Urban Question Research Articles

Public City as Network of Networks: A Toolkit for Healthy Neighbourhoods

The distinction between the current urban crisis and that which emerged in the latter half of the last century lies in the rise of environmental concerns linked to the climate crisis, which compound the existing socioeconomic issues. The “new urban question”, in its intersectional sense, necessitates high levels of integration, interdisciplinarity, interscalarity, and iterativity to recompose the physical and socioeconomic components of change. In this regard, the proposed contribution aims to develop a transferable methodology to guide urban regeneration actions that are sustainable from a socio-economic and environmental perspective, capable of leading to the creation of “Healthy Neighbourhoods”. This objective is pursued by the authors through the definition of a toolkit of design parameters to assess the improvement of an urban area before and after the regeneration intervention. Indeed, each proposed parameter affects one or more of the ten indicators used to evaluate the health of a neighbourhood. The proposed methodology will later be tested, in subsequent phases of the research, on the case study of Pietralata (Rome, Italy).

Answering new urban questions: Using eXplainable AI-driven analysis to identify determinants of Airbnb price in Dublin

This paper presents a novel approach for leveraging an eXplainable artificial intelligence approach to examine the price determinants of Airbnb in Dublin, Ireland, mainly focusing on urban characteristics. We employ an interpretable machine learning (ML) approach on publicly accessible Airbnb data to identify optimal Airbnb rental features, predict price trends, and understand Airbnb’s growth in Dublin. Our analysis also integrates features from three main categories: physical geography (e.g., elevation), social geography (e.g., Electoral Division), and infrastructure & economic geography based on housing/rental market theories (e.g., distance from the city centre). This integration of geographical attributes with ML algorithms provides localised insights into Airbnb pricing dynamics, addressing gaps in previous research that often overlooked the impact of geographical features on price prediction. By applying the TreeSHAP utility (tree-based attribute for SHapley Additive exPlanations), we establish the significant role of these geographical features in predicting Airbnb rental prices, thereby reinforcing theories like Alonso’s Bid-Rent Theory. We further validate the robustness of our models through testing procedures. Our study offers considerable value to urban planners, policymakers, urban researchers, and market stakeholders, deepening the understanding of Airbnb’s impact on urban landscapes and contributing to the broader discourse on the Sharing Economy.

Are Cities Decisive for Life Satisfaction? A Structural Equation Model for the European Population

The growth of cities is an unstoppable phenomenon that began in the last century and will undoubtedly be one of the challenges of the current century. It is not only a question of urbanization; its implications and consequences extend to the economy, society, culture and the environment. The capacity of cities as engines of change and progress cannot be questioned, and its consequences will alter the lives of their citizens, who will search, in a more liquid world, for the best places to live. Therefore, this study aims to examine the influence of perception of urban quality (PUQ) and social trust and security (STS) on the life satisfaction (LS) of European citizens to find out if these variables are essential for the population living in Europe. The data were selected from the European Urban Audit survey, which covers 40,597 people living in 80 European cities. The analysis in this study is carried out at the city level. The partial least squares structural equation modelling approach was applied to verify the hypotheses. The findings reveal a positive correlation between PUQ and STS with LS, with STS being a mediator between PUQ and LS. These results underline that improving the perception of the urban environment can significantly increase well-being, contributing more than 70% to citizens' life satisfaction. This multidisciplinary analysis highlights the importance of considering various urban dimensions in planning and public policies to foster prosperous and satisfactory urban development.

The Urban Question in the Age of Innocence and Convergence

This is a discussion of how the “urban question” became a topic of general interest in the media, based on a bibliometric analysis of newspapers from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, targeting a specific process of urbanization in the United States, hinting at how the public perception of urban studies came to attract different fields of research and how new responsibilities were added to urban management. Sources used were the historic newspaper databases of Chronicling America and the New York Times, via ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Preliminary conclusions indicate directions for further multidisciplinary debate, summarized as follows: understanding of the city may have originally proceeded somewhat naïvely, disregarding central features of the urban phenomena; early methodological instruments were more frequently based on limited observation than on deeper surveys; and there is a continuing period of innocence and convergence in the understanding of the urban question.

