Urban research and child-friendly cities: a new Australian outline

Recent public debates about Australia's children and young people have begun to acknowledge the direct impact of urban development on their health and well-being. This paper reviews a broad range of trans-disciplinary literature addressing child-friendliness in contemporary Australian cities, drawing particular attention to the fact that even some of the most recognised texts on children and young people in Australia still make few references in their analysis to the issue of place and neighbourhood. More specifically, the paper points to two particular research challenges confronting the ongoing study of young people's well-being in urban areas, including (a) the need for a more thorough analysis, both conceptual and applied, about how children and young people's well-being is affected by different urban forms and by the social and ecological variations that occur throughout cities; and (b) the focus on younger children needs to be complemented by a focus on adolescents and young adults who in turn need to be actively involved in confronting these challenges.     

A generational attitude: young adults facing the economic crisis in Milan

Abstract

For almost 10 years there has been talk of the economic crisis affecting the European area, with more evident effects in the Mediterranean countries. Yet the expression ‘economic crisis’ has become too wide and blurred to be useful for describing how the current socio-economic conjuncture is affecting different categories of young people in different ways. Precariousness and reduced job opportunities, with their consequences for social mobility, constitute only the more explicit and raw evidence of the lived experience of the crisis among young people. Although families remain the all-solving institution, the consequences of the crisis are diversified according to the economic, cultural and social capital of each individual, to gender and generation position, and to subjective and contextualized perceptions. This article presents research conducted to investigate how young people living in the urban area of Milan locate, react, readapt and reinvent themselves in the present economic context by analysing their aspirations, expectations and practices. We develop a comparative analysis of the main structural bias (gender, education, social class position) in order to shed light on the effects and perceptions of the crisis among young people in the city of Milan.     

Informal (In)security in Urban Afghanistan

Poverty and insecurity in Afghan cities are intricately intertwined with conditions of “informality.” The term and the realities it describes refer to living situations in which basic needs and activities such as work, housing, and social security are unprotected by laws and standards. Immersion into such a convolution of informality determines the life of a majority among urban populations in Afghanistan and conveys a deep sense of insecurity for the urban poor. The paper looks at how rapid and unprecedented urban growth in Afghanistan goes along with rising levels of livelihood insecurity and explores how the urban poor cope with livelihood risks through a range of informal arrangements. Conceptually, the notion of “informal security regimes” helps capture informality as a coping strategy and how it relates to urban poverty in Afghanistan. Informed by extensive empirical fieldwork, the paper identifies different elements of the “informal security regime” in urban Afghanistan and explores their specific operations. The paper is mainly focused on the Afghan capital, Kabul, supplemented with evidence from other urban sites in Afghanistan.     

Planting Roots,Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

A contentious issue for Pacific Islanders, as well as researchers of the Pacific Islands, is ni-Vanuatu notions of ‘belonging’ to urban centres. Previous research in Vanuatu has shown that despite generations of people born and raised in Port Vila, the nation's capital, the urban centre is not generally perceived as a ‘place’ to which urban migrants can say they are from. For many, exclaiming that one is ‘from’ town is tantamount to admitting one has ‘no place’. This paper, based on fieldwork among a group of urban young men in Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, argues that in contrast to this, Freswota young men are generating a new locative identity. Their urban community rather than their parents' home island places is emerging as their primary location of belonging and the source of their sense of self, personhood and social identification. As such, these young men are the urban autochthones of the country.     

Urban Planning and Sustainable Development

Following the discourse about sustainable development based on the Brundtland Commission's report and the processes in the UN Committee on Environment and Development, a sustainable urban development would require considerably more ambitious policies than today in order to limit energy consumption, reduce pollution and protect natural areas and arable land. Re-use of urban areas and more effective utilization of building sites is a possible strategy to this end. However, continuous growth in the building stock will make it increasingly difficult to bring urban development in wealthy countries within the frames of what is ecologically sustainable and equitable in a global perspective. Planning for a sustainable urban development must be oriented towards long-term goals and utilize knowledge about the environmental consequences of different solutions, but should not be based solely on means-ends rationality. Rather than aiming at consensus including all stakeholder groups, planning for sustainability should facilitate alliance-building among those population groups who can support the basic equity and environmental values of a sustainable development.     

The Local Drivers of Land Degradation in South‐East Asia

Economic globalisation has led to a huge increase in demand for food, goods and services by expanding urban middle class populations. These demands cause environmental changes that in turn feed back upon the urban environment and human population. While the global changes are well researched, the cumulative significance of local environmental changes is less well known. Yet, the local changes may have greater impact on the decisions which individuals make that affect soil erosion and land degradation. People respond to family circumstances and to local economic opportunities in ways that most suit the needs of their families and households. Several demonstration projects that were not adopted offer lessons in understanding how people make their land‐use decisions. An understanding of people's past experiences, present needs and views of the future helps those seeking to improve environmental management to promote policies and actions that are likely to succeed by being acceptable to those involved.     

