Urban Professionals Research Articles

Channelling compassion towards change: elite volunteerism, corporate philanthropy and education reform in urban India

ABSTRACT This article explores how young elite urban professionals and fresh graduates in Mumbai and Delhi are fostering diverse aspirations of service, entrepreneurship and charting new professional mobilities through volunteering opportunities at a well-known corporate-supported non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Teach for India (TFI) programme. Mostly with commerce, engineering and management educational backgrounds, the TFI intervention operates as a nodal site for these elite youth to not just serve underprivileged children through ‘acts of compassion’ but also channel their experiences to understand the education system and reinvigorate it through corporate management values of enterprise and performance. Through examining the trajectories of these individuals, I foreground the nascent terrain of technocratic expertise being shaped through an interlinked collective of corporate NGOs that have become prominent in advising the Delhi state government, under the leadership of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), to improve public education through discourses of enterprise and performance.

Unravelling the ‘Help’ in Self-Help

The present article intends to explore the challenges faced by the urban professionals in reaching for the emotional and professional amidst the neoliberal marketplace, via the narratives salient in Self-Help texts. Self-Help texts embody metaphors that rely on agency bound “bootstrapping” narratives, where individuals are compelled to maximise their agency in terms of tangible profits and fulfil their calculated potential in the social marketplace of competition. The neoliberal marketplace obfuscates the existing inequalities through narratives of multiculturalism and individual empowerment. Deliberation through thematic analysis, this article intends to look into the emergence of the ‘achievable self’ through the prevalence of Self Help texts as a popular genre in the Indian scenario. It also seeks to discuss the mental health challenges faced by individuals in meeting the achievement benchmarks of the current ethos, and how Self-Help texts posit themselves as providing the means to do so. The emergent themes will be discussed in the article in detail. This article seeks to explore the relationship between the reader and self-help texts to better understand the process by which newer conceptualisations of mental wellbeing as an achievement benchmark have emerged.

A Systematic Text-Analytics-Based Meta-Synthesis Approach for Smart Urban Development

‘Smart’ has become a leitmotif that is widely assumed to reach the goals of urban sustainability and improve the living standards of people. Though there is an exponential increase in the smart cities' research during the last two decades, the concept is still silent about the importance of existing cities and communities to achieve Smart Urban Development (SUD). Authors propose a Systematic Literature Search and Review framework, coupled with deductive text computational and inductive grounded theory methods for the meta-synthesis. This study contributes to the present research landscape by facilitating urban professionals for framing integrated strategies, instead of blindly fixing the urban spaces with technological components. The automated text analysis for meta-synthesis is a novel approach for analyzing a diverse concept like Smart City, by eliminating chances of human errors. The findings conclude that the three-dimensional objectives of SUD are achieving sustainable development, high quality of life, and inclusive development.

“Tax Discrimination District”

Problem, research strategy and findings Recent efforts to promote land value capture as a solution to the fiscal crisis of local governments have gained traction, increasing the use of value capture tools across a variety of contexts. This research provides a case study examining how the politics of transit value capture district designation intersect with racialized patterns of disinvestment. Using the case of Kansas City (MO), I illustrate how the attempts of planners and policymakers to expand transit value capture were met with resistance from both low-income and wealthy neighborhoods. I explore how differentiated response to neighborhood concerns by planners combined with stakeholder frameworks about social equity and perceptions of historical domination to produce results exactly counter to the stated purpose of “not building transit purely for the White people.” The case illustrates the importance of considering racial inequities and historic patterns of marginalization in transit value capture to achieve racial equity and challenge existing patterns of segregation. Takeaway for practice Designating value capture district boundaries is a sociotechnical process that interacts with and potentially reinforces existing patterns of domination and oppression. To ensure that value capture implementation does not reproduce and exacerbate existing inequities, urban planning professionals should centralize issues of race, segregation, and marginality in their efforts to create, capture, and distribute land value. Value capture schemes need to be tailored to the local built environment, sociodemographic history, and the needs of specific communities to be effective at addressing spatial inequities.

