Urban Life Research Articles

Living through the future: rural youth, livelihoods and the production of gendered aspirations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This paper explores the relationship between the everyday livelihood practices of rural youth living and working in Addis Ababa and the production of gendered future aspirations. Drawing on Appadurai’s (2004) notion of the ‘capacity to aspire’ and building on theoretical advancements on youth aspirations, findings presented show young people’s future imaginaries are rooted in the driving factors that defined their migration trajectories, renegotiated in relation to subjective experiences of urban life. In highlighting the strategies that youth devise in their efforts to survive and live through the city, this paper highlights the relational nature of aspirations, emphasising how future imaginaries are formed in relation to youth’s past, their social obligations, their networks and their marginality in relation to the state. This paper situates the production of future aspirations within broader social, economic and migratory spatialities and temporalities that configure young people’s gendered experiences of cities of the global South.

Sid Chaplin: A Writer with a Cause

The aim of this article is to recover the radical subtext of both the life and work of Sid Chaplin by reasserting the essentially political dimensions of his writing. Chaplin devoted the whole of his career as a writer to documenting not only the decline of the coal mining industry in the north-east of Britain where he lived, but he also traced the impact this process had on the working-class communities that were dependent on the pits. In his two later novels set in the city of Newcastle, The Day of the Sardine (1961) and The Watchers and the Watched (1962), Chaplin went on to dramatize similarly troubled changes in urban working-class life in the 1950s and 60s. The article not only argues that it is this nexus of class, politics and literature that translates so convincingly into his Newcastle novels, it also claims that it is the fundamental radicalism of his own literary project that explains the problematic neglect of his work by both critics and readers.

Finding space in EU law

ABSTRACT This paper suggests that we lack scholarship that analyses EU law spatially. A spatial reading of EU law can help reveal the incidence, contingencies, pathologies and contestation of EU law. This paper looks at one specific spatial dimension of EU law: the interaction between, and the construction of, the urban and its hinterland. It suggests that EU law is much more sensitive to the spatial dynamics that underpin urban life than rural life.

Spatial disparities in urban park accessibility: Integrating real-time traffic data and housing prices in Ningbo, China

The urban park accessibility is a vital measure of urban livability, indicating either the presence or absence of environmental equity. This study introduces a novel approach by integrating real-time navigation data with traditional accessibility assessments to examine the spatial distribution of parks in Ningbo, China. It evaluates service provision across different transportation modes and park tiers, revealing significant spatial disparities in accessibility. Particularly, it highlights a pronounced polarization, with some city core areas experiencing limited access. Additionally, this research establishes a clear correlation between housing prices and park accessibility, illustrating how urban greenery can influence real estate values. The findings underscore the need for policy interventions to promote equitable access to urban parks and to address potential green gentrification risks. The methodology proposed here offers valuable insights for urban planners and policymakers in scientifically assessing public resource accessibility and planning more equitable urban environments.

Optimizing Coziness and Productivity: An All-Encompassing Ergonomic Investigation on Diners and Restaurant Operators in Dense Urban Living Environments

This research aims to determine and optimize the welfare of visitors and food stall owners in dense urban environments, especially in the context of dense residential areas in big cities. As ergonomics research, its main focus is to assess the physical and psychological conditions of visitors and food stall owners operating in dense urban environments. This research method involves a detailed analysis of ergonomic aspects, including room layout, furniture design, lighting and acoustics, taking into account the unique demands of dense housing. In addition, in-depth interviews with food stall owners and observations of visitor behavior were conducted to understand the non-physical aspects that influence their well-being. The research location is in the Paseban area, Central Jakarta. The results of this research provide an in-depth understanding of how environmental conditions can influence comfort and productivity in food stalls, both from the perspective of visitors and owners. The practical implications of these findings can serve as a guide for architects, designers and policy makers in improving the design of public spaces in dense urban environments, with the ultimate goal of improving the welfare of local communities. This study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how ergonomics can be applied effectively to improve the quality of life amidst the challenges of dense housing in large cities.

