Culture-led urban regeneration policies in the Ibero-American space

ABSTRACT

This article examines cultural policy strategies supporting urban regeneration, focusing on its particular characteristics in the Ibero-American context. We start by developing a systematic contrast between the different circumstances that have led to the emergence of these strategies in the Ibero-American sphere and in other parts of the world. Our examination of the Ibero-American regenerative experience also includes a consideration of the paradigmatic cases that arose initially in the Iberian Peninsula and the typological analysis of subsequent Latin American experiences. The consideration of all these different elements ends up providing a global vision of the specificity of the phenomenon in its Ibero-American context.     

Between National Socialism and expert internationalism: Karl Strölin and transnationalism in urban planning, 1938–45

This essay examines the transnational activities of National Socialist experts, focusing on the endeavours of the burgomaster of Stuttgart, Karl Strölin. In 1938, Strölin became president of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP), one of the most distinguished international expert institutions for European and North American urban planning. The article discusses his belief that promoting an international convention on the protection of urban populations would contribute to German diplomacy in the initial period of the Second World War. Then it investigates the IFHTP president’s efforts to transform his institution into an outlet for National Socialist ideas against the background of the German advance through Europe. A final section deals with Strölin’s attempts to transform the IFHTP into a forum for evaluating urban reconstruction policies in the last year of the war. This biographical study shows how it was possible to juggle the logics and expectations of seemingly contradictory spatial and political realms during and after World War II. National socialist politics and ideology exacerbated the tensions between local, national and international affiliations, but at the same time never fully permeated the mechanisms of expert internationalism. By revealing how Strölin navigated between local ambitions, the demands of domestic foreign policy and the ethics of expert internationalism in three markedly different projects, this essay contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the cross-border activities of National Socialist professionals in (occupied) Europe.     

A Bayesian approach to rapid seismic vulnerability assessment at urban scale

The seismic vulnerability of city centers is commonly assessed by extending the study methods applied to single buildings to urban aggregations. This approach is not always applicable at territorial scale, as it is uneconomical in terms of time and costs. An innovative method provides reasonable large-scale a priori estimation of parameters not directly evaluable from the exterior of buildings by elaborating values which can be measured from the outside. Those parameters are treated as continuous variables, by assigning them a suitable probability density function. The Bayesian approach is adopted, which allows the update of initial hypotheses by using new data gathered during on-site surveys. In this regard, a rapid survey form for the on-site data collection is proposed. An example of its application to a façade of a building structural unit in Santo Stefano di Sessanio in L’Aquila province (Italy) is proposed, showing promising preliminary results for buildings belonging to Italian historical centers.     

Zopilotes,Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures,Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis

While scholars frequently frame conflicts over urban waste in terms of a politics of infrastructure, this article frames such conflicts in terms of a politics of organization. In 2008, self‐employed recyclers in and around Managua, Nicaragua blockaded local dumps in an effort to secure rights to scavenge for resellable material. Over the course of this “garbage crisis”, a material and semiotic entanglement of human labor organization with animal ecology became politically salient. At different points, recyclers were compared to ants (hormigas), vultures (zopilotes), and scorpions (alacranes). State officials, NGOs, and recyclers themselves used these animal metaphors to describe the organization of waste collection. Drawing on theories of value from political ecology and economic anthropology, as well as analysis of the deployment of these “organic” metaphors, we outline an “organizational politics” of urban waste.     

The $15 Wage Movement Moves South: Politics of Region in Labor Union Campaigns

The North American labor movement continues to wrestle with the challenges of organizing workers in the US South. This article explores the contradictory position of the South in the contemporary labor movement, using the circulation of the $15 minimum wage to ground the analysis. By problematizing the place of the South in US labor, this article contributes to efforts to complicate the geographic imaginaries of the South and to our understanding of the contemporary labor movement's expansionary projects. Drawing on qualitative interviews and participant observation in Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, I trace the abstract circulation of organizational resources, strategies, and tactics of the $15 wage movement into, throughout, and back out of the South.     

