Contesting the Divided City: Arts of Resistance in Skopje

This paper examines issues of power and resistance in “divided cities”. Basing my analysis on fieldwork I carried out in Skopje, Macedonia, I look at how urban space may be constructed and used by hegemonic groups as a means of asserting their power and how, in turn, the city may be a place of resistance where power is contested and public space reappropriated. Drawing on Lefebvre's perspective on the production of space, I compare the conceived city to the lived city and examine how urban inhabitants may resist the division of the city and challenge hegemonic representations. I also draw on Debord's psychogeography to define an artistic, active and participatory approach to urban space through which the inhabitants may re‐conquer their right to the œuvre and to the city. I argue that the city as a lived environment may offer narratives other than division and that there are alternatives to the divided city.     

Intensification in the city centre: Barriers to implementation in Regina,Saskatchewan

As cities aim for more sustainable patterns of urbanization, intensification has emerged as a core planning strategy. In 2013, the City of Regina set new intensification targets: absorb 30% of annual population growth through intensification and add 10,000 residents to the city centre by 2035. In the decade since, implementation has been unsuccessful. This study explores the barriers to core area intensification in Regina by engaging with key informants through semi-structured interviews. Our findings identify the most significant barriers as soft market demand, a city centre that is unappealing as a residential context, insufficient political will, an absence of developers who specialize in core area intensification, and unfavourable development economics. These findings illustrate the unique challenges faced by mid-size Canadian cites in disrupting entrenched development patterns and driving development towards the downtown.     

Use of repeat house sales to measure changes since the early‐ or mid‐1980s in two inner‐city neighbourhoods in Windsor,Ontario

Changes in the prices of homes and the reasons for those changes may be more accurately predicted from repeat sales of the same homes after controlling for their changed attributes and differences in time between their sales and resales. This paper analyzes 346 of 583 sold houses in the Glengarry neighbourhood in Windsor, Ontario, that were sold more than once between 1981 and mid‐2017, and a corresponding 414 of 737 sold houses in the city's Wellington‐Crawford neighbourhood, sold more than once between 1986 and mid‐2017. After comparing types of resold homes with once‐sold ones, a repeat sales model predicts a first period of increasing annual percentage changes in resale prices compared to sale prices during the 1980s, followed by a second period of stagnation and possible decreases until 2011, and then increases during a third period after that. In addition, changes in resold homes’ attributes of the dwelling unit and neighbourhood are a second type of neighbourhood change in two inner‐city neighbourhoods during the past 30 or more years.     

Fringe explosions: risk and vulnerability in Canada's new in‐between urban landscape

This article argues that a new landscape of urbanization takes shape in Canadian cities. In‐between the old downtowns and the new suburbs of urban Canada, a hitherto underexposed and under‐researched mix of residential, commercial, industrial, educational, agricultural and ecologically protected areas and land uses has become the home and workplace, and increasingly also the playspace of most people in Canada. The article examines this new landscape through the lens of the specific risks and vulnerabilities experienced by its inhabitants and users. Using a propane gas explosion in Toronto in the summer of 2008 as an example, we demonstrate that the ‘in‐between city’ is a space of great complexity, which has grown haphazardly and in a contradictory fashion, where, in contrast to the archetype of inner city and suburb, no clear spatial imaginary has been guiding urban development. This leads to always uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous proximities between various and competing uses and social practices. This is nowhere as clear as it is in the splintered urban infrastructures that service this landscape or use the in‐between city's space to service other adjacent or distant purposes.     

Entre industrie et tourisme: L'évolution du paysage baieriverain à Saguenay,Québec

Between industry and tourism: The evolving landscape of La Baie in Saguenay, Québec La Baie is a borough of the newly amalgamated city of Saguenay, which is defined by its past industrial and maritime development. This area encompassing the Ha! Ha! Bay is characterized by a lush natural landscape, contrasting sharply with the haphazardly built environment and urban fabric. The demolition of the Port‐Alfred pulp and paper mill and the cruise ship terminal project offer the possibility to improve and harmonize this former municipality's landscape. In this article, we will discuss the evolution of the borough's landscape patterns through glimpses of the maritime and tourist tradition, industrial base and the design of downtown commercial space.     

The Origin of 18th–19th Century Tin‐Glazed Pottery from Lorraine,France

Forty‐eight tin‐glazed ceramic fragments (faiences) from Lorraine, found in excavations or pertaining to objects in collections, were subjected to X‐ray fluorescence analysis to determine the bulk, major, minor and trace element compositions. Sixteen superficially clay layers from the surroundings of Lunéville and Saint‐Clément were also analysed. The faiences are, with four exceptions, MgO rich. The combination of stylistic and chemical arguments allowed the recognition of 28 objects that were attributable to the important faience manufactory of Jacques II Chambrette in Lunéville. This reference group was used to test the provenance of high‐Mg faiences from private collections. The latter are not from the manufactory of Le Bois d'Épense/Les Islettes as commonly assumed, but most probably belong to Lunéville and Saint‐Clément. According to archival sources, the potters mixed three clays for the pastes. Some prospected clays are MgO rich due to the presence of dolomite and other Mg‐bearing minerals, but not as high as the faiences, a fact that can be explained by the sampling of de‐carbonatized layers.     

Québec et la géographie sociale en questions

Questioning Québec through social geography In the early 1960s, two revolutions were underway: the quiet revolution in Québec and the quantitative revolution in geography. Apparently unrelated, these episodes of change probably shared common underlying values associated with modernity. Since then, the transformations experienced in Québec have been interpreted in a multitude of ways, including geographical considerations. Research careers, mine included, have been shaped by this undertaking. All along, I have found that social geography, with the capacity it has to reinvent itself, has helped making sense of this turbulent environment. In the 1970s, exploring the structural dynamics of Canada's social space helped in figuring out the place occupied by Québec in this ensemble. Then, analyzing the historical relationships between cosmopolitan Montréal and provincial Québec City suggested that the oxymoron ‘quiet revolution’ stood for a central process in the cultural dynamics of Québec's social space, where new ideas arriving through Montréal are sifted and institutionalized by the state in Québec City. Nevertheless, Québec City is also capable of initiating progressive urban movements, as illustrated by the odyssey of the Rassemblement populaire de Québec, documented through participant observation. Such urban movements may affect the urban fabric but, as intense and creative social networks, they may affect even more their interacting members, as it seems to have been the case with regard to rapidly evolving gender relations during the last decades. All in all, after more than four decades, I keep the conviction that a practice of social geography that is open to various theories and methods is capable of producing liberating knowledge.     

Un classement multicritère des villes du québec pour favoriser la prise en compte de leurs différences

When it comes to making planning and development decisions, the concepts of small, medium-sized, or large cities are sometimes used to adapt public policies and instruments, or even to highlight challenges that are specific to certain categories of city. In this article, we take a look at the various dimensions that can be used to characterize cities, so as to empirically test a multi-criteria approach and build a typology of Quebec cities. Using an ascending hierarchical classification, we derive 11 classes of cities, whose conceptualization and graphic representation enable us to highlight their role and, in part, to localize their polarized area. This article complements and adds to works undertaken by other researchers over the last 20 years. Although it does not aim to propose specific changes to public policies and instruments, this article may serve to inform public decision makers in the development of such policies and instruments, and to enrich academic debates on the nature of small and medium-sized towns in particular.