Cities as partners : The challenge to strengthen urban governance through North-South city partnerships
governance, local authorities, developing countries, partnership, co-operation, urban development, civil society, twinning
During the last decades, local governments have increasingly become recognised as actors in international development cooperation. It has been estimated that today 70% of the world’s cities are engaged in some form of international cooperation. Many of these relations connect the developed and the developing world (‘North’ and ‘South’). They put cities at the core of international cooperation, both as development agents and as beneficiaries. In the light of world-wide ongoing decentralisation of government, globalisation and urbanisation trends, the changing role of local government and increased attention to good governance as a precondition for development, municipal partnerships are more and more employed as instruments for cities and communities to assist one another by means of knowledge sharing, the transfer of resources and technology, and joint cooperation. Cities – both local administrations and civil societies - partner up and their partnerships seek to contribute to a variety of objectives, including poverty alleviation and institutional strengthening. The concept of urban governance recognises that decision-making power exists both inside and outside local government institutions, diminishing the distinction between the public and private spheres. In order to achieve good, participatory local governance that contributes to local development, people and institutions need to be brought together. Both a strong local government and citizenry are therefore needed. Set against this background, this study aims to gain insight into the relevance and potential of North-South city-to-city cooperation with regard to strengthening urban governance in the South. Moreover, it seeks to understand better the factors affecting this potential. These factors include (supra)national policies and legislation; local political and organisational conditions necessary for municipalities to operate in international cooperation; actors involved, their responsibilities and relations; and conditions to build capacity and exchange knowledge trough partnerships in a North-South context. Drawing on a comparative study of four North-South city partnerships involving cities in Peru, Nicaragua, South Africa, the Netherlands and Germany, this study shows that city-to-city cooperation is successful in improving the effectiveness of local government to supply good service delivery, while it proves more difficult to strengthen civil society to demand good services. Thanks to their specific municipal expertise, cities can be meaningful partners in international cooperation and generate results where other donors do not. Their role is also vulnerable however, as an official municipal mandate for international cooperation is lacking. Political resistance, little financial resources and insufficient knowledge of poverty and development processes may undermine this role.
Meeting-places of transformation : Urban identity, spatial representations and local politics in St Petersburg, Russia
Time-space, lifeworld, Hägerstrand, Habermas, Lotman, participant observation, post-Soviet transformation, time-geography, cultural geography, cultural semiotics, urban studies, everyday life, Soviet cartography, local self-government,
This study develops a model for understanding spatial change and the construction of space as a meeting-place, and then employs it in order to show an otherwise little-known picture of (sub-)urban Russia and its transformation from Soviet times to today. The model is based on time-geographic ideas of time-space as a limited resource in which forces of various kinds struggle for access and form space in interaction with each other. Drawing on cultural semiotics and the concepts of lifeworld and system, the study highlights the social side of these space-forming forces. Based on a long-term fieldwork (participant observation) in Ligovo/Uritsk, a high-rise residential district developed around 1970 and situated on the outskirts of Sankt-Peterburg (St Petersburg), the empirical material concerns processes of urban identity, spatial representations and local politics. The study explicates three codes used to form the image of the city that all relate to its pre-Revolutionary history, two textual strategies of juxtaposition in creating the genius loci of a place, and a discussion of what I call Soviet "stiff landscape" in relation to Soviet mental and ordinary maps of the urban landscape. Moreover, the study shows that the newly implemented self-governing municipalities have not realised their potential as political actors in forming local space, which raises questions on the democratisation of urban space. Finally, the study argues that the model that guides the research is a tool that facilitates the application of the world-view of time-geography and the epistemology of the landscape of courses in concrete research. The study ends with an attempt to generalise spatial change in four types.
