Urban Resurgence Research Articles

Benefits of implementing the 15-minute city concept in stimulating the potential of social urban resurgence

The issue presented in the article is a proposal to look at a specific vision of the sociospatial organization of the city, namely the concept of the 15-minute city. In this proposed approach, this concept can become a source of inspiration for urban development, as well as a stimulating factor for the social potential of the urban community, which form the basis for the resurgence of cities after the crisis. In the theoretical realm, the basis for the considerations presented in this text is a socio-spatial perspective, according to which the city is perceived as a socio-spatial structure that is reproduced through daily social practices, reflecting both institutionalized patterns and the material organization of space. This text contributes to the discussion about the potential benefits of applying the 15-minute city concept for the development and resurgence of cities in line with the idea of livable cities, ensuring a high quality of life for their residents.

Understanding Divergence in the Performance of Central Business District Economies Among U.S. Metropolitan Regions, 1995–2019

Although references to an urban resurgence are pervasive, on average, the share of regional jobs found in central business district (CBD) areas has fallen since the 1990s. Yet, this fact masks great variation in the performance of CBD economies. In several metropolitan regions, the share of jobs found in CBD areas increased over this period. This paper seeks to understand the factors that explain such variation. Relying on a panel of metropolitan regions for the period 1995 to 2019, the paper finds that, as a regional economy increasingly comprises tasks that are more cognitive in nature, the share of its jobs found in CBD areas increases. Although the “great divergence” has been linked to an increasing dispersion of incomes, health care outcomes, and cultural identities among regions, the paper's findings suggest it may also be associated with divergent economic performance among CBD areas.

Neighborhood Change in Chicago and Its Suburbs 1990-2019

This research empirically examines neighborhood change, as measured by change in per capita income, for 335 Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs for the period 1990 to 2019. Its purpose is to examine the factors associated with neighborhood change in a metropolitan region anchored by a shrinking central city. Using Geographically Weighted Regression, this research analyzes the spatially varying impacts of explanatory variables commonly found in the urban resurgence literature such as race, ethnicity, education, and nativity. The results show that the areas experiencing the highest change in per capita income were the northern neighborhoods of Chicago as well certain suburbs on the suburban fringe, Conversely, decline in per capita income occurred in the inner-ring suburbs, particularly those to the south and west of Chicago. The results further show that some minority neighborhoods in Chicago experienced income ascent relative to the rest of the metropolitan area, which challenges the findings of some previous studies and provides insights for community and suburban planners.

The Impact of the Real Estate Crisis on a South European Metropolis: From Urban Diffusion to Reurbanisation

Beginning in the 1970s, the urban core of the Rome Metropolitan Area (RMA) experienced four decades of intense depopulation and urban diffusion, which caused a considerable social impact. On the basis of an original dataset on residential mobility within the city of Rome, this paper aims to show that the RMA is currently experiencing a new stage of reurbanisation resulting from the bursting of the housing bubble after the 2008 crisis. Unlike other European contexts, the RMA repopulation is lacking forms of “urban resurgence” and is taking place in one of the most difficult periods of the city’s recent history. Paradoxically, the trend of private real estate market succeeded to stop urban sprawl where for a long time public decision-maker had failed. This created an opportunity to finally govern the process and steadily halt the urban diffusion, implementing targeted residential densification measures aimed at stabilising the demographic recovery of the urban core and preventing a return to urban sprawl.

Urban resurgence in European cities

Urban resurgence in European cities

A masterplan for urban resurgence: The case of Mönchengladbach, Germany (2008–2019)

AbstractThis paper investigates how an urban masterplan can be used to catalyse civic and entrepreneurial engagement to trigger a broad resurgence process within a medium‐sized city. Therefore, it dwells on the masterplan project MG 3.0 in Mönchengladbach, which is often described as the initial impulse of a dynamic resurgence process—a confident statement the authors want to question. The exploratory case study applies the “urban health” concept by Glaeser and Gottlieb and highlights the significance of place‐based leadership as well as entrepreneurial engagement in terms of Corporate Urban Responsibility in developing an overarching vision of the urban future.

