Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism

The concept of planetary urbanization has emerged in recent years amongst neo‐Lefebvrian urban scholars who see urbanization as a process taking place at all spatial scales. This article analyses recent critiques of the urban political ecology (UPE) literature which argue that much of the work in the field has been guilty of focusing exclusively on the traditional bounded city unit rather than urbanization as a process. In response, the article reviews various strands of the UPE literature which have (always) moved beyond ‘the city’ to consider the various metabolisms and circulations of humans and non‐humans connecting cities with places outside of their borders at a variety of scales. Furthermore, it suggests how these approaches can productively work with the insights of the planetary urbanization literature, in considering both the changing nature of urbanization and also the socio‐ecological and political implications of these changes. Finally, the article suggests how the methodological approach of the ‘site multiple’ and its focus on everyday practices and lived experiences can be useful for researching diverse urban phenomena and their more‐than‐urban connections.     

‘We Live on Estimates': Everyday Practices of Prepaid Electricity and the Urban Condition in Maputo,Mozambique

This article examines the transition to prepaid electricity happening in Maputo, Mozambique, in order to reflect on the contemporary geographies of urban energy infrastructure and urbanization in sub‐Saharan Africa and other cities of the South. The article draws on fieldwork and archival research conducted in 2013 and 2014, arguing that prepayment constitutes a productive juncture in the urban experience of electricity infrastructure in Maputo's postcolonial moment, not merely a neutral technology or a disciplining technique of government (as argued by some scholarship). The article examines the multiple rationalities implicated in the use of the electricity infrastructure via prepayment and the organization of urban life it engenders (and of which it is also a product) by focusing on the everyday practices surrounding prepaid electricity of urban dwellers in neighbourhoods where the ‘modern infrastructural ideal' may never be fully realized. As a result, it contributes to an understanding of the experience of urban energy in cities where ‘slum urbanism', uncertainty and provisionality are dominant aspects of the urban condition.     

Subaltern Urbanization: Indian Insights for Urban Theory

The concept of subaltern urbanization is about vibrant smaller settlements—outside the metropolitan shadow—sustainably supporting a dispersed pattern of urbanization. We propose a theoretical framework which draws on an empirical research collective using both large statistical and land-use data sets and detailed case studies in non-metropolitan Indian geographies. Anchored in postcolonial urban studies, it looks beyond the logic of agglomeration and questions our understanding of settlement hierarchies and the location of social and economic innovation processes, opening up an alternative reading of urbanization that could be valuable for other regions. Local agency is core to this concept, transporting the arguments of the ordinary and the subaltern beyond large cities. Our findings, apart from emphasizing the agency of smaller settlements, highlight their multiple local and translocal flows, shaping an autonomous external engagement that could exist independently of relationships with large cities. Further, even though the rural and the urban seep into each other, they do so organically, unlike the process in planetary urbanization. Additionally, the rural-urban dichotomy remains performative, in that governance regimes influence the urbanization process. Appreciation of these dynamics can provide insights towards a better understanding of the system of human settlements, which is our goal in advancing this framework.     

When Diverse Norms Meet Weak Plans: The Organizational Dynamics of Urban Rubble Clearance in Post‐Earthquake Haiti

In the face of rapid global urbanization, cities are increasingly at risk from major disasters. While considerable attention has been given to other aspects of urban post‐disaster recovery, less has been dedicated to rubble clearance. This article examines the dynamics of rubble clearance through a study of how the diverse organizations responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake addressed this issue in Port‐au‐Prince. It draws on interviews with 52 organizations spanning the range of organizational types engaged in recovery efforts. Building on an evaluation of rubble clearance plans developed for other seismically at‐risk cities, the results indicate that organizations in Port‐au‐Prince lacked a shared understanding of who should coordinate, and engage in, this vital activity. The diverse organizations involved in recovery brought widely diverging norms concerning rubble clearance to a context with weak plans in place for this task. The outcome was uncoordinated action and slow progress. The article draws on the literature on interorganizational norms to contextualize its findings from Port‐au‐Prince. It concludes by arguing for efforts to generate new, shared norms concerning who should lead urban rubble clearance and, in particular, for greater support for, and deference to, local plans around this issue. Such plans would enable governments to establish robust protocols to coordinate action on this increasingly important challenge for cities.     