Impact of COVID-19 on mental health of health-care providers in Maharashtra: A cross-sectional study

Background: As COVID-19 is spreading rapidly, it is emotionally challenging for everyone. It has been observed that health-care workers come to play a major role and give their efforts to a greater extent in such situations. The studies have reported adverse psychological reactions to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak among health-care workers. Hence, the study was planned to assess depression, anxiety, and stress among health-care professionals during the corona pandemic. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional, observational study was carried out on health-care professionals working in the state of Maharashtra who were involved in the management of COVID-19 patients. Institutional ethical permission was taken before the study. The questionnaire was created to collect the data which having background information and the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel sheets and appropriate statistical analysis was done. Results: A total of 200 participants were included in the study. It was observed in our study that 51% of participants had depression, 38% had stress, and 49% had anxiety. Depression, anxiety, and stress were more among female health-care professionals than male professionals and it was statistically significant. It was found in our study that depression, anxiety, and stress were more in urban professionals than in rural health-care professionals, and the difference was statistically significant. Conclusion: As our study demonstrated a higher burden of depression, stress, and anxiety, early screening of health-care professionals and implementation of psychological interventions are essential for protecting and maintaining the functionality of the health-care system.

Yuppies: Young Urban Professionals and the Making of Postindustrial New York

Yuppies: Young Urban Professionals and the Making of Postindustrial New York

Community engagement in pastoralist areas: Lessons from the public dialogue process for a new refugee settlement in Turkana, Kenya

Large-scale development interventions have long failed to accommodate the needs and preferences of pastoralists or the systems of resource governance and land tenure upon which they rely. However, advocates of rights-based approaches to development emphasise the importance of community participation in planning and agenda-setting, and in Kenya, public participation is a formal constitutional requirement for government decision-making processes. In 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees concluded negotiations with local stakeholders about the use of 15 km2 of communal rangelands to build a new refugee settlement in Turkana County, Kenya. Negotiations entailed a community dialogue process involving local people living in the vicinity of the proposed settlement. This paper retrospectively examines the inclusivity of the dialogue process, with particular attention to the involvement of pastoralists and the representation of their interests. Interviews and focus groups conducted with a range of key informants and community stakeholders highlighted two key problems. First, negotiations relied upon a simplistic approach to communal land tenure that overlooked the complexity of overlapping and often contested access rights. Second, there was an over-reliance on urban professionals and politicians as intermediaries between rural communities and development actors. Even where elite intermediaries act in good faith, they may introduce an ‘oppidan bias’ into development policies, thereby marginalising the viewpoints of non-urban, non-sedentary demographics, such as pastoralists. I conclude with recommendations for the UNHCR to develop a more explicit strategy for direct engagement with host community stakeholders in Turkana and with increased attention to the interests of livestock producers and the nuances of pastoralist land use.

Skilling digital technologies in the labour sphere: experience of empirical research in Minsk and Saint Petersburg

Article is written on the basis of an analysis of empirical data obtained in 2021 from sociological studies conducted in Saint Petersburg and Minsk – cities with a population of one million, which served as the object of research of the current digital transformation. A feature of both samples was the large percentage of people with higher education among the employed population. In fact, we studied a group of urban professionals. The authors identify trends in the world of work that detail digital transformation processes. The purpose of the article is to describe the trends in the digitalisation process in the world of work in a large city and to reveal how relevant these trends are for the Belarusian and Russian professionals. The authors show the level of digital acquisition of the employed urban population today, as well as the impact on this process of the previous year associated with the pandemic and the inevitable transition of a part of the employed population to remote work. The article presents the factors that determine the labour motivation of urban professionals of different levels in their mastering of information and communication technologies, reveals the development trends of labour digitalisation processes and their impact on certain groups of professionals employed in both production and non-production spheres. It is concluded that the motivation of the employed population to master new digital knowledge directly depends on how much a person needs it in the workplace, contributes to his career advancement or helps to keep the workplace.

From sonic experiences to urban planning innovations

ABSTRACT It is widely accepted that personal responses to soundscapes are more dependent on listeners’ emotions and attitudes, than on sounds or their physical features alone. Fast-growing cities have catalyzed the importance of designing urban spaces that citizens find pleasant and homely and that support a communal style of living. Unfortunately, there are no standardized methods or techniques to translate sonic experiences into measurable and reliable data, which urban planning professionals or the building industry could turn into innovations and solutions. Most of the data pertaining to noise pollution and city soundscapes is still based on predictive acoustic models and rarely takes any real-life experiences or physical measurements into consideration. This paper presents the concept of a smart and participatory approach for gathering sonic experiences that could be translated into measurable values. The aim is to search for data collection methods to provide data to train deep learning. With machine learning methods, it is possible to find patterns in both desirable and undesirable urban soundscapes. The aim of this concept is to create crowdsourced data collection methods and improve the understanding and communication between citizens and planning processes by producing more accurate and comparable experiential data.