Thinking Shanghai : A Foucauldian interrogation of the postsocialist metropolis
globalisation, global city, networks, public space, Foucault Michel, network society, colonialism, urban culture, inhabitants, post-socialist city, metropolis
This work is an investigation into Shanghai’s role in the twenty-first century as it attempts to rejoin the global city network. It also examines the effects this move is having on the city, its people, and its public spaces. Shanghai’s intention to turn itself into the New York of Asia is not succeeding, in fact the city might be better trying to become the Chicago of Asia instead. As one of Saskia Sassen’s ‘global cities’ Shanghai functions as part of a network that requires face-to-face contact, but it has also been able to benefit from links that were forged during the colonial era (1842 to c.1949). In fact, the new global elites who have made cities like Shanghai their home have ended up living much like former ones; with the result that their needs are pushing out the very people who used to call this city ‘home’. These are the people who inhabit what Manuel Castells calls the ‘Fourth World’ (what this research refers to as the ‘analogue archipelago’). Manuel Castells’s notion of the ‘network society’ also shows how recent developments in globalisation have resulted in qualitative social and economic changes because they operate in real time. Globalisation, however, does not necessarily mean Westernisation. In fact, there is a strong neo-Confucian ethos underpinning China’s recent resurgence, which in turn has important ramifications for how Chinese people perceive public space. Shanghai’s new public space is curiously dead – and while Asians tend to blur distinctions between public and private more than we do in the West (which can render these spaces harder to read for Westerners) – the fault lies more with the fact that some of Shanghai’s new public spaces are simply ‘left-over’ spaces, particularly in front of the newer skyscrapers. This space has been designed for movement, not for use, and it contrasts starkly with the traditional alleyway houses of the colonial-era city where communal activity, graduated privacy, and organised complexity made for a rich and dynamic street life. Part II of this thesis deals with colonialism, noting how Shanghai has benefitted from its justly famous colonial history in its attempts to rejoin the global city network. Colonialism is carefully differentiated from imperialism, although it is noted that both were premised on industrial innovations, particularly Britain’s, in the nineteenth century. Part II also examines Hong Kong’s and Singapore’s role in the global city network, the better to understand Shanghai; and a useful comparison has been made between Shanghai’s alleyway houses and the Singapore shophouse with regard to public space and the possibilities for rehabilitation and reuse. Part III is perhaps the most important section of this thesis, particularly its use of Michel Foucault’s theories of space and power relations and how these are inscribed in a built environment. This Part also highlights the use that has been made of Foucault’s work by other academics, notably Edward W. Said in Orientalism. Said saw some good things as having resulted from Western hegemony over that part of the world he defines as the Orient but generally tends to regard imperialistic influence as debilitating and dangerous. Use has also been made of some critics of Said’s work, notably Robert Irwin and Ibn Warraq, who maintain that Said overvalued the role of the intellectual, and, more dangerously, misunderstood the Foucauldian notion of discourse, which is what led him to make some of his most damaging statements about European racism against the Orient. By way of contrast, David Grahame Shane’s application of the Foucauldian notion of the heterotopia – to Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City – is an apposite and accurate use of one of Foucault’s theories. Part IV examines China’s rich and ancient culture, noting as it does so that cultures are constructed, and, more importantly, asking how they are constructed. Manuel Castells sees the construction of identities as using materials from history, geography, biology, productive and reproductive institutions, as well as from collective memory and personal fantasies, and even from power apparatuses and religious revelation; this thesis’s examination of the Chinese mentalité is an important exercise in helping to comprehend what is happening in Shanghai today. Cities are not about buildings and streets; cities are about people, and their networks of interaction. Any study of a city must take account of the warm life of its inhabitants and not allow itself to be blinded by the cold geometries of stone. This examination of what has gone wrong with Shanghai’s new public spaces was greatly aided by an understanding of the Chinese language itself, which in turn led to the conclusion that the Western term ‘public’ might be better transliterated into Chinese as chang (which means ‘open-air’) rather than the more usual gong (or ‘public’), especially when describing Shanghai’s new public space.
Just environments : Politicising sustainable urban development
eco-friendly living, sustainable urban development, diversity, justice, postpolitics, discourse, normalisation, discipline, othering
European cities are becoming increasingly multicultural and diverse in terms of lifestyles and socioeconomic conditions. However, in planning for sustainable urban development, implications of this increased diversity and possibly conflicting perspectives are seldom considered. The aim of this thesis is to explore dimensions of justice and politics in sustainable urban development by studying inclusionary/exclusionary effects of discursive power of official strategies for eco-friendly living on the one hand and everyday lifestyles on the other, in ethnically and socially diverse areas. Two case studies have been conducted, one in a city district of Stockholm, Sweden, and one in an area of Sheffield, England. The empirical material consists of interviews with residents, interviews with planners and officials and an analysis of strategic planning documents. The case study in Stockholm illustrated the prevalence of a dominant discourse among residents in which Swedishness is connected with environmental responsibility in the form of tidiness, recycling and familiarity with nature. In Sheffield there are more competing and parallel environmental discourses. The mainstream British environmental discourse and sustainability strategies are being criticised from Muslim as well as green radical perspectives. The mainstream discourse is criticised for being tokenistic in its focus on gardening, tidiness, recycling and eco-consumption, and hence ignoring deeper unsustainable societal structures. This can be interpreted as a postpolitical condition, in which there is a consensus around “what needs to be done,” such as more recycling, but in which difficult societal problems and conflicting perspectives on these are not highlighted. In the thesis it is argued that the strategies for urban sustainability are underpinned by Swedish/British middle-class norms, entailing processes of (self-)disciplining and normalisation of the Other into well-behaving citizens. It is argued that an appreciation of the multiple and others’ ways of saving natural resources would make the sustainability strategies more attuned to social and cultural diversity as well as more environmentally progressive. Finally, the importance of asserting the political in sustainability strategies is stressed, highlighting the organisation of society and possible alternative socioenvironmental futures.
