Urban Inclusion Research Articles

Housing Inclusion Perspective: The Causal Structure of Housing Cost Burden, Fertility Intentions, and Social Housing in Urban China

To address low fertility and enhance urban inclusiveness and sustainability, this study conducted a questionnaire survey in 35 cities in China, systematically collected data on housing inclusiveness and fertility intentions, and used the SEM to analyze the causal relationship between housing costs burden, fertility intentions, and perceived need for social housing. The results show that the housing cost burden has a statistically significant positive (+) effect on the perceived need for social housing and a statistically significant negative (−) effect on fertility intentions, and that fertility intentions have a positive (+) effect on the perceived need for social housing. Notably, the direct effect of the housing cost burden on the perceived need for social housing (0.15) is greater than the total effect of the housing cost burden on the perceived need for social housing mediated by fertility intentions (0.14). This suggests that even when housing costs are high, families who still plan to have children exhibit a greater demand for social housing. Therefore, social housing can positively impact fertility intentions and help reduce housing cost pressures on families. Additionally, actively promoting inclusive housing development will have a significant impact on the sustainable growth of the urban population and economy, making meaningful contributions.

When the ‘inclusive turn’ fuels the entrepreneurial city: Critical perspectives from Singapore

The rise of the notion of ‘inclusion’ in urban planning, seen in phrases like inclusive city, calls for a critical analysis of its evolving meaning and its spatial, social and political implications. Paradoxically, the meaning of urban inclusion has narrowed such that it now primarily refers to accessibility for people with disabilities. At the intersection of urban studies and critical disability studies, our article investigates the conceptions, criteria and modes of production underlying the implementation of urban inclusion in Singapore's ‘Enabling Village’, a purportedly inclusive space opened in 2015. We use a mixed‐methods approach, analysing official narratives and conducting site visits to understand the site as both an appropriated and a branded space. We show that, in Singapore, the inclusion agenda interacts with the city‐state's distinctive approach to planning and governance, where social issues are ‘engineered’ and give rise to replicable operational models. Our hypothesis is that implementing the inclusive city through the production and promotion of ‘inclusive’ urban projects such as the Enabling Village fuels the expansion of Singapore as a state‐led ‘entrepreneurial city’ (Harvey, Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 1989; 71(1):3–17). In particular, operationalising ‘urban inclusion’ in this way allows for the reinvention of Singapore as a global urban model.

Assessing spatial configuration of barrier-free facilities from the perspective of age-friendliness: A case Study of Beijing, China

Enhancing urban inclusivity is a crucial task for sustainable urban development. One key challenge is to create seamless and accessible urban space that caters to the mobility needs of people, especially the elderly. Addressing this pressing challenge requires a comprehensive overview of barrier-free facilities (BFFs) configuration within cities. In this study, we propose an integrated framework for assessing the BFFs in Beijing by leveraging open BFFs data and mobile phone data. The proposed framework encompasses considerations of spatial distribution, accessibility, and supply-demand patterns of BFFs. Our findings reveal the significant agglomeration and heterogeneity of BFFs in Beijing, as well as serious spatial and social inequalities. Furthermore, the supply-demand relationship of BBFs in Beijing is relatively good, with 77.8% of supply-demand balanced areas. Overall, our study provides a holistic understanding of the BFFs within Beijing, offering valuable insights for informed decision-making in inclusive city planning and development.

Finding common ground on the threshold: An experiment in critical urban learning

The paper delves into the role of academic institutions in urban commoning, which involves the sharing and collaborative management of common resources. It specifically examines the impact of Practices of Urban Inclusion, an experimental learning programme, in fostering new forms of collaboration across places and institutions. This programme was co-designed and co-run by a network of four architecture and urban planning schools and three third-sector organisations across four European countries. The paper mobilises the concept of 'threshold spaces' by Stavros Stavrides to discuss if and how urban knowledge and learning can be co-produced and circulated ‘on the threshold’ between academia and civil society. Practices of Urban Inclusion is thus seen as a threshold space that aimed to bring different subjectivities and forms of knowledge into connection by foregrounding experiential knowledge, fostering collaborative learning, and connecting temporalities. The paper reflects on the key characteristics of the programme and highlights some of its commoning outcomes. We suggest that conceptualising knowledge co-production through ideas of commoning and threshold spatiality allows for more nuanced understandings of the dynamics of academia-civil society collaborations.