‘Concrete bodies’: young Latina women transgressing the boundaries of race and class in white inner-city Stockholm

This article examines young Latina women's interactions in the urban landscape of Stockholm, with a particular focus on white, middle-class areas, and how social difference and racial positioning are produced in and through the processes of urban segregation. Although Stockholm consists of different multiethnic and middle-class white suburbs, a discourse of sharp division between ‘the suburb’ and the inner-city is prevalent in the daily press. Here ‘the suburb’ is either portrayed as dangerous or exotic. This article is based on qualitative research with 29 young Latina women living and attending schools in both the suburban and inner-city areas. This approach facilitates an understanding of how gendered, racialized and classed aspects of segregation are embodied in multiple directions and how mechanisms of spatial exclusion prevail in predominantly white areas – often seen as ‘neutral’ or non-racialized areas. In conclusion, in order to capture the realities of young people's lives within materialized discourses of race and space, I argue that it is crucial to include white settings in the analysis, and experiences of exclusion.     

Responding to the ‘crisis of masculinity’: the perspectives of young Muslim men from Glasgow and Edinburgh,Scotland

Debates about the so-called crisis of masculinity have tended to focus on the experiences of white working class young men and black young men to the exclusion of other groups of men. This article seeks to redress this omission by exploring young Muslim men's knowledge and understanding of the crisis of masculinity and the ways in which they respond to such discourses. Using qualitative data collected during interviews and focus groups with young Muslim men – mainly of Pakistani heritage – living in Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, I demonstrate that young Muslim men's responses to the crisis of masculinity debate are informed by a complex range of issues including their own class position, familial and related gendered expectations alongside the young men's interests in sport and leisure activities.     

Food in the City: Urban Food Geographies and ‘Local’ Food Sourcing in Melbourne and San Diego County

Perceptions of food systems and food acquisition decisions are grounded in specific socio‐economic and environmental contexts. Working in two relatively affluent urban communities in Melbourne, Australia and San Diego County, USA, this article explores the ways that individuals perceive their food systems, where they acquire food, and their definitions of ‘local’ sourcing. Surveys and interviews reveal a clear discrepancy between the ideals and the reality of food acquisition decision‐making, particularly the desire to eat ‘local food’. Survey respondents' realities do not live up to their expectations. These practices can largely be explained by the interplay between the respondents' perceived priorities, food preferences, dietary requirements, and decision‐making constraints in particular urban geographies. Further research is needed on the role of perceptions in food decision‐making in specific geographic contexts.     

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.     

Barrio Women's Invited and Invented Spaces Against Urban Elitisation in Chacao,Venezuela

Outright victories against urban elitisation are rare in the current urban revolution. This article highlights how urban elitisation is confronted in Chacao, the most elite and urban part of Venezuela. Initially it reviews how this urban elitisation created the main economic, political and military strongholds of the opposition to the Bolivarian revolution. Then, in contesting it, the urban and Bolivarian revolutions feed each other through women's participation in invited and invented spaces of citizenship. From such spaces, Chacao women in their settler's movement organised struggles of insurgent citizenship to stop elitist urban renewal agendas and develop further forms of insurgent urbanism to conduct an urban renewal from below and establish a New Socialist Community for 600 families. They emerged as a revolutionary class to implement Bolivarian policies addressing the inefficiency and opportunism of the bureaucratic state and contesting urban elitisation with an anti‐capitalist and anti‐imperialist insurgent urbanism.     

Green Infrastructure,Grey Epistemologies,and the Urban Political Ecology of Pittsburgh's Water Governance

This paper explores Pittsburgh's water governance to consider the way divergent approaches to urban stormwater management reproduce existing urban metabolisms and belie more radical possibilities for the urban hydro‐social cycle. Federal action has forced municipalities in the Pittsburgh metropolitan region to make changes to its urban water systems and develop a plan to comply with water quality regulations. Within Pittsburgh's water governance debates, compliance centers on various sets of technological strategies for defining and solving purportedly wicked urban environmental problems. Urban political ecology, here, is used to deconstruct the tensions and convergences between these different stormwater governance strategies. I argue that green infrastructure approaches (whose intentions are to expand practice and participation) are framed by dominant grey epistemological approaches. In this view, alternative and creative forms of greening the city may not necessarily represent a more democratic process, but instead reproduce uneven urban landscapes under greener cover.     

Picturing the city: young people's representations of urban environments

Urban environments form the setting of everyday life for most Western young people. This article explores visual representations of cities made by young people in a range of environments within four countries. The findings inform a larger study on urban geographies within geography education. We analyse students' drawings of cities regarding physical characteristics, activities and issues. There are many commonalities between drawings from the four countries, the majority showing a ‘big, busy city’ representation with skylines, traffic and shopping areas. There are also distinctive characteristics for each set, for example Finnish students tended to emphasise environmental and social issues more than in the other countries. In relation to methodology, we conclude that drawings, supported by contextual information, are a useful source to understand young people's representations of cities. Further, this research supports thinking about how to merge young people's experiences and imaginaries with the teaching of urban geography.     

