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Following the discussions of how to define a city, in Chapter 4 Storey guides the reader through case studies of primary cities. In his primer on ancient urbanism, Glenn Storey provides an introductory text that encompasses many crucial topics across a range of past urban sites. Storey classifies cities into "hyper" and "hypo" cities, which are compact high-density or physically large areas of with low-density populations, respectively. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Virtual Archaeology Review is the property of Virtual Archaeology Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Over the last decade, vehicles have been used as weapons to target, kill, and injure pedestrians in cities such as London, New York, and Berlin. In response to these attacks, governments are implementing new policies and physical interventions to securitize pedestrian spaces. A previous wave of urban securitization hardened buildings against explosives delivered by vehicles, but ramming attacks, by using the vehicles themselves as weapons, challenge established ideas about relationships between pedestrians and automobility. In this paper, we explore the conceptual shifts that need to accompany planning and designing for security from vehicle-ramming attacks, as compared to traditional anti-terrorism efforts. Using New York City as a case study, we review the design strategies cities are using to prevent vehicle-ramming attacks, and consider the potential trade-offs between these securitization efforts, contemporary models of street design, and the everyday use of urban public spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses Nirmala Erevelles' Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic and Samuel R. Delaney's Times Square Red, Times Square Blue to examine the Giuliani administration's rezoning and redistricting of New York City's public sex spaces in the late '80s and early '90s as an example of "structural violence." This paper foregrounds Johan Galtung's theory of "structural violence" and Ervelles' definition of the social model of "disability" to argue that the Giuliani administration's spatial redefinition of New York (of Times Square, specifically) was a heteronormatively and capitalistically motivated initiative that effectively 'disabled' the homosexual population that frequented the homoerotic public sex spaces. The spatial redesign of Times Square supplanted Times Square's prior identity as an "entertainment area catering largely to the working classes who lived in the city," for a vision of a new Times Square that would capitalistically cater to a middleclass group of heteronormative families and tourists. This analysis reads the redistricting of New York through a disability theory lens to tease out the relationship between structural violence, capitalism, aberrant sexual identity, and conceptions of space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments are inherently responsible for citizens' well-being. Given that achieving sustainable development ["Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs"—(WCED in Our common future, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987)] is core to the attainment and maintenance of citizens' well-being, and increasingly understood to require major transformations in integrated social, technological and ecological systems (Sachs et al. in The decade of action for the sustainable development goals: sustainable development report 2021, Cambridge, 2021), it follows that governments have a significant role in shaping transformations. Muted progress on long-standing social, environmental, and economic challenges alongside spiralling public budgets and intergenerational debt suggests, however, that public governance systems are inadequate to facilitate the transformations urgently required. Conceptualising the practice of public decision-making as a complex system, this paper investigates whether known influences on public decision-makers can be linked to Meadows' (Leverage points: places to intervene in a system, Sustainability Institute, North Charleston, 1999) leverage point framework. Finding meaningful connections, it further explores how the leverage point framework can be employed to engage decision-making influences as enablers of desirable public outcomes. It is contended that shifting decision-makers' focus one step beyond currently prevalent leverage points will set in motion the transformations in governance required to facilitate sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxi trip-sharing is of great significance to improve the overall traffic efficiency of the city. The calculation of the matching possibility between any two taxi trips in a given time range is large,so it is difficult to meet the application needs of the whole urban space . This paper proposed a fast filtering strategy based on time, distance and direction constraints. It applied the strategy to the trip-sharing matching method which was based on graph. The results verified by the New York city taxi data set, show that the proposed filtering strategy can greatly reduce the matching time without affecting the effect of trip-sharing( the matching time of a single trip is reduced by about 82%). Based on the GPS trajectory data of 8 531 taxis in Qingdao on March 15th (Wednesday) and March 18th (Saturday) during 2017, this paper made an empirical analysis. It shows that when the de- lay threshold is set at 5 min, the number of shared trips in the city on workdays can reach 45% of the total trips, the total travel time can be saved close to 5 000 hours, and the total distance can be saved 80 000 km. The results of Saturday and