Urban Crisis Research Articles

Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Populist Politics by Timothy J. Lombardo

Reviewed by: Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Populist Politics by Timothy J. Lombardo Ian Toller-Clark Timothy J. Lombardo, Blue-Collar Conservatism: Frank Rizzo’s Philadelphia and Populist Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 328 pp. $37.50 (cloth). Donald Trump’s electoral college victory in the 2016 presidential election achieved in part through wins in the so-called Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania shocked seasoned political observers and everyday Americans. However, the political culture of all three states has been shifting for well over two decades. Journalist Dan Kaufman’s The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics (2018) argues that Trump’s Wisconsin victory “merely heralded the final stage of Wisconsin’s dramatic transformation from a pioneering beacon of progressive, democratic politics to the embodiment of that legacy’s unraveling” (4). Meanwhile, political scientist [End Page 183] Katherine J. Cramer’s The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (2016) contends that a “rural consciousness” among Wisconsinites forged a politics of resentment that powered both Walker and Trump to electoral success. She defines “rural consciousness” as “a perspective that is at its core rooted in place and class” and imbued with “a sense that rural folks don’t get their fair share” (12). Cramer’s work underscores an important part of contemporary politics that influences both Rust Belt and national politics: the polarization between rural and urban communities. Still, the focus on rural or even White middle-class suburban politics has obscured the crucial role of urban politics and the “urban crisis” in conservatism’s resurgence across the Midwest and the nation. Historian Timothy Lombardo’s deeply researched and insightful Blue-Collar Conservatism offers a powerful intervention to our understanding of contemporary political culture and the popularity of Trumpism in the city of Philadelphia. Blue-Collar Conservatism traces the political transformation of White working-and middle-class Philadelphians from blue-collar Whites to blue-collar conservatives between the 1950s and 1980s. White working-and middle-class Philadelphians of the 1950s had been foundational members of the city’s postwar reform coalition. Along with African American voters, White working-and middle-class voters powered the rise of Democratic mayors Joseph S. Clark and Richardson Dilworth, who promised to bring the prosperity of the postwar United States to Philadelphia through urban and industrial renewal projects. These projects, however, could not reverse the structural changes to Philadelphia’s economy. Moreover, they reified the racial and class inequalities of that segregated city. These inequalities produced tensions, especially between the predominantly White police force and the city’s burgeoning African American population. The result was a three-day urban rebellion during the summer of 1964. Lombardo, however, is careful to show that Whites did not engage in a simple backlash against the failures of postwar liberalism. From the mid-to-late 1960s, White working-and middle-class Philadelphians, who included police officers and their families, crafted a colorblind argument that “differentiated the right to entitlements by making the clear distinction between hard work and handouts” (132). In their telling, opposition to public housing, school integration, and even “law and order” liberalism was not about keeping African Americans and other minorities out of their neighborhoods but rather about preserving what they had earned for themselves. [End Page 184] This argument obscured the ways that “Blue-collar whites benefited from and cheered liberal plans like urban renewal and federal spending for construction” (131). Meanwhile, Philadelphia police commissioner Frank Rizzo effectively used the argument to win the mayoralty in 1971. As mayor, Rizzo became the champion of Philadelphia’s blue-collar Whites. He made their causes his own, including state funding for parochial schooling and preventing the construction of public housing in Whitman Park. In these ways, Rizzo reflected blue-collar Whites’ selective rejection of postwar liberalism. That rejection was based on a colorblind, racially obfuscating ideology—one divisive to Philadelphians and Americans more broadly—that pitted people who saw themselves as hardworking against those who accepted so-called handouts. As Lombardo provocatively concludes, “Blue-collar conservatives did not view the liberal governance of...

