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Current urban green space planning processes are typically guided by greenspace-to-residence proximity indicators. Alone, these indicators are unable to assess, and respond, to the growing socio-spatial polarisation of environmental risks, impacts, and benefits among distinct societal groups within a city. In this research, we present a municipal green space planning tool for measuring the spatial distribution of urban green space diversity within a city, developed using a novel spatial application of the Shannon diversity index to urban green spaces. We illustrate the use of this planning tool in the case of Vantaa, a city in Southern Finland, and examine the association of this diversity indicator with three spatially polarising socio-demographic factors in the region. Contrary to the dominant environmental distributive justice narrative, and stark trends towards socio-spatial polarisation observed in many cities internationally, our findings reveal that urban green space diversity does not currently correlate with income, age structure, or share of population with a foreign background in Vantaa. However, given the changing social dynamics present in our case city, ongoing monitoring and evaluation of who benefits and how from ecosystem service benefits of a diverse urban green space network is necessary. This research offers a practical tool for urban green space planners in European cities facing similar periods of significant differential spatial expansion and changing social dynamics.

Residential gating is a notable element in cities worldwide, but notable gaps exist in studies of residential gating in smaller cities and the Global South. This article examines the historical and urban geographies of residential gating in the Arab Gulf, using a case study from Bahrain. This research adds new nuance to studies of gated communities by presenting a case study from a smaller city in the Global South and integrating observations and interviews. The results explain the reasons for gated community development in Bahrain and provide insight into gated communities’ built and social environments in Bahrain. The article concludes that in ordinary cities, understanding urban development in general, and gated developments in particular, demands attention to their spatiotemporal contexts. Attention to these contexts can provide new insights that contribute to efforts to interpret and theorise contemporary urbanisation processes.

Residential gating is a notable element in cities worldwide, but notable gaps exist in studies of residential gating in smaller cities and the Global South. This article examines the historical and urban geographies of residential gating in the Arab Gulf, using a case study from Bahrain. This research adds new nuance to studies of gated communities by presenting a case study from a smaller city in the Global South and integrating observations and interviews. The results explain the reasons for gated community development in Bahrain and provide insight into gated communities' built and social environments in Bahrain. The article concludes that in ordinary cities, understanding urban development in general, and gated developments in particular, demands attention to their spatiotemporal contexts. Attention to these contexts can provide new insights that contribute to efforts to interpret and theorise contemporary urbanisation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimistic vision of a balanced socio-spatial development trajectory of the European economic space has been constantly challenged by the rise of new dimensions of socio-spatial inequalities and, recently, by the polarising effects of the global economic crisis. Inequalities emerged not only as income differentials but also as various forms of material deprivation, such as having limited access to basic goods, services, and housing and struggling with permanent financial difficulties. In this study, we focus on spatial processes produced by various institutional-corporate and administrativebureaucratic- strategies that changed the 'material' conditions of consumption practices profoundly, before and after the crisis. The critical political economic concept that we employ allows us to consider consumption as a socio-spatial practice in which various (class, gender, family, etc.) social relations manifest, and, as a social act, are embedded into a 'material reality' of consumption spaces. Thus, we consider the on-going restructuring of consumption spaces and the related practices as manifestations of uneven development and the underlying (spatial) logic of capital. We seek to reveal the following: i) how localities were polarised by the influx of retail capital and the spread of new retail forms; (ii) if a shift towards a tighter control in retail and consumption enhanced or eased the unevenness of consumption landscapes; and (iii) whether the polarisation processes were accelerated by the crisis (the spatially uneven decline of retail investments and household incomes). To achieve these objectives, we rely on a combined methodology including the analysis of spatial statistics on retail restructuring and consumption in regulations. For the latter, we employ the content analysis of the relevant policy documents and media discourses as well as empirical results of fieldworks (interviews with executives) targeting various retail organisations. Our results reflect the role of retail capital-multiple territorial embedding-in driving uneven development during crisis through corporate strategies for protecting the spatially fixed assets of retailers. The retailers' spatial strategies should be understood as the manifestations of the responses to the crisis of the financialised Central and Eastern European (CEE) markets (declining demand, indebtedness, and flight of capital from peripheral markets) that differentiated consumers by income and by place of residence across Hungary. This process was also facilitated by the state through the parallel employment of an interventionist retail policy and a re-fashioned and socially selective redistributive system, which fuelled the emergence of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' consumer groups- marginalizing primarily the poor living in peripheral (mostly, rural) spaces within Hungary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on the preliminary results of the research of socio-spatial structure in Zagreb. The main socioeconomic indicators: educational structure, average earnings, and the structure of employed and unemployed population were analysed. Despite the lack of relevant statistical indicators, results show notable changes of socio-spatial structure indu-ced by transition processes. Differences between city districts, expressed by socioeconomic indicators can be viewed as a beginning of the process of socio-spatial polarisation in Zagreb.

Despite over 20 years of uninterrupted economic growth and population expansion, distinct concentrations of poverty and disadvantage remain extant in all Australia’s major conurbations. This paper systematically identifies, classifies and maps disadvantaged places in the nation’s largest cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Our exploratory analysis indicates the presence of four distinct disadvantaged area types across the three cities. For each city we measure the ongoing intensification of spatially concentrated disadvantage and the pace at which ‘disadvantage epicentres’ have continued to shift outwards in the direction of the metropolitan periphery. Contributing to this process, the small fraction of disadvantaged suburbs exiting the ‘disadvantaged’ cohort 2006–2011 were predominantly those located closer to CBDs. 2006–2011 change over time analysis also validates the typology in highlighting that particular types of low-income suburbs have had a disproportionate propensity to acquire ‘disadvantaged’ status over this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, master planned estates are emerging as a favoured form of residential development, finding support from urban planners and government. The proliferation of master planned estates has led urban researchers to comment on the socially exclusive nature of many of these new developments and their potential contribution to socio-spatial polarisation in the urban landscape. Do master planned estates purposefully inculcate an image of exclusivity, and do these constructions result in socio-spatial polarisation? A case study of the contribution of master planned estates to polarisation in the urban landscape is examined here. This research analysed the intentions, imagery and outcomes of a specific master planned estate in suburban Sydney – Glenmore Park. The established, socially constructed, and in some ways negative image of western Sydney has been used as a mirror against which an alternative – albeit exclusive and distinct – identity for Glenmore Park has been advanced. The intended image was for an exclusive and prestigious estate for white nuclear families. The developers and place marketers played a key role in the construction of this exclusivity, which ultimately superseded some of the more socially inclusive planning objectives for the area. The overriding conclusion from this research is that, in this case, there is an explicit connection between intentions and imagery, which encourages socio-spatial polarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]