高速城市化视域下的苏南地区生态安全一体化

改革开放以来,苏南地区的城市迅猛推进,高速城市化对区域生态安全造成了一定的威胁.在高速城市化的视域下,苏南地区苏、锡、常三市谋求生态安全不能再沿袭"画地为牢"的"独善其身"的模式,必须走一体化的道路.当前,苏南地区生太安全一体化应从区域环境规划一体化、区域生态一体化等层面予以推进.     

Infrastructure's Expenditures: Changi Airport,Food Cargo and Capital's Technosphere

Urban research has long maintained that an unwavering link exists between urbanization and infrastructures, with the latter serving as structuring devices that give material and discursive shape to a city's socio‐ecological composition. But, while infrastructures’ mediative power and consequent ecological effects are well established, present scholarship tends to associate them with only a specific set of metabolisms—namely, those tied to urban (re)production—at the expense of wider capitalist projects that may exceed discrete urbanisms. Complexifying this view, this article posits that infrastructures can constitute larger systems and frameworks that help capital achieve networked forms of accumulation. Specifically, it follows recent theorizations on the technosphere—artificialized environments of interacting systems—to demonstrate how infrastructures help drive particular dispositions and modes of production and consumption beyond cities. Through documentary analyses and interviews with industry players, the article uses the emergent food cargo business at Singapore's Changi Airport as an empirical case to exemplify the enfolding of one such technosphere through infrastructures. It shows how paying heed to these technospheric formations exposes hidden expenditures—in this instance, of land, energy and labour—that not only underpin a global regime of (food) circulation, but also result in additional socio‐ecological costs often omitted in urban research.     

The Forever Frontier of Urbanism: Historicizing Persian Gulf Cities

In recent years, Persian Gulf cities have become symbols of the most spectacular forms of the ‘globalization of urbanization’. Current scholarship has sought to situate these cities in transnational processes and linkages with conceptualizations of ‘the global city’ and the mechanisms of ‘worlding’. This article builds on but moves beyond this line of analysis by turning to the histories of this region and its built environment to explore the longue‐durée influence of capital and empire operating across multiple scales. From this perspective, the glittering high‐rises and manmade islands are contemporary manifestations of a century of urban forms and logics of social control emanating from company towns, the struggles of state building, and the circulation and fixing of capital. To grasp how the Persian Gulf region has been remade as a frontier for accumulation, the analysis in this article blurs the boundaries between metropole and periphery, reconceptualizing the region not as an eclectic sideshow, but as a central site for global shifts in urbanism, capitalism and architecture in the twentieth century.     

Water sources and demand in South Western Nigeria: implications for water development planners and scientists

In-depth interviews and personal observations were conducted with 5000 households each in four cities (Lagos, Ibadan, Ife and Ilesa) in South Western Nigeria concerning their household water supply system, water use practices and water demand. Owing to deficiencies in piped water availability, households invest in coping strategies in the form of alternative supplies and storage facilities to supplement piped water.This study revealed that about 30% of respondents have a private piped water connection. Even then, the tap water is available only three times a week on average. This has forced people in the area to invest heavily in the provision of storage tanks of various (up to 5000 litres) capacities for storing tap or rainwater wherever it is available and in the construction of both shallow and deep wells. The computed per capital per day water demand for the study area is about 46 litres. The “coping” strategies have important economic implications for the consumers and thus modelling of water demand should go beyond connection decision. The choice of any particular system for a given usage depends on the perceived attributes of the system. The implications of the results for water planners and water demand modellers are presented in this paper.     