Affective authoritarianism as joyful ‘oeuvre?’ Godly Subjects and Suburban Gladiators

This paper presents the spatial experience of authoritarianism as a dynamic atmosphere with the seductive potential for radical joy. For Lefebvre (1996), joyful co-creation of space – an ‘oeuvre’ – was a vital facet of everyday urban life. As such, the paper challenges normative portrayals of authoritarianism as an inherently joyless, bleak and oppressive operation of power, and delves deeper into its variegated, contextually contingent and complex P/political spatialisations, conflicts and contradictions. Affect emerges as a productive lens through which to explore the complexities, range of emotions, identities and world-makings of authoritarian space, and its paradoxical capacity for joy. The paper draws from ethnographic reflections and spatial vignettes from three comparative experiences in different parts of the world: a mega-church service in suburban Singapore, and visits to two suburban hardcore gyms (in Northern England and Southeastern United States). These experiences are thematically framed as spaces of ‘Godly Subjects’ and ‘Gladiators’. They are spiritual, exhilarating spaces; spaces of radical possibilities. They are also inherently hierarchal, patriarchal, disciplined and oppressive. Thus, conjunctural subjectivities are affectively embodied in these spaces resulting in conflictual experiences. Though joyful, these are spaces of ‘cruel optimism’, where desire and aspiration are caught in a loop of un-achievability. Such is the contradictory nature of authoritarian power/space. However, whilst critical, the paper avoids an easy taxonomy of authoritarianism into clear binaries, framing it as both an open and closed socio-cultural-political space, and highlighting how and why more affective and spatialised readings of authoritarianism are needed across contextual cultural geographies at this moment.

Ethnic culture in urban space: a theoretical review

Relevance. Cities are centers of attraction for people of different nationalities and cultures. In the context of urbanization and globalization, various ethnic cultures interact, which leads to their transformation. The study of ethnic culture in urban space makes it possible to understand how culture changes under the influence of new living conditions, which is especially important for the formation of intercultural relations and tolerant attitude towards representatives of other cultures and nationalities.The purpose is to analyze theoretical studies of ethnic culture in urban space, including issues of tolerance, identity, and urban mentality.Objectives: to consider the elements of ethnic culture; to analyze the connection between ethnic culture and urban space; to determine how identity manifests itself in urban space; to characterize cultural ethnic practices in urban space; to characterize the visual artifacts of ethnicity in urban space.Methodology. The socio-cultural paradigm of studying urban space was used as the methodological basis of the study. The authors also applied general scientific methods: analysis, comparison, generalization.Results. A theoretical analysis of the developments of domestic authors on the topic of manifestations of ethnic culture in urban space, including aspects of national symbols, architecture, mentality, identity, tolerance, is carried out.Conclusions. Ethnic culture in urban space is a complex phenomenon encompassing socio-cultural and ethnodemographic aspects of urban community life. It finds expression in architecture, cultural practices of events, ornaments, everyday life, and the media. Today, despite the unification of everyday life and lifestyle, there are trends towards strengthening national identity, preserving national identity and cultural traditions, in particular through elements of urban public spaces.

Identification of Land Use Mix Using Point-Based Geospatial Data in Urban Areas

Identifying land use mix (LUM) in urban areas is challenging, often requiring extensive human intervention and fieldwork. Accurate classification of LUM is crucial for various disciplines, including urban planning, urban economics, and public health. This study addresses this need by employing Voronoi triangulation and an entropy-based LUM formula using point-based geospatial data collected from publicly available sources. The methodology was tested in two distinct urban settings: Ankara and Kadıköy. Ankara, the capital city, provides a large and diverse urban environment, while Kadıköy, a district in Istanbul known for its dynamic urban life, offers a contrasting scenario. Results were analyzed concerning local spatial autocorrelation and point of interest (POI) intensity. The comparative analysis demonstrated that the approach performs well across different urban contexts, with improved results observed in Kadıköy due to its higher density of mixed-use development. Specifically, we managed to identify mixed land use areas with an accuracy of up to 78% and an F1-score of 83% in urban regions. These findings highlight the robustness and applicability of our approach in diverse urban environments, providing valuable insights for city planners and policymakers in optimizing the allocation of urban resources and enhancing land use efficiency.