Blots on the face of the city : the politics of slum housing and urban renewal in Toronto, 1940-1970
housing, urban renewal, disadvantaged district, social movement, social housing, city centre, slum, history of urban planning
This thesis seeks to overcome the myopia of previous studies of urban renewal in Toronto through a historical approach to the interaction between state housing policy and community activism in the politics of urban renewal. First, it examines the continuities and discontinuities in the history of planning and social housing activity and activism in Toronto. In particular, the thesis examines the long history of community activism in Toronto, and how local residents resisted--sometimes successfully, most times not--the Haussmannization of inner-city Toronto. Vigorous community opposition to urban renewal, though only successful in the late 1960s was by no means a recent development in Toronto. Second, the thesis places the local politics of slum clearance and urban renewal schemes within the context of Toronto's chronic low-income housing shortage which conditioned how these programs played out and how Torontonians reacted to them in the ways they did. Third, and finally, it is a central contention of this thesis that the destruction of inner city neighbourhoods under the guise of renewal was due, in large part, to the way in which these neighbourhoods were portrayed in popular discourse. Thus, the thesis examines the idea of community as "contested terrain" in two different ways--physical and ideological. The battle for control over the renewal of Toronto's inner-city neighbourhoods concerned real spatial sites, the conditions of many of which were harmful to the physical and material interests of their residents. As a result, planners, politicians, and residents of inner-city Toronto neighbourhoods struggled daily to prevent further decay of individual and collective residential environments. Nonetheless, the primary battle waged over the control of inner-city neighbourhoods was ideological. Planners, politicians, social housing activists, the popular media, community activists, and inner-city residents aft struggled over the definition of inner-city neighbourhoods as "slums." All too often Toronto's working class neighbourhoods were viewed through the lens of the "Victorian slum" and universally portrayed as landscapes of disease, despair, and degeneracy--both physically and morally. The inability of Torontonians to move beyond a kind of "Victorian environmentalism" to comprehend the diverse realities of inner-city neighbourhoods led to the physical and social destruction of much of working-class Toronto. Ironically, wiping these "cancerous blots" from the face of the city through massive urban renewal and public housing projects was the most costly solution of all and undermined the nation's entire urban housing program. Indeed, the fundamental contradictions between the discourse and the reality of poor housing districts were vital to the struggle of politicalhegemonies that eventually brought slum clearance and urban renewal schemes to a halt by 1970.
Homeowners' architectural responses to crime in Dar Es Salaam : Its impacts and implications to urban architecture, urban design and urban management
urban planning, security, architecture, crime, homeowner
This study is about Homeowner’s architectural responses to crime in Dar es Salaam Tanzania: its impacts and implications to urban architecture, urban design and urban management. The study explores and examines the processes through which homeowners respond to crimes of burglary, home robbery and fear of it using architectural or physical elements. The processes are explored and examined using case study methodology in three cases in Dar es Salaam. The cases are residential areas of Mikocheni B, Ilala Kasulu and Chang’ombe Housing. The findings from the three cases are compared and the common findings are illuminated and discussed using criminology, economic and social theories and concepts. The results of the study show that, homeowners physically and architecturally modify their home environments for many reasons. Homeowners do so by building or erecting wall fences around their houses and install or barricade doors and windows using metal bars. From the study, the notable main reasons are security and protection from burglary, thefts, home robbery and visual and physical privacy. Others include property marking, disputes and misunderstandings between neighbours and property encroachment by neighbours. In the study, it has been established that, the actions by the homeowners in responding to crime of burglary, thievery and home robberies have impacts and implications on the built environment. The impacts are: affects the visual experience of the built form by limiting view to houses; keeps neighbours apart thus limiting social interaction among residents; segregating public spaces and thus making them empty without people; encroaching on the streets; reducing surveilability of streets and neighbouring dwellings; create the impression of ‘private appearance’ therefore stigmataizing the residential neighbourhoods, all of which increase the vulnerability of areas as well as enhancing the ‘subjective’ feeling of fear in the areas. Furthermore, the responses pose risks to residents when fire evacuation from homes is required, including the effects that affect the environmental comfort conditions of homes and the overall built environment. Despite of the impacts to the built environment as summarised in the foregoing, the study has shown that, homeowners still erect wall fences and barricade their homes due to fear arising from previous crimes. On the basis of the impacts, a new approach to planning of residential housing areas is recommended in which the question of security against crime is included as design factor particularly in urban design. Either an approach to architectural design of houses and the layout of houses that considers crime as an important factor in addition to ‘target hardening’ approach is recommended to increase visibility and surveilability of built environments. The study concludes by highlighting five implications to urban architecture, urban design and urban management at planning and architectural design, considerations which may be of impacts towards improving built environment and management of the urban residential arena. The study ends by outlining and recommending areas of further research.