WATCHING AND SEEING

AbstractThis article explores grassroots practices of community safety and security in Brooklyn, New York through a framework that centers the abolitionist practices imbedded in Black neighborhood collective action. Literature on safety and security often conflates the two concepts, not considering how grounded applications of the two may produce different outcomes and approaches to community well-being. Additionally, we know little about how Black communities build safety and security from the ground up. And while academic scholarship on abolition provides a robust theoretical foundation, more examples of how communities could and do employ police abolition are needed. Utilizing archival research and oral history interviews, I argue that a crisis of police legitimacy compelled alternatives to formal policing in New York City during the urban crisis, or the postwar period of massive urban divestment and hyper-ghettoization. These efforts included masculinized security practices such as neighborhood patrols and protests, while community safety practices included forms of neighborhood sociality grounded in feminized and queer relationships of care and concern. These efforts, which critiqued institutional racism and neglect and emerged from the indigenous knowledge base and social networks of community members, provide considerations for recovering abolitionist practices in Black neighborhood collective action and implications for building alternatives to policing. This article contributes to literature on Black communities, collective action, and abolition by offering an intersectional analysis of the various ways Black social and political engagement centers on practices of safety and security and does not always fixate on conscripting a police response.

Parish Boundaries at 25: A Personal History

Parish Boundaries at 25:A Personal History 61 John T. McGreevy As a senior in college without a plan, I pondered attending law school, even taking the LSAT. I simultaneously considered graduate school, despite knowing very little about what graduate school entailed. Most of the graduate schools to which I applied rejected my application—I had only the haziest "research agenda"—but I snuck by the Stanford admissions committee. So to Palo Alto I went. I loved the coursework and even the oral examinations, and enjoyed working with superb faculty such as David Kennedy and George Fredrickson, ultimately the first and second readers on my dissertation. But I agonized over choosing a dissertation topic. Despite completing seminar papers on agrarian populism in 1890s California and on draft resisters during the Vietnam war, I doubted whether I could sustain interest in either topic for the long haul.62 I "stopped out" (to use Stanford vocabulary) for a year and taught at Hales Franciscan high school, an overwhelmingly African-American Catholic High School on Chicago's south side. A graduate school friend, Daryl Scott, now a distinguished historian at Howard University and then working on his history of twentieth century ideas about race and social psychology, turned out to have attended the school. We marveled at this coincidence when we would bump into each other while working in the nearby University of Chicago library. 63 By then I had settled on writing about Catholicism. I did so not because I had read about Catholics in graduate school—I hadn't—but because I knew the depth of the milieu. Both of my parents had attended Catholic grade schools, high schools and colleges. (My father also attended a Catholic medical school.) Both had worked in Catholic hospitals for much of their professional lives. The sheer size of the [End Page 29] subculture made its absence from the standard literature on the United States glaring. Historians of, say, imperial Germany, where Catholics were an equally large part of the population, had done much more to make Catholicism a core topic of inquiry.64 But what would be my angle? No subject seemed more exciting to graduate students doing United States history at Stanford in the 1980s than "race" and George Fredrickson's work, and more distantly that of David Roediger, Barbara Fields and others animated late night conversations.65 J. Anthony Lukas's Common Ground, on Boston during the busing crisis, amazed me with its narrative force and recounting of the city's Catholic history. I wrote Lukas out of the blue and he encouraged me to examine his notes deposited at the Wisconsin Historical Society. I remember my excitement when I first plucked Arnold Hirsch's Making the Second Ghetto off a shelf in a Berkeley bookstore.66 Hirsch mentioned Catholics only episodically. But his brilliant research prompted me to ask: what did it mean that Black migrants to the northern cities encountered so many Euro-American Catholics? I tracked Hirsch's footnotes, which led to a full summer going through the Catholic Interracial Council papers at the Chicago Historical Society. So I had a topic. What I didn't anticipate was that interest in religion in modern United States history would explode in the twenty years after turning in my dissertation.67 As it turned out, and as often happens, I was not alone even in my specific interests. Gerald Gamm's Urban Exodus, on Jews and Catholics in Boston, published three years after Parish [End Page 30] Boundaries, even more convincingly displayed the importance of Catholic institutions in shaping American urban life.68 Thomas Sugrue's Origins of the Urban Crisis, published the same year as Parish Boundaries, became the lodestar for our generation's collective understanding of postwar urban history.69 To my mind it still is. Sugrue only touched on Catholicism—as he acknowledges—but almost against his will it popped up in his analysis at various points. He was the first person, I think, to cite my just about to be published dissertation. Sugrue's scholarly example makes me even more grateful for his commentary in this forum. I especially appreciated his discovery of a real estate listing...

