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This text is a book review discussing two books that examine the social dynamics and transformations of urban spaces. The first book, "Les sauvages de la Civilisation: Regards sur la Zone, d'hier à aujourd'hui" by Jérôme Beauchez, focuses on the marginalized inhabitants of the "Zone" in Paris and their cultural and political power. The second book, "The People's Hotel: Working for Justice in Argentina" by Katherine Sobering, explores the transformation of a hotel in Buenos Aires into a cooperative space. Both books highlight the violence of capitalist urban governance and the need for alternative forms of urban living and governance. The texts emphasize the importance of social justice and the empowerment of marginalized communities in shaping urban spaces. [Extracted from the article]

This article develops 'street-level bureaucracy' theory to conceptualise how policy implementation within urban design governance is shared among actors whose role transcends sectoral responsibilities and motivations. It presents case study research with a Scottish local authority which has made a strategic investment in a placemaking policy agenda, including the creation of an influential design review panel of volunteer experts which exemplifies the wider embrace of private capacity within public governance. The paper identifies the distinctive role of design review panel members in street-level implementation, and shows how their discretion is shaped simultaneously by public and private interests. It concludes that understanding and utilising these micro-level processes provides opportunities for conceptualising policy implementation within a neoliberalising urban governance context, and for addressing the implementation gap between the aims of public urban design policy and the realities of delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the diverse and often competing values of citizens, and resolving the consequent public value conflicts, are of significant importance for inclusive and integrated urban development. Scholars have highlighted that relational, value-laden urban space gives rise to many diverse conflicts that vary both spatially and temporally. Although notions of public value conflicts have been conceived in theory, there are few empirical studies that identify such values and their conflicts in urban space. Building on public value theory and using a case-study mixed-methods approach, this paper proposes a new approach to empirically investigate public value conflicts in urban space. Using unstructured participatory data of 4528 citizen contributions from a Public Participation Geographic Information Systems in Hamburg, Germany, natural language processing and spatial clustering techniques are used to identify areas of potential value conflicts. Four expert interviews assess and interpret these quantitative findings. By integrating quantitative assessments with the qualitative findings of the interviews, we identify 19 general public values and nine archetypical conflicts. On the basis of these results, this paper proposes a new conceptual model of 'Public Value Spheres' that extends the understanding of public value conflicts and helps to further account for the value-laden nature of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories" by Lisa Björkman is an ethnographic monograph that examines the settlement of Pratiksha Nagar, or Waiting Town, on the outskirts of Mumbai. The book challenges dominant narratives of urban development and infrastructure by highlighting the complexities and contradictions within the city. It explores the role of various actors in shaping the lives of the project-affected people in Pratiksha Nagar and raises questions about accountability and ethical responsibility. The book offers valuable insights into the effects of large-scale infrastructure projects on the urban poor and emphasizes the importance of trust and relationships in determining eligibility for assistance. While some critics argue that the book lacks acknowledgement of other perspectives, it is praised for its interdisciplinary nature and potential to inform urban planning practices. [Extracted from the article]

"The Great Urban Transition: Landscape and Environmental Changes from Siberia, Shanghai, to Saigon" by Peilei Fan is a comprehensive analysis of the impact of rapid urbanization in Southeast, East, and North Asia. The book explores various issues related to urban landscape change, population growth, environmental challenges, and socio-economic adaptation in the context of economic changes over the past three decades. Using geospatial information systems and remote sensing technology, the author provides insights into how urbanization affects local communities and the environment. The book also addresses contemporary issues such as urban population growth, environmental challenges, economic development, urban policy, and transport innovation. It is a valuable resource for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners working on urban and environmental issues. [Extracted from the article]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as an impactful feature of the life, planning and governance of 21st-century cities. Once confined to the realm of science fiction and small-scale technological experiments, AI is now all around us, in the shape of urban artificial intelligences including autonomous cars, robots, city brains and urban software agents. The aim of this article is to critically examine the nature of urbanism in the emergent age of AI. More specifically, we shed light on how urban AI is impacting the development of cities, and argue that an urbanism influenced by AI, which we term AI urbanism, differs in theory and practice from smart urbanism. In the future, the rise of a post-smart urbanism driven by AI has the potential to form autonomous cities that transcend, theoretically and empirically, traditional smart cities. The article compares common practices and understandings of smart urbanism with emerging forms of urban living, urban governance and urban planning influenced by AI. It critically discusses the limitations and potential pitfalls of AI urbanism and offers conceptual tools and a vocabulary to understand the urbanity of AI and its impact on present and future cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global capital and highly-skilled international labour are sought by cities for economic growth. Much research has been about Western cities, but less is known about how pro-growth developmental Asian countries, which have become key global hubs, organise their urban planning and policy efforts to gain global capital and skilled labour in their cities. In Singapore, the state is active in reshaping the city into a 'cosmopolitan grid' by planning and developing new urban amenity spaces that can attract human capital to fuel the desired urban growth, such as international schools, private housing options, and access to a global selection of goods and services. Oftentimes, the socio-cultural and socio-spatial changes at the neighbourhood level are seemingly ignored, despite the significance of the neighbourhood as a critical social space for the daily practice and formation of social relations in demographically diverse cities. Drawing on cognitive mapping interviews with foreign-born and native-born residents in two upper-middle income suburban neighbourhoods in Singapore, which are recognised as the heartlands of the native-born but have become popular with highly-skilled foreign-born families (namely Western expatriates) in the last decade, this article shows how the top-down rational production of cosmopolitan space by the state framed in a formation of the 'cosmopolitan grid' has played out and shaped the everyday production of social space among the native and foreign-born residents which determines the experience and opportunities for integration in this city-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Urban Design Governance: Soft Powers and the European Experience" by Carmona, Gabrieli, and Bento explores the concept of urban governance and its importance in improving urban design quality. The authors analyze the institutional and economic dimensions of urban governance and provide in-depth case studies in the European context. They highlight the significance of financial dimensions in urban design governance and distinguish between regulatory and informal planning instruments. The book also emphasizes the role of soft power in enhancing governance structures and promoting urban design outcomes. However, it does not address the capacity of urban design governance for wealthy and disadvantaged groups, leaving room for further research in this area. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the role of governance in creating inclusive and habitable urban environments. [Extracted from the article]