The (re)positioning of the Spanish metropolitan system within the European urban system (1986-2006)
urban growth, metropolisation, spatial planning, economics
The thesis seeks to demonstrate that during the period between 1986 and 2006, some of the principal cities of the Spanish metropolitan system, have undergone significant change in terms of their European competitiveness. It is suggested that in the case of Madrid and Barcelona in particular this change has been of such a magnitude to proportion them a much more important place within the European spatial configuration than that which they occupied in the mid-1980s. Empirical evidence is offered to support this conjecture. The thesis lies wholly within the framework of spatial planning at the European territorial scale. It charts the comparative ascent of the Spanish cities from the moment of Spain’s entry into the European Union (EU) in 1986 against the background of the development of European spatial policy, increased economic integration across Europe, the increased importance of the ‘territorial’ dimension of EU cohesion policy and an eventual waning of the applicability of the terminology of ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ to describe European geographical location. Part One (Chapter 1) addresses the processes of urbanisation in general from a global perspective and then focuses on metropolitan growth in a number of different historical contexts from the start of the 19th Century. Parts Two (Chapters 2-5) and Three (Chapters 6-9) of the thesis carry out analyses at two contrasting but complementary spatial scales. Part Two examines the metropolitan growth processes in Spain, in the period since 1857, detecting the historical moments in which there were surges in the metropolitan populations of the seven cities of the metropolitan system. The dimensions of the spatial units of analysis corresponding to the seven Spanish metropolitan urban regions are described, based upon a methodology first developed by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in the context of a transnational spatial planning project of the INTERREG community initiative. These seven spatial units form the basis for a socio-economic analysis of the structure of the metropolitan system, drawing upon data principally from the 2001 Census. If by 1930 one of the key characteristics of Spain’s urban system was having not just one but two cities (Madrid and Barcelona) belonging to the group of 27 cities across the world with populations in excess of 1 million inhabitants, this same differentiation between the country’s two largest cities and the remainder of the urban system is equally valid today. Spain’s urban system remains clearly bicephalous in being dominated by these same two cities in terms of demographic and economic strength. Part Three begins by examining the evolution of European spatial policy against the background of an ever-enlarging European Union and changes with regard to the notion of cohesion – from a concept understood in terms of economic and social factors, to one in which the territorial dimension has become increasingly important. The European urban system is then critically examined through a number of key and influential studies, with particular regard to the rankings and hierarchies of metropolitan urban regions deriving there from and the changes in the placing of the Spanish metropolitan urban regions therein. Taking inspiration from the seminal contribution of Manuel Castells in the context of the structural changes resulting from the informational and technological revolution, the thesis seeks to replicate the concept of a ‘space of flows’. This is carried out through a ‘network analysis’ approach drawing upon air passenger flows between some 28 European metropolitan urban regions of the EU15+2 group of countries, enabling the analysis of the interaction between these 28 cities. This methodology enables arriving at a number of descriptive indicators which in turn, through the application of a multi-dimensional scaling mathematical technique, permits comparing the functional and physical distances of each of the metropolitan urban regions from the centre of the ‘conceptual space of air passenger flows’ and the centre of gravity. The resulting map of the functional positioning of the cities offers a spatial vision of metropolitan Europe quite different to that based upon Cartesian coordinates. Such an approach enables demonstrating that cities such as Barcelona, Madrid, Helsinki, Lisbon and Athens, traditionally considered as physically peripheral to the European core area, appear to be more favourably positioned in functional terms. Furthermore in the case of Spain the results indicate that Barcelona lies closer to the centre of the conceptual ‘space of air passenger flows’ than Madrid. In light of this empirical evidence, together with the signs of increased economic integration across some parts of Spain, the prospects of Spain forming part of a wider European territorial concentration of flows and activities, and the recognition of the territorial capital of Madrid and Barcelona within recent EU spatial policy declarations, the thesis concludes in Part Four that these two metropolitan regions have undergone a clear consolidation and (re)positioning within the European metropolitan hierarchy.
Measuring the formation of world cities : The case of Shanghai
global city, world city, globalisation, urbanisation, economics
The global shift of production activities from the developed to the developing countries, induced mainly by the explosive development of information technology (IT), has brought profound changes to the world economic system and tremendous transformations in the spatial organization of our society. Instead of a dispersed distribution of human settlements, some core cities, along with their hinterlands, have stood out functionally as the world's most important centers for gathering information, coordinating production, marketing, distribution, finance and delivering commands. To capture such fundamental changes and the accompanying new urbanization trend, the concept of world city, substantiated by Friedmann in his papers of 1982 and 1986, has been generated and developed... However, in spite of the achievements of past studies on world cities, there are still a confusion and grounds uncovered. Particularly obvious is the lack of a systematic measurement on the formation of world cities, which is greatly needed when many cities, especially many key cities in Pacific Asia, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Beijing, are aspiring to be a world city. The present thesis is thus aimed at filling the gap by devising a measuring methodology based on quantifiable indicators to chart the extent of a city in its development towards a world city.