Wednesday are very close. The number of trips during the morning rush hour from 6 :00 to 9 :00 is relatively small and the spatial distribution is relatively scattered. Therefore, the proportion of shared trips, the total saved time and saved distance are the least com- pared to other period. The benefit of trip-sharing during this period is the smallest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2016, the city of New York and the Google-backed consortium CityBridge launched LinkNYC, a communication network that enables residents and visitors to access Wi-Fi, charge their phones, and make domestic calls--all for free. The ten-feet tall kiosks scattered around the city are also equipped with screens, cameras, a tablet, speakers, and a microphone. Almost immediately after its launch, many raised concerns about LinkNYC: noise complaints concerning users listening to loud music, homeless people gathering around the kiosks, outrage regarding users watching pornography, as well as the potential threat to privacy the kiosks present. In this paper, I argue that LinkNYC functions as a neoliberal apparatus of listening and silencing in the public sphere through data collection and restrictions of usage of the kiosk in the name of accessibility. As Google's first attempt at occupying the public space, LinkNYC reveals the aspirations for the neoliberal city. Through an ethnographic socio-technological study of LinkNYC, I engage sound studies in current discussions about surveillance. I theorize the modalities of listening in the neoliberal city and discuss competing notions of the public space in smart/responsive cities. I investigate the ideological difference between the smart city and the responsive city and trace the movement from a listening entity to a responsive one, analyzing the implications for privacy. I theorize unsilencing and its politics, discussing examples of re-appropriation of the kiosks. I conducted fieldwork by observing interactions with the kiosks and by doing interviews with citizens, homeless advocacy groups, CityBridge employees, and experts. In addition, I analyze the discourses of CityBridge, local politicians, activists, journalists, and citizens surrounding LinkNYC. This paper is at the theoretical intersection of sound studies, urban studies, science and technology studies, and surveillance studies. Through this case study, I open a theorization of the listening practices of surveillance to look at how power circulates through sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses ways in which artists and cultural practitioners have recently been using forms of urban exploration as a means of engaging with, and intervening in, cities. It takes its cues from recent events on the streets of New York that involved exploring urban spaces through artistic practices. Walks, games, investigations and mappings are discussed as manifestations of a form of 'psychogeography', and are set in the context of recent increasing international interest in practices associated with this term, following its earlier use by the situationists. The paper argues that experimental modes of exploration can play a vital role in the development of critical approaches to the cultural geographies of cities. In particular, discussion centres on the political significance of these spatial practices, drawing out what they have to say about two interconnected themes: 'rights to the city' and 'writing the city'. Through addressing recent cases of psychogeographical experimentation in terms of these themes, the paper raises broad questions about artistic practices and urban exploration to introduce this theme issue on 'Arts of urban exploration' and to lead into the specific discussions in the papers that follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the way people define and challenge practices of distance during protest and the way protesters disrupt ‘generally established and universally visible and valid distances’ associated with the place. In illuminating these ideas, two case studies with seemingly similar socio-spatial characteristics are explored. The first case was initiated by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and aimed to call attention to the nation's neediest people by embarking on the ‘Poor People's Campaign’, which settled people on the National Mall in an encampment they called Resurrection City (RC). The second action, the Occupy Movement, was an international protest movement directed towards social and economic inequality. The Occupy Movement called upon protesters to ‘flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months’ to call attention to the inequalities of global capitalism. The paper interprets the strategies and tactics used by the Poor People's Campaign and the Occupy Movement to challenge distance, concluding with some reflections on the way contemporary forms of dissent are changing the way we perceive public space and its politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public spaces have a surplus value for cities, as they are places for unexpected encounters, public discourse, relaxation and passage. Despite the wide range of beneficiaries, municipalities still often consider them as traditional public goods and bear sole responsibility, yet increasingly lack budgets. Co-production could be a possible solution to share costs, rights and responsibilities, but is often contested due to fear of privatisation and commercialisation. This paper evaluates different forms of co-production of public space in New York City and investigates how they could be translated to the Dutch context, where co-production of public space is still rare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South