FLAGSHIP DEVELOPMENTS AND THE PHYSICAL UPGRADING OF THE POST-SOCIALIST INNER CITY: THE GOLDEN ANGEL PROJECT IN PRAGUE

Over the past few decades many urban leaders have searched for an appropriate policy response to tackle urban decay. Various kinds of flagship projects emerged in many cities as the products of a property‐led approach to the regeneration strategies adopted by local governments in North American and European cities. It was expected that the creation of high‐profile milieux would launch chain reactions which would eventually lead to the regeneration of declining neighbourhoods. The focus of this study lies in the anatomy of physical transformation in an inner city neighbourhood within the context of post‐socialist transition. In particular, the paper discusses the flagship role of the Golden Angel commercial centre in the physical upgrading of the Smíchov district in Prague. The case study contributes to the understanding of complex circumstances and mechanisms of revitalization in the post‐socialist inner city. The empirical material is based on field observations, expert opinions and existing documents. The paper shows that a high‐profile project can be one of the driving forces in physical revitalization through the provision of symbolic power, credibility and appeal to a declining neighbourhood. At the same time, it is emphasize that physical transformation is a multi‐conditional and context‐related process rather than an automatic and straightforward outcome of flagship developments. Successful revitalization depends on a favourable constellation of various factors. On the local level, the key factors include the development potential of the location, the attitude of the local authorities and the commitment of all involved actors.     

BLOCK,NEIGHBOURHOOD OR DISTRICT? THE IMPORTANCE OF GEOGRAPHICAL SCALE FOR AREA EFFECTS ON EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Researchers show an increasing interest in the question of how a neighbourhood influences its residents. The crucial question is whether place‐related factors have an independent effect on individual life chances. This study examines adolescent development, with educational attainment as the dependent variable. It further addresses contextual effects that emerge at different intra‐urban geographical scales by exploring spatial effects at block, neighbourhood and district level in Oslo, Norway. How does the population composition at the three scales affect the level of future educational attainment for adolescents? What are the most important aspects of the population? Is the impact of various population indicators similar or different across the three scales? A number of causal mechanisms, which operate at different geographical scales, such as social interaction, shared social spaces, stigmatization and institutional resources are discussed. The study has a longitudinal approach, and includes register‐based information about the whole population of Oslo and a young target population. The analysis is based on two‐, three‐ and four‐level modelling. The results reveal significant effects on the youth's future educational attainment at all geographical levels and for all tested measures of social and demographic area composition. The share of low‐educated neighbours seems to have the strongest impact. Contradictory to most other studies, the results show that the highest geographical level (district) has the strongest effect. This surprising result is tentatively interpreted to emerge from a combination of three interwoven mechanisms: the youths' extended activity spaces and social interactions, the institutional aspects (schools), and place stigmatization.     

Spatial and environmental impacts on adverse birth outcomes in Ontario

This study assesses the overall spatial variations and neighbourhood‐level “hot spots” of low birth weight and preterm birth incidence within three public health units in Ontario, Canada. The analysis uses a stepwise approach of intra‐class correlation analysis, a spatial scan statistic, and multilevel spatial modeling. Results show that neighbourhood level variation accounts for only 2–3 percent of the total variation of adverse birth outcomes in the study area. However, strong spatial autocorrelation is observed at the neighbourhood level, and spatial clusters of relatively high adverse birth outcome rates exist in areas that are associated with environmental risks, including pollution sources and proximity to highways. Thus, although estimated neighbourhood impacts on adverse birth outcomes are small compared with those of individual‐level risks, local high potential environmental risk areas are identifiable. Environmental surveillance and spatial statistical analysis should be conducted regularly by local health authorities to identify and monitor the impact of environmental changes on health in general and on birth outcomes in particular. Specific community‐oriented health interventions may be required to reduce observed local health impacts.     

