Urban Contest Research Articles

Assessment of indoor radon levels at multiple floors of an apartment building in the historic center of Rome (Italy): a comprehensive study.

The urbanized area of Rome is largely built over volcanic deposits, characterized by a significant radionuclides content and consequently a high radon emanation potential. An accurate monitoring of workplaces and residential dwellings constitutes a first step towards mitigating the indoor radon exposure. Since radon diffusion dynamics involves complex interactions among many environmental parameters on different time scales, a proper assessment of radon concentration variations can be better achieved by means of active monitoring approaches. We present here the results of 1year of continuous measurements conducted in six premises (five apartments and a basement) at different floors of the same building in the Esquilino district, in the historical center of Rome. Collecting annual series of radon concentration enables us to identify fluctuations over a seasonal scale, with radon generally decreasing in the warm season. The simultaneous tracking of different floors should cancel the influence of geogenic radon and of building characteristics like age, typology, and construction materials. While the basement shows the highest radon concentration, indicating a major contribution from the ground, we observe indoor radon levels comparable at all the upper floors, questioning the common belief that high-risk exposure be limited to the lowest storeys. The use of active devices makes it possible to discriminate between average indoor radon measured during the day and overnight, when residents are more likely to be at home. Our analysis provides the characterization of the dynamics of the gas emanation and transport inside the buildings and of its temporal fluctuations, in relation to the environmental and meteorological conditions. Since the experiment was performed in the Roman urban contest, we cannot ignore the specificity of the retrieved data, affected not only by endogenous factors like life habits relative to ventilation and conditioning of the apartments, but also by exogenous factors, among which the warmer microclimate compared to the surrounding suburban and rural areas, due to the effects of urbanization (urban heat island effect).

Peacekeeping’s conflict urbanism: a decade of urban change in Mali

ABSTRACT Since the deployment of the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), host communities have witnessed not only significant levels militarization but also continuous conflict. Noticeably, national-level politics and specific urban issues mix and manifest especially around MINUSMA’s physical presence. The ensuing protest and violence challenge the UN mission to consider its immediate and long-term imprint on the place of intervention and the urbanism it produces. How does peacekeeping contribute to the destruction and production of urban space? What kind of urbanism does, and should, a peacekeeping mission foster? Based on a qualitative analysis, this article considers violent contestation in the context of MINUSMA, focusing on incidents in Kidal, Gao, and Mopti. It suggests ‘conflict urbanism’ as conceptual framing to analyse the characters of urban contestation in the presence of peace operations and to signal the necessity to sustain some forms of contestation as part of Mali’s peacebuilding efforts.

Special issue: Urban contestations

Special issue: Urban contestations

An urban PES model for diffused green areas requalification and maintenance in Milan

In 2005 Milan Municipality launched the “Adopt a green spot” model initiative, to restore and maintain scattered and marginal green areas, following a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme. The PES scheme was designed in the form of two standardized typologies of voluntary agreements – sponsorship and collaboration - allowing flexibility in the commitment of involved private stakeholders, including condominiums, NGOs, and the business. 502 agreements, for a total surface of 265.398 m2, have been signed up to now. The paper analysis the design components of the PES scheme which determines its capacity to be replicated in different contexts involving a variety of stakeholders. The main elements enabling the success of the PES scheme are i) the flexibility of the voluntary agreements designed to meet the needs of various stakeholders; ii) the variety of green areas included in the initiative; iii) public recognition which makes it possible to attract firms iv) low transaction costs borne by the stakeholders. The financial resources committed, even if representing a small portion of the total social benefit generated, are sufficient to ensure an adequate requalification and maintenance of small green areas, often neglected because of scarcity of public financing. The replication capacity of this PES scheme makes it a model initiative. Given its characteristics and flexibility, it has been used for the definition of more than 500 agreements with different stakeholders, and for these reasons the policy design approach can be suitable for the replication in other urban contests.

Rethinking Italian Autonomist Marxism: Spatial Composition, Urban Contestation, and the Material Geographies of Social Reproduction

AbstractClass composition was the most important concept to be developed within the rich milieu of Italian autonomist Marxism, acutely addressing subject‐object dichotomies and organisational problems of internal differentiation in and between classed, raced and gendered social formations. Yet “compositionist” analysis has received remarkably little attention within urban‐geographical literatures. This paper reviews and develops the class composition concept, offering the first fully developed theorisation of spatial composition and underscoring its relevance for a contemporary politics of space. It stresses the importance of immanent, reflexive non‐teleological periodisations of capitalist relations for anti‐capitalist struggle through the intertwined concepts of spatial composition and the tendency. Through this theoretical lens it narrates the innovative and under‐examined spatial praxis of often women‐led urban movements in 1970s Italy, arguing that these remarkable struggles provide vital lessons for thinking through the diverse modalities of organisation and class recomposition emerging in the material geographies of social reproduction today.