"Housing in the Margins: Negotiating Urban Formalities in Berlin's Allotment Gardens" by Hanna Hilbrandt challenges traditional understandings of informality in urban studies. The book argues that informality should not be seen as a deficiency, but rather as a strategy employed by various actors to manage urban problems within the boundaries of formal laws and institutions. Hilbrandt focuses on allotment gardens in Berlin as a non-conflictual example of informality, shedding light on the complexities of informal urbanism and the negotiations between the state and practitioners. The text emphasizes the importance of understanding the complexities of informality and its impact on urban spaces. [Extracted from the article]

Scholarship on urban Latin America is prolific and multifaceted. The region not only is the most urbanised in the world but also the most unequal. This distinctive feature makes it rich and relevant for urban theory-making. This essay introduces a Virtual Special Issue (VSI) on urban studies in Latin America that showcases a selection of articles from the journal's archives from the mid-1970s to the present. It aims to locate urban studies scholarship in/about the region in the context of democratisation struggles and their urban implications. On the one hand, it traces the intellectual trajectories of some key urban debates bringing attention to their disciplinary, methodological and theoretical underpinnings. The VSI identifies four well-established strands: (1) Disputes around local governance; (2) Anatomy of uneven urbanisation; (3) Housing provision landscapes and infrastructural assemblages; and (4) Economic geographies and variegated gentrifications. On the other hand, it delineates a broad picture of the emergent debates and thematic, methodological and geographical absences in the pages of this journal. Through this analysis, the editorial concludes by identifying some potentially productive future directions for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Territorial Capacity and Inclusion: Co-creating a Public Space with Teenagers" is a book that explores the involvement of teenagers in urban planning and the co-creation of public spaces. It highlights the importance of including teenagers in decision-making processes related to the built environment and emphasizes the benefits of their inclusion, such as more inclusive and sustainable cities. The book focuses on the Lisbon Living Lab project, which engages teenagers in the creation of inclusive public spaces through a multidisciplinary approach. It discusses the challenges and opportunities of involving teenagers in urban planning and provides valuable insights into how territorial capacity can be enhanced by their participation. The book also addresses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public spaces and teenagers' relationships with these spaces, emphasizing the need for inclusive and responsive urban environments. Overall, the book calls for collaboration, engagement, and co-creation to shape cities that reflect the dreams and needs of all, regardless of age. [Extracted from the article]

Smart cities promote computational and data-driven understandings of the built environment and have the potential to reconfigure urban planning and governance practices in profound ways. Smart urbanisation is often presented as a politically neutral and socially beneficial approach to achieve urban sustainability goals but the emphasis on data gathering and algorithmic analysis and decision-making has the tendency to restrict how urban stakeholders know and act upon cities. In this article, we apply Artistotle's intellectual virtues of techne, episteme and phronesis to critique current practices of smart cities, data-driven urbanism and computational understandings of cities as they relate to urban planning theory and practice. We argue that the rise of smart cities represents a partial return to early- to mid-20th-century positivistic knowledge politics and the reassertion of technical experts as the drivers of urban change. However, we also highlight the recent emergence of citizen-centred smart cities as an opportunity to promote value rationality in urban planning activities. We conclude that there is a need for greater integration of techne, episteme and phronesis in the pursuit of smart cities to ensure that digitalisation does not foreclose on certain ways of knowing cities but instead, provides a foundation to support a progressive knowledge politics of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart urbanism is an established research area in geography and the social sciences. We draw on 'worlding-provincialising' strategies identified in an Urban Studies Special Issue from February 2021 to explore how smart infrastructures, a form of smart urbanism, disrupt representations of informality and urban development in new and productive ways. Focussing on the disruptive or troublesome implications of smart infrastructures reveals site-level considerations for developing policy and practice, where acknowledging the nuanced context for its use can present opportunities for not only understanding energy transitions in the Global South, but also creates opportunities for cross-learning. Drawing on our collective insights on a solar mini-grid project in Qandu-Qandu, Cape Town, we sketch out three ways the disruptive aspects of solar energy can be helpful for re-building knowledge on the informal city by: (i) re-positioning notions of 'formal' and 'informal' infrastructure(s) in urban planning and policymaking; (ii) highlighting new avenues for citizen autonomy; and (iii) recasting the informal city as a site for continuous innovation and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Atlas of Informal Settlement, a mapping project that aims to understand self-organized urban design in informal spaces. The authors used Google Earth imagery and Street Views to trace the evolution of informal settlements and analyze their form and infrastructure. The atlas presents maps and visual analyses of 51 informal communities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, highlighting the principles of self-organized urban design. The authors emphasize the importance of understanding the productive capacities of informal settlements and how they can guide future urban growth. The book also explores concepts such as overdevelopment, upgrading, and organizing in relation to informal urban design. The authors argue that informal settlements have much to teach formal planning paradigms and offer valuable lessons in self-organized urban design. The atlas demonstrates the significance of mapping as an analytical tool to reveal socio-spatial interconnections and calls for interdisciplinary research to fully capture the complexity of self-organized urbanism. [Extracted from the article]