The urban experience as seen from the park : Spatial practice in neighbourhood parks of Bogota, Colombia
park, public space, social interaction, community
Latin American research has addressed the role of urban landscapes in contributing to a sense of community, to social relationships, to the quality of urban life and to community development. This thesis analyses, compares and evaluates spatial practice in two local parks of Bogotá, Colombia. Spatial practice in this research is defined according to Lefebvre’s writing on the production of space. Spatial practice refers to the sensorial level of spatial phenomena ; it involves uses, interactions, perceptions, influences and transformations in the everyday relationships between space and people. The two parks under investigation are located in and belong to different socioeconomic areas and the cross-class comparison of parks and spatial practice is important in a highly segregated city such as Bogotá. Locally, the two parks are part of the innovative municipal government program, ‘Parks for Learning How to Live,’ (1998-2000).This project transformed public space physically as well as residents’ perceptions of public space, parks, and outdoor recreation and leisure. The research design was qualitative because it sought information on perceptions, uses and feelings of park users.The findings identified that despite the two parks being similar in terms of their physical characteristics, they display different spatial practices that in turn reflect the socio-economic status, history, and expectations of the communities that use them. This research provides an in-depth analysis of the spatial practice in these two parks in order to start building a bottom-up framework that may be instrumental for future planning.
City fragments : Space and nostalgia in modernizing Quito, 1885-1942
urban history, social inequality, urban segregation, history of urban planning, urban life
Quito radically altered during the fin-de-siècle, growing from a small Andean hamlet into a burgeoning metropolis. This process increasingly took on a spatial dimension after 1908, when the completion of a railroad between the Ecuadorian capital and the port of Guayaquil accelerated the development of an industrial sector on the southern edge. Quito's elite abandoned the colonial center for mansions on the northern environs in ensuing years, propelling a clear socio-racial segregation. A master plan developed in 1942 codified this situation while incorporating the wide avenues and parks typical of the City Beautiful movement ever since Haussmann drove his boulevards through the slums of old Paris. Nevertheless, the plan avoided demolishing the old city, giving the city's segregation a temporal cast. This dissertation examines how perceptions of space, modernity, and memory influenced the production of the shifting - yet static - cityscape that developed between 1885 and 1942. It begins with a discussion of the panoramic gazes of cartographers and municipal planners, whose attempts to reorder the city according to the molds of science and progress disguised the perpetuation of traditional social inequalities. It next moves to urban dwelling with a discussion of everyday life across three city districts and a review of the architecture and acculturation of a Swiss immigrant family. A review of allegorical imagery follows, beginning with laudatory portraits of Quito as the locus of Ecuador's Spanish heritage and continuing with the contrasting conceit prevalent in liberal and socialist novels that the city represented a social battleground. Finally, it traces the development of a pastiche among chroniclers using the vignette to overcome a perceived division between modernity and tradition, often incorporating folkloric themes and narrative styles. By juxtaposing these fragments, the dissertation argues that Quiteños from across temporal, spatial, and social boundaries coped with the pressures of modernization by redefining the city as a nostalgic place populated by the ghosts of a fictitious past.
Two decades of planning Guangzhou, 1918-1938 : The advent of modern city planning in China in the early-twentieth century
urban planning, urban renovation, urban form, modernisation, history of urban planning, land, urban change
Guangzhou was the Chinese city where the first large-scale urban re-structuring attempt was made by the Nationalist Government to transform it from a pre-modern, walled city into a modern metropolis in the early-twentieth century. The municipal government of Guangzhou consistently embraced a rational planning approach, adapted from contemporary European and American planning models, to guide and regulate city building activities driven by new urban functions of the time. While these early endeavors laid a foundation for Chinese city planning in the modern era, to date very little has been researched on the origin and achievements of these endeavors. This study examines the beginning of modern city planning in Guangzhou, the establishment of its framework, its progressive implementation, and its physical outcome.
Playpolis : Transyouth and urban networking in Seoul
play, technology, ubiquitous technology, youth, ethnography, urban culture, urban space, networks
The overarching aim of this study is to create new knowledge about how playful interactions (re)create the city via ubiquitous technologies, with an outlook to apply the knowledge for pragmatic innovations in relevant fields such as urban planning and technology development in the future. The study looks at the case of transyouth, the in-between demographic bridging youth and adulthood in Seoul, one of the most connected, densely populated, and quickly transforming metropolises in the world. To unravel the elusiveness of ‘play’ as a subject and the complexity of urban networks, this study takes a three-tier transdisciplinary approach comprised of an extensive literature review, Shared Visual Ethnography (SVE), and interviews with leading industry representatives who design and develop the playscape for Seoul transyouth. Through these methodological tools, the study responds to the following four research aims: 1. Examine the sociocultural, technological, and architectural context of Seoul 2. Investigate Seoul transyouth’s perception of the self and their technosocial environment 3. Identify the pattern of their playful interaction through which meanings of the self and the city are recreated 4. Develop an analytical framework for enactment of play This thesis argues that the city is a contested space that continuously changes through multiple interactions among its constituents on the seam of control and freedom. At the core of this interactive (re)creation process is play. Play is a phenomenon that is enacted at the centre of three inter-related elements of pressure, possibility, and pleasure, the analytical framework this thesis puts forward as a conceptual apparatus for studying play across disciplines. The thesis concludes by illustrating possible trajectories for pragmatic application of the framework for envisioning and building the creative, sustainable, and seductive city.