Evaluating the impact of social housing policies: Measuring accessibility changes when individuals move to social housing projects

Addressing housing deficits and inequalities remains a key challenge for cities in promoting more sustainable urban development. In response to these challenges, governments around the world, particularly in the Global South, have made substantial investments in housing policies for middle- and low-income individuals. Nevertheless, while these initiatives increase housing provision, they often face criticism for not adequately considering the location of new residences. This oversight has far-reaching effects on the accessibility to essential facilities, which play a pivotal role in determining spatial advantages and disadvantages, and consequently, in the degree of inclusion of individuals in both the city and society. Addressing this critical role of accessibility, this paper introduces a methodology for assessing the potential impact of housing policies on the lives of their beneficiaries, by quantifying changes in cumulative accessibility levels between individuals' former house locations and the location of the housing projects into which they moved. Accessibility is calculated for three distinct transport modes: walking, cycling, and public transport, using unimodal and multimodal urban network models. A case study was conducted in Natal, northeastern Brazil, on the implementation of the Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life, MCMV) housing policy, initiated in 2009 and still active today. The results of the study revealed a significant decrease in accessibility across all transportation modes when individuals moved to the new housing estates. The decline was particularly pronounced among individuals with lower incomes, potentially raising their regular expenses after relocation and, ultimately, leading to spatial isolation and social exclusion. These findings demonstrate the contribution of the methodology to capturing the impacts of housing policies on the everyday accessibility of their beneficiaries, while emphasizing the importance of re-evaluating these policies with a particular focus on fostering the social and urban inclusion of beneficiaries.

Will the true inclusive city rise? Mapping the strengths and weaknesses of the city ranking systems

Ranking cities is considered an effective instrument to rate and qualify the specific image of cities and encourage them to define and improve sustainable development strategies, but it has also been criticized for generating biased outcomes. Recently, the number of rankings for inclusive cities is rising, in fact along with growing investments in inclusive city projects and initiatives. The inclusive city rankings have both the strength to enhance lesson-drawing and self-improvement and the weakness to exacerbate competition among un-equals. In this article, nine different ranking systems for assessing urban inclusion are scrutinized and compared. Based on relevant theory regarding inclusive urban development and ranking systems, a methodology to compare and assess ranking systems is established, building on different quality aspects. The findings indicate that although for most ranking systems much essential information to understand how they produce results can be retrieved, motivations for generating these inclusive city rankings can be moral, utilitarian, or a combination of both, and that evaluation methods and dissemination of the results sometimes lack transparency and timeliness. Some metrics are incomplete and/or biased toward specific dimensions and indicators. The consistency across the ranking systems in producing the best-performing cities is much stronger than that of the worst-performing cities. Moreover, an obvious developed-developing gap was observed in the sense that most high performers are in Europe and to a lesser extent Nord-America, while the bottom 25 % are primarily in developing countries. Finally, suggestions are given to make methodologies for inclusive ranking systems more transparent, comprehensive and less biased.

Amenity complexity and urban locations of socio-economic mixing

Cities host diverse people and their mixing is the engine of prosperity. In turn, segregation and inequalities are common features of most cities and locations that enable the meeting of people with different socio-economic status are key for urban inclusion. In this study, we adopt the concept of economic complexity to quantify the sophistication of amenity supply at urban locations. We propose that neighborhood complexity and amenity complexity are connected to the ability of locations to attract diverse visitors from various socio-economic backgrounds across the city. We construct the measures of amenity complexity based on the local portfolio of diverse and non-ubiquitous amenities in Budapest, Hungary. Socio-economic mixing at visited third places is investigated by tracing the daily mobility of individuals and by characterizing their status by the real-estate price of their home locations. Results suggest that measures of ubiquity and diversity of amenities do not, but neighborhood complexity and amenity complexity are correlated with the urban centrality of locations. Urban centrality is a strong predictor of socio-economic mixing, but both neighborhood complexity and amenity complexity add further explanatory power to our models. Our work combines urban mobility data with economic complexity thinking to show that the diversity of non-ubiquitous amenities, central locations, and the potentials for socio-economic mixing are interrelated.