The article contributes to understanding public transport as a public space by exploring diversity and the city through mobility. It investigates the compressed and mobile space of the 90/91 trolleybus in Milan. Due to its itinerary and extended schedule, this bus is intensively used by citizens with different ethnic, economic, social and cultural backgrounds. Literature on planning and transport has recently started exploring qualitative issues through individual ethnographic research on transport means. Research on everyday multiculturalism, despite recognising the role of public transport as a promising space to study the negotiation of difference, rarely adopts this specific focus and does it mainly from a socio-anthropological point of view. Against this background, the work investigates the compressed space of a bus through an ethnographic exploration of people, spaces and practices onboard. Notably, the article is is grounded on direct observation carried out by three classes of students in the Urban Ethnography course offered in the MSc in Urban Planning and Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, and presents a post-hoc reflection on the outcomes of the teaching project. Grounding on this experience, the article argues that the compressed and mobile space of public transport is an excellent observation point to investigate everyday negotiation of difference and a privileged observatory of broader city dynamics. Additionally, the multiplication of points of view embedded in the observations and experiences of students has proved how, in the face of increasingly diverse cities, pluralisation may be a key methodological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slum and informal settlement upgrading maintains a town or city's gross housing stock, unlike the slum clearance programmes that preceded it, which depleted the housing stock, particularly of dwellings affordable to the lowest-income groups. Sheng, Yap Kioe Upgrading Informal Settlements: Experiences from Asia, Bangkok: White Lotus Books, 2023; 224 pp.: ISBN: 978-90-832562-6-9, 450.00 (pbk) [ Amsterdam: AnyBook Press, 2023; 236 pp.: ISBN: 9789083256269, €17.90 (pbk)] Urban slum and shanty upgrading In the chronology of paradigm shifts of state intervention in a traditionally laissez-faire market in the procurement and management of low-income group urban housing in developing cities and towns of the Global South, slum and shanty upgrading superseded slum clearance policies and strategies. [Extracted from the article]

This paper expands the repertoire of comparative urbanism by putting forward a method of 'hopeful comparison', in which we explore an asynchronous comparison between post-war Poland and Syria. Similar to the way that Polish architects used urban design as a 'practice of hope' during the Second World War, contemporary Syrian architects are now drafting reconstruction plans even if their implementation does not seem politically possible. Yet what role can an ethical, affective stance such as hope play in the methodology of comparative urbanism? In our comparative strategy the role of radical hope is threefold. First, it creates the comparative connection between two cities destroyed by urbicide, thus countering the destructive connectivities of war and, in case of Syria, capitalism, and foregrounding resilience and human connection (which also opens up the potential of healing). Second, radical hope provides a temporal reorientation of knowledge, redirecting the analysis from the traumatic past towards an open future. Third, in this way a hopeful comparison becomes a practical tool for thinking through concrete ethical and political dilemmas concerning reconstruction and property regimes. How to think about reconstruction when the conflict is still ongoing, and, if the property system is now weaponised as part of the conflict, how to avoid inadvertently reproducing this violence in the process of property restitution and reconstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we queer the understanding of urban spaces to move forward a utopian project. 'Let this be a new town unfettered by the traditions of the past, a step into the future', proclaimed Nehru about Chandigarh. Designed by Le Corbusier and his team in the 1950s, Chandigarh was symbolically and materially meant to propel India into modernity. Although built with the ideals of socialism and secularism, Chandigarh is very much an elite city. This paper traces the Queer Pride parade initiated in the year 2013 to appreciate how non-normative groups challenge and subvert the planning of Chandigarh. Our attempt in this paper is to queer the utopian understanding of Chandigarh. We do this through a reading of pride walks as disruptive moments that assign new possibilities and meanings to public spaces. Technocratic solutions proposed as part of grand urban planning imaginations can never take us closer to utopia. Instead, we argue, it is through disruptions caused by events like pride parades that we slowly inch towards utopia. In making the above argument, this paper pushes the boundaries of both queer theory and urban utopian imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National urban planning organisations have an important role in policy-making related to skills-building professional practice for urban planning for climate change. Norman, Barbara Urban Planning for Climate Change, Abingdon: Routledge, 2022; 196 pp.: ISBN: 9780367485993, £27.99 (pbk), ISBN: 9780367486013, £96.00 (hbk) The involvement of urban planning has great potential to overcome the problem of climate change ([1]). In the introductory chapters, the author discusses urban planning for climate change, focusing on climate risks and adaptation with a special chapter on climate-induced resettlement. [Extracted from the article]