inner cities, public space, social interaction, disadvantaged district, barrio
My enquiry starts from a practical perspective: that of the intractable problems of our inner cities; inadequate service delivery, absent infrastructure, poverty, unemployment. Themes unquiet and persistent. I offer a critique of approaches to policy and argue that post-structural theoretical shifts offer new practical perspectives and the potential for imaginative understandings, which remain largely unexplored. I focus on the built space and the emotions in an attempt to alter the perspective from which questions are asked, and to problematise the questioning process itself. Questions of method are integral to this thesis. The story told is that of the barrio of La Cienaga. It is at once a particular story; that of one of the oldest barrios of Santo Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic, and of the individuals who live there. It is also a typical story of a deprived inner city area that can be found the world over. Residents of La Cienaga discuss the public spaces of the barrio, the private spaces of their homes and their links and visions of the wider city which surrounds them. Stones tell of what it feels like to live in such a place, how the built environment affects social relations, the possibility of community, aspirations and a sense of self. In the second half of the thesis I look at the story telling process: the purpose of stories: their ability to reveal and heal. I return to my practical concerns and examine the implications of both my method and the findings uncovered in the first half of the thesis, for the concrete recurring problem of the barrio: waste and absent infrastructure. The result is a solution that neither I, nor the barrio residents, could have imagined at the outset.
A nice place to visit : Tourism, urban revitalization, and the transformation of postwar American cities
urban history, urban planning, urban renewal, tourism, urban policy
This dissertation examines the growth of tourism as a strategy for downtown renewal in the postwar American city. In the years after World War II, American cities declined precipitously as residents and businesses relocated to rapidly-expanding suburbs. Governmental and corporate leaders, seeking to arrest this decline, embarked upon an ambitious program of physical renewal of downtowns. The postwar urban crisis was a boon for the urban tourist industry. Finding early renewal efforts ineffective in stemming the tide of deindustrialization and suburbanization, urban leaders subsidized, with billions of dollars in public finances, the construction of an infrastructure of tourism within American downtowns. By the latter decades of the period, tourist development had moved from a relatively minor strategy for urban renewal to a key measure of urban success. This dissertation traces the development of postwar urban tourism in the cities of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Each city provides a case study for a different type of urban tourist development: hotels, convention centers, stadiums, and festival marketplaces. Such tourist development fulfilled a multiplicity of desires and needs in the postwar city. First, tourism catered to the growing consumerist ethic of postwar America, in which not only goods but experiences became consumer objects; thus cities were remade into easily consumable entities. Secondly, it offered opportunities for urban revitalization that required little in the way of sacrifice from middle-class Americans, an attribute that became especially attractive after the conservative backlash of the late 1960s. Finally, tourist development allowed city leaders to project an image of urban vitality even while much of their cities remained in dire straits. While much of the scholarship on urban tourism has either celebrated its ability to renew cities or condemned its inauthenticity and delocalizing tendencies, this dissertation argues that tourism's often exploitative nature had little to do with its inherent characteristics but rather lay in the choices of leaders who saw a revitalized downtown as their highest goal, and were often willing to sacrifice the traditional measures of civic improvement to achieve that end.
Governance as glue : Urban governance and social cohesion in post-WWII neighbourhoods in the Netherlands
social cohesion, neighbourhood, urban society, governance, housing, urban policy, housing policy, participation
At the time when the post-WWII neighbourhoods were built, they were much wanted housing environments. Today, however, they face many problems with safety, concentrations of poverty, and liveability. Much good is expected of social cohesion to restore the situation in these neighbourhoods. Policymakers and researchers alike are eager to understand how social cohesion in urban neighbourhoods can be improved. Simultaneously with the attention for social cohesion we observe a change in the way that neighbourhoods are managed; now not only the public authorities, but also private partners and the voluntary sector play a part. In the academic literature much has been written about both social cohesion and urban governance, but empirical evidence of the relationship is lacking. The aims of this study were to enhance our insight into the factors that generate social cohesion, to evaluate urban governance practice, and enhance our understanding of the relationship between social cohesion and urban governance. These issues have been studied in the context of post-WWII neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. In line with the expectations, the participation of residents in decision-making processes is found to be an intermediary factor, relating urban governance to social cohesion and vice versa. Policymakers play a crucial part in this relationship.
