Low‐Carbon Gentrification: When Climate Change Encounters Residential Displacement

This article focuses on the emergence of ‘low‐carbon’ gentrification as a distinct urban phenomenon, a process that we see as the outcome of efforts to change the social and spatial composition of urban districts under the pretext of responding to climate change and energy efficiency imperatives. The article develops a conceptual framework for scrutinizing low‐carbon gentrification, predicated upon insights from literatures on ecological gentrification and displacement. It documents the existence of an ‘eco‐social paradox’ associated with new patterns of socio‐spatial segregation and energy efficiency retrofits. We interrogate the discursive and policy frameworks, socio‐spatial implications and political contestations of low‐carbon gentrification. Evidence is drawn from case study research in an inner‐city district of the Polish city of Gdańsk, where such processes have been unfolding since 2006 due to the implementation of a targeted urban regeneration programme. This investigation is positioned within a wider analysis of secondary written sources about similar developments in other geographical contexts across Europe and North America, where anecdotal evidence suggests that low‐carbon gentrification may be widespread and common.     

Urban Geographies of Hesitant Transition: Tracing Socioeconomic Segregation in Post‐Ceauşescu Bucharest

Scholars have raised concerns about the social costs of the transition from state socialism to capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and geographers are particularly interested in the spatial expressions and implications of these costs, including apparently increasing residential segregation. Applying a range of segregation measures to 1992 and 2002 census data, this contribution studies socio‐occupational residential segregation in Bucharest. The conclusion is that Bucharest was relatively socio‐spatially mixed at both times; in fact, a modest, yet fully legible, decreasing overall trend is observable. This is at odds with many popular assumptions of the past 20 years.     

Desegregation and Integration as Linked or Distinct? Evidence from a Previously ‘White’ Suburb in Post‐apartheid Cape Town

This article analyses whether the physical desegregation of a residential neighbourhood ultimately facilitates the social integration of its residents. Desegregation is measured quantitatively (i.e. using census data for a suburb in which no single race comprises more than 50% and at least one other racial group comprises 25%), and social integration is assessed qualitatively using indicators such as friendship, common local identity, sharing local facilities and involvement in local institutions. Essentially this research is concerned with whether labelling a suburb ‘desegregated’ is a superficial term that whilst implying racial mixing actually masks social segregation; and also whether assumptions that urban policies of desegregation ultimately facilitate social integration are accurate. This desegregation/integration nexus is explored by examining the lives of residents of a desegregated Cape Town neighbourhood. South Africa provides a timely context because the legacy of apartheid’s spatial and social design continues to dominate the urban scene despite policy efforts to promote both desegregation and integration.     

Placing the Urban Village: A Spatial Perspective on the Development Process of Urban Villages in Contemporary China

The rapid urbanization of China since the mid‐1980s has led to the development of a new spatial category, the urban village (chengzhongcun). The dominant neoliberal urban development regime approaches urban villages as a social, spatial, economic and political problem, and as targets for aggressive redevelopment and eradication policies. In this article, I propose a spatial perspective that makes use of several theoretical ‘anchors' to analyze the influence of urban village spatiality on its development process and to explore alternatives to the dominant redevelopment model. I begin by examining the spatial conceptualization of the urban village as a non‐place, arguing that this spatial reading undergirds the redevelopment‐by‐demolition model and tends to obscure alternative conceptualizations. I then move on to propose three alternative readings of urban village space, examining it as an everyday space, a liminal space and a neighborhood. Combining these three readings with the ‘non‐place' conceptualization provides a nuanced understanding of urban villages' unique spatial attributes and social roles, by evoking spatial and social processes that take place in most urban villages across China. Taken together, these spatial readings challenge the social and spatial rigidity of dominant representations of urban villages and supply a much‐needed spatially based conceptual framework that can be used to develop new urban planning models.     

Assemblages of Urban Leisure Culture in Inner‐City Bucharest

Inner‐city redevelopment in the south‐eastern European metropolis of Bucharest has been an intriguing object of analysis. Having been neglected for a long time by its inhabitants, urban politics and the local economy, the historical inner city recently experienced tremendous development of its evening/night‐time economy and leisure culture, as though it had received fresh impulses from European integration. However, there is no single cause which effected this unexpected proliferation. Therefore, this article traces the contingent ways in which the inner city has been affected, mainly through an empirical reconstruction of socio‐material assemblages of inner‐city leisure culture. A typology of (partial) assemblages is developed, which illustrates the heterogeneity, contingency and changeability of emerging temporary relations between various social, material and ideational elements. We demonstrate how localism and internal replication of limited business concepts have triggered the selective adaptation of various symbols of modernization. Against this background we argue that post‐transformational urbanity involves contingent social self‐referencing and socio‐material assemblage, rather than the adoption of prevailing translocal models of urban development. A critical reassessment of assemblage theory, as applied to this particular urban context, leads to final considerations concerning possible theoretical readjustments.     