Of Bloatware and Spreadsheets: Nairobi, Chinese Phones, and the Limits of Data Coloniality

ABSTRACT This article charts the recent history of affordable Chinese phones in Nairobi, a city heralded by many as one of Africa’s digital capitals. Here, cheap handsets manufactured in China are the material commodities that facilitate an increasingly competitive datafication of urban life. From crypto-wallets to distributed logistic platforms, Chinese phones are the enablers of new, datafied economies that seek to transform and incorporate so-called “frontier markets”—informal economies that have thus far escaped the circuits of digital capital. Yet the story of low-cost phones also reveals how these frontiers are sites of trials, negotiations, glitches, agency, and adaptations. In fact, it was urban data about Nairobi that shaped the making of these now ubiquitous devices. Combining oral history and an ethnography of the experts that punctuate the value chains of affordable cell phones, this article ultimately challenges some of the widespread assumptions about (China’s) data coloniality in Africa.

The Catalytic Role of Soft Cities in Urban Development Systems

In the context of Industry 4.0, the development of cities worldwide has shifted from large-scale industrialization towards intelligent and sustainable growth. Contemporary urban researchers classify urban systems into three categories: hard cities, soft cities, and resilient cities. Hard cities refer to the physical framework and infrastructure of urban spaces, while soft cities embrace the art ,cultural, civilized, aesthetic, and humanistic aspects of urban life. Resilient cities, on the other hand, embody the plasticity necessary for sustainable development. This paper will utilize case study methodology and comparative research to analyze the positive effects and catalytic impact of the development of soft urban systems on hard cities and resilient cities.

Changes in urban green space configuration and connectivity using spatial graph-based metrics in Ardabil developing city, Iran.

Urban planning is essential for managing the diverse impacts of urban green spaces, such as public access, stormwater control, urban life quality, and landscape aesthetics, promoting sustainable urban development and urban residents' well-being by integrating green space considerations into city planning. The aim of this study is to use graph-based metrics to calculate the connectivity of UGS across the main municipal zones of Ardabil city over consecutive periods under different population growth rates. Another objective of this study is to compare the connectivity values of UGS in the four municipal zones and to evaluate changes in the connectivity indices at various distance thresholds of UGS patches. After identifying UGS in different periods, the changes in graph-based connectivity indices at various distance thresholds of UGS patches were analyzed. Additionally, the changes in connectivity indices over different periods and across various municipal zones were compared and analyzed. The findings reveal that UGS areas were larger in the past but have recently had smaller patch sizes. Connectivity between UGS nodes (dNL) decreased at various distances over the study years, showing a declining trend in different connectivity indices. UGS connectivity decreased in municipal zones 1, 2, and 3 but increased in recent years after a decline until 2012 across all four zones of Ardabil city. Zone 4 had the highest UGS connectivity due to newly developed urban areas and well-allocated UGSs. Integrating the ecological impacts of UGS connectivity in urban development and design will enhance trade-offs between conservation, public health, and social equity. New urban areas should allocate sufficient land for UGS and parks, ensuring accessibility to support health and leisure through municipal planning. The study highlights the need for sustainable urban development policies that prioritize the allocation and maintenance of UGSs.

Messina, 1167–68: A Microhistory of Urban Agency in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Sicily

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship on the cities of the twelfth-century Kingdom of Sicily continues to nuance our understanding of urban life under the umbrella of a new monarchy. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that this new monarchy, centralising and powerful as it was, did not fully squash its cities’ independence, and that this was not even its aim. This picture has been aided by recent studies that interpret urban identity and agency in a more holistic and polycentric framework, incorporating both its political and economic situations and its socio-cultural, religious, ceremonial and communicative contexts. Consequently, recognition of a vibrant “public arena” within the cities of the medieval world now extends to those in the twelfth-century Kingdom of Sicily. The present article supports and further expands this re-evaluation of the kingdom’s cities through a microhistory. It takes one episode of unrest in one city which offers an unusually close (for the Kingdom of Sicily at least) snapshot of urban dynamics. It interprets this moment via approaches grounded in recent scholarship on urban public politics that foreground the “political turn” in rebellion, and which view such moments of unrest and collective action as a normal part of a continual dialogue within a polycentric political landscape.