Residential mobility of couples around family formation in the Netherlands: Stated and revealed preferences

AbstractDespite ongoing debates on urban resurgence and suggestions that cities have become more popular as a location to raise children, empirical evidence on the extent to which families with children tend to stay in cities is scarce. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by analysing intentions to move and the actual mobility behaviour of young families in the Netherlands. First, and based on administrative data from Statistics Netherlands (2008–2016), it provides a detailed geographical analysis of couples' actual moving behaviour around the life event of first childbirth in a wide array of settlement types. Results demonstrate that the transition to parenthood still triggers couples to move down the urban hierarchy: urban couples, especially those in high‐density neighbourhoods, tend to leave the city, whereas couples in smaller municipalities outside the city tend to adjust their housing situation by local moves. However, lower density neighbourhoods in inner cities are relatively successful in retaining couples around family formation. Second, and based on the Netherlands' Housing Survey linked to administrative data, this paper examines geographical variations in families' stated intentions to move and analyses the likelihood that these moving intentions are realised. Results suggest that patterns of family migration cannot merely be interpreted as revealed preferences for suburban or rural environments. Whereas urban families are more likely than non‐urban families to have intentions to leave, they are also most likely to intend to move within their settlement. However, Amsterdam families in particular are unlikely to fulfil their intentions to make a local move, probably because of housing market constraints.

Urbanization and Its Discontents

American cities have experienced a remarkable renaissance over the past 40 years, but in recent years, cities have experienced considerable discontent. Anger about high housing prices and gentrification has led to protests. The urban wage premium appears to have disappeared for less skilled workers. The cities of the developing world are growing particularly rapidly, but in those places, the downsides of density are acute. In this essay, I review the causes of urban discontent and present a unified explanation for this unhappiness. Urban resurgence represents private sector success, and the public sector typically only catches up to urban change with a considerable lag. Moreover, as urban machines have been replaced by governments that are more accountable to empowered residents, urban governments do more to protect insiders and less to enable growth. The power of insiders can be seen in the regulatory limits on new construction and new businesses, the slow pace of school reform and the unwillingness to embrace congestion pricing. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

What drives urban population growth and shrinkage in postsocialist East Germany?

AbstractMost cities in East Germany experienced drastic shrinkage between 1990 and 2014, but in recent years some have stabilized or even switched toward new growth paths, while others have been continuously declining. A descriptive analysis of subgroups of cities with diverging population growth trajectories reveals that this recent phase of “urban resurgence” accounts to a large share to the growth of the largest cities and some smaller cities in their hinterland and is strongly related to the residential preferences of families and young adults. Furthermore, the estimation of spatial regression models for the period 2004–2014 including a comprehensive set of control variables, such as agglomeration effects, initial demographic conditions, labor market characteristics, climate, and quality of life‐related factors, reveals that recent patterns of urban population development are negatively correlated to historical growth rates during times of socialism. This indicates that postsocialist urban development can be interpreted as a direct outcome of the transition process and as a backlash against the socialist past when urban development was dominated by central planning policies. However, the relevance of the individual determinants included in our regression model differs strongly with respect to the population dynamics in different age groups.

The changing soundscape of the performing arts lobby

A lobby is traditionally the formal entrance to a performance venue. It can act as a buffer from the urban environment and be used by patrons before, during and after performances. In multi-venue performing arts centers, it can also act as buffer space between performances. An urban resurgence has seen younger populations move into cities and stay, and performance venues are adapting to serve the new populations. Performing artists have creatively extended their reach into the lobby using its spaces for lectures, pre and post performances, social gatherings and exhibits. Lobbies are becoming active during most of the day and evening, breaking down the acoustic buffer that they once held. This paper will focus on a soundscape study produced of several multi-performance venues that are finding creative ways to use their lobbies. It includes the identification of the activities that are taking place there, how these activities impact the main performance venues, and solutions to maintain the traditional functions of the lobby, whilst providing the active spaces needed for the future.