Relating a City's History and Geography with Bourdieu: One Hundred Years of Spatial Distinction in Tel Aviv

This article advances a conceptualization of spatial distinction that, following Bourdieu, relates principles of division in ‘social space’ with formations of segregation in urban space. It applies this interpretive framework to concisely narrate the one hundred years' history of spatial distinction in Tel Aviv. Analyzing five moments in the city's development, it focuses on a dominant principle of distinction in each period and its ensuing segregations: predominantly ethno‐national (Jewish–Arab) distinction that established Tel Aviv in opposition to Jaffa at the turn of the twentieth century; nuanced ethno‐class distinction that shaped the city's rapid growth in the 1920s–30s and created an elaborate socio‐spatial hierarchy of neighborhoods; institutionalized distinction that governed the collective supply of housing in the 1930s–40s, evolving into a complex system of housing classifications; ‘distinction‐by‐distance’ through exclusive suburbanization and the emergence of a metropolitan scale of distinction in the 1950s–70s; and a ‘back‐to‐the‐center’ strategy of distinction by way of gentrification in the 1980s–90s and within gated residential enclaves at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Through this concise history, various principles, mechanisms and scales of spatial distinction are elaborated upon, as a way to think about the socially constructed, historically contingent and continuously changing divisions and segregations in cities.     

Beyond Circular Thinking: Geographies of Transit‐Oriented Development

Transit‐oriented development (TOD) plays a significant role within contemporary planning policies for ‘smart growth’ and sustainable development, particularly in Europe and North America. As a well‐rehearsed practice, this planning model is due for critical assessment and improvement in terms of its ability to incorporate dynamic and heterogeneous socio‐spatial processes as matters of concern. Analyses of the conditions for ‘making TOD work’ in the scholarly and professional literatures tend to focus on the ‘node’ and ‘place’ qualities. While elaborations on node analysis (primarily based on accessibility measurements) abound within empirical research, discussions of place‐specific assets are limited in scope and often spatially bounded by the circle defined by a 10‐minute walk. This essay examines the use of this generic ‘circle’ model, and how it normatively frames how place is understood in TOD studies. We argue that the circle enhances a Euclidean understanding of the site, which favours a static and homogeneous spatial analysis of accessibility and density rather than (other) place qualities relating to dynamic socio‐spatial processes. Finally, we argue that relational geography can facilitate an analysis of place qualities beyond the circle—one in which both the continuities and shifting settings of the wider context are meaningfully taken into consideration.     

Gated Communities in Santiago: Wall or Frontier?

It is a widely held notion, disseminated in particular by the LA school of urban studies, that gated communities are enclaves, which not only maintain segregation but also help increase it. In Chile a more benevolent interpretation has arisen. Sabatini, C´ceres and Cerda argue that gated communities help out the poor communities that surround them. If the spatial scale of segregation is reduced — from city to local or neighborhood level — social disintegration should slow, according to their analysis. This article seeks to empirically complement and expand on Sabatini, Caceres and Cerda's position, which seems to be a better interpretation of Chilean reality than the grim picture presented by the LA school. The article is an ethnographic work based on in‐depth interviews in gated communities and a surrounding shantytown in the Huechuraba district, a lower socio‐economic class area in north‐west Santiago. The research concludes that, despite the existence of a wall that promotes community integration among so‐called equals, in conditions of spatial proximity sociability between inside and outside groups is not diminished. Thus, in Huechuraba there is no impenetrable wall separating poor and rich; equally, the walls do not seem to promote community integration within. Spatial proximity has encouraged relations mainly in the realm of functional exchange, making the creation of gated communities in poor neighborhoods a socially desirable experience, at least in the case of Santiago. En études urbaines, l'idée que les communautés privées sécurisées, gated communities, soient des enclaves qui entretiennent, et accentuent, la ségrégation est courante, notamment pour l'école de Los Angeles. Le Chili suscite une interprétation plus humaine. Selon Sabatini, Cáceres et Cerda, les communautés privées sécurisées sont un soutien pour les communautés pauvres avoisinantes. Si l'échelle spatiale de la ségrégation est réduite — de la ville au niveau local ou de quartier — la désintégration sociale devrait, d'après eux, ralentir. L'article vise à compléter et développer de façon empirique leur théorie, celle‐ci semblant traduire la réalité chilienne plus fidèlement que le sombre tableau de l'école de Los Angeles. Il s'agit ici d'un travail ethnographique qui s'appuie sur des entretiens poussés dans des communautés privées sécurisées et un bidonville du secteur de Huechuraba, zone socio‐économiquement pauvre du nord‐est de Santiago. Les recherches concluent que, malgré l'existence d'un mur qui favorise l'intégration communautaire entre soi‐disant égaux, la sociabilité entre les groupes intérieur et extérieur ne diminue pas en cas de proximité spatiale. Ainsi, à Huechuraba, il n'existe aucun mur impénétrable entre riches et pauvres; de même, les murs ne créent pas, semble‐t‐il, d'intégration communautaire dans leur enceinte. La proximité spatiale a encouragé les relations surtout dans le domaine des échanges fonctionnels, faisant de la création de communautés privées sécurisées dans les quartiers pauvres une expérience souhaitable au plan social, du moins dans le cas de Santiago.     