Across Africa, cities have become fodder for grand-scale foreign investments and redevelopment projects signifying a distinct phenomenon synonymous with a new kind of urbanism. This paper offers a critical commentary on the proliferation of new infrastructure plans tailored as policy, technological fixes and solutions to urbanisation challenges, both real and perceived. We stir a conversation around the notion of 'plug-in urbanism': first, as an entry point for the study of a model of city building that is exceedingly determined by reflex prioritisation of assumedly universal and transferable corporate-driven policy agendas; secondly, as a critique of unidirectional, homogenising and determinist technological ideas and infrastructures; and thirdly, as a recourse to inclusive and holistic planning. We present the case of the Nairobi Expressway, a recently launched two- to four-lane 27 km viaduct, and the largest in Africa, as an example of a 'plug-in' infrastructure project: i.e. pre-packaged state-of-the-art development installation that comes complete and tailored as a magic bullet and obvious solution to identified mobility and transport challenges in Nairobi city. We demonstrate how in its parodic guise, the expressway highlights a project that is designed and financed by foreign authorities and sustained in line with foreign standard ideologies of what a world-class city should look like, yet in reality only leads to piecemeal and incomplete growth and development. Drawing from a standpoint of multiple urbanisms, we argue for more inclusive urban futures and visions that are responsive to diverse, popular and heterogeneous articulations of cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Urban Ecologies of Divided Cities" is a book that explores the systems and factors that shape and reproduce socio-spatial divisions in complex cities and territories. It is part of an international collaboration project funded by the South African Chair in Spatial Transformation. The book contains five thematic sections, covering topics such as historical and contemporary processes, new grounds for positive environments, territories and taxonomies, (re)definitions of place and space, and questions of agency. The contributions in the book offer diverse perspectives from various disciplines, including urban planning, architecture, anthropology, politics, geography, gender studies, and urban history. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the complex relationship between people, place, and space in divided cities. [Extracted from the article]

"Unsettled Urban Space: Routines, Temporalities and Contestations" is a book that explores the concept of unsettled urban space across different regions of the world. It focuses on three analytical perspectives: routines, temporalities, and contestations. The book draws on a range of theoretical models and empirical case studies to examine how space is settled, unsettled, and contested. It covers topics such as urban routines, temporal rhythms, and political conflicts in various cities. The book offers both a lexicon of case studies and an oblique reading that reveals connections between different aspects of urban space. Overall, it provides insights into systemic inequalities and potential paths for addressing marginalization and exclusion. [Extracted from the article]

