Everyday Lives in Vertical Neighbourhoods: Exploring Bangladeshi Residential Spaces in Toronto's Inner Suburbs

In the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA), almost a third of the total housing stock is comprised of high‐rise apartment buildings. Not only do most new immigrants reside in these structures upon arrival, they often continue living here for a prolonged period, for a variety of interrelated economic and psychological reasons. It is therefore important to ask: How do these vertical structures affect the life worlds of the residents? What functions do these spaces perform? How do immigrants develop attachments to these spaces, and how do they make them their own? By drawing upon the experiences of 30 Bangladeshi immigrant households in Toronto's inner suburbs, I demonstrate that even though these vertical stacks are not conducive to frequent social interaction by design, the residents variously transform such functional spaces into unique ‘Bengali’ neighbourhoods that are filled with ambivalent feelings of hope and despair, imaginations of the future, becoming a place they can call home away from home.     

The Neighbourhood in Pieces: The Fragmentation of Local Public Space in a Swedish Housing Area

In this article, we investigate the transformation of local public spaces in the ethnically and socially diverse housing area Norra Fäladen during 1970–2015. After being built, the area soon faced stigmatization and became known as a problem area. This was followed by a series of investments in local public spaces aiming for a stronger appropriation of the neighbourhood by its inhabitants. The production of a ‘neighbourhood spirit’ has, however, slowly deteriorated over the last two decades. Through the introduction of new areas, with large single‐family houses on the one hand, and a densification of the existing housing stock on the other, the inhabitants’ dependence on the existing (but now decreasing) public spaces within the area has been polarized. Local public spaces are also being increasingly relocated from central parts of the neighbourhood to the peripheries or outside the area. In this article, we investigate how this quite slow, yet steady, transformation has affected the local public spaces and the everyday life of the area.     

‘Many Rivers to Cross’: Suburban Densification and the Social Status Quo in Greater Lyon

Urban research often considers densification from the perspective of sustainable development and social mix. This essay focuses instead on the social and political stakes involved in densification through the example of a large French metropolitan area. It shows that the densification policies put in place in the Lyon agglomeration cannot be said to succeed in breaking down the historical segregation between its residential and affluent western suburbs (banlieues) and its industrial and working‐class eastern ones. The political manoeuvres executed by the institutions implementing densification, and the search for consensus characterizing France's intercommunalities, block any possibility of redistributing functions and social classes at the metropolitan scale, and hence of ending the social specialization of Lyon's suburbs. Moreover, municipalities subjected to pressure from suburban areas carefully assess the profile of residents selected to occupy new housing units—i.e. individuals already residing in the commune in the case of western suburbs, and middle‐class individuals hailing from the eastern part of the agglomeration in the case of eastern suburbs. Densification does not foster social mix at the metropolitan scale, neither does it improve the housing conditions of disadvantaged populations.     

THE TRUTHINESS HURTS

This essay applies some of the key insights in Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter. We discuss the relevance of cheap signals in political systems as well as the relevance of ideas in public policy with ‘rationally irrational’ voters. We add a fifth bias, ‘stick‐it‐to‐the‐man bias’, to Caplan's proposed anti‐market, anti‐foreign, make‐work and pessimistic biases, and we apply them all to environmental policy.     

Cracks in the Creative City: The Contradictions of Community Arts Practice

The recent flurry of research about arts‐led regeneration initiatives illuminates how contemporary arts festivals can become complicit in the production of urban inequality. But researchers rarely engage with detailed empirical examples that shed light on the contradictory role that artists sometimes play within these spectacularized events. Similar research in performance studies connects the political limits and potential of social practice arts — interventions that encourage artists and non‐artists to co‐produce work — as civic boosters strive to stage cities in order to attract investment. In this article, I explore the case study of Streetscape: Living Space at Regent Park, a participatory artistic intervention programmed in a public housing neighbourhood that is undergoing redevelopment in Toronto, Canada. Streetscape was part of the Luminato festival, an elite booster coalition‐led festival of ‘creativity’. I refer to these arts interventions to demonstrate how artists engaging in social practice arts can become complicit in naturalizing colonial gentrification processes at multiple scales. But I also reveal how artists can leverage heterogeneous arts‐led regeneration strategies to make space for ‘radical social praxis’ (Kwon, 2004), interventions that challenge hegemonic regimes. I conclude by interrogating the effectiveness of place‐based efforts in unsettling the ‘creative city’.     