The social city : Middle-way approaches to housing and suburban governmentality in southern Stockholm, 1900 - 1945
social housing, housing policy, new town, governance, local authorities, inhabitants, identity, suburb
This dissertation deals with the period bridging the era of extreme housing shortages in Stockholm on the eve of industrialisation and the much admired programmes of housing provision that followed after the second world war, when Stockholm district Vällingby became an example for underground railway-serviced ”new towns”. It is argued that important changes were made in the housing and town planning policy in Stockholm in this period that paved the way for the successful ensuing period. Foremost among these changes was the uniquely developed practice of municipal leaseholding with the help of site leasehold rights (Erbbaurecht). The study is informed by recent developments in Foucauldian social research, which go under the heading ’governmentality’. Developments within urban planning are understood as different solutions to the problem of urban order. To a large extent, urban and housing policies changed during the period from direct interventions into the lives of inhabitants connected to a liberal understanding of housing provision, to the building of a disciplinary city, and the conduct of ’governmental’ power, building on increased activity on behalf of the local state to provide housing and the integration and co-operation of large collectives. Municipal leaseholding was a fundamental means for the implementation of this policy. When the new policies were introduced, they were limited to the outer parts of the city and administered by special administrative bodies. This administrative and spatial separation was largely upheld throughout the period, and represented as the parallel building of a ’social’ outer city, while things in the inner ’mercantile’ city proceeded more or less as before. This separation was founded in a radical difference in land holding policy: while sites in the inner city were privatised and sold at market values, land in the outer city was mostly leasehold land, distributed according to administrative – and thus politically decided – priorities. These differences were also understood and acknowledged by the inhabitants. Thorough studies of the local press and the organisational life of the southern parts of the outer city reveals that the local identity was tightly connected with the representations connected to the different land holding systems. Inhabitants in the south-western parts of the city, which in this period was still largely built on private sites, displayed a spatial understanding built on the contradictions between centre and periphery. The inhabitants living on leaseholding sites, however, showed a clear understanding of their position as members of model communities, tightly connected to the policy of the municipal administration. The organisations on leaseholding sites also displayed a deep co-operation with the administration. As the analyses of election results show, the inhabitants also seemed to have felt a greater degree of integration with the society at large, than people living in other parts of the city. The leaseholding system in Stockholm has persisted until today and has been one of the strongest in the world, although the local neo-liberal politicians are currently disposing it off.
Migration and metamorphosis - on the power of the insignificant in a Moroccan city
migrant, migration, urban culture, anthropology
This thesis is based on fieldwork undertaken in Ifrane, a migrant city in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Morocco. The community has always faced what Simon Harrison has called a ‘scarcity’ of identity in suffering social, cultural, linguistic and economic dislocation. However, a close analysis of everyday life has afforded new insights into the creation of relational stability and migrant well-being through little understood, seemingly insignificant, phenomena. It uncovers an unrecognised relationship between identity and numerical objectification in a Muslim cosmology and, consequently, challenges and overthrows existing assumptions of heterogeneous religiosity. The numeric utilisation of seemingly insignificant objects by migrants is instrumental in the creation of relational nexuses so important for well-being in their new home. In this city migrants find happiness at the intersection of the self, thing and number: a reshaping of identity. It is achieved through the migrants’ complex interactions with the physical world, and relies on their ability to numerically strategise and organise objects. Numeric operations make relationality possible and allow knowledge to be shared across linguistic and cultural boundaries. In all cases well-being in this new environment is found not in the extraordinary or the idiosyncrasy, but rather through normality. By amplifying and introspecting the connectivities that emerge from acts of calculation in the everyday, this thesis contributes at once to a burgeoning study of ethno-mathematics and to the study of well-being in anthropology, drawing attention to the relational nature of actions and their foregrounding in fragile social worlds.