Strategies for Overcoming the Urban Crisis Using Cultural Assets

Cities are suffering from massive natural disasters, climate change, diversification of social disasters, increased aging facilities, and the emergence of new disasters such as infectious diseases. Urban governments are required to change their policies to effectively prevent disasters and to provide substantial recovery and relief systems. However, social and economic policy alternatives related to the lives of citizens have not been specific in South Korea. This study suggests that citizens and communities with cultural consensus have a strong sense of pride in the region, and that expanding participation based on it is desirable to overcome urban disasters. According to the analysis results, cultural properties have a low relationship with urban crisis management, and cultural factors do not seem to have much impact on the disaster management processes. This study suggests the creation of new values based on cultural assets, expansion of exchange areas for cultural values and disaster resilience, understanding of culture to reflect regional specificities and differences, linkage between disaster education with culture and arts education, and change in various ways of civic participation.

PROBLEMS OF GLOBAL URBANISM SOLUTION IN THE CONTEXT OF CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT, TECHNOLOGY AND THE FORMATION OF CREATIVE CLASS

In the article the structural and functional model of the city' cultural urbanization was developed in the context of the complexity methodology as the basis for solving the problems of the urban crisis, in which all countries and peoples of the world are involved. The analysis methodology is the use of systematic methods of structural and functional, informational and cultural analysis, as well as the complexity methodology as a basis for overcoming the urban crisis of urban agglomerations that are involved in the system of global urbanism and require solving the problems of urban life, middle creative class formation, increasing the global creativity index. The leading approach to the study of this problem is a complexity methodology, which includes a non-linear methodology, in the context of which the problems of global urbanization are solved. The urban crisis and ways of solving the problems of global challenges of agglomerations or large cities have been studied. The essence of the urban crisis and the problems of global challenges of agglomerations or large cities are presented.The problem of urban research is that modern cities were colonized by rich and successful people, leaving far behind the inhabitants of small villages and townships: hubs, covorkings and high-tech innovations have absorbed parks, stores and coffee shops; restructuring of cities and urban areas has led to increased rents and concentration of wealth in one hands. It has been established that under the global challenges of our time, high-tech agglomerations (megacities) are becoming the focus of all problems - economic, social, cultural, demographic, environmental. An attempt was made to divide urban agglomerations into 4 groups of cities and find out their problems. Megacities as epicenters of the economy suffer from economic splits, split into small areas of rich and large zones of poor areas. The problematic issues of the structural and functional model of the cultural urbanism of the city, which aims to bring global urbanism to a new level of technical, social and cultural progress and social development, have been identified. The prospects of solving the problems of global urbanization in the context of the development of the concept of Enlightenment 2.0 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution are analyzed.