Gender bias in the planning industry and planning outcomes

ABSTRACT Through a dozen in-depth interviews of urban planning professionals in Brisbane, Australia, this study examines the relationship between the experience of women in the planning profession and the consideration of women’s issues in the city. The study reveals that Brisbane’s planning industry continues to be perceived by those who work within it as an ‘old-boys-club’. Planning practitioners are acquiring gender biases during their university education and possibly earlier – much before planning graduates enter the profession. Although the planning industry is adopting more inclusive leadership and management approaches and becoming more feminised, patriarchal relationships remain strong. Brisbane’s neoliberal planning and governance systems, and conservative business sector encourages and rewards ‘male’ behaviours in the workplace. The findings mostly corroborate earlier studies on gender issues in organisations. In the planning sector, gender issues are more concerning because they affect planning outcomes across the city, as well as the lived experiences and needs of women and other vulnerable groups.

The work, family and care nexus in Paris and Tokyo: Gender equality and well-being among urban professionals

ABSTRACT Based on 51 qualitative interviews of middle- to upper-middle-class women and men in their thirties through early fifties in Paris and Tokyo from 2018 to 2020, this qualitative research seeks to develop a comparative understanding of how women and men reconcile the diverse commitments of work and family in two post-industrial societies by querying such topics as the contexts for dual-career households, the meanings of work for women and men, workplace challenges, and gender and the division of household labor. Recent shifts in gender roles, female workforce participation, and more varied living patterns and couple relationships are increasingly placing pressure on younger and middle-aged couples with children. Our findings suggest that despite historical and cultural differences in the nexus of work and family, not to mention diverging levels of government support for dual-worker families, there are interesting commonalities in the ways in which couples reconcile work and family. In particular, in both Japan and France, naturalizing women as the main care givers is a fundamental aspect of how work and family balance is maintained. Despite the presence of many supportive institutional frameworks for flexible work, childcare support, and gender equity, both the French and the Japanese pursue subjective well-being through gendered notions of care.

A Reconsideration on the Theory of Beauty: Previous Views and a New Approach Following Maslow's Theory (Part II)

This paper is the second part of a work that aims to rethink the concept of beauty as close as possible to its essence and in a way that integrates the science of aesthetics with the field of construction. Within other theoretical and practical works, this study may be further used to physically reflect the definition of beauty in areas such as architecture, civil engineering or urban planning and support professionals in designing and building beautiful objects and constructions. However, it has to be added that the assumption that there must be a particular original aspect related to beauty that leads a human-made object to success, needs to be further identified. The approach to the concept of beauty is through a general philosophical perspective and partially through the areas mentioned above.The second part of the study includes the synthesised guidance provided by Monroe Beardsley through the theories on beauty from the nineteenth century until today. In addition, it comprises the scheme of concepts that characterised the beautiful in this time, including the lines that guided its study, previous ideas that support our later views on presented theory, and a brief exposition of Maslow's theory of human motivation followed by our theory on beauty and the conclusions.

Attitudes towards Indian English among young urban professionals in Hyderabad, India

AbstractDespite extensive work on the description of Indian English(es), only limited attention has been paid to attitudes towards the variety among its speakers. This paper reports on semi‐structured interviews eliciting language attitudes with 32 educated young students and professionals in Hyderabad, India. Results reveal that Indian English is occupying an increasingly legitimate position within the popular consciousness, and that there is an increasing sense of ownership of a supra‐local or pan‐dialectal ‘Indian English’. There is an expressed desire for Indian English to continue to expand, and to be accepted as one of the authentic languages of India. The participants exhibited relatively high levels of linguistic security, and while a certain ‘nostalgia’ for British English was retained by some, Indian English appears to be emerging as an authentic carrier of Indian identity.

The Phenomenology of Change: How Conflict Drives Urban Transformation

Here we propose a new methodology for learning from conflict, referred to as a 'phenomenology of change' approach. This framework can be used to ascertain how, why, and under what conditions conflicts can lead to social, spatial, and political transformations in the urban built environment. This approach builds on examination of ongoing struggles and actions undertaken by citizens and urban governing officials during conflict. It uses this evidence to document whether and how authority is renegotiated as well as the conditions under which the issues under contention and the identity positions of stakeholders will positively or negatively impact the likelihood of built environmental change. Drawing on the five case studies in the special issue, we come to four general conclusions. 1. Change is more likely when actors strategically combine one action repertoire with another. 2. Conflicts over space are particularly well suited to the formation of institutionalized engagement processes for renegotiating authority, thus making change more probable. 3. Despite the importance of negotiating with institutions during conflict, opportunities to engage in such processes are not equally distributed among all races and classes of citizen. 4. The temporality of conflict – that is, the length of struggle – has a direct bearing on both the likelihood and durability of change. The article concludes with a focus on the roles of urban professionals in mediating conflict, reflecting on their relations with both citizens and governing authorities, and discussing how insights drawn from a phenomenology of change framework can be used by professionals to enhance desired transformations in the urban built environment.

