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The concept of urban living is evolving, and there is a growing interest in creating smaller, more connected, and hyperlocal neighbourhoods, where everything people need is within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. This paper challenges the concept of the '15-minute city' as a panacea for urban ills, by exploring the history of utopian urban planning and regeneration aimed at creating sustainable, inclusive and vibrant communities by desegregating disadvantaged groups. Specifically, we examine social mixing policies, which are recurring top-down interventions that pathologise concentrated urban disadvantage. We trace the evolution of these policies in Europe from the Garden City movement to post-war social housing redevelopment to the current 15-minute city, which we consider to be social mix by stealth. While such policies can reduce the degree of concentrated disadvantage in the short term, they tend to be ineffective in the long term, as deprived neighbourhoods often remain so despite attempts to make them more diverse. The paper argues that the 15-minute city would be implemented through de facto social mix actions at the neighbourhood level, which are insufficient to address the deeper structural issues that perpetuate spatial inequality and deprivation. We propose that longitudinal and comparative analyses, combined with 'right to the city' perspectives, should be considered in future research and policymaking to understand – and more importantly address – why urban renewal initiatives that aim for equitable outcomes at the neighbourhood scale ultimately fail to deliver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have transformed from a centrally planned communist system to a market economy and liberal democracy after 1990. The rapidly changing social and power relations have been gradually manifested in the spatial pattern of cities. After the turn of the millennium, a growing number of papers reported that the regeneration of inner-city neighbourhoods intensified, generating population change in certain areas. Authors writing on urban renewal and gentrification in CEE have been inspired by the typology of gentrification elaborated in Western contexts, even though historical legacies and specific local conditions set serious limitations on the use of such concepts. The aim of this paper is to scrutinise the essential features of urban change and gentrification in post-socialist cities, discussing the main pre-conditions for, actors in and the resulting types of this process. Existing literature in the field has been systematically collected, analysed and compared. According to our findings the classic stage model of gentrification cannot be used in post-socialist cities, partly because the process is still in its infancy and partly because several hybrid forms of gentrification-like processes hide the spatial effects of market-based renewal. The variegated forms of urban change are the result of historical legacies, path dependencies and a set of factors embedded in local contexts. The paper highlights some of the research gaps in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, research has emphasised a shift from city government to urban governance. Such a shift brings about its very own challenges, namely governance gaps, uncertain configurations in governance and a limited capacity to act. In this paper, we argue that the concurrent rise of strategy documents in city administration addresses these challenges. Our central claim is that strategy documents can be understood as a distinct discursive device through which local governments enact aspired governance configurations. We illustrate our argument empirically using two prominent examples that, while showing similar features and characteristics, are anchored in different administrative traditions and institutional frameworks: the city administrations of Sydney, Australia, and Vienna, Austria. The contribution of the paper is to show how strategy documents enact governance configurations along four core dimensions: the setting in space and time, the definition of the public, the framing of the res publica and legitimacy issues. Moreover, our comparative analysis of Sydney and Vienna gives evidence of differences in governance configurations enacted through strategy documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many ways of moving through a city. Cycling is one which has received considerable attention from urban scholars. Yet it has remained largely neglected within the burgeoning literature on the post-socialist urbanisms of Central and Eastern Europe. This paper uses a case study from Sofia, Bulgaria to address this gap in urban research. By exploring the practices and affordances of cycling, we offer a discussion of everyday mobility, public life and urban space in post-socialist Sofia. This case study incorporates ethnography and in-depth interviews with regular cyclists. Through a discussion of bicycling spaces and practices, this paper complicates the notion of post-socialist cities as places defined by the decline of public sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is located within work in urban studies about the significance of contact with difference as a means for reducing prejudice and achieving social change. Recent approaches, influenced by theories of affect, have emphasised non-conscious everyday negotiations of difference in the city. In this paper it is argued that such approaches lose sight of the significance of the subject: of the reflective judgements of ‘others’ made by individuals; of our ability to make decisions around the control of our feelings and identifications; and of the significance of personal pasts and collective histories in shaping the ways we perceive and react to encounters. Rather, this paper uses a biographical approach focusing on interviewees’ narratives of encounter. Through its attention to processes of mobility and emplacement, it contributes to debates about when contact with difference matters by highlighting the importance of everyday social normativities