旅游目的地定位主题口号设计若干基本问题的探讨——基于品牌要素视角的分析

本文从旅游目的地定位主题口号作为品牌化中品牌要素的角度,结合部分国外目的地品牌化研究文献、品牌理论和相关营销学理论,对在目的地品牌化这一新研究框架下定位主题口号的概念理解、双向沟通功能、科学设计方法和流程以及设计中须注意的几条原则进行了探讨。文章旨在通过详细阐明理想目的地口号的作用目标和设计原则,厘清传统营销中对该相关问题的一些模糊认识,并拓宽思路,为国内的目的地口号设计实践注入少许新的观点。     

No-go- area,no-go- school: community discourses,local school market and children's identity work

This article focuses on how 11-year-old children in a segregated Swedish suburb at the time of choosing school for Year 6 in the 9-year compulsory school used current community discourses in their identity work, while constructing an ‘us’ in relation to ‘them’. The segregation in the suburb was strengthened by the process of a school market, with competition among the schools. Even if the formal choice was made by the parents the study shows that the choosing process was also an important part of the children's identity work. The results show differentiations among the children with a majority of children involved in re-constructing both a neighbourhood and the neighbourhood's school as no-go-areas while other children rather choose that school.     

Estonian Swedish Ethnic Survival – Examples from Nuckö in the Interwar Period

Abstract

A long-term perspective is important in studies of ethnic groups and their opportunities for survival. This case study deals with the Swedish population in Nuckö (Noarootsi), Estonia, during the interwar period. Even though the Swedish population declined as a whole, some villages succeeded in maintaining their Swedish affiliation. Settlement patterns and varying opportunities to own land are important factors behind these differences. The Estonian–Swedish cultural awakening in the interwar period made it easier for people to show their Swedish ethnic identity more openly. Inhabitants in villages that already at the end of the nineteenth century had a large proportion of Estonians in their population, reacted more positively to the state's request that people change their surname as part of the assimilation policy of the 1930s. Even though people in some villages chose to register a change in ethnic status, a change of surname, and even changed their use of language, they may nonetheless have remained committed to their former Swedish ethnicity on a private level. It is crucial to combine different kinds of data, such as church records, censuses and interviews, in order to illustrate the complexities of ethnic identity from a variety of different angles.     

HOW CHILDREN PLACE THEMSELVES AND OTHERS IN LOCAL SPACE

This study examines the ways in which children aged 11 to 15 in six adjacent neighbourhoods in a medium-sized Swedish town place themselves and others in local space. Special attention is given to how they discuss a neighbourhood stigmatized in the public discourse and how children who live in this neighbourhood react to the negative representations of the place in which they live. The study is based on group interviews and maps. The study shows that children construct representations of their own neighbourhoods as "quiet" neighbourhoods and place objects of "trouble" and "danger" somewhere else. It is argued that this is done both in relation to their personal knowledge of the neighbourhood and in relation to local and/or media representations of their own and other neighbourhoods. It is shown that the children are influenced by media representations of a stigmatized neighbourhood, but also that they are not passive reproducers of these discourses and that some of them are able to offer counter-discourses. The children living in this neighbourhood experience difficulties in defending it as the quiet place which they perceive it to be to outsiders because of the negative discourses.     

THE SWEDISH CONSULAR SERVICE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE, 1720–18151

This paper deals with the origins and functions of the Swedish consular service in Southern Europe between 1720 and 1815. It is argued that establishment of the consular service was a necessary part of the Swedish policy of trade expansion. Consuls acted partly as commission agents of Swedish merchant and shipowners, because Sweden lacked established trading contacts in the area. Partly, consuls had official diplomatic functions, especially in North Africa. The consular service is conceived as an institutional arrangement reducing transaction costs of Swedish agents. This article suggests that reduction in protection costs in particular was a significant competitive advantage of Swedish merchants and shipowners and was due to peace treaties with the Barbary states in North Africa and Sweden's neutrality in the 18th‐century great power conflicts.     

国外旅游目的地品牌化研究现状与分析

20世纪90年代末以来,旅游目的地品牌化研究逐步受到关注。本文在回顾国外相关研究文献的基础上,从旅游目的地品牌化概念、旅游目的地品牌构建、旅游目的地品牌传播、旅游目的地品牌管理以及旅游目的地品牌评估等五个方面对研究状况进行归纳,并就其中存在的某些局限提出了一些见解,以供国人在相关研究中参考。     

After Gentrification: Social Mix,Settler Colonialism,and Cruel Optimism in the Transformation of Neighbourhood Space

Social mix policies have emerged as a prominent mechanism to legitimate neighbourhood redevelopment efforts across the US. Despite integrationist rhetoric, results often disabuse marginalised communities of their claims to the city. This paper employs a hybrid spatio‐temporal analysis at the intersection of political‐economic theories of gentrification and post‐colonial and Black geographies literatures to examine underlying cultural logics and affective experiences animating such processes of neighbourhood transformation, contestation, and succession. Reflecting on 15 years of experience researching Over‐the‐Rhine (OTR), Cincinnati, we contribute a stylised distinction between the foundational, mature, and ongoing legacies of urban settler colonial relations. Our account discloses the power geometries shaping neighbourhood space by illustrating the impact of the discourses, tactics, and strategies employed by pro‐development actors and neighbourhood activists as OTR's socio‐political landscape shifted over time. In conclusion, we engage the thorny questions these dynamics raise surrounding how inner‐city neighbourhoods are theorised and struggled over after gentrification.     