A resurgence in urban living? Trends in residential location patterns of young and older adults since 2000

ABSTRACTSome have heralded a resurgence of urban living in the U.S., particularly among young adults. Are Americans abandoning suburbs in favor of more urban lifestyles? What is the scope and scale of this urban resurgence? We develop a typology of neighborhoods to analyze the residential location of young and older U.S. adults from 2000 to 2011–15. Census and national travel survey data reveal that suburban population growth continues to outpace that in urban neighborhoods. Although young adults are more likely than older adults to live in urban neighborhoods, recent urban population growth is neither associated with suburban decline, nor being led by young adults. Significant recent population growth in the newest, suburban neighborhoods suggests that greenfield development remains the primary means to increase American housing supply. Shifting metropolitan growth from the suburban fringe would likely require expanding housing supply in urban neighborhoods, and bringing urban amenities to established inner-ring suburbs.

City and Urbanity in the Social Discourse

The aim of our article is an attempt to present the concept of urbanity that has been shaped throughout centuries along with the development of European civilisation and now entered a new phase of social production of space based on cultural dimensions. The future of the majority of World’s population is connected currently with the urban life with the assumption that qualitative characteristics of life in the 21st century define the quality of civilisation itself. Contrary to many scientists’ predictions of the decline of the city and urbanity, new reviving urban projects, social local activities and everyday urbanism appear which are connected with redefinition of the city as a community. The rebirth of cities, currently referred to as “urban renaissance”, “urban resurgence” or “urban revival”, can be also defined in terms of new urbanity regarded as an insightful and creative attitude towards the city and its culture. The elementary order of things was determined in the last decades not by the space but by the time and its acceleration and simultaneously the role of architecture alters. The course of thinking about the city is changing from a single space-time city towards a personalised city, based on individual identities and corresponding places in the physical and virtual space. That can mean a new role of the city in the creation of urbanity. In the era of advanced communication technologies, a question arises about the ontological status of the city when the emphasis is placed on independence and individuality in interactions between people. Social life becomes detached from traditional spatial patterns and practices. We are interested in the urbanity understood in the wider context of cultural urban studies which are focused on new ways of organising the communication space and social relations. We will refer in this article to the values constitutive for the city and urbanity that guided the idea of the city since the dawn of time as well as its new deconstructed forms (e.g. the pop-up city, neo-bohemia, the creative class, neighbour communities, urban guerrilla gardening, experimental urban farms, etc.).

Urban Resurgence as a Consumer City: A Case Study for Weimar in Eastern Germany

Weimar achieved urban recovery as a ‘consumer city’ with sub-brandings like a population magnet with a high living-quality, a cultural city with touristic attractions, and a university city. Its intensive cultural promotion policies combined with urban regeneration programs have contributed to the recent demographic and economic growth. This study demonstrates this success and investigates its sectoral weaknesses compared to other German cities. Weimar needs an optimal mixture of consumption- and production-oriented development strategies to rectify the current structural imbalances and better control those negative impacts caused by a rapidly ageing population. Besides ample presence and intact connectivity of high-tech industries and producer services within a city which enhance R&D, innovation and productivity, Weimar should more seriously consider, when design-ing future development policy, that both urban growth approaches are interrelated: agglomeration generates higher income for the creative class, whereas high urban amenities attract young creative entrepreneurs selecting locations for start-ups.

Urban shrinkage and resurgence in Germany

This article questions the strict parallelism of demographic and economic development in characterising urban shrinkage in Germany. As the cases of several Ruhr cities and East German cities prove, urban economic growth can be achieved thanks to the substantial presence of modern industries and business services, and despite declines in population size. Serious shrinkages of Halle, Cottbus and Schwerin are primarily due to failures in the post-industrial transformation process. Recent policy measures strongly oriented towards slowing the downsizing process of population (via e.g. urban regeneration strategies) do not appear to be sufficient for achieving urban resurgence in these cities. More active industrial policy measures are required there to create a competitive high-tech manufacturing sector, to stimulate innovation activities and to boost its growth interdependence with modern local services and R&D infrastructure.