At The Frontier of Water Conservation: Attending to Relationships, Values, and Practices for Inclusive Infrastructure

Water utilities are incentivizing residential water conservation and incorporating alternative water sources, such as rainwater. How do past relationships with state institutions and their water infrastructures impact present engagements with state-sponsored rainwater collection? How does the formalization of rainwater harvesting as a conservation strategy account for or discount the practices and values of low-income Hispanic residents? Mixed methods data from southern Arizona show that collectively, low-income Hispanic participants had rainwater collection expertise often born from past experiences in the context of precarious water provisioning, but both residents and institutional experts tended to downplay this situated expertise. At the same time, by enrolling in state-sponsored rainwater collection, many low-income Hispanic households enacted their belonging to the city on their own terms, charting an unexpected path towards urban inclusion. I highlight how applied anthropology contributes to adaptive water management by showing how different relationships, values, and practices imbue people’s engagement with water infrastructures.

The homing of newcomers in Brussels at the intersection of bordering and urban speculation: From survival strategies to infrastructures for civic imagination and urban inclusion

Informed by a year of participatory action research in Globe Aroma, an organisation supporting artists and art lovers with a background as newcomers in Brussels, this paper examines how newcomers negotiate their homing at the intersection of bordering and securitisation on the one side, and gentrification and urban speculation on the other. We argue that these exclusionary structures of power do not only challenge newcomers’ homing by restricting access to housing, but also by creating precarious conditions for supportive organisations, which are often housed in low-quality, temporary infrastructures. Our research explores how housing and socio-cultural organisations in Brussels begin to utilise coalition-building and space-sharing as survival strategies, that gradually transform into a common claim for permanent infrastructures and become tools for building solidarity and homing the city. In doing so, they foster an alternative vision of urban citizenship, grounded in community-building and decent housing and services for all.

도시포용성 증진을 위한 문화 거버넌스 연구

Urban inclusiveness, as a sustainable future value of cities, is enhanced through citizen participation and collaborative governance. The Cultural City Project is a governance-centered initiative that enables citizens to collaborate and address urban issues through culture. This study examines the meaning of urban inclusiveness and collaborative governance in the Cultural City Project and explores future directions. The study examined the following research questions, and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted with Cultural City experts: 1) The current status of governance in Cultural Cities, 2) The suitable structure or form of governance for the Cultural City Project, and 3) The practical and strategic measures for governance in Cultural Cities. The governance of Cultural Cities should aim to achieve urban inclusiveness and transform into a citizen-centered collaborative organization that has responsibility and self-sustaining power through agreed-upon definitions and operational measures by citizens. This study suggests the accumulation of citizens' cooperative experiences and collective efficacy, as well as the enhancement of learning motivation and expertise, through the expansion of private networks via sharing experiences and solidarity among Cultural Cities.

An empirical study on urban integration of Chinese elderly individuals with migration in periods of economic transformation: Internal mechanism and economic effects

This study used CMDS2018 data to conduct an empirical study on the urban social inclusion of elderly migrants from the welfare economics perspective. Regression results from fuzzy set theory and several other methods show that living with children positively affects urban social inclusion, while living with their daughters has a greater impact. Migration distance and family wealth negatively impact the urban integration of the elderly. In contrast, the impact of family cohabitation and the economic environment on elderly migrants is strengthened through urban inclusion mechanisms. A higher degree of urban inclusion can effectively mitigate negative effects and enhance positive effects. This study provides empirical evidence from the welfare economics perspective for the urban integration of elderly Chinese individuals with migration in economic transformation.

"The Growing Suburban Sprawl in Large Latin American Cities: Applying Space Syntax to the Case of Northern Peripheral Region of Bogotá "

"The expansion of urban land in Latin American cities has been extensive over the last 30 years. Urbanisation has grown considerably, and, according to the United Nations, it is expected that approximately 70% of the population will live in large cities by the year 2050. This process leads to more complex urban relations, more intense suburbanisation, larger settlements in the peripheral areas of cities and, subsequently, a significant reduction of urban green infrastructure. The aim of this paper is to assess whether the expansion areas defined in different planning instruments generate urban inclusion and are aligned with the already consolidated urban area. The case study areas are represented by the municipalities of Chía and Cajicá in the northern suburbs of Bogotá city, which have a strong integration with the central city. The methodology integrates data from municipal land use plans and the spatial syntax method to visualise the effect of expansion on urban morphology. The results obtained show that Chía presents an area of greater integration than Cajicá, specifically the centre of the municipality, in which there is a high level of functionality with respect to the new expansion areas defined in the Master Plan. This study concludes that the new expansion areas should be developed on the central axes, where the highest integration values are located, and at a greater distance from natural elements such as rivers. Finally, the methodological approach can be replicated to analyse other urban areas and support decision-making on urban functionality and expansion.