Vehicular air pollution has created an ongoing air quality and public health crisis. Despite growing knowledge of racial injustice in exposure levels, less is known about the relationship between the production of and exposure to such pollution. This study assesses pollution burden by testing whether local populations' vehicular air pollution exposure is proportional to how much they drive. Through a Los Angeles, California, case study we examine how this relates to race, ethnicity and socio-economic status – and how these relationships vary across the region. We find that, all else equal, tracts whose residents drive less are exposed to more air pollution, as are tracts with a less-White population. Commuters from majority-White tracts disproportionately drive through non-White tracts, compared to the inverse. Decades of racially-motivated freeway infrastructure planning and residential segregation shape today's disparities in who produces vehicular air pollution and who is exposed to it, but opportunities exist for urban planning and transport policy to mitigate this injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iconic buildings are important meaning generators in cities. This study explores the role that iconic buildings in-the-making have in the discursive construction of city identity in public debate. Through the examination of the Locarno PalaCinema case (Switzerland), our study proposes that iconic buildings – during their planning – can serve as aspirational identity artefacts: objects that are mobilised in discourse to inform productive idealisations of city identity by powerful urban actors. Findings identify the mechanisms through which the aspirational artefact and city identity interact in discourse, showing that iconic building projects orient city identity claims, while at the same time city identity meanings taken from collective memory, present understandings and future aspirations are used by actors to infuse the evolving project with meaning. This study aims to contribute to debates in urban planning and city identity by discussing the identity anticipation role of the planning of iconic buildings and how they can be a productive ground to reflect, re-orient and re-claim the unique features of a city's identity while aspiring to achieve a different future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities play increasingly recognised roles in global climate change responses: as change laboratories, spaces of opportunity, and as administrative and economic hubs that concentrate human and financial resources and needs. They host high climate mitigation potential and acute climate adaptation vulnerabilities. Scholarship flags conventional urban planning approaches to limit global warming to 1.5°C as inadequate. Yet urban sustainability transitions literature features few examples of functioning alternative governance and planning paradigms. This paper assesses one such approach, new municipalism: social movements centred on a democratic transformation of the local economy and state. We combine attention to urban sustainability transitions and new municipalism research to interrogate whether and how the latter can facilitate the provision of leadership and institutional arrangements that enable urban transformation to sustainability. Our desk study considers two prominent examples of new municipalism in Spain, where Barcelona en Comú and Ahora Madrid arose as anti-austerity movements to combat neoliberal urban agendas during the 2010s. We find that the praxis of collective decision-making associated with new municipalism does offer inclusive, innovative policy pathways and the potential to implement experimental knowledge and learning in complex real-world settings at the urban scale. We argue, however, that powerful neoliberal mechanisms impose structural constraints on the very push for deep political change that new municipalist movements embody. By linking transformative climate governance needs with new municipalism movements and wider political economic structuring forces, we explicate the tensions and contested dynamics of institutionalising progressive social movements in the multi-scalar governance of urban sustainability transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different types of environment stimuli (e.g. noise, aesthetics) in urban environments are becoming better understood as determinants of the mental health of urban dwellers. Research on the impacts of urban exposures, especially those related to urban designs, and their potential impacts on the mental health of adolescents specifically, however, is currently lacking. In this study, we examine the relationships between five pedestrian- and transit-oriented design (PTOD) concepts – imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity – and adolescent emotional responses to six settings of varied PTOD quality, and discuss potential design-related emotional affordances within Gibson's Theory of Affordances (ToA). Using an online survey method with videos of each setting, a nationally representative sample of Canadian adolescents viewed the videos and indicated responses to six mental health indicators (positive affect, negative affect, calmness, anxiousness, perceived restorativeness and mental demand). Adjusted linear mixed models (LMMs) were constructed to examine the association between different urban settings and each outcome. Results indicated that, generally, as the quality of five PTOD concepts increased, as reflected in the scores of the different settings, positive emotional responses tended to increase while negative responses decreased (excluding mental demand). Within the frame of the ToA, multiple emotional response outcomes were significantly associated with settings high in aggregate PTOD quality (e.g. Plaza-Positive Affect: β = 0.116, 95% CI: 0.010–0.222, p = 0.033; Bluespace-Mental Demand: β = −1.634, 95% CI: −1.770 to −1.498, p = <0.000), suggesting such spaces may be perceived by adolescents as possessing greater emotional richness with respect to affordances. Future studies should further explore these relationships with other means (e.g. objective methods). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a major contradiction in contemporary urban planning. This is the relationship between the entrepreneurial modes of urban politics that shape contemporary planning practice and the interrelated dynamics of economic precarity and informalisation of low-income communities that exacerbate contagion, and therefore enable pandemic spread. Through a review of literature on the urban dimensions of COVID-19, and on the historical relationship between pandemics and urban planning, we develop a framework for analysing the debates that are emerging around planning approaches to addressing contemporary pandemic risk in low-income, informalised communities. We argue that post-pandemic debates about urban planning responses are likely to take shape around three discourses that have framed approaches to addressing informalised communities under entrepreneurial urbanism – a revanchist approach based on territorial stigmatisation of spaces of the poor, an incrementalist approach premised on addressing the most immediate drivers of contagion, and a reformist approach that seeks to address the structural conditions that have produced economic precarity and shelter informality. We further argue that any effort to assess the political outfall of the COVID-19 pandemic in a given context needs to take an inter-scalar approach, analysing how debates over informality take shape at the urban and national scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines historical and contemporary sources to examine 'epidemic urban planning' from the first decades of the 20th century through to the present day. It considers how infamous early 20th-century epidemics triggered the development of several urban regulations that profoundly shaped the city's future. To reduce the risk of contagion in bourgeois space, the city began displacing and spatially segregating the urban poor, leading to deprived neighbourhoods in the city's suburbs. The social and urban structure of these deprived, 'vulnerable' neighbourhoods remains to this day. Madrid was also greatly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, and the initial distribution of COVID geographies seemed to reflect these historical legacies. Epidemic-influenced segregation kept wealthy neighbourhoods relatively safe during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, concentrating the disease in poorer areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laura Wolf-Powers' book, "University City: History, Race, and Community in the Era of the Innovation District," examines two periods of redevelopment in West Philadelphia, focusing on the impact on poor and non-white communities. The book compares the redevelopment efforts in the 1960s, which resulted in the construction of the University City Science Center, with the more recent development projects led by the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Wolf-Powers argues that while urban planning has become more inclusive, the costs of these developments are still disproportionately borne by marginalized groups. The book provides historical and ethnographic research, challenging assumptions about the benefits of redevelopment and highlighting the need for more equitable outcomes. [Extracted from the article]

"Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias" by John Lorinc is a comprehensive analysis of smart cities technology and its historical and conceptual development within the field of urban studies. The book explores the complexities of defining smart cities and examines the array of technologies that contribute to their development. It also delves into the connection between smart urbanism and utopian thought, as well as the role of technology and planning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The book emphasizes the importance of urban governance and the need for a balanced understanding of the positive and negative impacts of new technologies in urban landscapes. While the book could benefit from further exploration of the utopian origins of smart cities and post-colonial analysis, it is a valuable resource for researchers interested in the intersection of technology and urban planning. [Extracted from the article]

However, without any land market mechanism, an inefficient allocation of land led to a rigid urban spatial structure even with internal restructuring of the cities to utilise land optimally. Zhu, Jieming Urban Development in China Under the Institution of Land Rights, London and New York: Routledge, 2020, 208 pp.: ISBN 9780367358037, £130 (hbk) Elementary economics starts with theories of consumption and production, and the theory of production lists four factors of production: land, labour, capital and organisation. A dual land market with arbitrage opportunities soon developed and the promulgation of 1988 for urban land privatisation and marketisation changed the urban landscape of China. [Extracted from the article]