Between mass-market conventions and everyday life: The domestication of dining furniture in urban Istanbul

Although dining tables and chairs function as the main furniture stereotypes valued for hosting in traditional Turkish households, this practice has been subject to changes and challenges in contemporary urban life in Istanbul. This qualitative study of dining furniture brings insights into the design, production, purchase and use of furnishings from a broad review of literature and from semi-structured in-depth interviews undertaken in the homes of young urban professionals in Istanbul between the years 2013 and 2016. Prescribed as indispensable stereotypes in the furniture retail stores and considered as essential domestic units by the interviewees, dining tables and chairs are found out as not fulfilling their intended hosting functions efficiently or being often replaced by centre tables or coffee tables, because of an increase in casual rather than formal occasions. Domestication of the dining table as an open buffet was considered a practical way to help hold the food and drinks that were also on couches and coffee tables. In addition, the dining table was used for completely different functions unrelated to eating, as study desks or as surfaces for folding and ironing laundry, whereas dining chairs were used as places to drape coats or clothing. Interrogating the disconnect between the consumption and use context of the dining suites yields deeper discussion about the level of intellectual capital of Turkish furniture industry and the consumer culture which advices the enactment of norms. Insights in these complex, changing and sometimes contradictory patterns may influence the design of domestic furnishings in Turkey. Therefore, more user-based design research and a further examination of contemporary patterns of use in urban households are needed to activate this potential for the Turkish furniture design industry.

What the newcomers to transit-oriented development are confronted with? Evidence from Iranian policy and planning

Today, the American model of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has gained widespread adoption around the world. Together with pioneer cities in the U.S., Japan, Singapore, and other European countries, there are newcomers to TOD, mainly from the cities located in the developing countries with rapid urbanization and motorization trends, with the purpose of benefiting from TOD advantages in response to the apparently unsustainable traffic-caused challenges. Opportunities, challenges and prerequisites needed for TOD planning seem to have been unclear so far for such nations. Hence, the present study, aims to fill this gap through examining an analytical framework for TOD planning in the case of Iran. The recent policies on TOD also have been initiated at both national and local levels in this country. Directed content analysis of 11 call interviews with Iranian urban professionals and government officials demonstrated that, as with global experiences, adversary physical characteristics and policy background of Iranian cities tremendously preclude joint transport land-use initiatives so that the nature of urban (transport) policies and planning as well as the resulting urban form are both car-oriented. As such, there is a great deal of fundamental works that should be accomplished by the newcomers. The results showed the extent to which the conditions for TOD newcomers are similar which could provide a common framework to the future customized analysis of the individual challenges and planning prerequisites.

Efficacy of working from home among urban professionals in Malaysia during the pandemic: The robust predictive role of mattering

Past studies suggested that the sense of mattering tend to be a robust predictor of work self-efficacy, even when controlling for strong variables such as state self-esteem. This current study aimed to investigate whether the aforementioned suggested still holds among working adults who had to work from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia, where the government enforced movement control order (MCO), a semi-quarantine policy where individuals can only travel within 10 kilometer radius of their respective homes. We hypothesized that the state self-esteem will fully mediate the link between mattering and work self-efficacy during the period of WFH, and that trait extraversion will moderate the mediation. In the 5th week of the MCO, our data was gathered from 109 urban working adults in Malaysia who had to WFH by employing General Mattering Scale, State Self-Esteem Scale, Remote Work Self Efficacy Measure, and the extraversion facet in Big Five Inventory. The result of bootstrap analyses with 5000 samples using PROCESS Macro Model 8 suggested that state self-esteem mediated partially mediated the association of mattering and work self-efficacy among individuals at all levels of extraversion. Discussion, limitations and suggestions are provided in the end of the paper.