in the production of moral dispositions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper reflects on how ESDP (European Spatial Development Perspective) principles can be applied in territories with weak population patterns in quantitative terms. The ESDP defines a functional urban area (FUA) as the influence area of a city and sets a minimum threshold of 15,000 inhabitants for the city and 40,000 for the entire FUA. These thresholds are taken as guidelines to explore the concept of functional regions, adding more information from several sources. Hence the paper starts under the normative background given by EU spatial policy and proposes a methodology of analysis combining several techniques, including an application for the Castilla–La Mancha autonomous region (ES42 in NUTS 2). The approaches used in the method proposed include data from mobility, commuting, accessibility and qualitative analyses of services. The outcome shows how ESDP principles could be applied in practice in places with low-density settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'Borrowed size' is an emerging policy concept in several European countries, presenting theoretical potential to explain contemporary urban dynamics unaddressed through conventional urban growth theories that emphasise the role of agglomeration economies. In its original conceptualisation by Alonso, the concept describes and explains the situation that especially smaller cities that are located in a larger 'megapolitan complex' do perform better because they have access to agglomeration benefits of larger neighbouring cities. This paper scrutinises the concept of borrowed size, thereby focusing on its conceptualisation and reviewing its empirical justification thus far. Our empirical analyses show that the concept must be stretched in terms of scale and scope to enhance its policy value. Borrowed size occurs when a city possesses urban functions and/or performance levels normally associated with larger cities. This is enabled through interactions in networks of cities across multiple spatial scales. These networks serve as a substitute for the benefits of agglomeration. Theoretically, the borrowed size concept demands a recasting of the geographical foundations of agglomeration theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the extent to which people of different origins, natives and migrants, come together in everyday life in Europe. Instead of looking at overall 'perceptions' and 'stances', which are context-dependent and mediated through political-ideological currents and discourses as well as broader patterns of prejudice, we focus on sustained close contacts that suggest meaningful and organic relationships. Since it is most often people of migrant background who are blamed for leading 'parallel lives' and 'not integrating', we chose to focus on them and their interethnic friendships. Moreover, we seek to understand the relevance and role of the neighbourhood context in the development of those relationships. Despite the expressive fears in public discourses about the supposed negative impact of the presence of immigrants and ethnic minorities on social cohesion, our findings indicate that close interethnic relationships are not uncommon in diverse European cities. They further highlight that the neighbourhood context plays an important role in the first years of migrants' settlement. Relationships in the neighbourhood develop in less formal social settings and are also less demanding in terms of host-country cultural skills on the part of the migrants, thus giving the opportunity to newcomers to develop close interethnic relationships with natives. Finally, the analysis supports the positive role of diversity at the neighbourhood level in the development of interethnic friendships and stresses the importance of the neighbourhood's socio-spatial characteristics and its location in the wider urban net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the increasing socio-spatial inequalities in European cities and their impact on the possibilities for fostering social cohesion. Many policy programmes tackle spatial unevenness in order to build more cohesive communities. These policies have some impact, but their effect on reducing inequalities at city level is limited. Therefore, an important question is how the overall socio-spatial organisation of European cities affects social cohesion and the capacity to form an urban community able to decide on a common future. First, the complex relation between present-day societal and spatial dynamics is discussed, asserting that it produces segregation. The second part reflects on how segregation is regarded in terms of social cohesion. Many authors stress the social innovative capacities within segregated areas. However, European cities display different socio-spatial structures. How these structures influence negotiation processes between different social groups is poorly treated. The last part of the paper addresses this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The new urban politics (NUP) literature has helped to draw attention to a new generation of entrepreneurial urban regimes involved in the competition to attract investment to cities. Interurban competition often had negative environmental consequences for the urban living place. Yet knowledge of the environment was not very central to understanding the NUP. Entrepreneurial urban regimes today are struggling to deal with climate change and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon reduction strategies could have profound implications for interurban competition and the politics of urban development. This paper explores the rise of a distinctive low-carbon urban polity—carbon control—and examines its potential ramifications for a new environmental politics of urban development (NEPUD). The NEPUD signals the growing centrality of carbon control in discourses, strategies and struggles around urban development. Using examples from cities in the US and Europe, the paper examines how these new environmental policy considerations are being mainstreamed in urban