Urban Restructuring Research Articles

Transport transitions in Copenhagen: Comparing the cost of cars and bicycles

In many cities of the world, bicycle infrastructure projects are implemented to foster more sustainable transportation systems. However, such projects have often raised questions regarding their public funding, as they entail considerable costs. This paper reviews cost–benefit analysis (CBA) frameworks as these are presently used to assess bicycle infrastructure projects. Specific focus is on the CBA framework developed in Copenhagen, Denmark, a self-declared “city of cyclists”. In this framework, costs and benefits of car and bicycle, the two major urban transport modes, have been assessed and are compared across accidents, climate change, health, and travel time. The analysis reveals that each km travelled by car or bike incurs a cost to society, though the cost of car driving is more than six times higher (Euro 0.50/km) than cycling (Euro 0.08/km). Moreover, while the cost of car driving is likely to increase in the future, the cost of cycling appears to be declining. The paper concludes with a discussion of the applicability of the Copenhagen CBA framework to advance sustainable transport planning and to motivate and justify urban restructuring.

Cosmopolitanism in situ: conjoining local and universal concerns in a Malmö neighbourhood

This article explores an in situ approach to the emergence of cosmopolitanism as domains of common interest and aspiration. Adopting a cosmopolitan lens that does not assume the central role of categories of diversity in structuring social relationships, the article captures the dialectics between the material place, which facilitates interactions and the social space created in the course of engaged practice in a specific urban setting. The cosmopolitan lens made visible the ways in which local and global concerns and dynamics of power are emplaced in Möllevången, in Malmö, Sweden, a neighbourhood defined by a local history of immigration and activism as well as by the globe-spanning processes of urban restructuring. Locally organised cultural and political events and initiatives promote a sense of belonging to the neighbourhood and conjoin particular and universal commitments towards environmental issues, human rights, equality and social justice.

Begin Again, Return Again: The Transition Narratives and Political Continuities of Global Urbanization

Modern urbanization has been commonly understood as a localized transition of rural to urban populations within the space of a state. This transition narrative works in conjunction with other boundaries of modern progress, such as nature/culture, or savage/civilized. Contemporary analyses of the complex processes of global urban restructuring argue that these boundaries of modernity are increasingly irrelevant. Much of this work characterizes the emergent global urban condition as a political transformation that threatens to make irrelevant modern state sovereignty and the international system of states. Yet these claims of transformations in urbanization and in politics repeat the linear transition narratives of modern politics. An analysis of urbanization in my small Canadian city offers an example of how sovereignty is continually reinscribed through such transition narratives. Understanding this pattern of progress and return as the characteristic dynamic of aporetic boundary practices opens an innovative methodological approach to analyzing the continuities and discontinuities of contemporary politics. Politically oriented urban studies tend to focus on sites that evoke global urbanization as a challenge to state authority, such as megacities, transnational movements, and slums, and on locations in the Global South that challenge the colonial violence of Western sovereign politics (Roy 2009; Robinson 2013). Kelowna, BC, where I live, is the sort of place that escapes this critical attention: just another small, prosperous, predominantly white city, comfortably located within a stable Western state. Dominant accounts of Kelowna's urbanization repeat the modern narrative of a transition from rural community to mid-sized city, yet Kelowna increasingly operates within contemporary neoliberal models of “place-making” as a global competitive strategy. This is not to say that contemporary urbanization has transformed Kelowna …

Class Meets Land: The Social Mobilization of Land as Catalyst for Urban Change

AbstractThe paper explores the active yet neglected role that local class struggle over land plays in negotiating new forms of urbanity. Unfashionably shifting research focus from global elites and the “creative class” to local industrial elites and industrial workers, we show that socially embodied local struggles over land are as relevant to globalized urbanizations as they had been to industrial capitalism, and need to be brought back squarely into geographical analysis. We focus empirically on the closely knitted histories of the Pirelli company, Pirelli's workers, and Pirelli's industrial space at Bicocca (north‐east Milan). As we unfold Bicocca's transformation from workers' village (nineteenth century), to radical industrial action hub (1960s–1970s), and finally to trendy mixed‐use space (1990s–2000s), we show how, for over a century, social struggles over land remain the terrain on which new forms of urbanity are fought, and highlight two important points. First, class struggle over the economic, social, and symbolic role of industrial land was not the outcome of, but an essential precondition for urban restructuring. Second, the industrial working class and traditional elites were not passive recipients, but active producers of urban change.