Social Accounting Research as If The World Matters

Abstract

This essay is intended as a self-reflective, auto-critique of the ‘social accounting community’. The essay is directed at the academic community of accountants concerned with social accounting. This `community' is predominantly concerned with English language accounting journals and is preoccupied with the social and environmental practices of the larger private sector organisations. The essay is motivated by a concern over our responsibilities as academics in a world in crisis and a concern that social accounting is losing its energy and revolutionary zeal. This community's social accounting endeavours have taken place in almost complete ignorance of the activities and developments in non accounting communities and, in particular, developments in the public and third sectors. The essay reaches out to the public and third sector work and literature as an illustration of one of the ways in which ‘our’ social accounting can try to prevent itself from becoming moribund.     

The New Ruins of Ireland? Unfinished Estates in the Post‐Celtic Tiger Era

In the wake of the global financial crisis, and as Europe's financial and fiscal woes continue, Ireland's beleaguered economy has attracted a great deal of scrutiny, with much made of the country's status as one of the PIIGS and the fact that it was bailed out by the troika of the IMF, EU and ECB in November 2010. Whilst most attention has been directed at Ireland's banks and the strategy of the Irish government in managing the crisis, substantial interest (both nationally and internationally) has been focused on the property sector and in particular the phenomenon of so‐called ‘ghost estates’ (or, in official terms, unfinished estates). As of October 2011 there were 2,846 such estates in Ireland, and they have come to visibly symbolize the collapse of Ireland's ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. In this essay, we examine the unfinished estates phenomenon, placing them within the context of Ireland's property boom during the Celtic Tiger years, and conceptualize them as ‘new ruins’ created through the search for a spatial fix by speculative capitalism in a time of neoliberalism. We detail the characteristics and geography of such estates, the various problems afflicting the estates and their residents, and the Irish government's response to those problems. In the final section we examine the estates as exemplars of new ruins, the remainder and reminder of Celtic Tiger excess.     

The Politics of Post‐Suburban Densification in Canada and France

This debate specifically focuses on densification as a particular dimension of (post‐) suburbanization. In the introduction, we discuss densification, along with ‘compactness' and ‘intensification', conceptual terms that have become buzzwords within urban planning. Objectives associated with these tend to be presented in the literature within a normative framework, structured by a critique of the negative effects attributed to sprawl. The perspective here is different. It is not normative but critical, and articulated around the analysis of political and social issues, related to the transformation of wider metropolitan space. Three main themes are developed: (1) the politics of densification (the environmental arguments favouring densification are highly plastic, and are thus often used to defend projects or initiatives which are actually determined by other agendas); (2) why morphology matters (a similar number of houses or square metres can be established in many different ways, and those different ways have political and social meaning); (3) the diversity of suburban densification regimes (it is not only the landscapes of the suburbs that are diverse, but also the local bodies governing them—between the small residential municipalities of the Paris periurbs and the large inner suburbs of Toronto lies a broad spectrum).     

Negotiating Social Mix in Toronto's First Public Housing Redevelopment: Power,Space and Social Control in Don Mount Court

This article examines the experience of social interaction in Toronto's Don Mount Court community, the first socially mixed public‐housing redevelopment site in Canada. Similar to the American HOPE VI program, redevelopment involved the demolition and mixed‐income reconstruction of the community to include both public housing and new market condominiums with a neo‐traditional redesign. Based on participant observation, this article describes four struggles that emerged over the course of a series of mixed‐income community governance meetings intended to promote social inclusion. These struggles related to (1) unequal power relations in shaping local priorities; (2) the power to brand the community and define its aesthetic characteristics; (3) the power to define and use public space; and (4) power over modes of surveillance and exclusion. The findings challenge the myth that the ‘benevolent’ middle class will use their political influence and social capital to the benefit of their low‐income neighbors in mixed neighbourhoods. Instead, the research found that public‐housing tenants were often on the receiving end of antagonism. It is argued that policymakers intent on ameliorating problems related to residence in disadvantaged communities should focus on funding for social programs and transformative change, rather than on public‐housing demolition and state‐driven gentrification via mixed‐income redevelopment.     