Supply-Chain Urbanism: Constructing and Contesting the Logistics City

With the development of global logistical systems to coordinate the movement of goods, cities around the world are being reconceived as nodes in circuits of commodity capital. These efforts are reshaping urban environments and provoking novel forms of political resistance. They are also bringing distant places and subjects into new relations of interaction and interdependence. This article traces the web of urban change and contestation that has taken shape around the expansion of the Panama Canal, an infrastructure megaproject with reverberations that have been felt in port cities throughout the Americas. Drawing on research conducted in the Panama City, Los Angeles, and New York City areas, I examine efforts to remake urban space in the name of smooth, efficient circulation—what I call supply-chain urbanism—and the struggles that have ensued over land, labor, and environments. The concept of supply-chain urbanism calls attention to the life-damaging impacts of goods movement on communities and workers, impacts that are unevenly distributed across space, race, and class. Crucially, it also underscores the connections between seemingly disparate episodes of urban change and resistance. Beyond shedding light on emerging forms of logistics-based urbanization, the article illustrates the value of relational methodologies for the study of networked urban dynamics. In disclosing the wider forces, processes, and flows that connect far-flung experiences of urban transformation and struggle, such approaches can apprehend the interlinked character of contemporary urbanization processes in ways that purely local perspectives cannot.

Councils, Councillors and Profiteers: Urban Land Speculation and Contestations in Southern Rhodesia in the 1940s

Studies of the land question in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) have demonstrated that land was an object of intense speculation. However, they have predominantly considered speculation on rural and agrarian land to the exclusion of urban areas. This article contributes to and expands on this scholarship by considering the largely missing urban dimension. It examines conflict between speculators and municipalities over urban land in Southern Rhodesia in the 1940s. While making reference to the situation across the colony, it relies on the specific case of the town of Que Que (now Kwekwe) to argue that excesses of land speculation hamstrung the expansion and development of towns by distorting land prices. When the privately owned Naseby Estate was put on the market in September 1947, speculators, working with some councillors, exploited legislative, administrative and bureaucratic loopholes to steal a march on Que Que municipality, which wanted to purchase the land directly. They subsequently offered the land back to the municipality at a substantially raised price. Largely employing primary data, the article demonstrates that, once government bodies indicated interest in a piece of land, landowners would increase the price sharply, or speculators would buy the land specifically for resale to public institutions. The article also considers the questions raised and strategies imagined by concerned councillors and other interest groups in the wake of Que Que municipality’s loss. It not only contributes to scholarship on colonial land and urban development but also reveals less discussed tensions and contradictions within the settler society.

The Role of Traders and Small Businesses in Urban Social Movements: The Case of London's Workspace Struggles

AbstractThis article focuses on the role of traders and small businesses in urban social movements by exploring three examples of opposition to commercial displacement in London. While the work of Castells, Lefebvre and the wider field of urban social movement research has radically expanded the terrain of struggle beyond the workplace to take in a wide range of community and grassroots groups and concerns, little attention has been paid to the potential role of traders and small businesses, particularly in the global North. The article focuses specifically on the mobilization of traders and small businesses in response to the threat of commercial displacement which, as one of the ways in which surplus value is extracted from cities, is a potentially significant site of urban contestation. Drawing on the author's research and involvement with one metropolitan and two local ‘workspace struggles’ in London, the article demonstrates that commercial displacement may mobilize threatened traders and small businesses to play a role in broader urban social movements with wide‐ranging goals and concerns. Further research on workspace struggles has the potential to offer much‐needed insights for radical urban politics and possibilities for developing alternatives by challenging and working across divides between economy and society.

Struggles to remain in Kigali’s “unplanned” settlements: the case of Bannyahe

Examining the precarious status of informal settlements in Kigali at a time of large-scale planning-induced expropriation, this article considers urban contestation in the context of the city’s changing spatial-legal regime. We analyse the case of one informal settlement’s expropriation and relocation – the settlement of Bannyahe – and the contestation that has ensued as resident property owners take the District of Gasabo to court. Through interviews with settlement residents, we follow the fates of these displaced urban citizens and consider their struggles to remain in their homes. Finally, we suggest that such contestation over legal procedural regularity and negotiation over property valuation at the neighbourhood level forms the limit of overt opposition to the city’s masterplan. Terming these limits to contestation “silent boundaries” that circumscribe contestation for property owners in the Bannyahe settlement, we offer perspectives on contestation and compromise amidst urban socio-spatial reordering in the “new Kigali”.