Book review: The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition

Book review: The Urban Question in Africa: Uneven Geographies of Transition

Discourse Studies, Corpus, and Multimodality in Urban Research

This paper explores the contribution of Discourse Studies (DS) to urban research from two perspectives: the field of inquiry and the research corpus. It investigates which areas have utilised DS in their research and why, as well as which types of discursive modes have been subjected to analysis. An analysis of 126 publications suggests that DS has been widely utilised to investigate urban questions in urban planning and theory, urban policy, housing research, and environmental policy; this capacity can be expanded to other fields of urban research. The study also finds out that the corpus of analysis has mainly remained monomodal, limited to one item or multiple items of the same type, predominantly text-based materials. To address this problem, the corpus of the analysis should be diversified to recognize the multimodality of discourse. This entails encompassing a variety of non-verbal modes such as images, music, gestures, moving images, soundtracks, and 3D objects. The paper concludes by pinpointing directions towards which future research should progress in order to overcome the challenges of utilising DS in urban research.Discourse Studies, Discourse, Urban Studies, Urban Research, Multimodality

From Urban Challenges to “ClimaEquitable” Opportunities: Enhancing Resilience with Urban Welfare

From the perspective of the scientific-disciplinary debate within urban planning, this research addresses the theme of the “new urban question” resulting from environmental concerns related to the climate crisis and socioeconomic issues that have now become structural. It then delves into the connection between urban environment quality and quality of life, ultimately questioning the role that territorial governance tools play in positively influencing the perception of well-being in cities. The overall objective of this contribution is to define an interpretative framework for experimental approaches in territorial governance. This overarching objective is articulated in the definition of two specific outcomes, pursued through an inductive methodology. The first one involves establishing an initial set of urban welfare indicators; the second entails defining strategies for planning, designing, and regenerating the public components of the city that could influence the indicators. Both outcomes are designed to be exportable to different territorial contexts.

Civic Urban Expertise in St Petersburg (2012–2019)

This article analyses the phenomenon of urban expertise in Russian cities, urbanistika, a term used to describe activities related to urban planning and decision-making. The creation of this field of knowledge coincided with increased public interest in expert assessment. The analysis focuses on an activist group involved in urban redevelopment projects in St Petersburg in 2012–2019. Using the insights of the literature on the sociology of expertise combined with urban studies scholarship, the study sets out to uncover the mechanisms by which civic urban expertise is constructed and to contextualise the global and local conditions in which such activity was shaped. The methodological approach tracks the process by which the network is created that allows for urban questions to become the objects of expert labour.

Village-ness, discrimination, and urban modernity: Thinking alongside ‘village people’ in Lebanon

Based on qualitative phenomenological research alongside village dwellers in Lebanon, this article identifies village-ness – an experience of being labelled as ‘non-urban’ with an upbringing and habitus considered to be ‘of the village’ – as difference and lack. I accordingly argue for the recognition of a hierarchization between those considered ‘city people’ and ‘village people’ in mainstream Lebanese imaginary that establishes experiences of discrimination, prejudice, and assault. Developing this, the article explores participants’ understandings of transformation improving these conditions. (Western-style) education, (capitalist) employment, (modern) technology, and a deepened connectivity to the city emerge as key variables in this respect. This change, my analysis shows, is conceptualised as ‘becoming urban’ understood as ‘becoming modern’, where Modernity is specifically framed as a Western-centric formation with discourses of ‘civility’, linear time, ‘development’, and ‘progress’ dominant. Accordingly, the article posits that the construction, inferiorisation, and assault of village-ness is a key site of the establishment and (re)production of a Eurocentric ‘urban modernity’ at the level of everyday lived experiences. Recognising that this phenomenon extends far beyond Lebanon, I posit the need to seriously bring the ‘urban question’ into anti/post/decolonial thought.

Discourse Studies and Urban Research: Methodological Challenges, Achievements, and Future Prospects

This paper offers a critical appraisal of the methodological capacity of Discourse Studies (DS) in conducting urban research. Based on an extensive literature search, 125 publications that explicitly claim to utilise DS were reviewed. The results show that DS has been utilised for its methodological value, critical lens, interdisciplinary approach, ability to reveal the undiscovered, and presentation of new insights to urban questions. This paper identifies and discusses major sources of inspiration and main trends in utilising DS in urban research. Theoretical diversity, the scarcity of analytical framework, and the lack of required expertise and skills are presented as three main methodological challenges for urban researchers. This paper concludes with suggestions for advancing the use of DS in urban research: obtaining an in-depth knowledge about its theoretical foundations, gaining an analytical overview of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, developing innovative frameworks that better explain urban questions, and gaining required linguistic knowledge for the application of DS.

On “Multitude” and the Urban Question: Reading in Times of Pandemics

“Multitude” is a term popularized by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt to conceptualize the labor condition and its political possibilities in the post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation. This paper seeks to explore such a concept in the context of an Indonesian city. It argues that the Indonesian multitude is formed through the worldwide division of labor, which involves the urban majorities whose work cut across formal and informal sectors. It teases out the absence of the “urban question” in the Indonesian city as a context for understanding the challenges faced by the Indonesian multitude. The paper (in light of post-pandemic) calls for the role of the state to serve as a medium for achieving societal goals and a guarantor of public access to Universal Basic Assets covering education, health, housing, technology, and information.

Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question

Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question

Tom Slater, Shaking Up the City. Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question

Tom Slater, Shaking Up the City. Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question

Review of Tom Slater 2021: Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban Question. Oakland: University of California Press.

In creative writing courses, students are encouraged to ‘show, don’t tell’. Focus on action, dialogue and description and minimize exposition. Exposition deadens the text and disrupts the story’s flow. For the social sciences, however, exposition matters. Not only do we want to know what happened, we also want to know why it happened and […]

To move forward, we must look back: White supremacy at the base of urban studies

The concretisation of the Chicago School solidified and inscribed in the city their obsession with the ‘Negro Problem’, race, race relations and (im)migration. Their fixation not only framed modern sociology with an emphasis on the ‘Other’ but cemented a taken-for-granted undergirding of Whiteness at its base. As a discipline, until we can name, point out, understand and highlight that form of violence, urban sociology will be deficient in understanding the city, particularly, but not limited to the US. As an alternative, I offer Du Boisian sociology, critical race theory, and global critical race and racism to aid in moving away from an unstated Whiteness. This article shows how Whiteness is at the base of the urban question and its consequences via the trajectory of the first sociologists of colour trained at the Chicago School, the work on the ghetto, underclass and the effects of such work.

Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future

Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future

Alexandria, the Threshold of Egypt: A Comparative Study on Volney and Jabarti's Idea of Alexandria in the Late 18th Century

Alexandria is the second-largest city in Egypt; this city is the threshold of Egypt and the first place by the sea where travelers encounter and create an idea of Egypt in their minds. Many western travelers, such as Hartmann Schedel, André Thevet, Jacob Peeters, Charles Perry, Volney, Dumont, and others have visited Alexandria and wrote reports on the City past and present, through which their opinions of the city can be accessed. Without a doubt, looking at Alexandria from a traveler's point of opinion differs from the opinions of a person who has lived there and observed the city from the inside. The question is how each of these two perspectives encounters the city. What questions have each of them asked and what answers have they given? And do these questions and answers come from their social and cultural background? Can a comparison of these two opinions provide a picture of the city to help better understand its history? It seems that the questions and answers of these observers come from their social backgrounds. At the same time Volney (1757-1820) lived in France, Abdul Rahman bin Hassan al-Jabarti (1825-1753) lived in Egypt. In this study, using an asymmetric macro-comparison method, we have attempted to evaluate the information in Volney's travelogue and Jabarti's ''Ajāeb-al Asār'' based on their perspective of the inside (Jabarti) and outside (Volney) of Alexandria. In his introduction to the late 18th century Alexandria, Volney seems to be much attached to the ideas from the French society, At the same time, Jabarti did not pay much attention to the question of Alexandria's urbanization and focused more on those who went to the city and left it. He laid the focus on the political and military situation of the city.
 Keywords: Alexandria, Volney, Jabarti, Egyptology, Travelogue, Travel Theory

Slater, T.: Shaking up the City: Ignorance, Inequality and the Urban Question

Slater, T.: Shaking up the City: Ignorance, Inequality and the Urban Question

Space, Place and the Church: Fostering a Consciousness and a Theology of Spatial Justice in South African Churches

Abstract Located within the wider questions that the South African church is asking about the relationship between reconciliation and restitution in post-apartheid South Africa, this article tracks the emergence of a movement of churches seeking to address the urban and rural land restitution question and puts it into conversation with the praxis of spatial justice. The authors introduce insight into the history of land and specifically church land in South Africa and explore what actions have been taken towards restitution of church-owned land and what this means for the development of a theology of spatial justice. Additionally, it includes an overview of South African churches’ declarations on land over the last thirty years and what has been done since these declarations. Finally, the authors will look at how these actions help develop a theology of spatial justice for a renewed praxis on land and space in South Africa.

City-regionalism and (re)framing the urban question in China

This paper situates the rise of city-regionalism in China in the context of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s approach to the urban question since 1949. From strictly controlling urbanization during the first two decades of socialist central planning, the Chinese state now promotes mega city-regionalization (literally in Chinese, city clusters) as a vehicle for internationalizing China’s economy. A reframed urban question in China today emerges from the ongoing tension between city-regional growth, on the one hand, and the emergence of new political interests in the urban living place around the collective provision of services, social and environmental inequalities, and citizen/resident representation in urban governance, on the other. The planetary scope of urbanization notwithstanding, differences in the national political context are crucial for explaining the full diversity of city-regional development processes and outcomes in different countries. The city-regional domain provides an exciting opportunity for urban scholars to examine the changing nature of the urban question in China in the context of an emergent ‘world of city-regionalisms’.