Commercialism and Identity Politics in New York’s Chinatown

After World War II, a remarkable, self-conscious process of community building has taken place in U.S. Chinatowns, especially when the institution of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 led to the eventual abolition of Asian quotas. New York’s Chinatown presents a case study of the postwar transformation that was related to both the global geopolitical changes and domestic urban economic restructuring. With the liberation of immigration laws, the Chinese population in New York has been continuously growing and becoming diversified. Illustrating the way notions of identity and heritage function to (re)assert spatial identity, the article examines the contested process of landscape construction in New York’s Chinatown and the underpinning social agendas, cultural and political implications in the process of identity-making.

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Selective mobility, segregation and neighbourhood effects

Neighborhood Decline and the Economic Crisis

Neighborhood decline is a complex and multidimensional process. National and regional variation in economic and political structures (including variety in national welfare state arrangements), combined with differences in neighborhood history, development and population composition, makes it extremely difficult to identify a unilateral process of neighborhood decline over time. Some scholars have tried to develop all-encompassing models to explain neighborhood decline; others have studied more deeply the relevance of a limited number of factors and developments in processes of decline. The literature has paid little attention to the influence of economic development on neighborhood development, and surprisingly, few studies have focused on the effects of the economic crisis on urban neighborhoods. The recent global economic and financial crisis affected many European and North-American cities in terms of growing unemployment levels and rising poverty in concentrated areas. At the same time, urban investments such as urban restructuring and neighborhood improvement programs have decreased, or come to a halt altogether. By reviewing existing literature, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of neighborhood decline in light of the economic crisis. By formulating ten hypotheses about the ways in which the economic crisis might interact with processes of neighborhood decline, this paper aims to push the debate on neighborhood decline forward and calls for more contextualized research on neighborhood change. We will highlight challenges for future research and point to factors that need to be taken into consideration in a post-crisis society.

Hyderabad: Visioning, restructuring and making of a high-tech city

Hyderabad is the second largest metropolitan region in India. The advent of globalization in India has opened the door for Hyderabad to brand itself as the popular destination for high-tech industries. In 1999, the entrepreneurial state government initiated Andhra Pradesh Vision 2020, a strategic document to develop the state by attracting foreign direct investments and developing specific growth engines in order to leapfrog toward the information society. Hyderabad was chosen to be the spine of the state governments’ visioning strategies and efforts have been made to brand it as the ‘world-class’ high-tech hub of India. Since then, Hyderabad has been under massive urban restructuring. This profile provides an overview of the origins and history of Hyderabad, the changing political economy of the state and resultant urban restructuring and followed by an exploration of emerging urban challenges and socio-spatial complexities of the expanding metro.

Setting the Ground for Global City Formation: Neoliberalisation and Local Elites in Frankfurt on the Main

Abstract This paper approaches the global city concept from a local perspective taking into account the political action of local elites in times of urban neoliberalisation. Drawing on the empirical research carried out in Frankfurt (Main), we argue that the very beginnings of the global city formation were less a result of global processes superseding local ones, as is often argued, but rather emerged out of local political action contested by local protests. In the first part, we will revisit the global city concept and contrast it against a critique of urban neoliberalisation. The second focuses on reviewing the history of urban restructuring in the Frankfurt Westend during the 1960s and 1970s. We suggest that the transformation of the Westend into a “strategic site of global control” (Sassen 2011) has been constructed as a narrative in order to legitimise local forms of real estate speculation, marketisation of commodification. Our paper tries to unfold the logics and strategies of such neoliberal urbanisation by critically reflecting upon historical events since the 1960s

Selective public policies: sustainability and neoliberal urban restructuring

This article deals with the transformation of urban environmental policies since the emergence of the concept of urban sustainability. It explores how the discursive frame of “sustainability” has favoured a hybrid neoliberalization of urban environmental policies in Manchester (UK) and Nantes (France). First, the paper describes the rise of entrepreneurial framing of the environment in the 1990s and 2000s. Second, it shows – with the example of eco-neighbourhood projects – how this new way of dealing with the environment led to specific and selective urban policies going hand in hand with the neoliberal restructuring of European cities. Third, it questions whether the notion of neoliberalization could be used to understand contemporary urban environmental strategies. It concludes by highlighting the heuristic potential of this notion when it goes along with careful case studies sensitive to contextual issues.