Assessment of Effectiveness of Sustainable Transport Development

The traditional assessment of efficiency ofoperations and of development projects of transportsystems is based on a mercantilist approach thatconsiders efficiency of activities according to the«cost–income–profit of economic entities» pattern.In this case, non-systemic, external results areusually not considered, while they can be many timeshigher in value terms than the internal resultsobtained by economic entities. External results areoften seen outside the realm of purely economicrelations. This is especially evident in theinfrastructure sector, the material basis of which isformed by transport and logistics. To some extent acrisis of economic doctrine has arisen. An ecologicalcrisis is being observed due to unrestrainedanthropogenic activity. The concentration of peopleand production activities in cities has become thecause of the urbanization crisis. Growing inequalityhas led to an exacerbation of social contradictions.As a result, mankind has faced a complex crisis ofcivilization. Sustainable development was recognizedas the main means of resolving the crisis. Sustainabletransport dev elopement-being primarily aninfrastructure field of activity, serves as thefoundation for building sustainable development ofthe economy and social sphere. The sustainabledevelopment goals set by the world communityunder the auspices of the UN can only be achievedthrough the comprehensive assessment ofeffectiveness of management decisions (cumulativeaccounting of all internalities and externalities).Transport has become a pioneer in sustainabledevelopment of territories and cities. The approachto a comprehensive assessment of effectiveness ofsustainable development determines the reform ofeconomic and fiscal relations in the future accordingto the principle of the Pigou tax.The objective of this article is to explore ways toimprove assessment of effectiveness andmethodology of sustainable development oftransport organizations and transport systems. Thearticle substantiates the relevance and directions ofimproving the methodology for a comprehensiveassessment of the results of transport activities andpresents analytical models for a comprehensiveassessment of its effectiveness. The promising tasksfor continuation of research and development areassociated with justification and legal legitimation ofthe use of cost estimates of various external resultsof improving transport, as well as with developmentof a system for monitoring of information necessaryfor a comprehensive assessment of sustainabletransport development.

CRISE URBANA E O ANTIVALOR EM DAVID HARVEY

This text discusses and explains the relation between the urban crisis today and the antivalue in respect to the conceptual framework by David Harvey, a well-known British geographer. He approaches this theme in many of his books, including ‘Marx, capital and the madness of economic reason’, published in Brazil, in 2018. This text uses this book as a starting point for the discussion of how the contemporary world, which is increasingly urban, is dominated by the Empire of antivalue, especially in the form of a growing debt. The antivalue, in the form of capital holder of interest, plays a crucial role in the accumulation of capital, articulating production, circulation and realization of commodities, promoting and facilitating the geographical movement of capital and the transfer of capital between economic circuits and cycles of production. However, debt is the favorite form of antivalue under capitalism today. In addition to being supported and granted by the State in a variety of ways, including through public debt, debt imprisons all economic agents in perpetual servitude. Debt follows the tendency of continuous production of value and surplus value under capitalism, a movement that Harvey calls bad infinity. Antivalue in its form of debt is also called fetishism of capital, which defines the contradictory situation in which money alone seems to have the magic powers to create more money. The consequences of growing debt to the urban crisis go beyond the necessity of solving fiscal problems of the State. The need to produce value and surplus value, in addition to the service of the debt generates urban spaces marked by gentrification and segregation. In sum, the text discusses the urban crisis today in the context of the domination by the financial-real estate complex, basing the discussion on Marx’s theory of value and the concept of antivalue, as presented by David Harvey.

If this is not an Urban Crises, what is?

The very purpose of Mumbai city must be questioned today as the city seems on a transformation spree again. With lakhs of migrants fleeing the city amidst the Covid-19 crises, what would the place be for the urban poor in the city in such a scenario? As cities evolve, their purpose changes and adapt to differing functions. The city in the process of evolution also carries relics of their bygone decades, as a part of their burden and identity, sometimes redundant, but reminders of their implicit purpose, holding vital clues to the origins of the spaces and its basis for existence. These issues lead to the same question — what is the purpose of a city? To create a city is far easier. The task is to keep an existing city going with inclusive and democratic spaces for all its residents. This requires imagination and political will. Determining the nature and future of an ever transforming urban phenomenon called Mumbai is a choice — one that rests with its people.