Social and digital vulnerabilities: The role of participatory processes in the reconfiguration of urban and digital space

In the Italian context, political and social participation in the urban dimension has experienced innovations to broaden the inclusion of citizens in public choices relating to citylife and to urban renovation. Participation found in the city a relevant space to experiment with innovation in the relationship between institutions and citizens, many initiatives advanced and developed over the years have had a powerful lever in technology: participatory budgets, consultations, public-private-non-profit partnerships. In other cases, specifically in peripheral realities, urban innovation has turned out to be detached from digital infrastructures and has benefited, rather, from the social infrastructures in the area. Civic committees, community foundations, collaboration agreements between citizens and authorities, and local community development experiences developed in peripheral contexts. Regenerating urban spaces is a political objective proposed with increasing emphasis by institutional bodies at the various levels of governance. Environmental, economic, social and urban planning intersect and overlap and often projects related to urban planning “on paper” prevail over issues related to urban communities “on territories”. Without adequate processes of participation and subjectivity of citizens living in urban contexts, no model of “urban renaissance” appears fully deployed, resulting in participatory processes that—at best—only allow for access logics in a neoliberal perspective. Through a qualitative methodology, the paper aims at presenting and investigating six case studies in major Italian cities (Rome, Naples, Milan, Turin, Florence, Reggio Calabria), in which democratic innovation and experimentation in civic engagement spread from the digital capital of citizens and the social organizations of the peripheral territory, with its specificities and its problems. In particular, the objective of the paper is to discuss and problematise the processes of participation involving and featuring vulnerable people within the reconfiguration of urban and digital spaces. Following Sutton and Kemp's approach, we consider the relationship between urban spaces and marginal communities as central to a one-to-one relationship, fostering processes of urban inclusion. Combining participatory processes in liminal marginalized communities with an institutional push toward holistic urban regeneration may develop opportunities for active citizenship, overcoming the neoliberal paradigm of the city.

Patterns of Living Lost? Measuring Community Participation and Other Influences on the Health of Older Migrants in China.

Community participation is a key element of active aging that promotes a new paradigm to enhance health and well-being as people age. However, social isolation is often a concern for older migrants. In this study, we aimed to investigate the current status of older migrants’ community participation and assess the main influences on three forms of welfare, development, and organizational participation. We adopted a quantitative research design for this study. A questionnaire survey was completed by 1216 older migrants in 4 cities; 1105 valid responses were received, representing a response rate of around 91%. The research findings showed that the current participation of older migrants in community activities was limited. By comparison, full self-care capability and non-chronic illness positively affected general and welfare participation. Educated at primary school had a negative influence on general, development, and organizational participation, whereas knowledge of the local language was a significant predictor of general and development participation. Urban inclusion and resident friendship had positive effects on general, welfare, and development participation. The study also revealed direct influences of socioeconomic characteristics on different types of participation. Moving forward, actions are needed to maximize older migrants’ participation in public events and community life.

South African cities, housing precarity and women’s inclusion during COVID-19

abstract South African history widely documents poor women’s housing exclusion in urban areas during the apartheid era. While the post-apartheid housing programme’s inclusionary objectives resulted in some women’s access to housing, its limited scale and some characteristics of the housing that was delivered meant that many poor women were already experiencing urban exclusion and housing precarity when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Drawing on a growing body of COVID-19-related research as well as government responses, this article uses a gender analysis to unpack the notion of inclusive cities in the context of housing during the pandemic. It argues that despite the evolution of housing policy to include sustainability notions, in particular Sustainable Development Goal 11, which aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive and sustainable, challenges to poor women’s urban inclusion not only remain, but have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Low-income women’s exposure to insecurities related to health, safety, affordability and loss of housing have shown cities to be neither inclusive nor sustainable for poor women, while gender-blind interventions have failed to take cognizance of the gendered impact of the pandemic on their housing experience. The article calls for post-pandemic recovery responses that take into account the constraints that hinder women’s urban housing inclusion in the first instance.