‘Gentrification Without Displacement' and the Consequent Loss of Place: The Effects of Class Transition on Low‐income Residents of Secure Housing in Gentrifying Areas

The increasingly disputed concept of gentrification‐induced displacement is combining with the argument that the poor benefit from social mix to produce a theoretical case for ‘positive gentrification'. The notion that new middle‐class residents not only attract more investment but bring opportunities for ‘upward social mobility' to low‐income people who manage to stay in gentrifying areas has become policy orthodoxy. While there are scholarly challenges to the extent of these benefits, the disadvantages of imposed social mix on low‐income communities even where they are not physically displaced remain under‐researched. This article helps to fill this gap by reporting on research into the experience of long‐term low‐income residents of gentrifying neighbourhoods who managed to stay put. The research explores notions of social mix, place and displacement among residents of secure community housing in Melbourne, Australia (the equivalent of small‐scale social housing in Europe and North America) with the object of establishing whether the absence of physical displacement is sufficient to ameliorate gentrification's negative impacts. The findings demonstrate that transformations in shops and meeting places, and in the nature of local social structure and government interventions, cause a sense of loss of place even without physical displacement.     

From Public Familiarity to Comfort Zone: The Relevance of Absent Ties for Belonging in Berlin's Mixed Neighbourhoods

Segregation along lines of race/ethnicity and class has created multi‐ethnic and rather class‐homogeneous neighbourhoods in various European cities, commonly labelled as ‘disadvantaged’. Such neighbourhoods are often seen as ‘lacking’ community, as local networks are crucial for belonging and mixed neighbourhoods are too diverse to provide homogeneous identifications. However, in contrast to the understandings of the sociology of community, people might still experience ‘belonging’, yet in different ways. This article argues that we have to focus on the under‐researched ‘time in‐between’ (Byrne, 1978), the absent ties that Granovetter (1973) pointed to, to understand belonging, while moving away from a conception of the anonymous city and from the urban village. This article explores how absent ties affect belonging by empirically sustaining the notion of public familiarity: both recognizing and being recognized in local spaces. Using regression models on survey data from two mixed neighbourhoods in Berlin, Germany, we analyse the importance of neighbourhood use for public familiarity as well as how it relates to residents' comfort zone: people's feeling of belonging and their sense that others would intervene on their behalf. Our findings indicate that research on neighbourhoods could benefit greatly from a careful consideration of the ‘time in‐between’.     

Categorizing Neighborhoods: The Invention of ‘Sensitive Areas’ in France and ‘Historic Districts’ in the United States

This essay offers a reflexive return to two research projects to demonstrate the value of Bourdieu's emphasis on the symbolic for the analysis of contemporary urban transformation. Bourdieu's insistence that we track the social genesis and diffusion of spatial categories of thought and action directs us to the empirical study of the struggles between agents and organizations that promote and/or oppose these categories, as well as the political, economic and other interests animating the agents. A retracing of the parallel invention of the ‘at‐risk neighborhood’ (quartier sensible) coined for and targeted by French urban policy since the late 1980s and the emergence of ‘historic’ or ‘diverse’ neighborhoods touted by gentrifying residents, cultural organizations and real estate agents in the United States since the 1960s challenges misleading oppositions between materiality and representations that often underpin and cramp urban research.     

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.     

Living on the Edge: Lessons from the Peri‐urban Village

The idea of an urban renaissance — based on a celebration of city life and its possibilities — is timely given half of the world's population now resides in urban areas. Yet, as appealing as this prospect may be, both in principle and planning theory, it remains at odds with the desires of many residents who seek ‘lifestyle living’ in low‐density suburban or ex‐urban settings. This article presents the results of a qualitative investigation of what it means to ‘live on the edge’ in a peri‐urban village, as understood by residents living in those settings. These results are evaluated in light of phenomenological literature on authentic and inauthentic places, and the myriad reasons so‐called amenity migrants choose the peri‐urban village as their preferred residential location. The results of in‐depth interviews with 28 residents are presented as a four‐part typology of ‘active’ lifestylers and those searching for community, and ‘passive’ speculators and those seeking a civilized society. Though prior work suggests people are attracted to the peri‐urban village for its bio‐physical environmental features, this research suggests socioeconomic factors and opportunities for active place‐making experiences are as, if not more, important.     