Architecture / Nanfang Jianzhu is the property of South Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of this paper is to present a new form of chart, which clarifies the inter-relationships between six fundamental urban design parameters that affect the quality and character of any urban layout. These parameters are: built-up area per capita; public ground area per capita (which includes streets and parks); plot factor (the ratio of land area given over to private development to land area available for public use, including that needed for circulation and area available for sport, recreation and public amenities (schools, hospitals, public toilets); floor space index (ratio of built-up area to buildable plot area); net density (population divided by the sum of all buildable plot areas); and gross density (population divided by total area). Mapping these six parameters in a chart shows the complicated trade-offs between one desirable feature and another, including combinations that show that higher densities do not necessarily mean small accommodation and inadequate public space – but they do mean high-rise, and there are severe limits on how high densities can go. The paper also plots diagrams that show the values of these parameters for existing localities in New York, Mumbai (including Dharavi) and Delhi. These diagrams are examples. With more data and more diagrams we might reach a better understanding of what particular values or combinations of values for these parameters we should aim for when designing a new development or modifying an old one. We might also understand the values or combinations of values that we should avoid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The occupation of public urban space is a prominent feature in most descriptions of the global wave of protests after 2011. This paper examines the occupation of one significant space, New York’s Zuccotti Park, to investigate how first, ‘occupying’ became the central form of practice of what later was called Occupy Wall Street. By reconstructing the habitus of the movement’s core constituency and its resonance with the practice of the occupation, this investigation also explains why it was so difficult for the movement to evolve into other forms. It sketches out how the practice of occupying influenced the cooperation between members of different social classes participating in the protest and compares the development of this occupation to the very different trajectory of the Occupy movement in Germany. It is argued that the US occupation only temporarily overcame obstacles to mobilizing the discontent of those young adults that found themselves biographically blocked from joining the new petty bourgeoisie and to building alliances with other social groups in the USA of the post-recession era. Since the eviction from the park reinforced these obstacles, it triggered a de-mobilizing dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the utilization and public perception of parks in New York City following the 9/11 attacks, using a quantitative content analysis of local newspapers published within a year of the attack, specifically looking for themes indicating how parks were perceived and used. My preliminary findings indicate that parks were frequently used for large gatherings and memorials, that people found solace in the parks themselves, and that communities either formed or strengthened through use of parks following the attacks. In conclusion, the creation and promotion of large common green areas in urban spaces may serve as a means of promoting the long-term mental and social well-being of a community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair as a conflicted site of public-sphere formation, and the repercussions of these conflicts on organized labor in New York. Conceived within the liberal administration of Mayor La Guardia and dedicated to the principles of social cooperation, this “closed-shop exposition” granted American Federation of Labor (AFL) trade unions an unprecedented degree of workplace benefits and rhetorical support by the Fair administration. This was undermined, however, by the trade unions’ limited public activities within the fair itself and their refusal of city offers to establish outreach and educational programs through events, rallies, and pavilions. As a result, the public space and discourse of a fair nominally devoted to social interdependence was appropriated by a variety of other interests, particularly those of corporate America. This marginalization would ultimately contribute to delegitimization, as allegations of graft and racketeering by visitors, exhibitors, and the national media framed labor as a direct threat to the “World of Tomorrow” and its visitors. Millions of Americans found their visits marred by exorbitantly inflated prices, delayed by strikes, and disappointed by cancelled exhibits. In the face of outside pressure, and with labor groups unable to address hostile critiques within the fair itself, the exposition administration withdrew its public support for unions while dramatically restricting their workplace rights. In this way, the “business-union” principles of the AFL not only undermined their legitimacy in the eyes of the public, despite the efforts of liberal municipal officials to promote them, but ultimately served to undo those very workplace gains such principles were meant to secure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the changing spatial properties of the McCarren Pool and connects them to the politics of race and class. The pool was a large liberal government project that sought to improve the leisure time of working class Brooklynites and between 1936 