Urban Question Research Articles

Reurbanisierung als wissenschaftliches Konzept - Plädoyer für eine Konzeptualisierung als Bedeutungszunahme des Städtischen

Reurbanization is currently one of the processes most discussed in urban research. But, since the term is used very frequently, many different definitions exist and the identification of common characteristics tends to be very difficult. In this article, reurbanization is conceptualized in such a way that it can be used as a tool for analysis and can help answer the question of whether it is a new trend or a temporary phenomenon. First, the author discusses the deficits of existing approaches and definitions of reurbanization. To contrast these deficits, the article introduces the concept of reurbanization as an increase in the importance of urban structures and inherent research questions and gaps. The focus is on the potential of urban areas instead of the actual moving-in, a mental change instead of a change of activity. The article ends with a discussion of the challenges that come with this new approach in methodological terms, using the example of location preferences. English title: Reurbanization as a Scientific Concept – Arguing for a concept of reurbanization as an increase in the importance of urban structures

Cities in search of Policy

Studies of urban public policy in Italy heretofore have highlighted the absence of attention to urban questions in the national political agenda until 1990, and afterwards the fragmentation of public initiatives, due to the lack of effective tools for coordination and governance. The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of urban public policy, as it has been carried out in Italy. This paper follows the framework of previous studies in urban policy, utilizing a typological model that proposes two types of national initiatives for urban areas: direct and indirect urban policies. This analysis enables us to propose answers to the following research questions: I) how, when and why have urban issues entered the nation-state agenda in Italy? II) does in fact an urban policy exist in Italy? and if so, what are its main characteristics? III) what are the main explicative factors lying behind the persistent fragmentation of urban policies in Italy?

Políticas urbanas no Brasil: marcos legais, sujeitos e instituições

A questão urbana no Brasil - traduzida como o direito à cidade e à moradia digna - nas três últimas décadas passou por intensas transformações tanto em seus marcos regulatórios quanto na forma de envolvimento das diferentes instituições e sujeitos localizados na sociedade e no aparato estatal. Desde os debates que antecederam a Assembleia Nacional Constituinte na década de 1980, a mobilização tem sido intensa e marcada por tensões entre os diversos atores. Busca-se demonstrar as incorporações de diferentes sujeitos por meio de processos democráticos participativos, como conselhos e conferências, os resultados obtidos por meio da consolidação de legislação específica e os limites atuais da Política Urbana.

Theses on Urbanization

In the early 1970s, a young Marxist sociologist named Manuel Castells, then living in exile in Paris, began his soontobe-classic intervention, The Urban Question, by declaring his “astonishment” that debates on “urban problems” were becoming “an essential element in the policies of governments, in the concerns of the mass media and, consequently, in the everyday life of a large section of the population” (1977 [1972]: 1). For Castells, this astonishment was born of his orthodox Marxist assumption that the concern with urban questions was ideological. The real motor of social change, he believed, lay elsewhere, in workingclass action and antiimperialist mobilization. On this basis, Castells proceeded to deconstruct what he viewed as the prevalent “urban ideology” under postwar managerial capitalism: his theory took seriously the social construction of the urban phenomenon in academic and political discourse, but ultimately derived such representations from purportedly more foundational processes associated with capitalism and the state’s role in the reproduction of labor power. Four decades after Castells’s classic intervention, it is easy to confront early twentyfirstcentury discourse on urban questions with a similar sense of astonishment — not because it masks the operations of capitalism but because it has become one of the dominant metanarratives through which our current planetary situation is interpreted, both in academic circles and in the public sphere. Today advanced interdisciplinary education in urban social science, planning, and design

Return to the City of Quartz: Excavating the Future 20 Years On

This paper revisits Mike Davis’ seminal City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles twenty years after it was originally published. It argues that the book continues to provide an indispensable model for left, politically engaged forms of urban research. The paper criticizes the apocalyptic readings of City of Quartz that have multiplied over time and instead suggests that Davis be read for his emphasis on an urban dialectic—the constant and ongoing struggles over urban form, politics and culture that shape the geographies of Los Angeles to this day. To this end, the paper looks to the city's more recent history, especially current battles being fought over the future of downtown L.A., to illustrate how we might continue to use Davis’ framework for critical analyses of urban power. At the same time, the paper addresses inadequacies of what has been called the “L.A. School” and its singularly postmodern approach to urban questions that fail to provide coherent understanding of the material realities of modern American cities. It argues that something like an L.A. School can be more properly grounded in the historical-materialist, even socialist, forms of writing and thinking developed in works like City of Quartz and much of the critical urban geography that came in its footsteps. Ultimately the paper is a call for scholarship on Los Angeles to be deeply engaged with both the concrete and abstract dimensions of a place, not for the sake of theory alone, but to further radical praxis in Los Angeles and all American cities.

