ghana, 1854–1929

Although the built spaces created by the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society (the Basel Mission) at Abokobi, Ghana, prioritized missionary ideals, these designs also demonstrated striking similarities with existing Indigenous Gã patterns of sociospatial organization, including both the patrilineal household (weku shiã) and the neighborhood (akutso). In The Urban Culture of the “Model” Christian Settlement at Abokobi, Ghana, 1854–1929, E. Sasu Kwame Sewordor describes how, beginning in the late nineteenth century, the members of an emerging Gã middle class projected and redefined Gã Christian ideas of “modernity” through architectural forms that enabled them to negotiate and sometimes contest the Basel Mission’s domination of the built environment in Abokobi. Drawing on material and archival evidence as well as oral testimony, Sewordor explores how Abokobi converts to Christianity reconfigured Indigenous domestic spaces, spatial practices, and cosmological notions to accommodate and also transform the religious and cultural framework imposed by the Basel Mission.

The sociospatial organization of favela

From the following research question: “How is the social space in Heliópolis' favela organized?, this paper has the reflexive objective of thinking the space of the favela beyond its stereotypes as a space that should be treated as singular, heterogeneous, and not as a problem to be solved. Using grounded theory by ethnographic approach by field notes during 18-month participant observation, 13 semistructured interviews, 8 open interviews, 26 testimonials on the project “Memória de Heliópolis”, and 2 WhatsApp groups, all empirical data were collected. By all these methods, it was possible to perform a deep immersion in the daily life of Heliópolis (the largest favela in São Paulo - Brazil, with 45 years of existence and more than 200,000 inhabitants living in one million square meters). The results showed how the favela is a social space that has been in transit since its beginning. The favela is a continuous urban process of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of itself and of the city. It is organized around its sociospatial deficiencies and around its potentialities. The favela can be called communities, neighborhoods, or cities. Therefore, by this study, it is possible to say that Heliópolis is a multipliCity.

Refugee-led socio-spatial organization in Al Baqa\u2019a camp, Jordan

The increase in refugee numbers is an increasingly important concern globally. Many countries in different regions have been accommodating refugees by providing temporary shelters made from ineffective and inadequate materials to provide thermal comfort for refugees. However, the shelters provided are often inadequate solutions for shelter and neglect the social and cultural diversity of the refugees. Socio-cultural norms, practices and values are rarely considered in the design of shelters and this has an adverse impact on how refugees live in these spaces. Using insights from the Al Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan as a case study, this paper uses a mixed-method approach to explore how the challenges of inadequate shelter has consequently led refugees to self-organize and create new socio-cultural spaces to adapt to the place. The findings suggest that historically, Al Baqa’a camp has reorganized by users due to social needs and climate challenges. When the camp was created in 1967, the inadequacy of the housing and infrastructure to provide comfort influenced refugees to self-organize and create adaptive spaces of comfort. However, over the decades, these spaces have evolved into spaces of enterprise, belonging and memory of their homeland. Therefore, this paper argues that refugee shelter design should have an integrated consideration of the climatic elements and the social and cultural aspects of refugees. The paper concludes with lessons learned drawn from the evidence to act as guideline for the consideration of official humanitarian organizations in other camps and local communities.

Social-spatial dynamics of workers in the Lorraine Region (France) in view of Luxembourg cross-border metropolisation

Since most research on economic metropolisation has until now concentrated on "high added value" workers on both sides of the border, little place is left for analysis either of the less valued categories in the process of metropolisation, or of the diversity of jobs within the regional labour markets. What, then, is the position of less favoured social categories in the evolution of cross-border metropolises over the last decades, when compared with managers or other liberal professions? To answer this question, a case study is carried out here on the cross-border commuters in the Lorraine Region (France), who participate in great numbers in the metropolisation of Luxembourg, by comparing them to those who work in France. The objective of this article is to give an account of the spatiotemporal evolution of the principal social classes among the cross-border commuters, based on the French population censuses. These databases, from 1968 to the present day, are comparable both in the time and space. The results confirm that a cross-border metropolis of Luxembourg has been formed, notably since the 1990s, by a substantial increase of highly qualified cross-border commuters, as well as by an augmentation of the less qualified workforce during this period: thus, in the Region of Lorraine, even in 2013, the share of the cross-border working class (commuting to Luxembourg) remains greater than that of the working class within France. Moreover, complex links exist in the phenomenon of metropolisation between historical social segregations and specifically metropolitan segregations in terms of the socio-spatial organisation of the territory in question: for example, the secondary urban centres of the French metropolitan area, such as Thionville or Metz, serve as a residential reservoir for the most highly qualified cross-border commuters, especially when this type of workforce has already been observed in these agglomerations in the past. Primary results point to the need to learn more about the conditions of different residential trajectories, as well as about the social status of different workforces on each side of the border.