and the early 1970s it was a quasi-public functional space. In the 1970s and the early 1980s, the pool became a quasi-public dysfunctional space because the city government reduced its maintenance and staffing levels. Working class whites of the area engaged into neighborhood defense in order to prevent the influx of Latinos and African Americans into parts of Williamsburg and Greenpoint and this included the environs of the McCarren Pool. The pool was shut down in 1983 because of a mechanical failure. Its restoration did not take place because residents and storekeepers near the vicinity of the pool complained that by the 1970s, it was only African Americans and Latinos who patronized the pool and that their presence in the neighborhood undermined white exclusivity. For two decades, the McCarren Pool became a multi-use alternative space frequented by homeless people, graffiti artists, heroin users, teenagers, and drug dealers. Unlike previous decades, during this period, people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds frequented the pool area in a relatively harmonious manner. In the early part of the twenty-first century, a neoliberal city administration allowed a corporation to organize music concerts in the pool premises and promised to restore the facility into an operable swimming pool. The problem with this restoration project is that the history of the pool between the early 1970s and the early 2000s is downplayed and this does not serve well former or future users of the pool. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public life in the contemporary metropolis has become increasingly tied with the methods of consumption and privatization of space. This paper analyzes how the culture of privatization which, according to Simmel (1903), has influenced the alienation of the individual and the deterioration of public space, contributes today to the development of social and political life. Beirut and New York are examined as two models that have a history of opposing social priorities, as well as disparate ways of town planning, yet share many features that are characteristic of a culture of commercial public space. What constitutes the essence of contemporary public life in the two cities is the rather unplanned agreement for occupying and dominating 'un-public'/private spaces or 'un-designed' public spaces in which people interact freely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes an urban space that functions, it is argued, as the commons in the neoliberal city. The space of community gardens in New York City is 'unpacked' according to three Lefebvrian moments of space: the material space, representations of space, and the lived space. Engaging alternative conceptualizations of social relations in the urban space, it complicates and explicates the notion of the commons and its actually existing manifestations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critics often mourn a loss of publicness in cities due to the increased presence of antiterror security zones and related behavioral and access controls, although recent work suggests that security landscapes have shifted from the hard, intense, militarized architecture of the late 1990s-early 2000s to a softer, less obtrusive approach more commonly seen today. Nonetheless, these studies are mostly anecdotal in nature: few studies attempt to back these claims with empirical evidence and even fewer connect this physical security imposition with the policies and plans governing its implementation and operation. In this paper I describe results of site visits to Civic Centers and Financial Districts in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In each neighborhood I catalog security landscapes using a simple tool to assess the intensity, duration, and location of individual security zones. I find that the security landscape covers between 3.4% and 35.7% of publicly accessible space in the districts studied, and that this landscape is most prevalent and intense in New York City. I also find that security zones governed by multistakeholder networks are more intense and militarized than zones managed by a single entity. By understanding how the policies impact physical security, albeit in a relatively small sample of cities and districts, we can better predict what the future of urban security measures might hold. This paper provides empirical grounding to more common theoretical speculations regarding the future of the urban security landscape in the global West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically explores the management of privately owned public space. It examines 163 spaces produced through New York City's incentive zoning programme, whereby developers provide and manage a public space in exchange for floor area ratio (FAR) bonuses. Developers of these bonus spaces employ a variety of management approaches, each correlating with common theories of spatial control in publicly owned spaces. However, as developer priorities are often fiscally driven, most approaches severely limit political, social and democratic functions of public space and produce a constricted definition of the public. As such, privately owned public spaces have deleterious effects on concepts of citizenship and representation, even as they become the new models for urban space provision and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE TENDENCY TO UNDERSTAND the impact of globalization on political activism through such binary oppositions as 'global' versus 'local' and 'space' versus 'place' elides the processes through which these spatial categories and discourses are politically constructed and contested. By contrast, the political significance