The Urban Question under Planetary Urbanization

AbstractIn Le Droit à la Ville (1968), Lefebvre projects the urban trajectory of his day into the sci‐fi imaginary of Isaac Asimov's remarkable Foundation series, recognizing the germ of ‘Trantor’ in our midst, the planet of 40 billion inhabitants where urbanization has reached its absolute maximum; all 75 million square miles of Trantor's land surface are a single city. In La Révolution Urbaine (1970), Lefebvre had already begun hinting at a new reality, not only an urban society, but of planetary urbanization. Today, four decades on, Asimov's extraterrestrial universe seems closer to home than ever, and closer to Lefebvre's own terrestrial prognostications: planetary urbanization is creating a whole new spatial world (dis)order. But how shall we reclaim the shapeless, formless and boundless metropolis as a theoretical object and political object of the progressive struggle? If the arena of politics has no discernible form, what would be the form of these politics? What, exactly, are urban politics? This article tries to rethink theoretically the urban question and the question of urban politics in our era of planetary urbanization, working through the political role of the urban in the light of recent ‘Occupy’ mobilizations.

Efetividade do Direito à Moradia na Cidade Ilegal

Este artigo tem por objetivo realizar uma análise dos instrumentos previstos no Estatuto da Cidade capazes de efetivar o direito fundamental à moradia para o contingente da população que habita a cidade ilegal, que se caracteriza pela existência de assentamentos urbanos decorrentes de ocupação de terrenos ociosos e não inseridos no mercado imobiliário formal.

Compact urban form, question or solution? Examining the compact city in the Middle Eastern context: challenges and opportunities

The idea of ‘compact urban form’ has been examined mainly in the context of developed countries, but rarely has it been studied in the case of Middle Eastern cities. Due to the distinctive sociocultural background of the cities in this region, special consideration is urgent and necessary. This article investigates the main challenges presented by this idea, with a focus on Middle Eastern cities. It argues that because claims about the sustainability of the compact urban form in Middle Eastern cities have not been scientifically proven, its social acceptability remains questionable, the extent of its compactness is ambiguous, the tools to ensure the successful implementation of the compact pattern have not been defined and the size of the city has not been convincingly addressed.

L'Union Européenne a-t-elle une politique de développement des métropoles ? (Does the European Union have a policy of metropolitan development)

The European Union does not have the formal competence for a policy of developing metropolises. However, the European influence on the metropolitan development is considerable and currently enforcing. This statement is based on three arguments : Firstly, the urban question is set on the European agenda more and more (p. ex. Charta of Leipzig, declaration of Marseille). One can say that a European urban policy is currently being established. Secondly, the indirect influence of different policies is important -the transport policy with its consequences for metropolitan accessibility is only one example. Thirdly, the regional policy on the European level has clearly paid more attention to the metropolitan dimension during recent years: After a phase of the paradigm of regional redistribution, current politics focus more on 'place based potentials' and the contributions to economic growth -in this context, metropolitan regions are frequently considered as important 'growth poles Against this background, one cannot say anymore that a policy for the development of metropolises would be inexistent.

Introduction. Urban Democracy: A South Asian Perspective

The ‘urban question’ has attracted increasing attention since the 1990s in the South Asian context because the issues at stake take on a particular urgency in the subcontinent for several reasons. A first, obvious reason is the increasing (and even strategic) importance of cities from a demographic, political and economic perspective. South Asia is home to 5 of the 10 largest cities—in fact, megacities—in the world. At the same time, with an urban population of 485 million, South Asia remains...

Planetary Urbanisation with or without Cities

In order to analyse the different kinds of global urbanization and to explore the challenge beneath it, the author describes the three phases of City History. The first city grew from the farming surplus and their destiny was tied to the farming economy. The rise of the capitalism in 16th century call for a new era. The City became mainly places of market trade. The industrial revolution was the third milestone, which we are just leaving now entering in the globalization. The author lists the five urban shapes: the slum, the megapolis, the world-sized city, the gated community, and the small and medium city. He also notices the existence of diffusing urban base on each continent. The challenges are numerous and highly tangled. The author suggests to combine the four main questions that every human being asks themselves about, the social question, the urban question, the knowledge question and the environmental question. I then conclude by opening a few leads for an ecological urbanization on various scales.

Formula One’s new urban economies

The Formula One (F1) industry has become a true microcosm of the world economy, as new business opportunities surface in emerging countries. Until the beginning of the twenty-first century, this sport was mostly relevant to traditional western urban elites, but since then, the F1 calendar has been largely altered to the benefit of ‘dominant-emerging cities’ and to the detriment of more traditional destinations. This article focuses on this urban question through a historical analysis of the F1 circuit’s expansion phases as well as through a study of the current Grand Prix’s estimate sanction fee.