development politics. Alongside competitiveness, the management of carbon emissions represents a new yet at the same time contestable mode of calculation in urban governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What evidence supports or refutes the claim articulated from various quarters that faith-based organisations (FBOs) have been repositioned as actors for combating social problems like poverty and social exclusion in cities? This paper explores FBOs as agents of social change in contemporary cities in Europe, with a glance at the US. The argument is, first, that we need to conceptualise changing dynamics between religion, politics and post-secular society in the conviction that cities are the pre-eminent loci where these new relations are forming with intensity. While state restructuring and the urbanisation of political action are well-documented processes, far less is known aboutsimilar changes in the governance of religious institutions and their consequences for the urbanising relations between religion and the public sphere. Secondly, there are a number of empirical instances of FBOs involving faith-motivated and other people who respond to problems of poverty and social exclusion in various cities across Europe and suggest a changing public role of FBOs in social and political issues. Such repositioning, however, does not relate to the public sphere without tensions and ambiguities and the paper draws out some implications for theory and practice that guide a new international and multidisciplinary research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social mix is one of the supposedly promising keywords in today's urban policies. Many players in the field believe that social mix enhances opportunities and the quality of life of urban dwellers. However, there are alternative views of social mix. This paper addresses questions about the relation between-perceived-levels of social mix and the strength of social networks and the reputation of the neighbourhood. In addition, residents' opinions about social mix are investigated taking individual, household and housing situations into account. The main source of information are interview data from the RESTATE project and the paper has a focus on large post-war housing estates in various European cities. It is concluded that there is a wide variety of social mix perceptions in estates built to similar designs in a similar period in different European cities and that these perceptions relate positively, albeit weakly, to the strength of social networks as well as to a good reputation of the estates. However, the context people find themselves in appears to be highly important for the opinions on social mix. People with strong social networks were more in favour of social mix if they perceived themselves living in socially mixed situations, but not if they perceived themselves living in homogeneous environments; people with negative opinions about their neighbours were more negative about social mix in general, but even more so if they had the perception of living in mixed situations themselves, and even more so if they were owner-occupiers. The paper concludes with some implications of these results for urban restructuring policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides empirical evidence that helps to answer several key questions relating to the extent of urban sprawl in Europe. Building on the monocentric city model, this study uses existing data sources to derive a set of panel data for 282 European cities at three time points (1990, 2000 and 2006). Two indices of urban sprawl are calculated that, respectively, reflect changes in artificial area and the levels of urban fragmentation for each city. These are supplemented by a set of data on various economic and geographical variables that might explain the variation of the two indices. Using a Hausman-Taylor estimator and random regressors to control for the possible correlation between explanatory variables and unobservable city-level effects, we find that the fundamental conclusions of the standard monocentric model are valid in the European context for both indices. Although the variables generated by the monocentric model explain a large part of the variation of artificial area, their explanatory power for modelling the fragmentation index is relatively low. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyses whether hosting the most prestigious European cultural event, the European Capital of Culture, has an impact on regional economic development and the life satisfaction of the local population. We show that European Capitals are hosted in regions with above-average GDP per capita, but do not causally affect the economic development in a significant way. Surprisingly, using difference-in-difference estimations, a negative effect on the wellbeing of the regional population is found during the event. Since no effect is found before the event, reverse causality and positive anticipation can be ruled out. The negative effect during the event might result from dissatisfaction with the high levels of public expenditure, transport disruptions, general overcrowding or an increase in housing prices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper revisits the relevance of conflict in governance and citizenship practices in cities. Europe national urban policies were readjusted in terms of economic policies and state expenditures in the 1980s and then again and more severely after the 2008 financial and economic crisis. Policy discourses in urban policy have emphasised the beneficial consequences of social and political consensus in helping cities to restructure economically as part of ‘good governance’. At the same time, the paradigm of citizenship understood as a system of social and political inclusion based on economic redistribution and political participation has been substituted by one that has the objective to ensure social cohesion in societies. This substitution renounces the objectives concerning social justice, fails to face the tensions of increasing social inequalities and misses the contribution of social