Contested marketplaces: Retail spaces at the global urban margins

This paper argues that retail spaces, such as marketplaces, are increasingly becoming sites of urban contestation. The globalisation of retail, online shopping and the redevelopment of cities has pushed marketplaces to the margins, but they still serve millions of people, particularly the urban poor. Concurrently, marketplaces are branded as authentic consumption experiences for tourists and residents. Building on these contradictions, I propose a novel framework with three analytical lenses to reposition marketplaces as marginal city spaces that serve as productive sites for studying urban transformation processes across the Global North and South.

Overwriting the City: Graffiti, Communication, and Urban Contestation in Athens.

Overwriting the City: Graffiti, Communication, and Urban Contestation in Athens.

Parkour, counter-conducts and the government of difference in post-industrial Turin

The following paper aims to offer a critical discussion of the unfolding politics of belonging and exclusion taking place in Turin’s regenerating cityscape as a way to illuminate the paradoxes, tensions and daily negotiations of emerging forms of social and spatial restructuring in the post-industrial city. In developing this analysis, we engage with an integrated methodological approach that privileges the voices and experiences of about 30 young men, mostly of migrant origins and aged 16–21, practicing parkour in the city’s public spaces. In addressing these issues, we focus on the participants’ engagement with one of the symbols of Turin’s (multi)cultural, community-oriented and creative renewal, the post-industrial urban park of Parco Dora in order to unpack the processes of inclusion/exclusion and the conduct of conduct enacted in the creation, management and use of the city’s regenerating areas. Our discussion of the participants’ ambivalent and contested practices in Turin’s cityscape enabled us to address how these young men re-inscribe tensions, instabilities and fault-lines relational to the ‘selective story-telling’ characterising Turin’s narratives of consensual transformation, post-industrial renaissance and (multi)cultural vitality. In particular, by engaging with the participants’ bodily and spatial negotiations in Turin’s public spaces through the lens of counter-conduct, we highlight the significance of recognising and examining partial, but productive forms of urban contestation within contemporary, pacified scenarios of urban regeneration.

A GIS-based model to assess buildings energy consumption and usable solar energy potential in urban areas

This paper illustrates a GIS (Geographic Information System) based approach for assessing thermal and electric energy consumptions and usable solar energy potential of residential buildings in order to increase their independence from fossil fuels.After integrating and simplifying previous researches, a methodology for estimating thermal energy needs, both for heating and hot water supply, and electric energy demand for assessing PV and solar thermal productivity is presented.For each single building the decrease of non-renewable thermal and electricity needs has been estimated both considering possible installations of PV and solar thermal systems.The described approach has been applied in two urban cells comparing the obtained results and testing its applicability in two different urban contest: a historical town centre and a new suburban district. The methodology has been proven to be suitable in both different contexts. On one hand, it has stated that new suburban districts are most suitable for solar potential exploitation, especially by means of PV. On the other hand, the obtained outcomes shows that a reduction of non-renewable thermal energy demand would have a greater impact on enhancing the buildings efficiency. The developed model should help local authorities for implementing energy management strategies in their urban areas.

From rural rebellion to urban uprising? A socio-spatial perspective on Bujumbura's conflict history

ABSTRACTRecent scholarship has observed a changing trend in patterns of conflict in Africa, from rural armed violence to urban protest and rioting. In 2015, Burundi's capital Bujumbura saw mass demonstrations against a third term for president Nkurunziza. After being met with fierce repression and hijacked by a failed military coup attempt, the protest movement quickly militarized into an urban guerrilla campaign. The Nkurunziza regime, which is rooted in a Hutu rebel movement and has an explicit rural powerbase, was quick to denounce the uprising as an urban phenomenon, limited to specific neighborhoods which during the civil war acquired an explicit Tutsi character. Rather than reading these protests as a shift from rural to urban contestation, this article explains recent events by looking at Bujumbura's historical trajectory through war and peace. An analysis of the interaction between socio-spatial legacies of conflict, identity and power reveals a nuanced picture of the recent uprising, with not only important intra-urban variations but also a less dichotomous relationship between city and the rural hinterlands than is often assumed in Burundi, one of the least urbanized countries in the world.

The shifting sands of land governance in peri-urban Mangaluru, India: fluctuating land as an ‘informality machine’ reinforcing rapid coastal transformations

This article examines how unstable land on a sandy peninsula in peri-urban Mangaluru becomes part of urban land contestation to primarily support continued informal tenure. The peninsula is undergoing shifts changing both its shape and land use under the influence of a range of biophysical and human forces. For the time being, fisherfolk can remain in place despite lacking land documents, but much of the peninsula has been proposed for commercial development projects. The sand-spit thus becomes a frontier for variegated land claims part of urbanization processes where the variable ‘nature’ of land is enmeshed. Drawing on urban political ecology and Indian land governance literature, the article highlights how the fluctuating land supports continued informality since the shifting sands make boundaries challenging to delimit and maintain, and, once stabilised, can be claimed by the state. The informalising characteristics of land, understood as an ‘informality machine’, reinforces similar ongoing urban transformations along the entire coastline, to mainly favour elite interests, but can also be seized upon by the fisherfolk themselves for new claims, or workarounds aimed at securing long-term tenure. Future research on the urban land question would do well to include a perspective of land as co-constituted by socio-natural processes.