Does shrinkage have an impact on urban livability? An empirical analysis from Northeast China

Urban shrinkage has emerged as a global socioeconomic development issue, presenting new challenges for countries in advancing the construction of livable cities. To investigate whether urban shrinkage has an impact on urban livability (UL), along with its underlying mechanisms and transmission paths, this study employed comparative inductive analysis and took Northeast China as a case for theoretical discussion and empirical validation. The results indicated that: (1) Shrinkage did have an impact on UL, which was dominated by negative effects and supplemented by positive effects. Furthermore, it exhibited characteristics of phased and dimensional heterogeneity, with significant spatial differentiation. (2) The impact of shrinkage on UL was essentially a comprehensive result of the interplay between the positive and negative effects arising from changes in urban development capacity and per capita occupancy caused by shrinkage. This process involved both variable transmission paths and stock transmission paths, jointly explaining the positive and negative shrinkage effects. This study provides a new perspective on rational cognition for coping with shrinkage effects and their generative logic, as well as theoretical insights for other countries around the world to optimize UL in shrinkage scenarios.

Atmosphere, imminence and the Manchester Arena Inquiry: on the affective modalities of becoming situationally aware to urban terrorism

ABSTRACT Building situational awareness has become a central logic among contemporary security apparatuses for abating no-warning urban terrorism. Situational awareness, we contend, casts the sensory, perceptual and affective capacities of human bodies to decipher their immediate surroundings and attune to the non-representational and more-than-known of an enfolding situation, as essential to its execution. What modalities of sense-making and attunement, then, does this burgeoning security rationality demand? And what sensibilities, affectivities and subjectivities are (re)produced and legitimated across urban life? In this paper, we unpack these questions by examining the ways affective and atmospheric attunement(s) are infused within orthodox and emergent security approaches for developing and honing situational awareness. We argue that affective atmospheres in particular furnish the theoretical architecture for attending to the spatio-affective-material registers through which imminence becomes palpable. Empirically, by analysing the Public Inquiry following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, we elucidate where the Inquiry advanced discussions on (the limits of) situational awareness and its sensorial, affective and atmospheric dimensions, thereby extending situational awareness into an atmospheric agenda within urban geopolitics. Finally, we reflect on how the impending UK Protect Duty might reconfigure the legal landscape of situational awareness, city resilience, and the affective economies of (in)attention.

Music and Urban Life in Baroque Germany, by Tanya Kevorkian

<i>Music and Urban Life in Baroque Germany</i>, by Tanya Kevorkian

Reimagining the familiar stranger as a source of security: generating guardianship through everyday mobility

The familiar stranger is a social phenomenon that emerges from the serial reproduction of daily routines, structured around urban places and practices, that results in repeated encounters with the same individuals over time. Scholarship suggests that increased familiarity among individuals might incur crime control benefits at places by reducing individual anonymity and enhancing the moral obligation to obey behavioural norms. Familiarity with place-based norms and regularities can also enhance guardianship capacity and willingness to intervene when problems arise. In this paper, we detail a framework that integrates geographical, sociological, and psychological understandings of urban daily life to conceptualize the familiar stranger as a uniquely urban phenomenon emerging from multiple social processes synchronising in time-space. Our framework highlights the capacity for variation in relation to intensity contingent on daily regularities, place attributes, structures and social norms and provides for future measurement, modelling, and monitoring of familiar strangers as a protective factor against crime that can be ascribed to individuals, places and/or social systems. We include an operationalisation of our framework for a single use case, namely familiar stranger encounters in a public transit network.

Technoscientific speculations: the anti-mimeticism of Japanese science fiction in the literary context of the late Meiji period

This article proposes that Japanese science fiction emerged as an escape from the limits of the realistic representation of the world proposed by Naturalism. It reads three science fiction short stories published in the magazines Tanken sekai (World of Exploration) and Bōken sekai (World of Adventure) between 1907 and 1910 to discuss early science fiction in which authors utilised technoscientific discourse. Engaging in a set of textual practices centred on developments of modern science and technology, these authors developed one of science fiction’s distinctive features: anti-mimeticism, a literary mode focused on the depiction of anything that cannot happen in real life. This article focuses on the modalities by which these stories—Tenkūkaikatsu Dōjin’s ‘Gessekai shinkon ryokō’ (Lunar Honeymoon), Ishii Kendō’s ‘Gessekai dokuryoku tanken’ (Self-made Exploration to the Moon), and Hakui Michihito’s ‘Yukai to benri wo kiwametaru ōgon jidai no tokai seikatsu’ (The Extremely Amusing and Comfortable Golden Age of Urban Life) 1 —employ a rationalistic view of the phenomenal realm to generate fictional worlds that relinquish the dominance of a mimetic representation of reality. An analysis of early Japanese science fiction from the late Meiji period reveals two elements that eschewed the realistic literature such as Naturalism: objective narration and an anti-mimetic base for the fictional world.