Fragmenting Urban Movements

How do political parties shape urban movements in developing countries? This paper examines struggles for urban inclusion in two informal settlements within Johannesburg: Thembelihle and Motsoaledi. I argue that the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), fragmented and weakened these movements through four mechanisms: place-specific governance, electoral encouragement, co-optation, and fostering loyalty. Both responding to and prompting these mechanisms, activists in the two areas pursued divergent politics. Whereas activists in Thembelihle emphasized working-class solidarity and citywide opposition to the ANC, activists in Motsoaledi emphasized neighborhood solidarity and presented a narrower challenge to the ANC. Residents in both areas secured material concessions, but they failed to produce a unified and citywide movement. The two examples underscore the difficulty of building movements for urban inclusion when a single political party dominates civil society.

Introduction

Inclusivity challenges that are prevailing in African cities and beyond, require concerted multi-thronged efforts from all stakeholders to address them. This is so because inclusivity issues cannot just be viewed from a narrow periscope but a comprehensive spectrum of inputs and actions. On the strength of the aforesaid, it became expedient for the SARChI-Chair for Inclusive Cities to organise a critical symposium that interrogated the concept of inclusivity from a multi-disciplinary dimension. Such an enquiry into the nature and extent of urban inclusivity in an African city context, provides an appropriate platform to understand factors underpinning the need to establish desired inclusivity (Medayese et al., 2016).

Introduction: Infrastructural stigma and urban vulnerability

In this introduction to the Special Issue ‘Infrastructural Stigma and Urban Vulnerability’, we outline the need to join up debates on infrastructural exclusion on the one hand and urban stigma on the other. We argue that doing so will allow us to develop a better understanding of the co-constitutive relationship between the material and the symbolic structures of the city shaping urban exclusion and vulnerability. Positing that stigma is not merely a symbolic force but has significant material effects, we show how urban dwellers often experience it in deeply embodied ways, including through impacts on their physical health. Furthermore, stigma is not only imposed on the built environment through discourse, it also emanates from the materiality of the city; this agentic role of the city is often disregarded in sociologically-informed approaches to urban stigma. When infrastructures become sites of contestation about urban inclusion, stigma can be utilised by stigmatised residents to demand connection to public networks, and the wider symbolic inclusion this entails. Through examining the issue of infrastructural stigma in cities and urban territories across the Global North and Global South, as well as the places in between, the nine articles in this Special Issue pay attention to the global relationalities of infrastructural stigma. Ultimately, our focus on the infrastructural origins of stigma draws attention to the structural causes of urban inequality – a reality which is often occluded by both stigma itself and by prevalent academic approaches to understanding it.

HGC: Hypergraph‐based dynamic stable clustering scheme model for vehicular ad‐hoc networks (VANETs)

SummaryVehicular ad‐hoc network (VANET) is the unstructured evolving conception of a wireless network; clustering in these networks is perplexing due to continuously varying topology and recurrent disconnection in networks. The cluster head (CH) stability plays a noticeable role in robustness and scalability in the network. The author designs a model that includes cluster generation and maintenance. The cluster formation is conceived on the notion that the changes that are brought about due to the vehicle's speed are inevitable. A directed hypergraph approach is used to comprehend this problem, and then, based on the spectral clustering through tensor trace maximization, an optimal number of the cluster is formed. The centers of these clusters are used to place the auxiliary facilities that aid cluster maintenance. In the maintenance phase, the author has envisioned a CH selection method based on a summed amalgamation of three metrics: link lifetime, cooperative connectivity level, and relative cooperative speed superimposed on the vehicular hypergraph network to design the metric for choosing a stable CH. The proposed scheme is tested on the old Delhi area that includes a market area with urban inclusion. Also, the area is highly crowded as being the marketplace. The region also has a tourist attraction as being part of the heritage of Delhi. The traffic density and the variety are high in peak hours—a complete analysis of the different vehicular mobility and routing analysis. The analysis done through microscopic and macroscopic parameters has projected significant improvement in the CH stability and a promising solution for dynamic networks.

Géographie de la dispersion des migrations subsahariennes au Maroc

At the very heart of this research work lies the dispersal policy translated into forced displacement of sub-Saharan migrants from the north of Morocco to medium-sized cities located further south. Based on an empirical study in the framework of an action research, our surveys were conducted comparatively in the medium-sized cities of Tiznit and Taza. Our research aims at highlighting the effects of dispersal, related to the process of “bordering” and the emergence of refuge cities where palliative reactions feed the reconfiguration of reception and urban inclusion missions.