The city transforms : Changing perceptions of urban identity : (Case study - the path of remembrance and comradeship in Ljubljana)
cities, urban identity, communications technology, mobility, Path of Remembrance and Comradeship
The city in the twenty-first century is in the midst of dramatic changes, and yet many have yet to fully manifest themselves, still concealed in technology and distributed enough to escape general understanding within the existing context of built form. Technology may be outpacing urban architectural theory, and large populations (primarily the young generation who are growing up with computers and mobile phones) are altering the identity, use and ultimately the form of cities. What is this changing identity? The present thesis asserts that if the "first generation" of cities was characterized by built forms and spaces, and the "second generation" defined by mobility, then the "third generation" of cities will certainly be "hyperdynamic", that is, technological, dematerialized, unprogrammed, emergent, adaptable and virtual, if they are to serve the needs and behaviors of their inhabitants. A theory of these three generations coexisting, much like archaeological strata, in the form of three conceptual urban layers is presented, along with consideration of the possible relationships between them. A case study set in the city of Ljubljana highlights emerging changes in the perception of the city and focuses specifically on the Path of Remembrance and Comradeship, a unique urban feature set against the background of Ljubljana's history, technologies and ways of thinking about cities. The case study forms a basis for talking about future trends and the potential for an expanded lexicon of urban dynamics. Les villes du 21ème siècle font l’objet de changements spectaculaires, pour certaines d’entre elles ces changements sont en cours, encore dissimulés dans la technologie et suffisamment intégrés dans le contexte actuel de la forme architecturale pour échapper à la compréhension générale. La technologie a dépassé la théorie de l’architecture urbaine, et une population importante (principalement la jeune génération qui a grandi avec les ordinateurs et les téléphones mobiles) est en train de changer l’identité de la ville et, par conséquent, la définition des villes. Que signifie ce changement d’identité ? Cette thèse affirme que la première génération de villes est caractérisée par des formes des constructions et par l’aménagement des espaces, la seconde génération est soumise à la mobilité, et la troisième génération de villes sera certainement hyper dynamique, c’est-à-dire technologique, dématérialisée, non-programmée, émergente, adaptable et virtuelle, pour qu’elle puisse couvrir les besoins et les comportements de ses habitants. Une théorie de la coexistence de ces 3 générations, un peu comme une strate archéologique formée de trois couches urbaines conceptuelles, prend en considération ces relations entre elles. Cette étude dans le cadre de la ville de Ljubljana met en évidence ces changements émergents dans la perception de la ville et souligne spécialement sur "Le chemin de la commémoration et de la camaraderie", une caractéristique urbaine unique dans le contexte de l’histoire de Ljubjana, les technologies et les façons de penser nos villes. L’étude de ce cas constitue une base de discussions sur les futures perspectives et le potentiel d’un lexique élargi de la dynamique urbaine.
Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL
Narrating the city. Urban tales from Tilburg and Almere
imaginary, narrative, urban life, image, urban society
In contemporary debates on the imagination and representation of the city, many scholars argue that there are many different ways to imagine or represent a city. A city can have different meanings to different people in different times and different places, and consequently a city can be represented or imagined in many different ways. Currently, in a world of movement and migration, it seems to be increasingly crucial to pay attention to these differing meanings and different perspectives. According to Sandercock (2003b: 1), the contemporary urban condition is defined by difference, otherness, fragmentation, splintering, multiplicity, heterogeneity, diversity and plurality. Healey (2002: 1779) consequently argues that the challenge in the contemporary period is to mould multidimensional conceptions of 'city' that both reflect and interrelate the rich diversity and complexity of contemporary urban life. In line with Massey (2005), this study understands the city as a simultaneity of stories-so-far and accordingly it analyses a multiplicity of urban tales about two medium sized Dutch cities: Tilburg and Almere. In the end, this polyvocal and narrative approach to the city and urban life aims to bring to light the ways in which many different voices can integrate in complex and often contradictory ways to build a previously unavailable image of the city.
The binational city Eurode : The social legitimacy of a border-crossing town
region, border, binational, European Union, urban culture, inhabitants, economy, local authorities, governance, urban society
This dissertation is about a project conducted in two neighbouring municipalities, Kerkrade and Herzogenrath, both situated on the Dutch-German border. The project’s goal was to become a single border-crossing municipality which was to be called Eurode. The main point of research interest was, to determine to what extent the inhabitants of both towns accepted and supported these plans. The reason why we are so interested in researching this is that the integration in border regions and towns is often considered to be a test-case in European integration. Since the social and democratic legitimacy of the European Union is a much discussed topic, the legitimation of the cooperation and even integration in border regions and towns could give an insight into the public support for the European integration. Although much scientific interest has been shown concerning the identity construction of those living on the border, and the extent of cross-border economic interactions, the aspect of how legitimate such cross-border constructs are, has received far less attention. Furthermore, in the border regions it is often asserted that the spirit of cooperation and integration across borders cannot be found in those living in these border regions. However, this has not been translated into quantitative investigations regarding public support for cross-border cooperation. This dissertation aims to give a first onset for this. It serves to mainly document this major project in cross-border-place making and (social) legitimation. The materials have been collected, organised and categorised in order to give a ‘thick description’ of the case Eurode. The story of Eurode will resemble to a great extent a historical reconstruction, for Eurode cannot be understood without considering its historical background. We will first look at an analysis of the measures taken by the local authorities of both towns to construct Eurode and to strengthen public support. After that, we will view a survey which shows the actual support lent by the inhabitants of both towns. This detailed focus, on both the construction and the reconstruction of a border-crossing municipality, adds a new dimension to the current research into borders, and in particular to the research on border regions and towns. Furthermore, the results of this survey do not only give evidence of how socially legitimate Eurode is today, but it also provides a perspective for future prospects.