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Copyright of Food Science & Technology & Economy is the property of Grain Science & Technology & Economy 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.)

This article analyzes the urban form and socioeconomic determinants of commute time at the individual trip level in México City. Average commute times were mapped and regression models were applied for four groups of workers according to transportation mode and educational attainment: Car-College, Car-Non College, Transit-College, and Transit-Non College. The most evident pattern of lower commute times in the inner city corresponded to college workers using transit. Regression results showed a complex interplay between socioeconomic variables, the urban form, and commute time. Overall, for car commuters there was limited and weak evidence of differential commutes among socioeconomic classes. However, for transit users, there was a trend of longer commutes for lower socioeconomic categories. Other socioeconomic factors associated with lower commute times were female, spouse, less educational attainment, the young, and the elderly. Important urban form determinants were the jobs-housing ratio at the destination associated with increased travel times and mixed-land use at the origin associated with a decrease in travel times.

Street vending in Ethiopia is a very important yet unbridled component of the informal sector. In the context of the current demographic dynamics and absence of sufficient job opportunities, street vending has become an important economic shelter for the urban poor. The key reasons for joining street vending include the small capital requirement, lack of access to credit facilities, and lack of suitable and commercially viable trading outlets. Street vendors use their personal savings, family transfers and informal credits as start-up capital. Street vendors generate by far better income than they used to get in their original villages. The social network is vital for joining the sector. The common narrative that operators in the informal sector are mainly with no formal education is frequently attacked as more people with formal education, including school dropouts, high-school completes and college graduates, are rapidly joining the sector. One of the major effects of street vending in Addis Ababa is the disruption in pedestrians' free movement and vehicle traffic. Presence of large crowd of vendors in a given space is the function of the size (volume) of items carried by an individual vendor. Formal shop owners identify street vendors as unfair competitors. Many people in Addis are accustomed to "shopping" at the streets since vendors offer merchandise at relatively lower prices. Street vending has unregulated feature whereby the government loses tax income which could have been collected had the transactions taken place legally. Local governments are forced to allocate huge budgets to hire as many officers to control street businesses. However, given the recurrent rise in the crowd of immigrants and weakness of institutions, the task of regulating street business is becoming almost unfeasible. In Ethiopia, the economic and social significance of street vending is not yet well studied and articulated to guide state policy directions aimed at alleviating urban poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses contemporary Indian novelist Kunal Basu's novel Kalkatta (2015), and seeks to understand the dynamic interrelation between city space and human beings in Calcutta in particular and in India in general. It explores the marginalisation and concomitant exclusion of non-Bengali people in the city under the ethnic domination of Bengali people and culture. A psychogeographical reading of the text suggests that the non-Bengali as well as the have-nots or urban poor in Calcutta suffer from discrimination due to an unequal distribution of resources. The setting of Basu's novel is Calcutta's Zakaria Street where cars fail to enter, young boys are trapped into gangs, girls fear slipping into prostitution, and mothers' dreams fade into harsh reality. Through investigating the lives of the marginalised in Zakaria Street as depicted in Kalkatta, this article critiques the corollary adverse impacts of unbridled urbanisation, whimsical capitalism, and the hierarchical power structure on the city's non-Bengali community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a number of prominent concepts in urban planning, like participatory planning or self-help housing, co-production has started to gain momentum in the global South context. While it is has been long discussed as a means of service provision, the term is more and more often used in the broader sense of urban governance and policy planning. This understanding goes beyond the aspect of scaling-up successful co-productive infrastructure focused projects; rather, it indicates a different format of engagement for prompting urban stakeholders into planning citywide urban solutions. This article discusses the distinction between the different levels of co-production and their inter-linkages, and it investigates the relevance of positioning co-production as a factor framing urban governance. This includes a discussion on three main contradictions that can be identified within the current discussion on co-production. Finally, it identifies a set of arguments for elaborating the role of co-production in a policy and urban governance setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the function of the grotesque mode in Rawi Hage’s novels Cockroach (2008) and Carnival (2012). The grotesque is an artistic form with which Hage draws attention to the predicament of the class of poor and disadvantaged new immigrants in contemporary Montreal. He thereby offers a recent immigrant’s unsettling, ex-centric perspective on the Canadian multicultural ideal that proclaims the acceptance of ethnic and racial difference.Formal aspects that generate a grotesque effect include the first-person narrator’s self-image, his disruptive discourse of resistance, his disorienting view of urban reality, and spatial metaphors in the context of the protagonist’s social alienation and marginalisation. Influential theories of the grotesque, introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser, help to describe recurrent shifts in the literary text from “the carnivalesque” to “the demonic grotesque”. In addition, Julia Kristeva’s related notions of “the abject” and “semiotic discourse” throw light on the sense of fear and repulsion felt towards the urban poor, and on the protagonist’s deliberate identification with vermin in the context of his discourse of resistance.Even though the underprivileged migrant is able to answer back, Hage’s novels are devoid of true regenerative and liberating power. As soon as the literary carnivalesque shifts towards the demonic grotesque, the narrative gives prominence to the migrant’s isolation and socio-economic outsider position. Nonetheless, the grotesque mode, being typically associated with flux and the rupturing of boundaries, does function as a powerful tool with which the author depicts the recent immigrant as an individual with an indomitable spirit.