The Impact of Urban Smartification and Urban Security on Achieving Sustainable Urban Development

Urban security is a condition where risks and other factors causing physical harm are controlled, thereby ensuring the health and well-being of individuals. Today, security is considered the most important goal of any country, and its absence or deficiencies in its establishment can challenge the healthy life of citizens. Naturally, places with all their characteristics and the type of human perception and behavior within them can shape spaces with positive or negative security. The city is one of the most prominent manifestations of human life and has undergone many ups and downs since its initial formation. The method of its governance has also evolved significantly throughout history. On the other hand, with the expansion of electronic knowledge and technology, machine thinking, and modern communications, many patterns and qualities of urban life have begun to change at an unprecedented pace, leading to the concept of urban smartification. Thus, the present study aims to examine the impact of urban smartification and urban security on achieving sustainable urban development. The research is descriptive and conducted through a library method. The results show that a smart city is one that can maintain, control, and integrate all infrastructure, such as roads, tunnels, airways, waterways, railways, communication sources, etc. It can also help optimize resources and address security issues. Given the facilities and capabilities that smartification brings to cities, achieving sustainable urban development indicators in communities will be more accessible and readily available to citizens in the urban space. DOI: https://doi.org/10.52783/pst.616

Exploratory Analysis on the Livability of a City with Digital Placemaking in Jakarta Timur, Indonesia

Abstract People who work in Jakarta to prefer suburban areas as their homes, such as Jakarta Timur. Urban livability directly influences the quality of life of the citizens. The purposes of this study on Jakarta Timur: 1) understanding the public space roles and values; 2) finding out the types of public spaces; 3) understanding the connection between livability and the value of public spaces; and 4) exploring new placemaking research method of using big data. The methodology included data collection (government documents, news articles from trusted sources, Google Reviews via Octoparse 8, and Google Map), data visualization (wordclouds and QGIS), and data analysis (word frequency, sentiment, and accessibility). The area’s socio-demographic study estimated that the reviews are dominantly written informatively and expressively by locals with certain characteristics (must be proven in future studies). It was also revealed that Jakarta Timur is comprised of more yellow zones (housing) with only a little green zone (already including the selected public spaces). The recurring motives for visitation included doing sport and playing with family/children and the sentiment analysis reflected overall positive values on the citizens. Regarding accessibility, it was found that despite preferring private transportation, the willingness to ride the public transportation still existed.

CONCEPTUALISATION OF THE DEFINITION «URBANISED AREAS»

The article outlines theoretical approaches to explaining the essence of urbanisation as a trend in the development of modern society. The article establishes that at the present stage of development of post-industrial urbanism, new theories and concepts of urban development are emerging. Scientists pay considerable attention to knowledge and high technologies. In the context of urban development, there are trends towards suburbanisation, as well as decentralisation and an increased role for local governments. Theories of urbanisation that are typical of post-industrial society characterise urbanism as a process that is directly related to political, economic and social factors. The author's own approaches to building the conceptual apparatus are proposed, taking into account the subject of this study and the identified characteristics of urbanised areas, in particular, the concepts of «urbanisation», «city», «agglomeration» are clarified. It is established that public management of development of urbanised areas is the exercise by public authorities of targeted influence on various spheres of urban public life with a view to ensuring intensive and extensive development of urbanised areas and improving the living standards of the population. An approach to the classification of urbanised territories for the purposes of public administration is proposed, which allows identifying the properties of urbanised territories and, accordingly, taking them into account in the formation and implementation of the State policy, strategies and public administration decisions on the development of urbanised territories, in particular: by the form of territorial settlement, planning structure, population density, level of urban development, functions performed by it, environmental status, as well as the level of economic and social development of the relevant territory, the level of damage and the level of security.