of place, far from being settled in the evolving global economy, is a hotly contested stake in contemporary struggles over the built environment. Through an ethnographic study of community activism in New York City, this paper demonstrates how elite claims about the global imperatives of capital accumulation are being challenged in so-called 'local places.' [Globalization, urban development, activism, space, New York City] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the expanding popularity of Web 2.0, there has been a huge surge in the use of social media, like Twitter, to express user sentiments or opinions. Delays and breakdowns in transit operations can make riders annoyed and irritated, and as a result, they express their anger and frustration via social media posts. Understanding the tipping points of public frustration will help in developing better solutions. This study aims to develop a framework by developing multilevel sentiment analysis and determine the emotion and politeness measures using transit-related tweets from New York (New York City) and California (San Francisco). The popular hashtags associated with the transit systems of New York and California were collected during 2019. The words associated with negative sentiments widely differ in these two states. Moderate levels of differences are seen in the politeness measures for these two states. Additionally, co-occurrence measures associated with negative emotions identified unique issues based on the demographics. This study demonstrates that Twitter provides a great opportunity to understand the public perception of transit, and the findings can help authorities design a more efficient transit system to improve user experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from Comprehensive or Interpretive Sociology and the Sociology of skyscrapers, this article proposes as basic objectives to verify how the North American economic culture is showed in the symbolism of the skyscrapers of Chicago and New York and to verify the parallelism between the formal evolution of these buildings and the main economic transformations that have occurred in North American society in recent decades. In short, we will try to highlight the following symbolic questions: if the skyscrapers of Chicago and New York represent the defense of an American business culture marked by strong competitiveness and individualism; if they express the aesthetic transition from a capitalist rationalist architecture to another aesthetic where fiction, fantasy and spectacularity prevail; if this process is in tune with the transformation from an industrial capitalism to another of consumption and if it manifests itself through the decline of rationalist structural architectural elements towards others marked by glass, lightness, fluidity, liquidity and commodification; if the individualism that characterizes North American capitalism has also mutated in recent decades, that is, if from a primitive exaltation of autonomy as a core value of society, it drifts towards the cult of an individualized, privatized self disconnected from public space. Ultimately, it is about confirming the sociological utility of skyscrapers, understood as symbolic, economic, social and cultural objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early twentieth century, Black families, journalists, and reformers positioned movie theaters as dangerous places with potential for crime and immorality. This article takes a look into the physical space of Harlem theaters to assess these fears, investigating the semiprivate public atmosphere of the movies and the various activities other than moviegoing that took place within them. It also considers the unique ways in which Black girls and women engaged in moviegoing in New York, often ignoring the concerns of families and caretakers about theaters, to embrace a means for pleasure and independence as they navigated the urban landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Young, African American and Latino gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately represented among new HIV cases according to the most recent national surveillance statistics. Analysts have noted that these racial/ethnic disparities in HIV among MSM exist within the wider context of sexual, mental and physical health disparities between MSM and heterosexuals. The intercorrelation of these adverse health outcomes among MSM, termed syndemics, has been theorized to be socially produced by a heterosexist social system that marginalizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, MSM and other sexual minorities. African American and Latino MSM experience overlapping systems of oppression that may increase their risk of experiencing syndemic health outcomes. In this paper, using data from twenty in-depth qualitative interviews with MSM living in four New York City (NYC) neighborhoods, we present accounts of neighborhood space, examining how space can both physically constitute and reinforce social systems of stratification and oppression, which in turn produce social disparities in sexual health outcomes. By analyzing accounts of emerging sexuality in neighborhood space, i.e. across time and space, we identify pathways to risk and contribute to our understanding of how neighborhood space is experienced by gay men, adding to our ability to support young men as they emerge in place and to shape the social topography of urban areas. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Parks play a critical role in the health and well-being of people in urban environments. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored the importance of public parks, particularly in cities. To maximize the benefits of these spaces, it is important to understand the social dimension of site user experiences within successful urban parks. Social media data provide a means to assess public places through the lens of large quantities of site users over time. Recent landscape research studies provide assessments of urban and nature-based locations using social media data and are predominantly quantitative in their methodologies (Havinga et al., 2021; Donahue et al., 2018; Wood et al., 2013). However, incorporating mixed methods into existing approaches can create a better understanding of site user experiences. This study uses 11,419 Tripadvisor reviews from the years 2010 to 2018 in a multi-step process, where qualitative content analysis builds upon Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) modeling topics to assess the semantic content of Bryant Park, NY. The new framework emerging from this process separates site user perceptions and sentiment positivity into categories. Site design elements are revealed as a major positive focus of site users, along with the position of the park within the urban fabric, site activity consisting of passive pastimes, and the essence of the space related to emotions. The study's findings can provide guidance for designers and park managers for the creation of successful urban parks and provide another baseline for research on New York City's parks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of DIGITHUM is the property of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Keywords: planned communities; public space; neoliberalism; public-private partnerships; racial segregation EN planned communities public space neoliberalism public-private partnerships racial segregation 1388 1393 6 10/12/21 20211101 NES 211101 Samuel, Lawrence R. (2019). At a time of an acute housing shortage in the city, Parkchester offered improved living conditions for residents eager to leave slums in tenement neighborhoods but unable to pay high rental fees in Manhattan apartment buildings. Parkchester, like Stuyvesant Town, perpetuated racial segregation in New York, revealing the limitations of private and public housing programs at the time. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), possessing the legal power of eminent domain to take private property for public use, had already embraced slum clearance methods to remake impoverished neighborhoods with public housing for the working poor. [Extracted from the article]

In this study, I analyse a commemorative gathering "The White Armbands Day" which works as the reperformance of dehumanizing practices dating back to the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia–Herzegovina. The commemoration specifically presents a request for the construction of a monument for the 102 killed children in Prijedor, the third largest municipality in the Serb Republic entity. The study is structured as a transdisciplinary reading (Halliday 2001. "New Ways of Meaning: The Challenges to Applied Linguistics." In The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology and Environment, edited by Alwin Fill, and Peter Mühlhäusler. New York: Continuum. First published in Journal of Applied Linguistics 6 (1990): 7–36.) of the "living memorial" (Allen and Brown 2011. "Embodiment and Living Memorials: The Affective Labour of Remembering the 2005 London Bombings." Memory Studies 4 (3): 312–327. doi:) showing that the affective and experiencing body is key in the production of more-than-visual/verbal, highly fluid discourses of remembering. My analysis shows that public spaces materialized through living memorials accomplish their moral dimension (Waksman and Shohamy 2016. "Linguistic Landscape of Social Protests: Moving from 'Open' to 'Institutional' Spaces." In Negotiating and Contesting Identities in Linguistic Landscapes, edited by Robert Blackwood, Elizabeth Lanza, and Hirut Woldemariam. London, New York: Bloomsburry) as they call attention to human rights and unspeakable violence, powerfully representing a resistance to the imposed memory regimes and the marginalized status that people have in their own country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the interplay of abjection, space and resistance at the example of a protest intervention that reclaims a highly policed urban space in the city of Leipzig (Saxony, Eastern Germany)—the Main Station. Methodologically, I combine ethnographic material collected throughout the process of a performative counter-action attempting to reclaim and re-imagine Leipzig Main Station as a venue and politicized space with a contextual analysis regarding the discursive landscape evolving around and shaping this urban locale. My empirical analysis is structured along the theoretical discussion of abjection: While Butler's theorization (Butler in Bodies that matter, Routledge, New York, 1993) allows me to focus on the formative power of spatial exclusion and the disruptive potential of protest, theoretical accounts in which abjection is conceived as a "threshold zone" or "overlap space" (Sharkey and Shields in Child Geogr 6:239–256, 2008; Vighi et al. in Between urban topographies and political spaces. Threshold experiences, Lexington Books, Lanham, 2014) help me to outline 'abject space' as a space of negotiation and contradiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than half of young adult (YA) (ages 18–26) smokers are non-daily smokers. While standard cessation methods are generally successful with adults and daily smokers, there is evidence that they are not as successful among non-daily smokers or young adults. Additionally, YA smokers are also in a transition period to regular smoking, making research on