We call for coupling degrowth with urban studies and planning agendas as an academically salient and politically urgent endeavour. Our aim is threefold: to explore ways for 'operationalising' degrowth concepts into urban and regional everyday spatial practices; to sketch pathways for taking degrowth conceptually and methodologically beyond localised experiments and inform larger scale planning practices and international agendas; and to critically assess the multiple ways in which such a radical urban degrowth agenda will have to differ in the Global North and in the Global South. We outline five steps for such a programmatic, yet paradigmatic, urban degrowth agenda. These are: (1) grounding current degrowth debates within their historical–geographical context; (2) engaging (planning) institutions in linking degrowth practices to urbanisation policies; (3) examining how urban insurgent degrowth alliances can be scaled up without co-optation; (4) focusing on the role of experts and professionals in bringing degrowth principles into everyday urban practice; and (5) prefiguring how degrowth agendas can confront the diverse and unequal urban social relations and uneven outcomes in the Global North and South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Degrowth offers a particularly trans-disciplinary and robust critique of growth-driven configurations of space, society and economy. However, its proponents are yet to seriously engage with urban environments by clearly outlining how, where, for whom and under what conditions the principles of degrowth could be applied in urban contexts. In this article, I focus on transport as a vehicle for understanding and addressing this challenge, thus contributing to the broader agenda of spatialising and urbanising degrowth. I turn to the specific case of 'fare-free public transport' (FFPT), a policy that exists in full form in nearly 300 localities worldwide. By referring to empirical material collected in FFPT programmes in Aubagne (France), Tallinn (Estonia) and Chengdu (China), I show that fare abolition can act as a policy that contradicts many principles of growth-driven capitalism by advancing an agenda of inter- and intra-municipal solidarity, working towards socio-spatial justice. Consequently, I demonstrate that when analysing and planning urban transport, degrowth may well build on diverse 'critical' perspectives on transport to engage head-on with explicitly political–economic questions underpinning urban agendas, thus avoiding joining the glossary of de-politicised and technocratic notions, and disregarding the socio-economic, political and spatial complexity of the urban. In this way, the article contributes to ongoing reflections about the role of urbanisation in the degrowth debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For spatial practices such as architecture, urban design and planning, degrowth remains an abstract concept, as there is no clear alignment of its principles into spatial strategies. To bridge this gap, this paper examines how degrowth can be operationalised into sustainable spatial practices. Through a review of more than 200 sustainable spatial projects across the world operating at the building, neighbourhood and citywide scales, the paper shows that while the majority of sustainable interventions representative of dominant architecture and urban design culture do not align to degrowth principles, a significant number of examples using sustainability strategies such as convivial technologies, building retrofitting, urban renaturation and revitalisation, eco-urbanisation and spatial infrastructure upgrading are in fact aligned to degrowth principles. We suggest that these examples form a potential stepping-stone to enable an urban design and building culture rooted in a degrowth agenda, however further research and conceptualisation are needed to enable this to happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) has become a dominant feature of many secondary cities over the last decade. These cities often have weaker property markets than 'primary' or capital cities and often rely on the 'knowledge economy' to drive economic and urban development. A growing body of work has explored the effects of 'new-build studentification' and its relationship to economic crisis and the financialisation of housing. Less attention has been paid to how the localised political and economic impacts of austerity led to the creation of particular planning policies and actions to facilitate PBSA. Through a case study of a housing estate in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, whose ward has seen a 467% increase in student housing numbers, this article highlights that student housing is shaped not merely by issues of supply and demand but also often by planning practice and local economic demands. Whilst we recognise that PBSA development is also reliant on particular global economic conditions and investment strategies, this article calls for a more relational, contextual approach to examining PBSA. We pay specific attention to local political and institutional actors and their policies, working practices and social constructs amidst austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article elucidates the discursive, spatial and procedural mechanisms by which residential segregation and ghettoisation based on religion in Ahmedabad is reproduced and reinforced. It studies the application of the Disturbed Areas Act of Gujarat, a 1986 law ostensibly intended to curb spatial segregation based on religion by preventing the distress sale of property in 'disturbed areas' affected by sectarian violence. However, this law is being used for precisely opposite ends and as a tool of 'ethnocratic urban planning' to advance the Hindu right's goal of separate and hierarchical nations based on religion and to actively 'Hinduise' urban space. Current practices of the law enable the state to police boundaries between Muslim areas and adjoining Hindu localities, sealing their porosity and preventing the formation of mixed areas by restricting property transfers. The article uses semi-structured interviews, mapping techniques, participant observation and official data as sources of evidence. It maps 'disturbed areas' in Ahmedabad for the first time and presents previously unpublished data on applications for property transfers between persons of different religions under the Act. The article argues that ethnocratic planning combines with a range of other vectors, such as targeted anti-Muslim violence, the hindrance of justice and reconciliation thereafter and the persistent vilification of minorities, to produce saffron geographies of exclusion in Ahmedabad. These saffron geographies of exclusion are grids of Hinduised spaces cleansed of Muslim presence that embody the ascendancy of the ideology of Hindutva over the city and simultaneously create Muslim ghettos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many cities across Africa are characterised by poor planning, housing deficit, waste management challenges and land-use conflicts. Government efforts to address these challenges remain inadequate, with increased private sector participation in urban governance which in recent times has taken the form of privatised cities. Deploying governmentality – the distributed and subjectified statehood – as an analytical frame, and with data produced through interviews, observation and review of various documents, this article analyses spatial rationalities of private city development in Ghana. Rationalities are viewed as drawing boundaries and producing order to foster correct comportments in analysing the logic underlying actors' approach to private city development. For the state, private city projects provide a quick fix to the urban planning and governance challenges by providing critical infrastructure and development control. Investors view private city developments as profitable ventures that offer the so-called 'ideal cities' that can respond to urban governance challenges. The discourses regarding privatised cities are focused on technocratic notions such as tenure security, development control and service delivery. It is, however, argued that the focus, target and strategies of privatised cities are piecemeal and limited in scope and cannot address the urban governance challenges confronting African cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although residential crowding has many well-being implications, its connection to mental health is yet to be widely examined. Using survey data from 1613 residents in Beijing, China, we find that living in a crowded place – measured by both square metres per person and persons per bedroom – is significantly associated with a higher risk of depression. We test for the mechanisms of such associations and find that the residential crowding–depression link arises through increased living space-specific stress rather than increased life stress. We also identify the following subgroups that have relatively stronger residential crowding–depression associations: females, those living with children, those not living with parents, and those living in non-market housing units. Our findings show that inequality in living space among urban residents not only is an important social justice issue but also has health implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doucet and Doucet, themselves streetcar enthusiasts, employ photography and visual analysis to look not just at streetcars but also at the area around them in order to determine change over time. Many streetcar enthusiasts in North America travel from city to city taking amateur, though high quality, photographs of streetcar transit systems. Doucet, Brian Doucet, Michael Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2022; 320 pp.: ISBN: 978-1487500108, $49.95 (pbk) Photography and related visual practices render visible what is often invisible when looking at statistics alone. [Extracted from the article]