Development Regimes,Scales and State Spatial Restructuring: Change and Continuity in the Production of Urban Space in Metropolitan Rio de Janeiro,Brazil

Using the experience of metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, this article contributes to the broader debate on development regimes, rescaling and state spatial restructuring in Brazil, and its specificities in relation to the international discussion on the transformations in Atlantic Fordism. I argue that the transition from a (peripheral) development state to a competitive and rescaled regime has been accompanied by important continuities. Legitimized through discourses around development poles and trickle‐down effects, the national‐developmental regime has systematically promoted some spaces as opposed to others, without much emphasis on the social and environmental dimensions of spatial policies. The emerging competitive state spatial regime, whether in its neoliberalized, or its more recent ‘rolled‐out’ national‐developmental version, is merely expected to aggravate the historical socio‐environmental contradictions in the production of space. Moreover, scale has proven contested and strategic‐relational, both molding and being influenced by actors that seek to use scalar politics to reach their interests. My analysis suggests that, within this scenario, neither economic growth, nor regulatory and institutional strengthening, nor financial resources are likely to produce structural transformation in the inherited spaces of Greater Rio de Janeiro.     

Campus,City, Networks and Nation: Student‐Migrant Activism as Socio‐spatial Experience in Melbourne,Australia

‘Education–migration nexus’ policies in Australia between 1998 and 2010 linked international education with different forms of temporary and permanent migration. This resulted in a blurring of boundaries around student, worker, consumer, migrant and ethnic identities. While the exploitation, marginalization and vulnerability of international students in Australia has gained a great deal of media and scholarly attention, less consideration has been given to the varied forms of subsequent protest undertaken by student migrants in Australian cities. This article analyses three case studies of protests involving student migrants in Melbourne: a protest against unfair assessment; a fight for a campus prayer room; and labour protests within the retail service and taxi industries. It draws on theoretical work on new social movements and social transformation in urban spaces to find ways to conceptualize this activism in relation to the scales of campus, city and nation. In doing so, it argues primarily that these sites of protest are socio‐spatial experiences that encompass shifting and socially produced spatial scales, as well as complex networks of association across different communities, which in turn reflect different student‐migrant identities.     

The Enclave,The Citadel and the Ghetto: The Threefold Segregation of Upper‐Class Muslims in India

The urban sociology literature has identified three types of segregated spaces: the ghetto, the enclave and the citadel. While the ghetto stems from a high constraint, the enclave accounts for a more intentional form of segregation and the citadel refers to a deliberate attempt to exclude undesirable populations. While these three figures are often contrasted in the American literature, this article focuses on a specific type of neighbourhood that combines all of these: the upper‐class minority neighbourhood. By introducing the main results of an interview study I conducted in the Indian city of Aligarh, I show that Muslim upper‐class residential choices are informed by contradictory feelings: while the threat of Hindu–Muslim riots forces them to segregate in homogenous neighbourhoods (the ghetto), their segregation also stems from a genuine desire to live in an Islamic environment (the enclave). Finally, the Muslim upper classes also indulge in a sharp process of socio‐spatial differentiation from their poorer coreligionists (the citadel). These processes of compelled segregation, self‐aggregation and social distancing lead to an enduring spatial concentration along religious and class lines. The simultaneity of these three logics indicates that the categories of the ghetto, the enclave and the citadel, framed in reference to the American context, can be applied to the Indian city of Aligarh if understood as dynamic processes rather than static spatial units. Such a reformulation allows theory to travel across the North–South divide in a more productive way.     