Multifunctional retention pond for stormwater management: A decision-support model using Analytical Network Process (ANP) and Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA)

The ever-growing impervious and contaminated surfaces in urban areas result in severe floods, degraded waterways, and stormwater. Water-sensitive strategies and water-sensitive urban design and planning can manage stormwaters through multifunctional retention ponds; however, urban professionals seek an assessment model that evaluates and quantifies the performance of multifunctional retention ponds on stormwater management. This research has developed the Urban Retention Pond Index (URPI) assessment model, a universal multi-layered decision-support tool that constitutes three criteria (C1. Geotechnical functions, C2. Water quality and treatment, and C3. Structural and physical landscaping functions), and twenty sub-criteria. Employing Analytical Network Process (ANP) has determined the weights of indicators, which formulated the URPI index. The ANP result indicated soil investigation (WC1.1 = 0.170), soil retention (WC2.1 = 0.156), and infiltration rate (WC1.2 = 0.108) could extensively impact to the performance of multifunctional retention ponds. To validate the model, it was implemented in the Boneyard Creek retention pond using the Weighted Sum Method. The assessment analysis assigned grade A to this site, meaning, Boneyard Creek pond manages stormwater mainly through Soils Investigation (WC1.1 = 0.150), Soil retention (WC2.1 = 0.144), and Infiltration Rate (WC1.2 = 0.091). Furthermore, Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) was conducted to analyze the URPI model’s input–output uncertainty and effect of variations, through a series of methods; Cumulative Distribution Functions (CDF), Probability Density Function (PDF), Scatterplot-Histogram Plot, Box-Whisker Plot, and Parallel Coordination. GSA could support the dominant controls and robust decision-making of the URPI model. GSA results determined that model outputs are empirically distributed with minor regression variance to the theoretical distribution. Most of the outputs fall within the intervals where the mean and median are more significant than the mode. The multiple regression analysis has shown that the three criteria are positively and linearly correlated. The Box-Whisker plots revealed the behaviors of the four mentioned measures are similar. Notably, the Box-Whisker standard error plots indicated the minor errors of the outputs in the whole network of the URPI model. Meanwhile, the Parallel Coordination indicated the largest centrality degrees by the spillway and landscape habitat retention sub-criteria and the largest Eigenvector centralities by soil retention and soil investigation sub-criteria in the whole network.

A Quality Assessment Directory for Evaluating Multi-functional Public Spaces

Abstract Public spaces facilitate opportunities for social interaction and promote social life. The social-spatial complexity of public spaces can be explored through the relationship between built forms and users’ daily social activities. The contemporary needs of users have retrofitted or replaced the controversial public spaces such as streets, depriving the prime function of sustaining and facilitating social life. Thus, any factors influencing users’ social/public life impact the quality of public spaces. Also, contextualization and definition of public spaces necessitate an evaluation of their quality. The lack of a quality assessment directory (QAD) for evaluating multi-functional public spaces motivated us to address it. To achieve the aim, this research has conducted a systematic literature review applying the content analysis to explore the principles and indicators influencing and enhancing social interactions in multi-functional public space design and then performed a normalization analysis to measure the weight of each indicator. The QAD constitutes five criteria (C1 – Inclusiveness, C2 – Desirable activities, C3 – Comfort, C4 – Safety, C5 – Pleasurability), and forty-two (42) embedded sub-criteria. The research found that Inclusiveness (Wn C1 = 4.38) and Pleasurability (Wn C2 = 3.88) have received the highest weights. Also, the research found that the sub-criteria ‘Physical/visual connection or openness to adjacent spaces’ (Wn Sc.4.1 = 1.00), ‘Users of diverse ages’ and ‘Community gathering third places’ (Wn = 0.750) have received the highest weights. Using such a QAD, urban professionals can quantify the effectiveness and efficiency of public spaces’ environmental and physical qualities in promoting social interactions and sociability.

From classical to progressive liberalism: Ideological development and the origins of the administrative state

Early support for expert policymaking through administrative agencies was rooted in concerns over political power. In a context of formal universal male suffrage, late 19th-century liberals (typically well-educated, urban professionals) opposed policies to regulate business out of fear of working-class radicalism. Yet by the 1910s, liberals supported redistributive policies---through administrative agencies. We use a formal model to show how potential policy feedback effects made an anti-business coalition between liberals and populists unachievable, and how, by diminishing feedback effects, agencies facilitated a successful progressive-liberal coalition. Because administrative agencies guaranteed a central policymaking role for credentialed urban professionals, liberals could support farmers and industrial workers against big business while no longer fearing the rising power of their coalition partners. In this way, the strategic dilemma created by a changing distribution of power among social groups explains the development of broad political support for bureaucratic agencies.