Neighbourhoods are fluid social and spatial constructs that vary by person and place. How do residential neighbourhoods shift as people age? This mixed-methods study investigates how perceived neighbourhood boundaries and size vary by individual and contextual characteristics. Semi-structured interviews with 125 adults aged 55–92 years living in the Minneapolis (Minnesota) metropolitan area suggested that neighbourhood boundaries are 'fuzzy'. Qualitative thematic analysis identified duration of residence and housing stability, race, life-space mobility, social capital, sense of safety, and the built and social environment as key neighbourhood determinants. This informed quantitative analyses among 7811 respondents (mean age 72) from the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study who self-reported how many blocks composed their neighbourhoods. We tested individual and contextual factors identified in the qualitative results as related to perceived neighbourhood size. Three-level gamma regression models showed that being older, white, less educated, lower income, less physically and cognitively healthy, less active, less socially supported, and feeling unsafe were significantly associated with smaller self-reported neighbourhood sizes. Further, living in less racially diverse, less dense, and less affluent areas were significantly associated with smaller neighbourhoods. The mixed-methods findings deepen understanding of scale in neighbourhood-based research, inform urban planning interventions, and help understand what 'neighbourhood' means among diverse ageing Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almazán, Jorge McReynolds, Joe Studiolab Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, San Francisco: ORO Editions, 2022; 250 pp.: ISBN: 9781951541323, £20.00 / US$25.00 (pbk) Is it possible to design a city that possesses Tokyo's best qualities? TMG, as a strong intermediate layer between the national government and ward administrations, was able to redistribute funds across the various parts of the city, avoiding stratification. [Extracted from the article]

Marco, Amati The City and the Super-Organism: A History of Naturalism in Urban Planning, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore, 2021; 200 pp.: ISBN: 978-981-16-3977-7, €93.08 (eBook) Marco Amati's aim in I The City and the Super-Organism, A History of Naturalism in Urban Planning i stems from a very pragmatic question: as people find refuge in cities because of climate change, which kind of alliance between city planning and the sciences do we need for habitability? Amati aims to prompt a historically informed discussion on the lessons learnt from an often reductionist and ideological application of sciences to city planning and to reflect on the kind of science needed in the Anthropocene. Illustrating the complex mirror game between city planning and the biological, medical and environmental sciences, Amati informs the starting point's question with a historical genealogy of the dialogue between the applied urban social sciences and the "hard" sciences. [Extracted from the article]