An Archaeological Study of a Streetcar Suburb: The East Main Streetcar Barns and Hayward-Hobbie Subdivisions,City of Rochester,New York

ABSTRACT

In order to appreciate the social dimensions of the industrial past, any research examining how working people both laboured and lived must recognise that sites of production and distribution may share a close relationship with the household, a relationship that will influence consumption and settlement patterns. Using artefactual and documentary evidence, this paper examines the initiation and growth of the Beechwood neighbourhood, a former streetcar suburb, located in the eastern section of the City of Rochester in western New York State. Streetcar suburbs in cities throughout the United States have received attention from geographers and urban historians for some time. This paper builds on previous studies by considering how transportation infrastructure — here, a maintenance facility and railyard for repairing inter-urban and intra-urban trolley cars — influenced the demographic and material patterns in one section of the neighbourhood in the first decades of the 20th century.     

Going beyond the grid: literary mapping as creative reading

Drawing from the importance of narrative inquiry in contemporary geographical reasoning and teaching, this paper focuses on some practices set around the relationship between maps and literature. Reader-generated maps, maps produced starting from the reading of a literary text, are at the core of a reflection on the potentialities of literary mapping in higher education; relating maps and literature in an educational environment, I suggest creative reading and creative mapping as co-constructive practices that are able to guide students in addressing and internalising the complexity of spatial categories. Reflecting on the students’ literary mappings, I focus on the various ways that the literary map contributes to mobilising the space of the text, guiding students in approaching spatial issues from a different (and creative) perspective. Time, point of view and literary trans-scalarity are the key narrative concepts that guide and inform possible inductive ruminations on literary mapping as a learning strategy. Following the core question of “what literary mapping might be and do in the digital age”, I aim to resituate contemporary discussions on literary mapping in an educational environment.     

基于企业网络视角的城市网络研究进展与展望

随着生产分割程度的不断加深,企业网络空间增长已经成为城市网络生长发育的重要驱动力量。近30年来,基于企业网络视角的城市网络研究日益增多,在链接关系及时空过程、价值生产空间格局、外部经济及其空间差异、规划实践及治理模式四个方面取得了重要进展。本文在梳理城市网络发展脉络的基础上,从多维视角提出了基于企业网络视角的城市网络理论体系研究框架。总体来看,基于企业网络视角的城市网络研究还处于起步发展阶段。围绕完善理论体系建设,未来研究应着力在5个方面取得进展：城市网络分析技术方法的发展完善、城市网络多维度时空过程的综合比较研究、城市网络发育过程的微观机理解析、城市网络演化模式理论模型研制、城市网络的治理模式和政策框架研究。     

基于GIS的沈阳旧城区叙事空间研究

20世纪60年代,叙事学作为一门学科始于西方历史学、文学领域。直至20世纪末,叙事学开始转向空间领域研究形成空间叙事学,并被逐步应用到城乡规划中,尤其是城乡空间结构等领域。空间叙事学不仅关注城市发展中的物化要素,更加注重物化要素所代表的城市文化和城市记忆等非物化要素的深入挖掘,是探究场所本体与场所精神的重要研究思路。本文从空间叙事学出发,基于GIS平台运用核密度及K函数对古代、近代、现代三个时期沈阳旧城区人工叙事要素和人文事件叙事要素进行点模式量化分析,得出沈阳旧城区叙事空间的总体结构,以及叙事点核、叙事廊道、叙事簇群等叙事空间结构单元,指出沈阳旧城区叙事空间的动态发展性、功能多样性和历史传承性特点,探讨了叙事空间的经济驱动、自然要素、城市定位和交通发展四大演变机制。从人文地理学的视角出发,结合叙事空间理论对沈阳旧城区叙事空间进行分析,结果具有文化地理和城市地理双重属性,丰富了城市研究在该视角下的研究成果。