Toward an overarching multi-level conceptualization of emergent leadership: Perspectives from social identity,and implicit leadership theories

Organizational leadership research has typically focused on hierarchal top-down leadership where the leader has legitimate authority over organizational tasks and roles. However, rather recently, research has emphasized the emergence of leaders within teams and groups, which is referred to as emergent or horizontal leadership. Due to its infancy, the concept has limited theoretical development and coherence. To further extend our understanding of the topic, we draw on social identity, and implicit leadership theories and offer a multi-level conceptualization of emergent leadership. We first compare emergent leadership to various leadership concepts and through a detailed review, identify mechanisms through which emergent leadership can be identified. Following that, we design an organizing framework based on existing research and then offer propositions presenting a multi-level conceptual model highlighting how different factors at different levels relate to informal leader emergence. We hope that by reforming the research of leadership emergence with a multi-level approach, we renovate the idea considering contextual factors and process mechanisms.     

Hard and Soft Densification Policies in the Paris City‐Region

This essay is concerned with the planning and densification of suburbs, which present a huge challenge insofar as they form a large area of urbanized land that remains underexploited due to low residential density. Drawing on current research in the Paris city‐region, the essay focuses specifically on the difficulty in implementing densification policies in low‐rise suburban areas. It examines the varying degrees of densification fostered by these policies, and builds upon recent urban studies literature on suburban change to trace how suburban areas are being transformed through regulations, instruments and market dynamics associated with densification processes. What kinds of densification policy are being implemented and what are the socio‐economic, political and cultural determinants of each type of regulatory approach? This essay will attempt to answer this question via an analysis of the densification policies being put in place in the municipalities of the Paris city‐region. It will offer in turn a typology of these different policies. It shows that densification is an instrument that can be used to address local political concerns which vary greatly depending on the economic, social and geographical position of municipalities within larger urban areas.     

Inter-organizational geographical proximity and local start-ups' knowledge acquisition: a contingency approach

Entrepreneurship studies offer conflicting answers to a key research question: What impact does geographic proximity have on the process of knowledge acquisition by start-ups? This study proposes a new, dynamic framework of three interrelated factors that may moderate this impact; it anticipates that the importance of local and distant knowledge networks depends on the life cycle stages reached by both start-ups and industrial clusters, as well as on the dyadic relationships between local start-ups and their business partners. Some additional variables help strengthen the conceptual model and the key research propositions. This study thus offers a new perspective on entrepreneurship research, namely the configuration of start-ups in both spatial and social contexts. Such a view offers two substantial benefits: a greater understanding of the role played by geographical proximity in knowledge acquisition and an impetus for further empirical research in this field. This article concludes with various implications of the proposed model for both theoretical and managerial purposes.     

When Social Infrastructure Deficits Create Displacement Pressures: Inner City Schools and the Suburbanization of Families in Melbourne

Under advanced capitalism, gentrification converges with the post‐Keynesian ‘unhinging' of the state from the project of social reproduction, including its responsibilities for collective consumption (e.g. housing, schools). Gentrification research scrutinizes this convergence through the ongoing assault on social/affordable housing, and yet anaemic housing welfare is not its endpoint. The social contract is further fractured through the ongoing discreditation and dismantling of the full gamut of legacies of the publicly regulated Keynesian inner city, including essential social infrastructure. Focusing on public schools, as an essential site for social reproduction, this article explores how the struggle for the city under neoliberal gentrification may be emerging along additional (non‐housing) vectors. Based on a qualitative study of families' experiences of poor public education provision in central Melbourne (Australia), this article argues that the exclusionary effects of gentrification likely exceed residential encroachment as state subsidization of residents continues to yield to the subsidization of capital. In particular, this article identifies life‐stage specific, infrastructure‐related displacement pressures wrought by a state failure to provide adequate public primary schools in the ‘regeneration' of central Melbourne, and it illustrates how these pressures prompt housing strategies that unevenly divest families of the locational advantages secured in the inner city. Highlighting the role of public school deficits in the reluctant suburbanization of lesser‐resourced families assists in foregrounding state complicity in displacement dynamics and the potential for these to magnify socio‐economic, gendered and socio‐spatial inequalities across the city.     