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is generally defined as planned high-density development containing a mixture of residential, retail, commercial and community uses around a transit hub and surrounded by a high-quality urban realm that prioritises the pedestrian (and more recently the cyclist) over the automobile. This article analyses the steps taken in Cape Town and Johannesburg to develop TOD schemes. In so doing, it problematises both the concept of TOD as a universal mechanism in which all cities apply a similar set of guidelines as well as the specific planning practices in South African cities. Drawing on the policy mobilities literature and specifically the emerging discussions of policy mobilities failure, I note the challenges and delays in implementing TOD in South Africa. It is not so much that TOD has been applied incorrectly as that it has been unable to stick in the local context. Rather than furthering the debate on whether a city should or should not promote TOD, viewing their planning through a policy mobilities lens highlights the urban politics of policymaking. Accordingly, the article presents a fine-tuned analysis of TOD as both a conceptual framework as well as a process for actually doing transport planning. Such a critical reading of the intertwined and overlapping practices of policymaking provides insights into the process of urban development and spatial transformation in (South/ern) Africa as well as across cities of the global south. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how people choreograph spaces to feel particular ways through material objects and intangible phenomena like light and sound. Drawing on theories of atmospheres and ethnographic fieldwork in Copenhagen, we argue that while there has been a proliferation of research on atmospheres in urban studies, we also need to attend empirically to the processes through which they come into being, consolidate and coagulate. Through exploring the interplay between domestic and urban spaces, we highlight the volatility and inherently social character of atmospheres. This entails how people's dynamic positioning within an urban atmosphere comes to matter for people's sense of the city. We exemplify with one such sensation of the city through the concept of 'midding', as the feeling of comfortably being on the perimeter of a situation. Exploring atmospheric positionings and processes enlightens our understanding of the urban atmosphere and shows how shared atmospheric moments connect people in time and space, stressing the importance of urban design to allow for such sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the scaling characteristics in China is critical for perceiving the development process of rapidly urbanising countries. This paper conducts a comprehensive scaling analysis with quantitative assessment of a large number of diverse urban indicators of 275 Chinese cities. Our findings confirm that urban scaling laws can also be applied to rapidly urbanising China but demonstrate some unique features echoing its distinct urbanisation. Chinese urban population agglomeration results in more effective economic production but the economies of scale for infrastructure are less obvious. Some urban indicators associated with infrastructure and living facilities surprisingly scale super-linearly with urban population size, contrary to expected sublinear scaling behaviours. In developing countries, different-sized cities have diverse agglomeration, industrial and resource allocation advantages, which can be reflected by scaling exponents. We characterise these unique features in detail, exploring the spatial disparities and temporal evolution of scaling exponents (β). Strong regional variations and differences are particularly pronounced in Northeast China and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Scaling exponent variations over time reflect the temporal evolution of the urban system and measure the coordination and balance of urbanisation. Economic output was most efficient in 2009 and β of GDP was slightly greater than 1.15 in recent years. Urban land expansion has been accelerating since 2000 with β remaining around 0.85–0.90. The study of urban scaling in China is enlightening in elaborating the uniqueness and coordination of urban development in rapidly urbanising countries and provides support in formulating differentiated urban planning for different-sized cities to promote coordinated development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary development policy portrays enhanced connectivity as the key to fostering economic growth in lagging regions. This global policy consensus and consequent infrastructure scramble have resulted in a proliferation of new urban spaces. These are dispersed, fragmentary and often unrecognised as urban by projects and plans centred on large-scale connective infrastructures to integrate remote regions into circuits of capital. Whilst our understanding of infrastructure-led development is informed by critical engagements with planetary urbanisation, global infrastructure and logistics, this position paper seeks to reconcile political economy analyses with situated studies closer to lived forms of heterogeneous precariousness in emerging urban worlds. Addressing recent debates that frame these bodies of scholarship as antagonistic, we emphasise the supplementarity of perspectives from within and beyond urban studies. This pluralism can be practised through comparisons that will (i) trace the geo-economic relationality of mega-infrastructures, which conditions directly and indirectly their planning, financing, construction and management, and (simultaneously or independently) (ii) examine difference in the diverse experiences of and responses to emergent infrastructural urbanisms of precarity. The article shows that genetic and generative comparisons can inform a research agenda on (peri-)urban precariousness, engaging policies with unmistakable global moorings but complex multi-scalar politics, diverging outcomes and situated resistances and appropriations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have documented how financial capital has produced displacement driven by hypermodern urban spaces characterised by luxury and exclusivity. In this article we highlight how hypermodern public–private partnerships (PPPs) often re-write history, creating a futuristic global city image. Our case study of Porto Maravilha's PPP reviews a dualistic narrative in the context of changes in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Porto Maravilha aimed to position Rio de Janeiro as a centre of global competition and capital. However, this narrative re-framed the history of the transatlantic slave trade through discursive tactics that diluted and undermined the brutality of slavery in Rio's port. Furthermore, this hypermodern PPP reinforced the post-abolition discriminatory urban planning policies that dislodged Africans and Afro-Brazilians from their places of residence, work and culture in the port district. The result is the erasure of the experiences of Black Brazilians in the port area for touristic consumption, selling the city on the world stage. Given this contradiction, we develop the concept of 'legacy participation' to secure the rights of Afro-Brazilians and their organisations to make decisions about their own territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customary land management systems are informal, community-driven land-use regulation systems that adapt zoning regulations and customary tenure to cooperatively self-regulate land-use management in multi-ethnic peri-urban settlements. The research uses an integrative literature review to critically re-evaluate the various concepts and practices of customary land management, their impact on the unique morphology of peri-urban areas and their relationship with urban planning. The research results indicate that customary land management systems are intrinsically linked to peri-urban settlements due to their polymorphic spatial structure and complex social groupings. It provides a simplified accessible and affordable land management system with multiple avenues for agency and a balance of power between different authorities. This generates a new set of social relations around neo-customary tenure. Customary land management systems are also linked to urban planning within a dual regulatory structure, combining formal policies and informal customs and providing alternatives for exploitative and exclusionary processes in weak and inefficient states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]