THE NEIGHBOURHOOD EFFECT IN A LOCAL ELECTION

One of the more popular ideas in electoral geography is that there is a positive correlation between residential proximity and voting behaviour. Often referred to as the neighbourhood effect, the idea is quite simply that individuals within a given local area tend to vote similarly. The process involves, it is suggested, social contacts between neighbours leading to political discussion and information flow which exerts an influence on the way people vote. Closely related to, but distinguishable from the neighbourhood effect is the friends-and-neighbours effect whereby neighbours of a particular candidate will tend to know him better, discuss him more, and support him more avidly than they will other candidates. Since the concepts of the neighbourhood effect and the friends-and-neighbours effect have been adopted into the literature of political geography, and have become central as explanatory models for certain spatial patterns of voting behaviour,¹ the rather inconclusive and contradictory findings of researchers using these concepts require examination, and the concepts and process require an empirical test.     

广州旧城区传统绅士化现象及其机制研究——以荔湾区逢源街道耀华社区为例

本文在对国外传统绅士化概念的内涵与机制进行梳理的基础上,以广州荔湾区逢源街道耀华社区为例探讨了市场转型期中国大城市传统绅士化运动的特征与机制。通过对绅士化特征的分析,本文指出广州作为转型期的中国大城市存在着渐进的自下而上的传统绅士化过程,并具有以下特征:以外来工商人员为主流"绅士",社区人口置换过程缓慢,政府主导社区的景观环境改造。其中,广州市政府的"退二进三"政策及旧城区的商业发展而非文化因素成为传统绅士化的主要动力,破碎的产权结构则是绅士化进程的主要障碍。     

Rhetoric in the Representation of a Multi‐Ethnic Neighbourhood: The Case of Via Padova,Milan

This paper analyses how the neighbourhood of Via Padova in Milan, Italy has been represented and problematized by the media and the last two municipal administrations over the last decade. Since the late 1990s, Via Padova has undergone a significant socio‐demographic transformation, one which has eventually characterised the area as one of the most multi‐ethnic and diverse districts in the whole city. However, this transformation process and the upcoming new framework for the neighbourhood have been explained and approached in very different (and contested) ways. The aim of this paper is to compare the different narratives provided by both the media and also governmental institutions during the formerly right‐wing and current left‐wing administrations, and the implications of this, both in the shaping of a collective image of the area and in the development of local policies.     

Trafficking in Liquor,Trafficking in Heritage: Beer Branding as Heritage in Post‐apartheid South Africa

A burgeoning literature on post‐apartheid heritage configuration has largely overlooked the use of branding in the creation of heritage discourses in South Africa and the significance of liquor for national identity. This article brings these two concerns together through an examination of two heritage‐scapes—the SAB World of Beer and the SAB Newlands Brewery Heritage Centre—constructed by South African Breweries (SAB) in 1995. It suggests that the commercial construction of heritage as branding provided a vehicle for a powerful corporate capitalist narrative in the post‐apartheid rhetorical contestation over a desired path for the future. It also suggests that dissonance within and between these corporate visitors’ centres mirrored a wider uncertainty over the meaning of national identity in early post‐apartheid South Africa.     

Modelling diversity: cultural district policies in Doha and Singapore

ABSTRACT

Over the last twenty years, cities around the world have seen the multiplication of cultural district projects, which aim to concentrate cultural organisations in a circumscribed urban space, or to label a neighbourhood’s cultural scene. This paper examines the adoption and adaptation of a globally circulating cultural policy model as an instrument of urban governance. Moving away from the notion of policy transfer, understood as a neutral and unidirectional process through which successful culture-led development models spread to other contexts, I show how local actors mobilise external references to position themselves in a transnational cultural policymaking field, and construct their city as a model. I compare the multi-scalar politics of urban modelling in Doha and Singapore, where globally circulating culture-led development models have been introduced not only as instruments of economic growth, but also as diversity management tools. On the one hand, cultural districts serve as discursive nation building/branding instruments to project an imagined identity locally and internationally. On the other hand, urban elites can mobilise cultural districts to make strategic shifts in the diversity management discourse, through an engagement with the urban environment, and the co-optation civil society actors at multiple scales.     