Urban redevelopment, governance and vulnerability: thirty years of ‘regeneration’ in Dublin

Over the last three decades, state intervention through urban regeneration has focused on ‘fixing’ perceived social and spatial vulnerabilities within particular neighbourhoods, communities or city spaces but has often generated new urban crises. Previous research examining regeneration over significant periods of time in the UK and Ireland, suggests that often the same spaces and communities are subject to repeated rounds of intervention. In this paper, the thirty year trajectory of regeneration in Dublin Docklands is examined. The importance of global flows of capital and how they are mediated by local contexts, actors and institutions through roll-back, roll-out and roll-with-it forms of neoliberalisation are examined. Since the global financial crisis, neoliberal governmentalities have been more deeply embedded in place through new institutions and the formation of a new growth machine that has produced new vulnerabilities. Dublin Docklands has been successfully commodified and marketized through the sustenance, albeit changing, of a growth logic over more than 30 years. Yet significant challenges related to governance, social inclusion and spatial justice remain, and arguably have been (un-) intentionally co-produced in new forms by sustained rounds of state intervention.

РЕВІТАЛІЗАЦІЯ МІСТА: СУТНІСТЬ ТА КЛЮЧОВІ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКИ

The general articulation of the issue and its connection with the important research and practice tasks. The application of urban revitalization in the national territorial development policy requires a proper scientific justification. The key role is played thereby by the definition of basic concepts forming the subject area for managerial influence. The disclosure of their content allows to expand more explicitly on approaches to the implementation of relevant policy.The analysis of the recent publications regarding the issues this article deals with; identification of parts of the general problem that have not been previously addressed. Theoretical issues regarding the urban revitalization have not yet achieved thorough scientific study. It should be noted that in the national science of public administration there is no complex scientific research devoted to substantiation of urban revitalization. However, in the course of the world scientific thought evolution in this direction the modern understanding of the urban revitalization, particularities of this process and expected results were formed.The purpose (the objective) of this article. The article clarifies the essence and concept of the urban revitalization, defines its essential dimensions and key characteristics.The key results and the background. The extensive terminology in the field of the urban revitalization is considered, which differs in individual states, but is similar in semantic meaning of terms. Provisions concerning the spatial, economic, social, cultural, ecological, public administration dimensions of urban revitalization are revealed. Its object, which consists of all or part of the degraded territory with a high degree of territorial concentration of negative phenomena of spatial, economic or other nature, is substantiated. The crucial importance of management activities of public sector institutions in the process of urban revitalization is proved, in particular, the involvement and coordination of all stakeholders, identification of urban crisis developments, searching for innovative solutions for their solving, preparation and implementation of relevant projects and programs.Conclusions and the prospects of the further research. The main characteristics of urban revitalization are formulated concerning the characteristics of the negative factor accumulation in degraded urban areas; orientation of urban revitalization on creation of preconditions for sustainable territory development; complex and long-term nature of this process; the role of local governments, as well as instruments of public participation and public-private partnership. Prospects for further investigations in this direction include the study of the process of formation and implementation of public policy of urban revitalization.

Urban transformation through national innovation competitions: Lessons from the UK’s Future City Demonstrator initiative

ABSTRACT Around the world, local innovations in the management and development of urban space are often significantly shaped by national government competitions. This article argues that the competition is a characteristic but underdiscussed feature of contemporary national policymaking on urban innovation, and considers how such competitions might be more constructively implemented in the future. It does so by closely tracing the outcomes of one paradigmatic example: the UK’s Future City Demonstrator competition, launched in 2012, which awarded funding to four cities (Glasgow, Bristol, Peterborough, and London) to implement their proposals. The analysis offers lessons for similar competitions by highlighting six factors which co-determined the implementation and outcome of this initiative: asserting the need for speed; conflating export opportunities with local benefits; focusing on the need for institutional reform; reliance on cross-sectoral collaboration; positioning the city as a platform for digital solutions; and a lack of integration at the national level. Relatedly, we urge commentators to adopt a critical distance from justificatory assertions of urgent urban crisis and local governments being straightforwardly in need of reform.