RESEARCH OF RURAL AREAS ON THE BASIS OF A GEOCENTRIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH

Importance. Theoretical representations and conceptual approaches to disclosing the understanding of the essence of a rural area from the point of view of its socio-spatial organization. Methods. The methodological approach to the comprehensive study of rural areas is based on the conceptual features of the research methodology in the form of an idea of integrity through a system of classification criteria and generalizations that bring to the level of understanding the state of a rural area in the form of a platform of a socio-agroecosystem. Results. A statement as a new platform for the study of the socio-agroecosystem in the form of a theoretical formulation of the conceptual features of the methodology for determining the directions of development of agricultural territories of the Russian Federation, which will expand the variability of the proposed methods for studying the transformation of rural areas. Conclusions. The theoretical substantiation of the directions of development of rural areas based on the research platform of the socio-agroecosystem will allow the use of new approaches to the study of rural areas based on a given vector of human-oriented development of the territory.

Unpacking food to go: Packaging and food waste of on the go provisioning practices in the UK

In the emergent literature, food ‘on-the-go’ (OTG) tends to be addressed as a consumption trend. However, considering that it entails significant amounts of packaging and food waste and has seen enormous growth in the UK since the 1990s, it is not sufficiently understood how OTG emerged as a sector. Conceptualising OTG as a provisioning practice and adopting a ‘Learning History’ approach, we aggregate journalistic columns and expert interviews into lineages that explain sectoral developments over time, and we ask how stakeholders frame OTG’s emergence and linked waste issues. We first show how OTG derives from an interplay of actors and shifts in socio-spatial organisation within the four areas of domestic economy and convenience, health and environment, urban space and policy, and corporate economy and technology. Subsequently, we outline typical understandings of packaging and food waste and shortcomings therein. Extending debates on consumer responsibilisation, we identify narratives that sideline producers’ focus on growth and their role in shaping OTG provision. Stakeholders often frame (1) OTG as demand-driven by reference to an ostensible ‘convenience culture’, (2) material waste as an issue of the ‘consumer-facing’ end of the supply chain, i.e. concerning food wrappers rather than materials used ‘back-of-store’ for logistics, processing, and hygiene and (3) food waste as a matter of avoiding leftovers while taking for granted resource-intensive, “wasteful” foods as part of businesses’ portfolios. We conclude that addressing waste higher up the supply chain may allow for a more nuanced account of causes of, and solutions to, unsustainable provisioning practices.

Governance and structuring of public and urban space in Bilbao: analysis of global trends at the local level

The phenomenon of deindustrialization, as well as the vertiginous changes dependent on financial capital, produced new trends in the models of organization and production of western cities such as Bilbao. The socio-spatial organization and structuring of the ‘new city’ begins to be a topic of great importance. It is in this sense that the concepts of public and urban space take on greater theoretical relevance. The results obtained through the application of the theory in the case of Bilbao, follow global urban development tendencies. Spatial planning fulfils the strategic functions of a system that dominates urban processes at their convenience. There is a tendency to build aseptic spaces that are closer to the interests of capital than of citizens.

Embodied spatial learning in the mobile preschool: the socio-spatial organization of meals as interactional achievement

ABSTRACT This study explores meals as a locus for children’s socialization into the socio-spatial organization of a mobile preschool, i.e. a preschool in a bus. Building on ethnographic fieldwork with video-recordings, the analysis is informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to explore the everyday interactional organization of meal practices. Conceptualizing space as both a resource for interaction and as achieved in interaction, the study investigates how children and pedagogues create space for meals inside the bus and in outdoor spaces. The results demonstrate how the socio-spatial organization is made relevant as a learning object in interactions between pedagogues and children, and between peers. Knowledge of the socio-spatial organization is shown to constitute a critical aspect of competent participation in the mobile preschool. A trajectory in the children’s embodied spatial learning is discerned, from socio-spatial configurations as objects of instructions to embodied habits.

Circularity in territories: analyzing the dynamics of collective actions in food systems

ABSTRACT Renewed attention to the ecological limits of the planet has engendered a movement towards collective actions within the food system. This article questions ways to comprehend the nonlinear dynamics in a territory and to make the moving objects of the territory more intelligible through their circularities and interconnections. Using examples from two collective food actions studied in Brazil and France, we present an approach to circularity analysis. We identify seven circularities in the interactions among elements of the food systems studied. The socio-spatial organization of the collective action links and organizes these elements through a dialectical expression of anchorage, openness, innovation, and tradition. Taking account of circularities can improve our understanding of the complexity of territorial moving objects, such as collective actions, and help render that knowledge intelligible for local actors. This can increase the value of their activities, encourage new activities and improve their impact on the territory.

Bill Hillier’s Legacy: Space Syntax—A Synopsis of Basic Concepts, Measures, and Empirical Application

Bill Hillier’s space syntax method and theory enables us to describe the spatial properties of a sustainable city. Empirical testing of the space syntax method over time has confirmed the capacity and innovativeness of analyzing spatial relationships with the purpose of understanding and explaining the socio-spatial organization of built environments. However, the conceptual framework of space syntax elements is scattered around in various academic writings. This article, therefore, gives a holistic and compact overview of the various concepts that are used in space syntax, from its basic elements to various analytical techniques and theories. To achieve this compact overview, we reviewed all space syntax literature accessible since the 1970s for finding core references to various concepts used in space syntax. Following a short description of its foundation and evolution through the work of Bill Hillier, we explain its basic concepts and measures in the form of an extended glossary. Explanations are enriched with various space syntax analyses and scenario testing on various scales that were applied to the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. We conclude with a discussion about the advantages and limitations of space syntax and about how this method adds value to the creation of sustainable cities.