北京城市社会区的变迁

北京城市社会区的空间结构从近代到现代,受不同的社会制度、历史成因的影响,表现出不同的特征,本文对北京城市社会区在三个时期的变迁进行了比较分析。     

Overcoming obstacles on the peri‐urban fringe: young people making new geographies

Understanding contemporary youth lifestyles is a challenge for urban planners and geographers. Young people's everyday needs are complex, and urban spaces in new outer city developments offer unique spaces for shaping their identities. Juxtaposed with affordances of digital technologies, the physical location of home exists in a fluid landscape. Overcoming obstacles, such as access to public transport, places to socialise, and meet their peers, is characteristic of the everyday young person's experience. Knowing how young people decide where to go for personal space, as well as who to ask for personal advice, was the aim of this study. The study was conducted with samples of young people growing up in the rapidly growing peri‐urban northern suburbs of the Australian city of Melbourne. A survey questionnaire was administered to a gender‐balanced sample aged 12–15 years (n = 523) with follow‐up interviews to better inform the results. Logistic regression and factorial analyses of variance reveal their favourite places to be ‘my’ bedroom, being with friends, the park, and the café. Although not the focus of this study, some gender differences were noted. In addition to innovative use of space, the results show the positive influences on their well‐being of trusted family and friends. Young people's geographies offer transdisciplinary insights that highlight their creative usage of these new urban spaces. They offer a new imaginary for geographical education and research.     

Shared Spaces of Transnational Transit: Filipino Gay Tourists,Labour Migrants,and the Borders of Class Difference

Between 2006 and 2008, I conducted autoethnographic research in what I refer to as Manila's ‘‘bright lights'' gay scene. As part of that research, I collected travel stories from young, urban, middle and upper-class gay men, in an attempt to draw out the relationship between transnational mobility, urban gay life, and dreams of global belonging. This article comes out of those stories as well as out of my own stories of living in, leaving, and returning to Manila. Starting with the international airport as a trope for the shifting boundaries that exist between kinds of travellers based on class identity, the essay moves on to describe the nationalised, gendered and class-specific divisions that cut across the transnational flows of gay Filipino culture globally.     

Urban Villages in China: A 2008 Survey of Migrant Settlements in Beijing

A team of Beijing-based urban planning specialists is joined by a noted American geographer to present the results and analyze their 2008 survey of migrant settlements in China's capital city. The paper examines the living and work conditions as well as housing consumption behavior of migrants in Chinese cities, focusing on chengzhongcun or urban villages—rural settlements that have been transformed into poor living spaces for migrant workers. It finds that although migrant workers are willing to pay the same or higher rent per unit of space, they consume much smaller dwelling spaces than local residents. Estimations of the Mincerian wage equation and of a housing demand equation show that migrants' small space consumption is a function not only of low income but also of a reluctance to spend their earnings in the city. The findings reinforce the notion that migrant workers consider the city as a place to work rather than a home in which to live. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: J610, O150, R210, R230. 14 figures, 5 tables, 34 references, 1 appendix.     

The After School Routines of Literature-Devoted Urban Children

This paper discusses the out of school routines of a group of ‘literature-devoted’ children of the city of Madrid (Spain). The children and families were recruited for the study at a library, a children's bookstore and a puppet show in a park. Participants provided information on their weekly routines through several procedures: surveys, photographs of their daily lives, interviews based on the photographs and interviews with parents. We develop a spatially based model that allows us to identify four styles of activity in children's out of school lives: homebound children, non-scheduled children, outdoor and scheduled children, and fully scheduled children. Our results suggest that there is significant diversity in the ways in which children's after-school time is organized, even within a middle-class and socially homogeneous sample as the one in this study. Also, the range of activities our participants engage in seems to contradict current portraits of Western urban children's lives as constrained.     

Hanoi 5000 Hoan Kiem Lakes: Using Art to Involve Young People in Urban Futures

In March-April 2007, a group of six Hanoi-based artists staged an exhibition of entitled “Hanoi 5000 Hoan Kiem Lakes”. Its purpose was to explore young people's visions of the future of their city and to stimulate discussion of the city's development from a non-planning perspective. To prepare for the exhibition, the artists undertook a survey among the youth of Hanoi, distributing a one-question questionnaire and interviewing on and off camera over 250 young people, randomly and selectively sampled in parks, on sidewalks, outside universities, and in university and school classes. Participants were invited to a workshop held by the artists at the exhibition to talk about how ideas get translated into art. This exhibition provided a timely intervention into debates over the landscape of Hanoi, what urban public space is and what it should be, and how non-technical, non-specialist views of the city can be incorporated into urban aspirations, thus acknowledging and encouraging the visions of the young people who will be the city's future leaders.