Controlling risks in the safe city: The rise of pre-emptive practices in law enforcement, public surveillance and mental health and addiction care (1970–2020)

This article describes pre-emptive practices in law enforcement, public surveillance and mental health and addiction care in the Dutch city Amersfoort and the Netherlands in general between 1970 and 2020. These developments are driven by top-down as well as bottom-up interactions on an urban level. The development of this ‘preventive gaze’, though intensified by 9/11, has deeper origins in the urban crisis: the struggle against communal crime and the heroin epidemic in circumstances of austerity encouraged a shift from post-hoc repression to prevention of public nuisance. This shift is analysed in light of the concepts of the risk society, the culture of control and the Disneyisation of inner cities, and its legal and moral implications are assessed. Aiming at unknown future risks, the ‘precautionary culture’ itself risks encroaching on the freedoms of citizens, ultimately making cities less safe.

The End of Urban Crisis? Decentering the Crisis Paradigm in Post–World War II U.S. Urban Historiography

The End of Urban Crisis? Decentering the Crisis Paradigm in Post–World War II U.S. Urban Historiography

Contextualizing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on food security in two small cities in Bangladesh.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an evolving urban crisis. This research paper assesses impacts of the lockdown on food security and associated coping mechanisms in two small cities in Bangladesh (Mongla and Noapara) during March to May 2020. Due to restrictions during the prolonged lockdown, residents (in particular low-income groups) had limited access to livelihood opportunities and experienced significant or complete loss of income. This affected both the quantity and quality of food consumed. Coping strategies reported include curtailing consumption, relying on inexpensive starchy staples, increasing the share of total expenditure allocated to food, taking out loans and accessing relief. The pandemic has exacerbated the precariousness of existing food and nutrition security in these cities, although residents with guaranteed incomes and adequate savings did not suffer significantly during lockdown. While coping strategies and the importance of social capital are similar in small and large cities, food procurement and relationships with local governments show differences.

Towards an Urban Disability Agenda

The overwhelming majority of Americans with disabilities live in metropolitan areas. Yet those areas continue to contain significant barriers that keep disabled people from fully participating in city life. Although political and social debate has periodically turned its attention to urban issues or problems — or even the so-called “urban crisis” — during the past several decades, it has too rarely attended to the issues of disability access. When political debate has focused on disability issues, it has tended to address them in a nationally uniform way, without paying attention to the particular concerns of disabled people in cities. Even when city leaders have focused attention directly on the impact of disability policy on their municipalities — for example, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell’s attacks in the mid-1990s on the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) requirement to install curb cuts — they have done so as part of a more general attack on mandates on state and local governments, in and out of the disability context. This essay, written for a symposium on disability and the city, asks the question of what we should want from an urban disability agenda. It begins by setting out some principles that should guide such an agenda. It then highlights some of the key barriers, in existing law and politics, for achieving those principles. In the last section, a brief conclusion, it speculates on the prospects for addressing those barriers — and ask whether the COVID-19 pandemic has made effective action on this front more or less likely.This contribution is an exercise in issue-spotting. Its goal is not to set forth a detailed critique of any current urban policy, nor is it to offer any particular path forward. Rather, it is to identify some key considerations for policymakers to address as they construct a truly inclusive urban agenda.

Fire at the Oakland Ghost Ship Warehouse: A disaster life cycle-based analysis.

Structural fires remain a prominent threat to public health and safety even in several regions of the developed world, where rising housing costs force many to reside in unsafe environments. This case report of the Ghost Ship Warehouse fire in Oakland, California, highlights deficiencies in the emergency management system in the context of similar nightclub incidents to inform recommendations that might prevent such events from occurring in the future. The characteristics of the Ghost Ship warehouse and circumstances surrounding the fire, as described in government documents and news media sources, were examined using the disaster life cycle framework. The Ghost Ship fire was also compared with two prior fire disasters at the Happy Land nightclub in New York City and Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island. The following risk factors were identified as common features of deadly nightclub fires: large crowd size, limited access to exits, multiple code violations, lack of required permits, inadequate fire suppression systems, and poor building maintenance. To prevent the recurrence of such disasters, Oakland and other cities should adopt measures to improve interdepartmental communication; streamline reporting of fire and safety hazards, and allocate sufficient resources and staff capable of identifying hazardous buildings, performing inspections, and enforcing building and fire codes. Equally importantly, the urban affordable housing crisis needs to be adequately addressed to mitigate vulnerable populations living in unsafe dwellings that place them at risk of deadly fires.