Intervenção do Estado e (re)estruturação urbana. Um estudo sobre gentrificação

De acordo com este artigo, gentrificação é consequência de mudanças, não apenas na qualidade, composição e distribuição da força de trabalho, mas principalmente, e primeiramente, na reorganização do espaço para produção, circulação e consumo de mercadorias. Isso coloca a compreensão do conceito como parte de um amplo e complexo processo de (re)estruturação urbana ligando o conceito também a processos específicos de (re)organização espacial, expandindo assim seu significado de forma a dar conta de alguns processos de gentrificação que, de outra forma, ficariam obscurecidos. Para tanto apresentamos o estudo de caso de “Dona Teodora” em Porto Alegre, onde o Estado aparece não só como o principal condutor dos processos de reestruturação urbana que aí ocorrem, mas, também, como o agente do processo de gentrificação.

Gentrificação no Bairro 2 de Julho, em Salvador: modos, formas e conteúdos

Este artigo tem como objetivo entender os processos recentes de reestruturação urbana que vêm tomando corpo no centro antigo de Salvador, mais particularmente, as ações corporativas e públicas apoiadas na lógica da gentrificação e da privatização do espaço urbano. Para tanto, concentramos a presente análise na proposta de intervenção no Bairro 2 de Julho, buscando entender como esse processo vem se constituindo nesta área reconhecida pela Unesco como Patrimônio da Humanidade. Nos empreendimentos privados apoiados pelo poder público, evidencia-se processos de exclusão social, produzidos por um modelo de planejamento urbano excludente pautado na concepção do urbanismo corporativo, que se utiliza de mecanismos de desvalorização e revalorização de patrimônio histórico-cultural. Contribuindo assim, para facilitar e ampliar o processo de ressignificação do patrimônio urbano e a expulsão da população mais pobre.

Labour Rights and Beyond—How Migrant Worker NGOs Negotiate Urban Spaces in the Pearl River Delta

AbstractThe Pearl River Delta (PRD) with its strong focus on international export production has a higher concentration of NGOs that support migrant workers than any other part of China. To better understand mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion affecting migrants in the city and their organisations, this paper takes up Martina Löw's (2008) space‐theoretical concept and her critical reference to Anthony Giddens' structuration theory showing how space can be interpreted as a duality of structural ordering and action elements. It asks whether these migrant worker NGOs can be seen as agents of change influencing the process of urban restructuring in the PRD and producing new urban spaces while negotiating with numerous different institutions on behalf of the workers. Based on a critical review of the literature, long‐term participatory observation and expert interviews with NGO leaders and staff, it uses four examples—NGO office space, factory space, litigation space and hospital space—to argue that these NGOs are producing transient urban spaces that not only advocate labour rights but also serve broader processes of creating and transforming the mega‐urban landscape of the PRD. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reestructuración de la vivienda social en Holanda : caso Europarei, Uithoorn

Hasta hace poco la reestructuración urbana basada en la gentrificación estaba a la orden del día en Holanda. Este tipo de intervenciones se basa en la demolición de una parte de la vivienda social (de alquiler) existente y la construcción de vivienda nueva (en su mayor parte de compra), lo que tiene consecuencias en la composición social del barrio ya que el número de habitantes de menor poder adquisitivo disminuye, la cantidad de habitantes de origen “no occidental” aumenta a menor velocidad y a su vez aumenta la población autóctona de clase media. En este artículo se habla del caso Europarei, su problemática y cómo se está enfrentando. Se calcula que su reestructuración se redondeará en 2020.