INTEGRATED SFM TECHNIQUES USING DATA SET FROM GOOGLE EARTH 3D MODEL AND FROM STREET LEVEL

Abstract. Structure from motion (SfM) represents a widespread photogrammetric method that uses the photogrammetric rules to carry out a 3D model from a photo data set collection. Some complex ancient buildings, such as Cathedrals, or Theatres, or Castles, etc. need to implement the data set (realized from street level) with the UAV one in order to have the 3D roof reconstruction. Nevertheless, the use of UAV is strong limited from the government rules. In these last years, Google Earth (GE) has been enriched with the 3D models of the earth sites. For this reason, it seemed convenient to start to test the potentiality offered by GE in order to extract from it a data set that replace the UAV function, to close the aerial building data set, using screen images of high resolution 3D models. Users can take unlimited “aerial photos” of a scene while flying around in GE at any viewing angle and altitude. The challenge is to verify the metric reliability of the SfM model carried out with an integrated data set (the one from street level and the one from GE) aimed at replace the UAV use in urban contest. This model is called integrated GE SfM model (i-GESfM). In this paper will be present a case study: the Cathedral of Palermo.

The WW II Saint-Pabu German Radar Camp and the <i>Stützpunkte Re</i> 03, <i>Re</i> 04

In previous articles different German radar bases have been considered. The preservation states of their components and their organization have been analyzed. This article further deepens the theme of the German radar surveillance during the WW II on the Atlantic Wall by taking into consideration the German radar camp of Saint-Pabu (Finistère-FR) and its defence Stützpunkte Re 03, Re 04. Its history, the preservation state of its components, its organization and how said components have been integrated in a modern urban contest are described.

Groundwater Heat Pump System: behavior and relationships between the groundwater temperature and electrical conductivity

The use of groundwater abstracted via open loop systems is increasingly being considered as a means to provide heating and cooling for buildings in urban contest. Physical processes affecting heat transport within an aquifer include advection (or convection) and hydrodynamic thermodispersion (diffusion and mechanical dispersion). The advective components tend to dominate the heat transfer process within the aquifer and the diffusion can be considered negligible. This study illustrates the experimental results derived from the groundwater monitoring in the surrounding area of an injection well connected to an open-loop GWHP plant which has been installed in the Politecnico di Torino (NW Italy) for cooling some of the university buildings. Groundwater pumping and injection interfere only with the upper unconfined aquifer. The data deriving from multiparameter probes installed inside the pumping well (P2), the injection well (P4) and a downgradient piezometer (S2), refers to the summer 2015. Monitoring of hydraulic levels, electrical conductivity EC and temperature T in P2, P4 and S2. The experimental results demonstrated the propagation of the subsurface thermal plume during the injection of warm water and the progressive disappearance of the temperature anomaly with time. Another important aspect that we will investigate is the unusual trend of EC values during the year and the possibility cross-correlation between EC values and T values. In particular we intend to continue this analysis to verify the reason of this data anomaly.

Legacies of a Contested Campus: Urban Renewal, Community Resistance, and the Origins of Gentrification in Denver

ABSTRACTThe postwar urban renewal experience varied among US cities according to the result of local social contests pitting those imposing their power to transform urban space against those resisting it. In this paper, we examine the role of one such contest in shaping urban renewal outcomes in Denver, using the case of the late 1960s Auraria project. The project sought to remove a poor, Hispanic neighborhood in order to build a new downtown college campus, generating community opposition from the inner city neighborhood residents, leaders of the city’s Chicano Movement, and historic preservation activists. We demonstrate how resistance actively shaped the ultimate form and character of the project, and how the legacies of this urban renewal contest extended—in unforeseen ways—beyond the immediate struggles of the time. We argue that these legacies provide the essential context for understanding planning practice, redevelopment strategies, and gentrification dynamics in the city today.

Эффективные алгоритмы в задачах по программированию

In the article the questions of fi nding and implementing of eff ective algorithms for solving the ingenious tasks on programming are considered. Under the effi ciency algorithm is understood the fulfi llment of the requirements for the minimum memory (under the terms of objectives) and the speed of the algorithm. The tasks, presented in the article, were used by the author to conduct urban programming contest among schoolchildren and students in March 2015. Considered in work tasks are aimed to show how tasks can be eff ective solved, using optimal solutions, which, often, may well remain not found. Source codes of programs are listed on the Delphi programming language. The importance of training pupils and students for solving such tasks due to the practical necessity and modern requirements to graduate.