Coordinating Transport and Urban Planning: From Ideologies to Local Realities

In Europe, the idea that coordinating transportation and urban planning is a necessary condition for setting sustainable urban development into motion has spread throughout academic and professional circles. While this concern is not new, the objectives underlying transport and urban planning coordination have deeply changed over the last decades. How have local authorities translated the requirements and objectives of national laws? How have they accounted for the evolution of these global objectives? What factors explain innovation and continuity in the relationship between land use planning and transport policies? In a comparative research between Switzerland and France, we addressed the question of political change by reconstituting the “trajectories” of four urban areas: Geneva and Bern in Switzerland and Strasbourg and Bordeaux in France. We have described the policy paths of these urban areas since the end of the 1960s by focusing on the contents of master plans, the principal technical solutions and projects that have been implemented, and the means of inter-sectorial coordination used. For each case, factors of change or inertia have been identified by focusing on three main variables that are often studied alternatively in public policy analysis: ideas, institutions and interests.     

‘In This Profession We Eat Dust’: Informal and Formal Solidarity among Women Urban Transportation Workers in Nepal

This article considers the working lives of women who drive electric rickshaws, known as tempos, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the author examines drivers’ precarious working conditions and the strategies they use in an effort to secure better conditions and job security. This case study illuminates the particulars of women tempo drivers’ day-to-day experiences and also speaks to larger debates in feminist political economy surrounding women's entrance into the paid labour force, especially in South Asia. Women drivers provide a compelling example of how socio-economically disadvantaged women in industrializing and urbanizing cities of the global South find ways to create and protect spaces of dignified work and worker solidarity despite myriad challenges. Evidence from the research suggests that both informal and more formalized coping and resistance strategies are important mechanisms through which women seek to change the terms of their labour.     

Rivalry or Synergy? Formal and Informal Local Governance in Rural India

Informal local governance institutions (ILGIs) are prevalent at the village level in rural India. Generally perceived by urban Indians to be ‘oppressive’, ILGIs also have progressive features and often perform a range of useful collective functions at the village level. Instead of fading away in the face of modernity, ILGIs have found ways to interact, often in a positive manner, with the newer, elected local government institutions, the Grama Panchayats. Based on field research in Karnataka state, this article tries to present a more holistic picture of ILGIs, including their role in village governance and service delivery; the ways in which they interact with Grama Panchayats, and the implications of their existence and role for local democracy. It also presents a tentative theoretical framework towards explaining why ILGIs in Karnataka particularly, and in India generally, seem to be less repressive, more functional and more likely to survive than in some other countries of the South.     

Challenges to Democracy in Market-Oriented Urban Planning in Norway

Neo-liberal ideas have resulted in a planning practice characterized by an informal phase in which early agreements are reached in closed negotiations between municipal planners and private developers. This challenges norms of legitimacy and accountability found in traditional democratic theories, as well as deliberative planning and network governance theories. Input-based legitimacy may be weakened by the lack of participation as well as by asymmetry in resources available for participation (voice). The representative democracy's (vote) responsiveness to the electorate may be weakened due to the lack of knowledge of the views of those affected, early lock-in to agreements and weak meta-governance due to the lack of adherence to overall plans. Throughput legitimacy is reduced by the lack of transparency, and thus accountability, in the informal phase. Output legitimacy might justify the privileged position of developers if tangible results are achieved. However, lack of participation weakens the quality and long-term lastingness of decisions, and lack of deliberation weakens the acceptability of justifications for those burdened by the decisions. We argue that two different types of reforms are necessary to increase the input legitimacy of planning practices: representative democracy reforms that strengthen the role of politicians and reforms that strengthen the direct participation of stakeholders in planning.     