Urban restructuring in post-war contexts: the case of Sarajevo

The transition from state-socialism to capitalism has not been the only process reshaping the urban landscapes in Central and Eastern Europe but some cities were aff ected by war destructions, like in the Caucus region or in the former Yugoslavia. The case study of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is helpful to understand how the urban transformation is performed in post-war contexts, an arena neglected in the current literature on post-socialist cities. This paper aims at exploring the interplay between postsocialist urban restructuring and the peace-building process. It presents results of a series of fi eldworks conducted in Sarajevo in 2010 and 2013. It is argued that in spite of the liberal policies implemented by the international community and the belated physical renewal, the transition from socialism to capitalism has been continuously undermined by the local power reconfi guration carried out during the war. The paper analyses the restructuring policies of the post-war period and its impact on the urban spatial structure. The fi rst two sections focus on the urban restructuring processes of post-socialist cities also in post-war contexts, in which the nature of the internationally-led reconstruction and peace-building is analysed as diff erential processes. Finally, both processes are considered in the case of Sarajevo in relation to the transformation of its urban structure.

Building a “Headquarters Economy”: The geography of headquarters within Beijing and its implications for urban restructuring

As command centers, headquarters (HQ) of large firms are crucial to the economy of cities where they are located. Since HQ of large firms play a key role in shaping the urban structure, it is important to investigate the locational patterns of HQ within a city for both academic and policy considerations. Based on a data set of publicly listed firms with HQ located in Beijing, we found that the spatial distribution of HQ is characterized by both agglomeration and dispersion. On the one hand, HQ are significantly agglomerated at different geographical scales. Several clusters of HQ have been identified in our study. Moreover, a suburbanization of HQ trend has also emerged. The regression analysis shows that firm attributes, including sector, scale, ownership and year of going public, may explain the location pattern of HQ. We conclude by providing a detailed analysis of HQ distributions within Beijing that is being shaped by both market and state forces; it also highlights the role of HQ location in urban restructuring. The agglomeration of HQ is persistent and could be the results of the interplay between market and state forces, among which the agglomeration economy as well as the urban planning are most important. The results could also shed some light on the development of a “HQ economy” and urban planning for other cities.

How unique is ‘China Model’: A review of theoretical perspectives on China’s urbanization in Anglophone literature

As a major aspect of the ‘China Model’, urbanization in China is being heatedly discussed in the Anglophone literature in the last two decades. By considering China’s urbanization as a ‘testing ground’ of ‘western’ theories, these studies are important for the understanding of China’s ongoing urban restructuring and exchanging knowledge with ‘western’ insights. Based on a survey of existing studies, this paper identifies various endogenous and exogenous concepts and explanations of China’s urbanization. It is suggested that China’s urbanization is mainly driven by a combination of political decentralization and neoliberalization with various forms of social stratification and mobility. However, it is argued that the distinctness of the ‘China Model’, which is usually used to support the legitimacy of studies of China’s urbanization, has led to many controversial arguments and diminished the due contributions of Chinese scholars in the knowledge production of China’s urbanization. To consolidate the legitimacy of studies on China’s urbanization and enhance the roles of Chinese scholars, we suggest future studies to pay more attentions to the fundamental theories with looser constraints and ‘true questions’ on Chi

Remaking Working-Class Community: Sociability, Belonging and ‘Affluence’ in a Small Town, 1930–80

Historians' interest in the ways locality shapes and constrains working-class culture has until recently tended to end with the post-war demise of the ‘traditional working-class communities’ thought to have coalesced in British industrial localities from the 1880s to the 1950s. Such communities, it is assumed, were torn apart in the post-war decades by affluence and urban restructuring, paving the way for the privatisation of working-class life. This article reports a historical case study of the small town of Beverley, East Yorkshire, a type of context often overlooked in such narratives. Evidence gathered from extensive oral history research in the town suggests that the three post-war decades were not so much a period of declining community as one in which full employment and a thriving traditional industrial sector brought considerable social stability. Many Beverley residents reported that they been embedded in extensive local networks of family, friends, acquaintances and workmates which underpinned attachment to place. The article argues that instead of accepting contemporary sociological portrayals of this period as one in which working-class community dissolved into individualism, historians need to engage empirically with patterns of local social life in the mid- and later twentieth century and to explore a greater range of urban settings.