Technology to Address Food Deserts: Low Energy Corner Store Groceries with Integrated Agriculture Greenhouse

Food deserts have emerged as sources of urban crises around the world. The lack of access to healthy food has rendered health inequities that have been made more visible by the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the populations experiencing food insecurity and healthy food access. Research is posed to fight food deserts through innovation and technology; specifically, through the development of corner store grocery markets with integrated agricultural greenhouses in such a way as to both provide access to healthy foods at reasonable cost to better meet nutritional needs, and significantly reduce operating costs. The posed technology includes a combined heat and power (CHP) system to reduce overall energy costs by meeting the partial electric and thermal loads required within the store and the connected greenhouse. A mathematical model is developed to control the operation of the CHP system and to dispatch the generated electric power to the store and the thermal energy to the greenhouse to minimize overall energy requirements. The model is applied to an ambient environment representing a heating-dominant climate. Results indicate the potential to reduce operating costs by 55% in a heating-dominant climate.

Developing communities: the Ford Foundation and the global urban crisis, 1958–66

AbstractBetween 1958 and 1966 the Ford Foundation embarked on a series of pilot projects of ‘urban community development’ in India and the United States. This article will highlight how both of these programmes emerged in response to what Ford officials understood to be a global urban crisis, caused by the migration of ‘backward’ rural populations into the cities. Rather than modernizing under the pressure of urban living, these newcomers appeared to be pooling into pockets of underdevelopment – ‘ghettos’ in the United States and ‘slums’ in India. Ford sought to tackle the problem by encouraging the participation of these marginalized communities in the process of urban renewal, a strategy intended to engineer the psychological modernization of their residents. In practice, however, Ford struggled to control the channels into which these mobilizations flowed, with poor urban residents utilizing the projects to push for radical changes concerning housing, policing, and tenant–landlord relations.

Die sozial-unternehmerische Stadt: Gesellschaftliche Ungleichheit, Reproduktionskrise und Stadtpolitik in Hamburg

Abstract. Entrepreneurial and social urban policies contradictorily depend from each other: growth policies aiming to increase investment and population numbers produce a crisis of reproduction (i.e. housing or care); and social policies aiming to resolve this crisis allegedly require entrepreneurial policies as fuel for tax resources financing social goals. We investigate this interrelationship along the recent housing and childcare policies in the city of Hamburg, Germany. We show that as long as growth and competition are primary objectives of urban governments, a compensatory social policy is needed to legitimate the entrepreneurial axiom – and therefore has a specific character: social policy in the social-entrepreneurial city is actually addressing inequalities, but it eventually is aimed at all classes, secures capital accumulation and is gendered. This paper contributes to understanding urban crises of reproduction by exposing that current social policies aiming to solve this crisis merely consolidate the crisis-prone growth policies.

Academic Southernness as Affective Boldness: A Quarantined Testimonial

This position statement elaborates on academic southernness, arguing its endemic quarantined position in Western and Northern academia. Drawing from the author’s personal experiences, this piece creates a critical dialogue with bell hook’s “choosing the margin as a space of radical openness” (2000), building the notion of academic southernness. Academic southernness is conceived summing Bhan’s notion of southern urban practice (2019) and Hutta’s affective boldness (2019), and is based on prioritizing action (against reflection), embeddedness (contrary to distance), and solidarity (in opposition to critique). Academic southernness is a permanent engaged and grounded perspective and attitude when facing (endemic) urban crisis, summarized by an extreme pragmatism, commonly unfamiliar for those from the “north” and explained by the anthem “act first, theorize later.” Academic southernness is foregrounded in contexts of crisis, such as the current pandemic, by affectively engaging in practices and with practitioners throughout territories of precarity, demonstrating engagement, embeddedness, and bold solidarities.