Crisis,Informalization and the Urban Informal Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa

Neo-liberal theories of informality have emphasized the potential of the informal sector for independent employment creation and growth. An alternative perspective is provided by the structuralist ‘informalization’ approach which regards the expansion of informal activity as part of the restructuring strategy of the formal sector in the face of economic recession. The informalization perspective challenges the traditional notions of the informal sector by focusing on such issues as differentiation, social networks, subcontracting and supply linkages with the formal sector, and the role of the state in informal sector expansion. Despite its First World and Latin American focus, the informalization approach offers important insights for the study of urban informal sectors in Africa.     

From Informal Recreation to a Geography of Achievement: Women's Soccer in South Australia

Since its inclusion amongst Olympic sports in the 1990s, women's soccer has grown impressively worldwide. Despite its rapid global expansion and growth in the number of playing participants, the sport has been neglected by geographers. In Australia, which is currently the fifth women's soccer country in the world as per registered players, the popularity of the sport has grown significantly in recent years. Perhaps even more strikingly, however, the approach to the sport has changed, to focus on the achievement of results. The shift in the purpose of women's soccer, from a solely social and recreational activity to an achievement sport, is a result of the increasing links between the local women's soccer systems and the global world of sport. The paper examines an exemplar of South Australia, and in particular the Adelaide metropolitan region. Here, in the last 30 years, women's soccer has evolved from a geography of foundation, defined by informal organisation and localised scope, to a geography of achievement, characterised by an institutionalised focus on the production of players, the introduction of higher-profile ‘sportscapes’, a broader pattern of clubs distribution, and a new set of connections with global women's soccer. The current geography of achievement links local and global women's soccer scenes. On the other hand, it funnels access to the achievement level of South Australian women's soccer to a limited central area of Adelaide's metropolitan region. The paper also draws attention to the part that social capital, and especially ‘bridging’ social capital, played in enabling the evolution of Adelaide women's soccer. The role of social capital as a contributing element of the development of sporting systems is a topic that deserves further investigation.     

From China's Urban Social Space to Social and Environmental Justice

A senior American specialist on China and noted geographer argues that the preoccupation of China geographers' with empirical analyses of that country's dramatic economic, social, and urban transformation over the last two decades—usually explained in terms of the now familiar quadruple forces of globalization, marketization, deregulation, and decentralization—should be broadened to reflect a concern for the problems of disadvantaged groups impacted negatively in dynamic urban and environmental settings. The methodology of reflexive activism is proposed as affording a framework for a more relevant geography focused on the study of China, with the potential to bring about positive and constructive change on behalf of China's disadvantaged population and its natural environment, and (as a possible side benefit) generate local epistemologies enriching the study of geography more broadly. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P30. 68 references.     

美国现代城市规划思维理念体系及借鉴与启示

从美国城市规划发展的历史过程入手,重点论述了美国现代城市规划思维理念体系,包括城市规划的编制、管理、实施、监督等各方面,在此基础上,提出了适应我国社会主义市场经济的城市规划发展的借鉴、启示、建议。     

Urban Planning in Italy: The Future of Urban General Plan and Governance

This article aims to highlight and, whenever possible, demonstrate that the urban general plan is still the instrument of the utmost importance to trigger and steer urban transformations. Within the current Italian context, the article examines the characteristics, contradictions, weaknesses and opportunities of urban planning set of rules and practices and tries to propose concrete answers to questions and issues strictly connected that affect the municipality's urban planning: how to manage and govern a contemporary metropolis or city agglomeration, the concerns associated with overlapping jurisdictions and different rules for various hierarchical administrative levels, the costs of social and common services, the need to include in the urban plan the possible use of European Union Structural Funds, the real estate market affecting new development and urban regeneration programmes and investments. All these aspects should be included in a unifying and strong planning instrument, the urban plan, which could address and steer effectively the urban planning policies and their governance.     