Irregular Connections: Everyday Energy Politics in Catalonia

While questions of energy and energy transition have become hotly contested, the abstract and fetishized conception of energy that dominates contemporary political debates occludes connections to everyday life. By tracing the activities of Catalan activist network Alianza contra la Pobreza Energética (Alliance against Energy Poverty or APE), this article seeks to excavate the political possibilities opened up by a more everyday energy politics. The article addresses the practice of illegal utilities connections among the urban poor of Catalonia, arguing that this constitutes a form of makeshift urbanism resonant of that conceptualized from within ‘Southern’ cities. These ‘irregular connections’ to urban infrastructure networks are then distinguished from the ‘irregular connections’ formed between people within the collectivized social infrastructure of APE. APE, I argue, translate ‘energy’ as social reproduction, framing their struggle for the right to energy around the right to sustain life with dignity. This, I suggest, is the starting point for a feminist praxis capable of creating new and unruly subjectivities, reconfiguring reproductive relations in more caring and collective directions, and ultimately challenging the violence of the commodity form.     

Locating the Urban In‐between: Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto

In the urban studies literature, urban politics is usually considered in two distinct locations: the city (often understood in quite conventional centralist ways) and the suburb (understood as spatially peripheral and politically at odds with the central city). At the metropolitan scale, the two types of urban politics are discussed in relation to one another. More recently, the metropolitan scale of urban politics has been expanded to regional dimensions. We pose the question of location of urban politics from a specific deficit in the geography of centre, suburb and metropolis. We argue that in today's regional political socio‐spatiality, politics will have to be found ‘in‐between’ the old lines of demarcation. Following Tom Sieverts' (2003) advice to look at the ‘in‐between’ cities that are neither old downtown nor new suburb but complex urban landscapes of mixed density, use and urbanity, we reveal the political vacuum that is at the heart of the urban region today. Using the politics of infrastructure in Toronto as our empirical example, we will show that vulnerabilities and risks for urban populations in that Canadian metropolis' in‐between city are co‐generated by the failure of conventional political spaces and processes to capture the connectivities threaded through those places that are in‐between the centre and exurbia.     

Real Existing Regionalism: The Region between Talk,Territory and Technology

In this essay, we propose the notion of real existing ‘lived’ regionalism as a rejoinder to the normative and ideological debates around new regionalism. Regional forms have shown little convergence in this age of globalized regionalization. Instead of an ideational construct or set of predictable practices, we argue that regionalism is a contested product of discourses (talk), territorial relationships (territory) and technologies (material and of power). The concept of real existing regionalism confronts the tensions between the discursive constructions and normative interventions characterizing much current regionalist debate and the territorial politics and technologies reflecting, generating and directing new state spatial strategic choices. The essay demonstrates the utility of the real existing regionalism framework through an analysis of the greenbelt, transport planning and post‐ suburbanization in Southern Ontario. We argue that regulatory institutions capture the Toronto region in a mix of rhetorical and technological change that complies with neither preconceived notions of regionalization nor the pessimism of total regional dysfunctionality. Rather, the lived experience of regionalization illuminates the emergent assemblages, multiplicity of everyday flows and ongoing multiscalar negotiations of diverse communities that produce the real existing region.     

Cities within the City: Do‐It‐Yourself Urbanism and the Right to the City

In many cities around the world we are presently witnessing the growth of, and interest in, a range of micro‐spatial urban practices that are reshaping urban spaces. These practices include actions such as: guerrilla and community gardening; housing and retail cooperatives; flash mobbing and other shock tactics; social economies and bartering schemes; ‘empty spaces’ movements to occupy abandoned buildings for a range of purposes; subcultural practices like graffiti/street art, skateboarding and parkour; and more. This article asks: to what extent do such practices constitute a new form of urban politics that might give birth to a more just and democratic city? In answering this question, the article considers these so‐called ‘do‐it‐yourself urbanisms’ from the perspective of the ‘right to the city’. After critically assessing that concept, the article argues that in order for do‐it‐yourself urbanist practices to generate a wider politics of the city through the appropriation of urban space, they also need to assert new forms of authority in the city based on the equality of urban inhabitants. This claim is illustrated through an analysis of the do‐it‐yourself practices of Sydney‐based activist collective BUGA UP and the New York and Madrid Street Advertising Takeovers.     