Power to the people: when culture works as a social catalyst in urban regeneration processes (and when it does not)

This article focuses upon the relationship between culture, urban regeneration schemes, and their impact on socio-cognitive assets – namely, social and human capital. It examines three major urban regeneration projects in the districts of Saint Michel (Montreal, Canada), Auburn (Sydney, Australia) and Bicocca (Milan, Italy), where culture has been invoked as a main transformational driver at the economic and socio-environmental levels, but with different approaches and results. Through comparative analysis, we develop a more general reflection on the social impact of culture-led urban transformation processes, questioning the actual role of cultural initiatives – particularly those related to the creation of new cultural facilities and the programming of big cultural flagship events – and participation as a means to improve the local social milieu. We find that a key role for social efficacy is played by projects’ capacity to elicit the commitment of residents through inclusive cultural participation, as opposed to instrumental top-down initiatives mainly addressing city and neighbourhood branding and real estate marketing purposes.     

THE VIETNAM WAR

This article investigates the role of the Vietnam War in Danish and Norwegian politics. We argue that Danish and Norwegian membership in NATO and an unstable parliamentary situation may explain why these countries, unlike Sweden, did not take on the lead in the international protest against the war. Non‐socialistic coalitions came to power in Norway and Denmark in the latter half of the 1960s which to an extent explains why the social democratic parties in both countries became more critical of the US. By the end of the 1960s, foreign policy as well as public attitudes towards the war converged in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and in all three countries powerful protest movements emerged that were remarkably similar. The Vietnam War strengthened the left in general and promoted a leftist politics of solidarity that influenced Swedish, Danish and Norwegian foreign policy‐making of the 1970s.     

SHADOWS OF PLANNING: ON LANDSCAPE/PLANNING HISTORY AND INHERITED LANDSCAPE AMBIGUITIES AT THE URBAN FRINGE

The history of vernacular landscapes at the urban fringe is poorly studied, limiting our understanding of the contemporary character of the fringe and our knowledge of the urbanization process. This article argues the necessity of a combined analysis of the legacies of planning and the footprints of former landscape ideals in order to understand the conditions for spatial planning at the urban fringe. After first introducing the methodological use of landscape/planning history, the article focuses on the Swedish discourse on landscape change and landscape planning concerning the urban fringe in the 1930s. Particular focus is placed on the discourse on agricultural landscapes at the urban fringe. The third section of the article presents an examination of the footprints of the ‘landscape convention’ (i.e. an agreement on the meaning of landscape in relation to law and justice) resulting from the landscape discourse of the 1930s. The article argues that the legacy of the 1930s explains some of the difficulties arising when planners of today aim to utilize the farm landscape as a resource for recreation at the urban fringe. The shadow of the landscape discourse of the 1930s also creates difficulties in dealing with peri‐urban landscapes in Swedish planning and Swedish law. With the ongoing discourse on how to implement the European Landscape Convention, such knowledge is particularly useful.     

TOWARDS A BIOPOLITICS OF THE VICTIMIZED BODY

This article discusses the creation of assault as a crime against health and life as this discursive process is expressed through Swedish laws, legislative discussions, and legal practice from 1945 to 1965. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s theoretical reflections on biopolitics and sociologist Thomas Lemke’s outline to a analytics of biopolitics, the article argues that a most central component in the genealogy of assault as a crime against health and life was a shift in the first post-war decades, from a predominant legal idealistic paradigm within Swedish jurisprudence, by which assault was defined as a crime against bodily integrity, to a legal realistic epistemology, imbued with the scientific knowledge and empirical ‘truth’-producing practices of modern medicine. As an effect, new discourses around the victimized body emerged, through which prevailing knowledges and ‘truths’ around violent crime and its effects were challenged and marginalized. In this discursive process, the 19th-century legal-moral category of violent crimes finally collapsed into the overarching legal category prescribed by Brottsbalken (1965) as ‘crimes against health and life’. Consequently, the victimized body was deprived of all meaning but ‘life’ and thus created as a biopolitical space, available to series of life-governing interventions and regulatory practices.