Urban Resurgence and the Consumer City

Cities make it easier for humans to interact, and one of the main advantages of dense, urban areas is that they facilitate social interactions. This paper provides evidence suggesting that the resurgence of big cities in the 1990s is due, in part, to the increased demand for these interactions and due to the reduction in big city crime, which had made it difficult for urban residents to enjoy these social amenities. However, while density is correlated with consumer amenities, we show that it is not correlated with social capital and that there is no evidence that sprawl has hurt civic engagement.

How Far do England's Second‐Order Cities Emulate London as Human‐Capital ‘Escalators’?

ABSTRACTIn the urban resurgence accompanying the growth of the knowledge economy, second‐order cities appear to be losing out to the principal city, especially where the latter is much larger and benefits from substantially greater agglomeration economies. The view that any city can make itself attractive to creative talent seems at odds with the idea of a country having just one ‘escalator region’ where the rate of career progression is much faster, especially for in‐migrants. This paper takes the case of England, with its highly primate city‐size distribution, and tests how its second‐order cities (in size order, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham, and Leicester) compare with London as human‐capital escalators. The analysis is based on the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Survey of linked census records for 1991–2001 and uses one key indicator of upward social mobility – the transition from White Collar Non‐core to White Collar Core. For non‐migrants, the transition rate for the second‐order cities combined is found to fall well short of London's, but in one case – Manchester – the rate is significantly higher than the rest of the country outside the Greater South East. Those moving to the second‐order cities during the decade experienced much stronger upward social mobility than their non‐migrants, but this ‘migrant premium’ was generally similar to that for London, suggesting that it results from people moving only after they have secured a better job. Second‐order cities, therefore, cannot rely on the speculative migration of talented people but need suitable jobs ready for them to access. © 2013 The Authors. Population, Space and Place. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How Far Do England's Second-Order Cities Emulate London as Human-Capital 'Escalators’?

In the urban resurgence accompanying the growth of the knowledge economy, second-order cities appear to be losing out to the principal city, especially where the latter is much larger and benefits from substantially greater agglomeration economies. The view that any city can make itself attractive to creative talent seems at odds with the idea of a country having just one ‘escalator region’ where the rate of career progression is much faster, especially for immigrants. This paper takes the case of England, with its highly primate city-size distribution, and tests how its second- order cities (in size order, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Sheffield, Liverpool, Nottingham and Leicester) compare with London as human- capital escalators. The analysis is based on the ONS Longitudinal Study of linked census records, primarily for 1991-2001, and uses one key indicator of upward social mobility, the transition from White Collar on-core to White Collar Core. For non- migrants, the transition rates for all the second-order cities are found to fall well short of London’s. In only one case – Manchester – is the rate significantly higher than the average for other areas outside the Greater South East (GSE) and its performance is matched by the non-London part of the GSE. Those moving to the second-order cities during the decade experienced much stronger upward social mobility than their non-migrants. This ‘migrant premium’ was generally similar to that for London, suggesting that it results from people moving only after they have secured a better job. If so, second-order cities cannot rely on the speculative migration of talented people but need suitable jobs ready for them to access.

The battle of Lincoln Square: neighbourhood culture and the rise of resistance to urban renewal

This article considers the organized resistance to urban renewal at Lincoln Square in New York between 1956 and 1959. The Lincoln Square Urban Renewal Project cleared ground for acres of luxury slab‐block tower housing, facilities for Fordham University and its much‐heralded centrepiece, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Lincoln Center gave urban renewal its most high‐minded mission: providing the nation with an image of cultural maturity and urban resurgence for use in the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. Organized resistance to relocation at Lincoln Square brought growing discontent with urban renewal to the attention of a citywide audience. Most importantly, the Lincoln Square resisters defended the complex social world of their old neighbourhood and revealed a vision of urban culture diametrically opposed to that on offer at Lincoln Center. They showed that endangered domestic spaces were complemented by an elaborate and also imperilled public world made up of informal commercial connections between the neighbourhood's residents and businesspeople. Ultimately, this resistance not only raised the alarm over urban renewal, but provided the glimmer of a new urban vision based on the complexity of the urban neighbourhood not the simplicity of the modern superblock.