Informal Traders and the Battlegrounds of Revanchism in Cusco,Peru

Informal trading in the global South, particularly in Latin America, is the subject of revanchist urban policy and yet few studies have examined the longer‐term impacts of such intolerant policies on traders. This article explores the evolution and impacts of revanchist policies directed at informal traders in the Andean city of Cusco. It makes two key contributions. First, it documents a shift from early revanchist policies to a post‐revanchist era where policies have become more tolerant of informal traders. However, contemporary policies fall short of a supportive environment for informal trading, hence the authors recommend changes that will ensure informal traders can access the city's streets and become an accepted part of the urban fabric. Second, given the lack of theoretical attention given to the impacts of revanchism, a battlegrounds framework is developed, consisting of spatial, political, economic and socio‐cultural battlegrounds. This framework provides a comprehensive insight into the complex set of interactions that exist between informal traders and the state. It is hoped that the framework will provide a tool for further research into the highly damaging impacts of revanchism across the globe.     

Playing with the Rules of the Game: Social Innovation for Urban Transformation

Innovation is perhaps the buzzword in local economic development policy. Associated narrowly with neoliberal ideas, conventional notions of innovation—like its capitalocentric counterparts, enterprise and entrepreneurialism—may promise higher productivity, global competitiveness and technological progress but do not fundamentally change the ‘rules of the game’. In contrast, an emerging field reimagines social innovation as disruptive change in social relations and institutional configurations. This article explores the conceptual and political differences within this pre‐paradigmatic field, and argues for a more transformative understanding of social innovation. Building on the work of David Graeber, I mobilize the novel constructs of ‘play’ and ‘games’ to advance our understanding of the contradictory process of institutionalizing social innovation for urban transformation. This is illustrated through a case study of Liverpool, where diverse approaches to innovation are employed in attempts to resolve longstanding socio‐economic problems. Dominant market‐ and state‐led economic development policies—likened to a ‘regeneration game’—are contrasted with more experimental, creative, democratic and potentially more effective forms of social innovation, seeking urban change through playing with the rules of the game. I conclude by considering how the play–game dialectic illuminates and reframes the way transformative social innovation might be cultivated by urban policy, the contradictions this entails, and possible ways forward.     

Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local

This symposium brings together three empirical studies and one conceptual overview examining the politics of redevelopment in contemporary Indian cities. Collectively these articles seek to redress the relative dearth of concerted attention to the institutional, economic and socio‐spatial changes that are shifting the terrain of urban politics in post‐liberalization India.     

Do LGBT‐supportive corporate policies enhance firm performance?

Prior research provides evidence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)‐supportive corporate policies are related to important human resource functions, such as enhanced recruitment and retention. In addition, prior research indicates that investors view the adoption of such policies positively. We examine the firm‐performance mechanisms underlying favorable stock‐market reactions based on an integration of perspectives from corporate social responsibility and the business case for diversity. Specifically, we estimate a hierarchical linear model (HLM) to account for the nested nature of our data (firms nested within states) and find that (1) the presence of LGBT‐supportive policies is associated with higher firm value, productivity, and profitability; (2) the firm‐value and profitability benefits associated with LGBT‐supportive policies are larger for companies engaged in research and development (R&D) activities; and (3) the firm‐value and profitability benefits of LGBT‐supportive policies persist in the presence of state antidiscrimination laws. In supplemental analyses, we find that firms implementing (discontinuing) LGBT‐supportive policies experience increases (decreases) in firm value, productivity, and profitability. We are among the first to link LGBT‐supportive policies specifically to financial performance outcomes as well as to develop and test a multilevel model of these relationships. Our results have important implications for theory and research on LGBT issues in organizations, human resource managers, and policymakers.     

Citizen Participation in Urban Governance in the Context of Democratization: Evidence from Low‐Income Neighbourhoods in Mexico

Participation has recently been subject to renewed attention and critique in the context of neoliberal urban governance. This is especially relevant in countries where decentralization and democratization in the context of neoliberalism have led to increased promotion of local‐level participation. This article suggests that current critiques of participation's potential for democratic citizen engagement in a neoliberal context would benefit from further reflection on how participation is implemented in contexts, particularly the global South, where neoliberalism and democracy may be understood differently. Different ‘cultures of engagement’ in specific settings suggest that understandings and practices of participation draw on different traditions, including corporatism and self‐help. This article seeks to add to the debate by exploring the socio‐spatial consequences of participation structures in low‐income neighbourhoods in a provincial Mexican city. Based on qualitative research in two low‐income neighbourhoods in Xalapa, Mexico, it examines how the provisions of the local citizen‐participation framework compare with residents' experiences of it. Formalized conceptions of participation, framed as involvement in service provision, interact with and shape residents' activities in developing their neighbourhoods. This has consequences for urban development there, including the reflection and reproduction of social and spatial marginalization.