汉代城市规划及城市内部结构

汉代城市有着它固有的城建导向或指导思想。这突出地表现在泣重地理环境、强调庄严重威、流行神学思想三个方面。且各级城市的建设有着较严格的等级规定。本文在中心城市的内部结构中,论列了宫殿区、商业区、居宅区、文化区的分布及其特点,欲对汉代的中心城市作一较完整的勾勒。     

Women in the Formal and Informal Economies of Late Eighteenth‐Century Quebec, 1763–1830

This article challenges the conventional interpretation of the transition from French to British rule in Quebec, which has emphasised the increasing marginalisation of women in the colonial economy. Using hitherto unexplored criminal and civil court records and newspaper advertisements, reveals that women and in particular married women, both French and English speaking, were active in all facets of business life. Given the importance of imported British luxury items in the colonial economy following the American Revolution, this article argues that women occupied a particularly dynamic segment of business life in Quebec, and were especially prominent in the critical textile and fashion trades. A major theme of this article is to show the significance of informal trade networks in expanding economic development in the late eighteenth century, where women were demonstrably key players. The presence of women in both formal and formal economies goes far to locating Quebec in a burgeoning Atlantic economy, and to explaining the nature of consumer society in this new British colony.     

The Political Economy of Housing Investment in the Short-Term Rental Market: Insights from Urban Portugal

Short-term rentals (STRs) emerged as holiday accommodations, disrupting the hospitality industry in the decade before COVID-19. Mainstream explanations for their growth revolved around digital tourism platforms like Airbnb as market disruptors and the sharing economy rationale. At the same time, critical scholars explored the capitalisation of greater rent gaps in urban central locations. However, these explanations are insufficient to explain the growth of STRs. We supplement them by building bridges between the urban political economy and the geographies of financialisation through the cases of Lisbon and Porto before the pandemic. The paper focuses on tourism-induced housing investment, taking a closer look at the profile of investors in association with STR property managers in the context of the late-entrepreneurial urban regime. We conclude that tourism development has allowed opportunities for housing financialisation through STR professionalisation, enhancing the allocation of interest-bearing capital in tourism-oriented real estate.     

Market Actors' Views on Urban Family Living: Informing Urban Planning and Place Marketing in Preparation for Urban Transitions

Cities want to attract young families as residents instead of losing them to the suburbs. This asks for profound and specific understanding of the housing-related needs and expectations of those families desiring urban living. The article presents and discusses these needs and expectations, focussing on social and environmental issues, as seen by different market actors with regard to a major urban transition area in Basel, Switzerland, a typical middle-sized western European city. We used the exploration parcours technique, which allows for what is called “information acceleration” including an in-depth encounter with different scenarios of urban design before responding to a questionnaire on urban family living (N?=?80). The results indicate that housing suppliers underestimate young families' demand for participation, for the recognition of children's needs, and, to a large extent, for high environmental standards.     

Informal institutional change in De Achterhoek region: from citizen initiatives to participatory governance

As in other European countries, the formal planning task of Dutch governments is subjected to devolution and austerity measures. Not only did these developments lead to outsourcing planning tasks to lower-level governments, also citizens are increasingly ‘invited’ to take responsibility for providing public facilities and services. In De Achterhoek, a Dutch region, these shifts are amplified due to population change and traditional active citizenship, and led to institutional change. Since a decade local governments stimulate citizen initiatives, under the umbrella of participatory governance. This process of institutional change did not alter formal institutions, but was the result of an informal and dialectic process between local governments and citizen organizations. In this paper, we will demonstrate the process of change and how it affected planning practices in De Achterhoek, building on theories of informal institutional change and its driving forces. The empirical part of this paper draws on the results of three focus group meetings, in which a diverse set of local stakeholders discussed the effects of change they observed and how it shaped planning practices. In the final section, we reflect on the degree of institutionalization, by examining the robustness and resilience of the observed change.     

A Property Rights Analysis of Urban Planning in Spain and UK

This study compares urban planning and land management in Spain and the UK. Its purpose is to identify key differences in the legal bases for these activities in the two countries and to comment on the way in which the institutions that deliver them allocate property rights between the state and private organizations and individuals. In particular, we analyse the respective approaches to allocating rights to compensation and betterment value associated with land development, commenting on the efficiency and equity of each system and, in Coasian tradition, the influence the assignment of property rights has on municipal government behaviour.