innovation and citizens’ practices that incorporate counter-hegemonic ideals as equally important to an effective multilevel governance. A bottom-link approach is suggested as a synthesis of the tension between top–down policies and bottom–up practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that dominant research practices in the urban transport field add to rather than subtract from social cohesion and mobility inequities. While this is recognised as an on-going political struggle, it is also explained through a failure to mobilise consistently a broad definition of social cohesion in transport research and policy-making; and a technology fixation among communities of transport research and practice, particularly in the commissioning of European Commission research. Elements of a new urban mobility agenda are proposed to address mobility challenges and to improve the fostering of urban social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Simpop2 is a generic multi-agent model designed for simulating any system of cities. From an evolutionary theory built upon the observation of networks of cities in different parts of the world and over long time-periods, it has been possible to identify stylised facts that characterise their main features and properties. This paper presents data-oriented simulations of two kinds of system: in early settled countries (Europe, 1300—2000) and in countries more recently settled (the United States, 1650—2000). The model can simulate properly the general dynamics of urban systems, at different scales of observation (general configuration and trajectories of individual cities). The simulations help to identify some dynamic properties that are shared by both systems: a general growth trend and spatial expansion (produced through interurban competition which generates emulation towards innovation that explain the persistency of the hierarchical configuration); a dramatic increase of contrasts in city sizes since the first industrial revolution linked to the increase of communication speed; and, a differentiation of urban economic functions produced through interactions between cities and innovation cycles, as industrial revolution. The model also puts forward the necessary integration of a new urban function in the model, which represents the early emergence of global cities. Yet, beyond these similarities in the evolution of all urban systems, when they are fully integrated, the model also measures to what extent the observed peculiarities in their contemporary spatial and functional configuration depend on differences in the early space-filling process between the two kinds of system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the pattern of the upper level of the world city network of knowledge as published in a series of earlier papers. The authors' aim is to update the findings and relate to the general world city discussion. The article addresses how the structure of the world cities of knowledge network has changed since 2000 in favour of south-east Asian and south European cities. The authors use bibliometric data on the world's 100 largest cities measured in terms of research output. The article also discusses the concept of world cities as an understanding that many cities are global service centres.

The transition from fast spontaneous urbanisation in southern Europe, with popular squatting as a form of civil disobedience, to 'new social movements' (NSMs) for democratic globalisation in cities, is taking place in the context of a broader transition. In the 20th century, there were unstable politics, civil wars and also still dictatorships in the south, which contributed in a north--south divide in Europe, engulfing civil societies, the welfare state, planning and grassroots mobilisations for a 'right to the city'. This paper focuses on social transformation during the 21st century and points to three directions. First, it explores the nature of several NSMs as urban social movements (USMs) organised by loosely networked cosmopolitan collectivities, social centres and flâneur activists demanding a 'right to the city', and interprets this with reference to globalisation, democratisation and the Europeanisation of southern civil societies. Secondly, it unveils innovative forms of 'urban' mobilisations in the south, influencing the rest of the Europe: squatting in the past, social centres and the ESF (both starting in Italy) at present. Thirdly, it traces transformations of USMs between two centuries and argues about the deconstruction of the north--south divide in Europe with regard to movements and definitions of the 'right to the city'. Mediterranean USMs have offered new insights and have broadened geographical imaginations in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the notion that homeownership affects poverty perception. This is investigated by utilising a logit model to analyse various characteristics of homeowners in 11 different European nations. Overall, the analysis fails to reject the notion that homeowners throughout Europe are less likely to perceive themselves as living in poverty, but no evidence is found that homeownership is more valued in nations with high owner-occupancy rates. However, support is found for the notion that homeownership is used as a form of security in countries that experience greater income inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban location is a multidimensional phenomenon: its dimensions are attributes, natural and man-made, which together affect urban performance. To capture their combined effect, the paper introduces the concept of 'location package'—i.e. the set of location-related advantages enjoyed by an urban place, such as proximity to other population centres, climate and topography. The hypothesis is that looking at urban location as a package of attributes, whose components may enhance or detract from each other, improves the empirical estimates of the effect of location on urban performance. This hypothesis is tested using population growth data on urban settlements in 40 European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]