Spatial Practices and the Institutionalization of Water Sanitation Services in Southern Metropolises: The case of Jakarta and its Kampung Kojan

This article examines the spatial practices and forms of institutionalization in the water and water sanitation sector in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, and especially in Kampung Kojan in the Kalideres subdistrict of Jakarta. To this end, it develops a three‐layered analytical framework viewing the city as a multi‐scalar socio‐ecological system in which different forms of human–water relations and their institutionalization are found. Particular attention is given to informality in this system and how it interacts with ‘regular’ state and corporate market sector practices. Within these interactive dynamics, informality is not only understood as a survival strategy but also as a creative practice connecting various social‐ecological opportunities, traditional and contemporary technologies and modes of institutionalization to each other. Ongoing institutionalization processes in the formal and informal economy, as well as between them, are analysed. Opportunities to integrate and regularize the diverse water sanitation services into community‐led closed water–wastewater cycles capable of ensuring public health and sustaining a bio‐hydrological balance at the local level are explored.     

Welcoming Refugees and the Cultural Wealth of Cities: Intersections of Urban Development and Refugee Humanitarianism

In a context of rising nativism, cities across liberal democracies are enacting agendas to ‘welcome’ migrants and refugees. Existing scholarship examines this contentious political geography as reflecting either accommodative or restrictive responses to local immigrant populations. Through this lens, pro‐immigrant policies and dynamics are seen to recognize and support a set of pre‐defined immigrant ‘interests’, with the pertinent question being which local actors initiate processes of incorporation and why. Drawing on urban scholarship, this article offers an alternative framework through an analysis of resettled refugees’ experiences within the ‘welcoming agenda’ of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I show that this agenda is tethered to postindustrial ideologies of urban development, which see building and promoting ‘diversity’ as an economic exigency. As such, locally resettled refugees are incentivized to participate in a ‘symbolic economy’ valuing images of diversity, cosmopolitanism and immigrant contribution. Refugees gain access to resources, recognition and decision makers through participation in this symbolic economy, a process constituting a previously unexamined form of incorporation. I advance the concept of the ‘welcomed refugee’ to organize thinking about this process and call for critical attention to the forms of incorporation fostered in pro‐immigrant, cosmopolitan, substate settings.     

RESILIENCE AND ADAPTATION IN GENTRIFYING URBAN INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS: The Experience of Cultural Manufacturers in San Francisco and Melbourne

Recent urban scholarship shows how zoning and real estate dynamics shape ongoing processes of gentrification and deindustrialization. While studies demonstrate the impact of planning and property market pressures on the arts, less research has examined their effect on urban manufacturers in gentrifying industrial districts. Given the differential impact of zoning and real estate pressures, our research focuses specifically on how ‘cultural manufacturers’ negotiate changing land use patterns in gentrifying urban industrial areas in San Francisco and Melbourne. Our findings show how cultural manufacturers develop flexible workspace arrangements, business models and professional networks to negotiate urban restructuring and avoid displacement. Though innovative, these survival strategies provide limited ability to navigate structural barriers. Here, the presence of intermediary organizations can help coordinate a strategic response to industrial gentrification and indifferent planning policy. In our research we highlight the everyday practices of adaptation and collective action in an under-researched cultural sector to provide a counterweight to macro-scale transitional narratives. While cities have deindustrialized owing to technological and competitive pressures, to focus exclusively on this misses a range of resilience practices that have sustained manufacturers in restructuring cities.     

The Myth of Formality in the Global North: Informality‐as‐Innovation in Dutch Governance

Why has urban informality in the global North received so little attention? We suggest that this neglect can be explained in part by the tendency of scholarship to reproduce the myth of Northern formality: the widely held belief that informality occurs only in corrupt and clientelist ‘developing countries’. This myth has allowed activities and connections that would generally be framed as clientelist or corrupt in the global South to be rebranded as policy innovation in Western Europe and North America. In this brief paper, we challenge the myth of Northern formality by focusing on two empirical cases of informality in Dutch governance that demonstrate how the state frames the toleration and deliberate use of informality as policy innovations. Specifically, we focus on strategic, uncodified and non‐transparent deviation from legal procedure in order to achieve compliance and/or effectiveness. Relying on ethnographic methods and secondary sources, we discuss firstly the governance of Amsterdam's red light district and secondly participatory infrastructure projects in the surrounding province of North Holland. The first case highlights the strategic non‐enforcement or non‐application of laws, while the second case points to the use of personalized relationships and non‐transparency in participatory governance.     