Copyright of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology is the property of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology 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.)

Objectives: A population survey was conducted in an urban shantytown in Bangladesh, as a baseline study of future epidemiological studies. This paper aims to describe the findings of the study, including the population profile and residential environment of the urban poor. Methods: We conducted a complete count household survey in an urban poor community in Dhaka. Using a brief structured questionnaire in Bengali language, trained interviewers visited each household and asked questions such as: duration of residence; ownership of house, toilet and kitchen; water supply; number of family members; age, sex, education, occupation, tobacco use, and history of diseases of each family member. Results: We found that there were 8604 households and 34,170 people in the community. Average number of household members was 4.0. Most people had access to safe water, but only 16% lived in the house with a toilet. Based on the proxy indicators of household wealth levels, we identified that about 39% were relatively well-off, while the rest were very poor. Tobacco use was prevalent in men regardless of age and in women aged over 35 years. Prevalence of self-reported hypertension and diabetes was slightly higher in women than in men, although over 70% of the respondents didn't know if they had such diseases. Incidences of diarrhea in the last one month were relatively low. Conclusions: The study showed population profile and sanitation environment in an urban poor community by a complete count survey. We expect the study to serve as a baseline for future epidemiological studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excluded from ‘the national order of things' refugees live under specific forms of control. Similarly, those citizens that the state considers as potential or real ‘enemies of the nation' live under forms of control that do not apply to other citizens. Using the paired comparison of a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank and the Palestinian districts of an Israeli city, this paper argues that a focus on control can help break the strict analytical dichotomy between cities and camps and between citizens and refugees. It draws attention to the role of agencies of control ranging from humanitarian organizations to policing agencies in shaping how marginalized refugees and citizens negotiate access to scarce material and symbolic resources. In the process, it shows how the forms that political engagement takes in the city and the camp challenge fixed notions of citizenship, cities and camps—for example, the notion that citizenship status and cities are inherently politically empowering while refugee status and camps are inherently depoliticizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of tourism and tourism development affects the urban poor both positively and negatively. Positively, they have more opportunities to find jobs in the tourism sector or increase their income when their jobs are related to tourism. They can also be the beneficiaries of pro-poor tourism projects. Negatively, they are viewed as an obstacle to tourism development where clean and modern images are sought. This study looks at park vendors (a type of urban poor) in Rizal Park, Manila, Philippines. This group is unique because it is not treated as a hindrance to tourism development and the vendors are considered as the beneficiaries of pro-poor tourism projects. They are active contributors to tourism development. When a government agency formalized their businesses, vendors' safety and pride increased. This study provides a case in which a shift from the informal sector to the formal sector contributed to the increased welfare of the urban poor. The shift was possible because of a national tourism drive generating favorable conditions, and the vendors' struggle to obtain the right to work in the park. In this paper, I discuss how the vendors achieved a legal status and show current conditions of their work and their relationship with a government agency after obtaining the right. Data for this study were collected between 2005 and 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study aims to describe the prevalence of non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors among the urban poor in Bangladesh., Design: We conducted a community-based cross-sectional epidemiological study., Setting: The study was conducted in a shantytown in the city of Dhaka. There were 8604 households with 34 170 residents in the community. Those households were categorised into two wealth strata based on the housing structure., Participants: The study targeted residents aged 18-64 years. A total of 2986 eligible households with one eligible individual were selected by simple random sampling stratified by household wealth status. A total of 2551 residents completed the questionnaire survey, and 2009 participated in the subsequent physical and biochemical measurements., Outcome Measures: A modified WHO survey instrument was used for assessing behavioural risk factors and physical and biochemical measurements, including glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c). The prevalence of NCD risk factors, such as tobacco use, fruit and vegetable intake, overweight/obesity, hypertension, diabetes (HbA1c ≥6.5%) and dyslipidaemia, was described according to household wealth status and gender differences., Results: The prevalence of current tobacco use was 60.4% in men and 23.5% in women. Most of them (90.8%) consumed more than 1 serving of fruits and vegetables per day; however, only 2.1% consumed more than 5 servings. Overweight/obesity was more common in women (39.2%) than in men (18.9%), while underweight was more common in men (21.0%) than in women (7.1%). The prevalence of hypertension was 18.6% in men and 20.7% in women. The prevalence of diabetes was 15.6% in men and 22.5% in women, which was much higher than the estimated national prevalence (7%). The prevalence of raised total cholesterol (≥190 mg/dL) was 25.7% in men and 34.0% in women., Conclusion: The study identified that tobacco use, both overweight and underweight, diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidaemia were prevalent among the urban poor in Bangladesh., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.)