Kto ma prawo do biopolis? Agamben, Negri i spór o metropolie

In a lecture dedicated to “the urban question”,Giorgio Agamben characterized modern spatial transfor-mations in terms of moving from the city, as a traditionalform of spatial organization, to the metropolis. =is processcoincides, according to the Italian philosopher, with thebirth of modern biopolitics, specialized in producing andmanaging the bare life. Agamben’s metropolis is a space ofindistinction, another materialization (beside camp) of stateof exception, an area of delocalizing localization, associatedby representatives of the urban studies with a neoliberalcity of zero tolerance. Negative analysis of (urban) biopo-litics by Agamben has its reverse side in form of metropo-lis theory formulated by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt.A similar starting point – a description of the metropolisexposed to the mechanisms of biopower, an assumption ofits boundlessness and heterotopic character, an abolishmentof dixerence between private and public space - leads themto the contrary, armative, due to the dixerent approachof biopolitics, conclusions. According to Negri, the metro-polis is to the multitude what the factory was to the industrialworking class. Multitude usually takes place in urban areas,aiming at their democratic transformation. It $lls the emptyspace after the working class - urban actor privileged byHenri Lefebvre - and takes over the right to the city, carriedout in acts of its constant reproduction. =e article aims athighlighting points of intersection and fundamental dixe-rences presented in both visions of biopolis. It argues thatbiopolitical resistance, linked to the cultural productivityof urban subject, involves the creation of place in Agam-benian non-place of sovereign power.

A new urban question

Contemporary processes of urban transformation like the concentration of a large part of the population in highly urbanised areas, the trade-off between environmental costs and the social advantages of increased mobility and the connection between new forms of multiple deprivation and spatial segregation, show how the new urban question may be defined and how this requires research efforts and experimentation not just in the field of urban planning alone. In the past other changes in the economy, society and the environment have led to the formulation of innovative metaphors for the comprehension of urbanisation processes. With his considerable experience which includes planning analyses such as that of Grand Paris and the Veneta Region, Bernardo Secchi underlines how these metaphors can be used as a means to generate and transfer knowledge across the disciplines called upon to address the new urban question.

Pratiche artistiche tra spazio urbano e sociale

This article on public space in expresses a desire to compare different experiences and approaches which help to identify the role of art more accurately in the processes of urban change. The contributions collected show the complexity of the reciprocal influences between art, the environment, the city and society and their objective is to highlight to what extent today an approach which creates dialogue between different disciplines and actors can furnish those who work on urban issues with innovative new tools. Within this vision, art is a tool which is able to place on the same plane differing capabilities which have as their common objective not only the improvement of urban contexts (public space, and places for residence, work and congregation) but also innovation in the treatment of urban questions on different levels.

Riflessioni a partire dalla tavola rotonda

Reflections from the round table - Taking its cue from the points raised and discussed at the end-of-conference round table, and from the various positions that emerged from it, the article investigates the ability of planning to make up the ground it has lost in relation to several significant challenges posed by the contemporary ‘urban question’. This concerns in particular the gap recorded on a daily basis between social and urban reality and the forms of governance and democracy at our disposal for tracking and anticipating its effects.

The Role of Urban Marketing in Local Economic Development: A Political Economic Perspective

The aggressive marketing of cities to attract private finance and capital is one important aspect of municipal neoliberalism. Urban marketing, as it is called, is said to be the surest way to deliver urban economic development. Using a political-economic framework, this paper provides an alternative analysis of urban marketing, and highlights other avenues for addressing the urban question.

Politics of the Light Object

The research, built work and design seminar entitled “The Politics of the Object: Transformative Public and Cultural Landscapes” examined the critical history of a 150-year old open air market in a dense urban area of Hong Kong. This culminated in a series of built installations that used light as a critical design medium to engage the public on urban renewal issues and questions of rapid development in Hong Kong. This ongoing educational initiative aimed to encourage debate about the issues of planned development and the neighborhood's preservation of cultural values.

ABAHLALI BASEMJONDOLO AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE CITY IN DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

The racialised regulation of space under apartheid was increasingly undone by insurgent popular action from the late 1970s. After apartheid a technocratic agenda that reduced the urban crisis to a housing crisis successfully depoliticised the urban question. At the same time the state made often violent attempts to reinscribe certain aspects of apartheid spatial logic by forcibly removing shack dwellers living in well located suburbs to tiny houses, and then later ‘transit camps’, in peripheral ghettoes. However from 2004 there was a remarkable sequence of popular protest against local governments across the country. An autonomous shack dweller’s movement, Abahlali basemjondolo, emerged from this grassroots ferment and has since issued a compelling demand for organisational autonomy, grassroots urban planning and the right to the city.

‘Sustainable Cities’: No Oxymoron

Are urban societies unsustainable per se? So far most analyses of urbanization have been ethno and temporocentric, concentrating on modern industrial and post-industrial cities of the West. The potential sustainability of cities should not be determined with reference to correct consumption patterns, and the structures of capitalism and industrialism, nor under an autarkic view. To answer the urban sustainability question the characteristics of urban societies need to be defined and isolated.