Urban Responses to Climate Change: Theories and Governance Practice in Cities of the Global South

Cities around the world have recently started to become ‘proactive’ initiators of climate strategies containing both mitigation and adaptation elements. The experience of these first movers has been studied and documented both empirically and, to a lesser extent, theoretically, primarily for cities in the global North. This symposium addresses related knowledge gaps by exploring case studies of urban regions in the global South confronting their projected climate change challenges, showcasing the experiences of Delhi, Santiago de Chile and Bogotá. Its specific aim is to explore the urban social response to nature change, the adaptation challenges faced by cities across the world and current practices of urban adaptation. Further, the symposium seeks to understand to what extent and in what respect current conceptual frameworks — which highlight urban ecological security and vulnerability — provide a useful context/framing to assist cities in confronting their challenges and to explain their actions. This introductory article examines current knowledge of the theory and practice of urban climate response. It introduces the concepts of ecological security and vulnerability and discusses the adaptive capacity of cities and how they are starting to respond to the emerging challenges of climate change. It concludes with a synthesis of the case articles and highlights some of the findings.     

Organizing The Ordinary City: How Labor Reform Strategies Travel to the US Heartland

In New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, formal alliances between labor unions and community organizations have spurred successful workplace and policy organizing campaigns. As a result, the institutional form of the community–labor coalition is travelling to smaller, less unionized and more politically conservative cities, where the replication of established organizing strategies must contend with political, economic and institutional differences that often go unnoted. Comparing community–labor alliances in Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago, this article identifies heretofore unobserved conditions of possibility for successful urban labor organizing in the US. Compared to smaller cities, Chicago and the large urban areas from which ideal practices are abstracted feature higher levels of union membership, significantly more funding of basic social and neighborhood services, and larger immigrant communities. Operating with minimal human services and limited recourse to the social and institutional networks of immigrant workers, labor coalitions in St. Louis and Indianapolis face recurrent barriers to identifying workplace problems, mobilizing low‐wage workers and sustaining citywide reform campaigns. This indicates geographical limits to the current organizing model and highlights the limitations of urban scholarship derived from large cities unrepresentative of urbanity as a whole.     

塑料管材在市政给排水管网改造中的应用

随着我国城市化进程的加快,面对人口资源和环境的双重压力,为确保可持续发展,我国在逐年加大对城市基础建设的投人。针对当前建筑的金属管材方面的一系列问题,结合国家政策、相关规范及工程实践,不断开发新型建筑新设备的使用.管材水管网建设的不断加快,各种排水管道的品种规格正不断的增加。传统的排水管材由于其本身固有的许多缺点,已经难以适应城市快速发展的需要,塑料材料作为一种新型的化学建材得到了迅速的发展。     

City size and urban labor productivity in China: New evidence from spatial city-level panel data analysis

The previous literature has generally found that most Chinese cities were undersized in the 1990s. However, little is known about how urban agglomeration in China has evolved since the country began to experience much faster urbanization and deep marketization after 2000. Based on panel data of 281 cities between 2000 and 2013, our spatial panel data regression results show that the scale impact of city size on urban productivity appears to have an inverted U shape, and its effect will grow when the cities’ industrial structure becomes more dominated by the service sector. There are also significant spatial interactions and spatial heterogeneity of urban agglomeration among Chinese cities. Furthermore, we compute the optimal size for each city and find that most Chinese cities are still undersized in recent years. Based on our findings, we argue that the Chinese government should focus on promoting sufficient growth of medium sized cities in its new urbanization strategy.