Does neighbourhood count in affecting children's journeys to schools?

This study examines two factors affecting children's school journeys – independent mobility and accessible school opportunities. Two time-geography based indicators, the spatial extent of potential path area and the number of weighted school places reachable (labelled OPP), are estimated. Multi-level modelling has been developed to analyse the interplay of individual, household and neighbourhood factors. Hong Kong is used as a case study because the neighbourhood effects on school provision within compact cities have not been well studied. The results show that 30.4% of the children's school journeys were made without adult companions. Half of the children walked to schools. The multi-level analysis suggests that nearly 90% of the variance in both indicators was found at the individual level. Neighbourhood, though not a decisive factor, does have impacts on the number of accessible school choices.     

The boundaries of suburban discontent? Urban definitions and neighbourhood political effects

Residents of city and suburban neighbourhoods have diverged in the way they vote, with inner-city dwellers preferring political parties on the left while suburbanites increasingly vote for parties on the right. Yet it is not clear whether such a division is more evident between residents of central and suburban municipalities (the jurisdictional hypothesis), or between residents of neighbourhoods differentiated by urban form and, by assumption, lifestyle (the morphological hypothesis). While there are clear reasons for the predominant reliance on municipal differences in research based in the U.S. and other countries, it is not evident that these reasons apply in the Canadian context. This article examines how urban boundaries articulate electoral differences between metropolitan residents in Canada's three largest urban regions, using aggregate election data for federal elections between 1945 and 2000, survey data from the 2000 Canada election study and a series of indices developed by the author. It is found that while trends towards city–suburban polarization are similar regardless of the boundaries used to define the zones, in the Canadian case the results are stronger and more significant when boundaries based on urban form (between pre-and post-war development) are employed. The implications of these results for the relationship between urban space and political values in Canadian cities are then discussed.     

Alone or together in the neighbourhood? School choice and families’ access to local social networks

This study explores how the everyday geographies of city life and families’ access to social networks in the neighbourhood influence families’ school choices. The data consist of thematic interviews with parents of 8–14-year-old children (n?=?170) in three urban areas located in the cities of Paris (France), Milan (Italy) and Espoo (Finland) and are analysed via qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the families’ access to local social networks influences the reasoning behind school choice to the local school. The children’s relationships with other children and adults in the neighbourhood are considered important, but additionally, the parents’ networks with other parents in the area, mediated by the school, play their role. School choices as practices should therefore be analysed not merely as choices of an institution, as they comprise various aspects concerning the surrounding neighbourhood as a physical and social space.     

Preserving ‘the Enemy’s’ architecture: preservation and gentrification in a formerly Palestinian Jerusalem neighbourhood

This article relates to the preservation of Palestinian buildings in Jerusalem and raises the question why state-sanctioned institutions act to preserve Palestinian architecture built pre-1948, bearing in mind the context of a difficult past and an on-going conflict? The article addresses the manner in which Jerusalem’s authorised heritage discourse focuses only on preserving Palestinian buildings’ tangible aspects (architectural styles), and not on intangible aspects such as the narrative of their builders. The main argument is that while preservation is presented as a civilised practice, it is driven by the commodification of the buildings and sites and their valued ‘authenticity’. The common practice is to ‘preserve’ these buildings by developing them to create more housing units. This practice inevitably leads to gentrification. Moreover, even when intangible aspects of heritage are pushed aside, preserving these buildings comes with the ‘risk’ of them being used as memory sites for subaltern groups. The article focuses on one formerly Palestinian West Jerusalem neighbourhood, Baka, where gentrification was triggered by historic Palestinian homes and where the neighbourhood’s development continues to be linked with historic preservation.     

‘We want to be there for everyone’: imagined spaces of encounter and the politics of place in a super-diverse neighbourhood

In the context of increasingly diverse urban populations in European cities, neighbourhood organizations are often seen as offering spaces of encounter that can foster a sense of belonging. As a result, they have formed an important element in urban policies on community identity and social cohesion. Yet everyday encounters in such micro-publics may not necessarily be experienced as positive, and these spaces themselves might become sites of contestation and exclusion. Through an ethnographic study in a super-diverse neighbourhood in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, this paper investigates how residents’ sense of belonging to the neighbourhood is informed by competing claims on a neighbourhood centre. Although envisioned as a collective space, contestations between different groups of residents over the centre as a functional and meaningful place illustrate how governing institutions shape informal politics of place through their own vision for the neighbourhood and their selective support of some initiatives over others.     

Under what conditions do ethnic minority candidates attract the ethnic minority vote? How neighbourhood and candidate characteristics affected ethnic affinity voting in the Dutch 2017 parliamentary elections

Ethnic affinity voting is the term for when political party candidates with an ethnic minority background receive a larger share of the vote in ethnically dense neighbourhoods. This study is one of the first to provide a detailed test for ethnic affinity voting during a national election in an open-list proportional representation system, with the same ballots in every polling station. It tests the conditions under which ethnic affinity voting is greater, studying the proportion of votes for ethnic minority candidates at neighbourhood level in the Netherlands in 2017, when a minority-interest party entered parliament and the traditional ethnic vote for the social democratic party (PvdA) imploded. This study disentangles party and candidate effects and finds evidence for (general and specific) ethnic affinity voting at candidate level. Even though ethnic minority candidates attract fewer votes, they perform better in neighbourhoods where more minorities live, especially when the group size of co-ethnics is larger. Ethnic affinity effects are relatively strong for candidates affiliated with minority-oriented and left-wing parties, and absent or negative for ethnic candidates of right-wing parties. Moreover, whether male or female ethnic candidates are more likely to attract the ethnic vote also depends on the ethnic background and party affiliation of the candidate.