Resurgent Metropolis: Economy, Society and Urbanization in an Interconnected World

AbstractAn urban problematic is identified by reference to the essential characteristics of cities as spatially polarized ensembles of human activity marked by high levels of internal symbiosis. The roots of the crisis of the classical industrial metropolis of the twentieth century are pinpointed, and the emergence of a new kind of urban economic dynamic over the 1980s and 1990s is discussed. I argue that this new dynamic is based in high degree upon the growth and spread of cognitive‐cultural production systems. Along with these developments have come radical transformations of urban space and social life, as well as major efforts on the part of many cities to assert a role for themselves as national and international cultural centers. This argument is the basis of what we might call the resurgent metropolis hypothesis. The effects of globalization are shown to play a critical role in the genesis and geography of urban resurgence. Three major policy dilemmas of resurgent cities are highlighted, namely, their internal institutional fragmentation, their increasing character as economic agents on the world stage and the concomitant importance of collective approaches to the construction of localized competitive advantage, and their deepening social disintegration and segmentation.RésuméUne problématique urbaine est dégagée à propos des caractéristiques essentielles des villes définies comme des ensembles d'activité humaine polarisés dans l'espace et marqués par une symbiose interne poussée. Les racines de la crise qu'a subie la métropole industrielle classique auxxesiècle sont mises en évidence. Est aussi étudié un nouveau type de dynamique économique urbaine apparu au cours des années 1980‐1990, cette dynamique étant largement fondée sur la croissance et la diffusion des systèmes de production cognitifs culturels. Parallèlement à ces évolutions, l'espace urbain et la vie sociale ont connu des transformations radicales, et nombre de villes ont entrepris de revendiquer un rôle de centre culturel national et international. Cet argument est à la base de ce qu'on pourrait appeler l'hypothèse d'une résurgence des métropoles. Il est montré que les effets de la mondialisation ont compté de façon cruciale dans la genèse et la géographie de la résurgence urbaine. Trois grands dilemmes politiques des ‘villes résurgentes’ sont soulignés: leur fragmentation institutionnelle interne; l'accentuation de leur place d'agents économiques sur la scène mondiale et l'importance concomitante des approches collectives pour construire des avantages concurrentiels localisés; ainsi que l'intensification de leur désintégration et de leur segmentation sociales.

Resurgent Cities, Urban Myths and Policy Hubris: What We Need to Know

1. Structure and Aims of this Special IssueThis Special Issue has grown out of an inter-national Symposium on Resurgent Citiesheld in London in April 2004. More than40 papers were given on a range of issuesrelated to that unifying theme. We are nottrying to represent the sweep of these contri-butions here. It would not be possible, givenhow rich the available material was. Here,we have two, more narrowly focused objec-tives. The first is to put the idea of ‘resurgentcities’ on the research agenda. What does thisphrase really mean? What plausible hypo-theses underlie the idea that resurgence islikely or feasible now? How does it relate tothe facts of cities in OECD and other moredeveloped countries? Our second objective isto take the notion of resurgence as anexample of the need for a research agenda todevelop serious, fundamental, evidence-based research on urban issues beforerushing to judgement or formulating urbanpolicies on the basis of some new conven-tional wisdom(s). In this context, it is hopedthat this Special Issue forms something of amanifesto.2. Resurgence and the Functions of CitiesThe symposium was not predicated on theassumption that urban resurgence was univer-sal or even existed, but that it was a processfor which there was some current evidenceand—given the importance of cities insocial, economic and political terms—wasthereforeasubjectforseriousenquiry.Contri-butions showed that city resurgence was ahard concept to define precisely and theevidence suggested that, although happeningin some urban contexts, it was both far fromuniversal, even uncommon, and—moresignificantly—its causes were not clearlyunderstood. This sceptical caution is reflectedin the contributions of Glaeser and Gottlieb,Markusen and Schrock, Musterd, andStorper and Manville as well as Beauregard(2004). Indeed, Glaeser and Gottlieb’sreading of the evidence is much more suppor-tive of resurgence—at least in the US—beingmore relative than absolute.Emphasising the difficulty of definingexactly what is meant by urban resurgence,the contributors to this Special Issue all havesomewhat different versions, although allUrban Studies, Vol. 43, No. 8, 1231–1246, July 2006