understanding how interpersonal and environmental factors affect this group of smokers critical. Randomized time location sampling was used to create a sample of New York City YA bar patrons between June and November 2013, who completed a self-administered survey (1,916 surveys). Questions were asked about perceived smoking social norms, stigma, behaviors, and demographics. Overall, almost half of the YA reported being current smokers (44.1%); one-third were non-daily smokers (36.7%) and less than ten percent were daily smokers (7.4%). Non-daily smokers compared with daily smokers had greater odds of believing New Yorkers disapproved of smoking [adjusted odds ratio (ORadj 1.76, 95 % CI 1.10–2.79)], keeping tobacco a secret from certain people (ORadj 1.84, 1.14–2.96) and feeling guilty when smoking (ORadj: 2.54; 1.45–4.45). Non-daily smokers had 41% lower odds of reporting how people who are important to you disapproved of smoking than daily smokers (ORadj: 0.59; 0.38–0.94). Further studies of interpersonal/environmental factors among YA smokers may support modifications to cessation programs that result in more successful YA quit attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates a multipronged community development initiative in Buffalo, NY, United States. Specifically, the city's community-based 'clean sweep' programme deploys teams of public servants to distressed neighbourhoods to enhance public spaces and engage residents in discussion and/or action. Statistical analyses of a pivotal year of the programme show that property owners on targeted city blocks appeared significantly less likely to violate property codes after the intervention, relative to remaining owners in two separate study areas. These results suggest that the actions that constitute a 'clean sweep' might make for effective community development in some distressed urban locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyze a recent conflict over drumming in a Harlem park to understand the ways in which cultural and racial symbols are employed in negotiations of space within cities. Specifically, I argue that racial belongingness--a racialized claim to space that exists outside of property rights and demarcated through iconography--can be used to both resist and facilitate gentrification in urban locales. The Harlem case illustrates how racial belongingness functions as a device that allows groups to contest power, representation, and access to public space across temporal, physical, and aural boundaries. Thus, I look closely at the city as a canvas and stage upon which passive forms of communication manifest in a racially and culturally coded fashion. Additionally, I argue that contemporary public space discourse is overly preoccupied with class, often neglecting the significance of race in the constitution and experience of urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revitalization of the City of Binghamton has been seen as a key element for economic recovery of the central New York region. Recently, civic leaders have favored neoliberal strategies. Supporters justify these strategies based on notions of community well being. They also assume that government sponsored creative destruction will counter-act the inherent tendency within capitalism to seek spatial fixes. Archaeological research on the history of landscape transformations in Binghamton demonstrates the depth of capitalist spatial fixes that have contributed to Binghamton's current economic crisis. The resulting exploitation of labor and the working class was often obscured by ideologies associated with individual achievement or social reform. Thus, the history of capitalist social relations as it was written in the city scape of Binghamton echoes contemporary conditions and has the potential to inform critiques of these conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article seeks to uncover the reasons for acceptance of the 'broken windows' hypothesis amongst New York City's political elite. Previous critical approaches have generally sought to challenge broken windows by showing that it is empirically suspect. While such approaches are indispensable, they tend to avoid addressing the problem of why, despite its lack of empirical support, political elites continually endorse the broken windows hypothesis as if it were an indisputable, scientifically established truth. In order to address this problem and extend the critical literature, I utilize an interpretive approach based on political memos, press releases, and other political documents from the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. Through an analysis of the official response to graffiti, unruly individuals and noise, I argue that broken windows is embraced by political elites insofar as it serves the interests of growth machines, which essentially seek to commodify and exploit urban spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the nineteenth century, New Yorkers fought passionately over the presence of hogs on their streets and in their city. New York’s filthy streets had cultivated an informal economy and a fertile environment for roaming creatures. The battles—both physical and legal—reveal a city rife with class tensions. After decades of arguments, riots, and petitions, cholera and the fear of other public health crises ultimately spelled the end for New York’s hogs. New York struggled during this period to improve municipal services while adapting to a changing economy and rapid population growth. The fights between those for and against hogs shaped New York City’s landscape and resulted in new rules for using public space a new place for nature in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]