Living With Stigma: Spatial and Social Divisions in a Danish City

Inspired by Bourdieu's theory of homology between social, mental and spatial structures, this essay dissects the relationship between spatial and social divisions in the Danish city of Aalborg using varied data from official statistics, surveys, qualitative interviews and field observations. Spatial divisions reflect differences in the objective distribution of economic and cultural capital, and are accompanied by symbolic divisions in residents’ minds. Some nuances are, however, added to Bourdieu's homology argument, as there are discrepancies between objective distributions and mental schemes, such that the latter exaggerate and dramatize the former. The neighbourhood of Aalborg East is subjected to this symbolic exaggeration in the form of spatial stigma or territorial stigmatization. An analysis of residents’ strategies for coping with spatial stigma furthermore provides an illustration of Wacquant's claim that this stigmatization can be met with a range of socially patterned responses ranging from acceptance or indifference to recalcitrance.     

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.     

The end of public housing as we know it: public housing policy,labor regulation and the US city

In this article I argue that the US public housing policy, as codified by the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (QHWRA), is helping to reconfigure the racial and class structure of many inner cities. By promoting the demolition of public housing projects and replacement with mixed‐income housing developments, public housing policy is producing a gentrified inner‐city landscape designed to attract middle and upper‐class people back to the inner city. The goals of public housing policy are also broadly consonant with those of welfare reform wherein the ‘workfare’ system helps to bolster and produce the emergence of contingent low‐wage urban labor markets. In a similar manner, I argue that public housing demonstration programs, such as the ‘Welfare‐to‐Work’ initiative, encourage public housing residents to join the lowwage labor market. Although the rhetoric surrounding the demolition of public housing emphasizes the economic opportunities made available by residential mobility, I argue that former public housing residents are simply being relocated into private housing within urban ghettos. Such a spatial fix to the problems of unemployment and poverty will not solve the problems of inner‐city poverty. Will it take another round of urban riots before we seriously address the legacy of racism and discrimination that has shaped the US city? Cet article démontre que la politique du logement public américaine, telle que la réglemente la Loi de 1998, Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, contribue à remodeler la structure par races et classes de nombreux quartiers déshérités des centres‐villes. En favorisant la démolition d'ensembles de logements sociaux et leur remplacement par des complexes urbanisés à loyers variés, la politique publique génère un embourgeoisement des centres‐villes destinéà y ramener les classes moyennes et supérieures. Les objectifs de la politique du logement rejoignent largement ceux de la réforme sociale où le système de ‘l'allocation conditionnelle’ facilite et nourrit la création de marchés contingents du travail à bas salaires. De même, les programmes expérimentaux de logements publics, telle l'initiative Welfare‐to‐Work (De l'aide sociale au travail) poussent les habitants des logements sociaux à rejoindre le marchéde la main d'?uvre à bas salaires. Bien que les discours autour de la démolition des logements sociaux mettent en avant les ouvertures économiques créées par la mobilité résidentielle, leurs anciens habitants sont simplement en train d'être déplacés vers des logements privés situés dans des ghettos urbains. Ce genre de solution spatiale aux problèmes du chômage et de la pauvreté ne viendra pas à bout du dénuement des quartiers déshérités du centre. Faudra‐t‐il une autre série d'émeutes urbaines pour que l'on aborde sérieusement l'héritage de racisme et de discrimination qui a façonné les villes américaines?     

Spaces of the Expelled as Spaces of the Urban Commons? Analysing the Re‐emergence of Squatting Initiatives in Rome

Asserting the need to acknowledge the role of the current crisis and austerity politics in fostering the re‐emergence of squatting initiatives in Rome, this article brings together the literature on squatting as an urban social movement, notably Martínez López's holistic approach, with a political economy perspective analysing the current stage of ‘late neoliberalism’. In so doing, I use the conceptualization of ‘expulsions’ developed by Sassen to show how emerging squatting initiatives in Rome represent the ‘spaces of the expelled’. Focusing on the case of Communia in San Lorenzo neighbourhood, the article shows how Martínez López's approach is able to account for the rapid success and support enjoyed by Communia, going as it does beyond the ‘single‐issue’ perspective that has dominated much of the squatting literature. Indeed, the main claims addressed by Communia activists concern a plurality of issues grouped around the concept of urban commons, as both a practice and a goal. Methodologically, the article is the result of 18 months of fieldwork based on an activist/participatory action research (PAR) approach, comprising participant observation/observant participation, in‐depth interviews and questionnaires.     

Rejoinder: Alex Schwartz's critique of ‘The end of public housing as we know it’

In this article I argue that the US public housing policy, as codified by the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (QHWRA), is helping to reconfigure the racial and class structure of many inner cities. By promoting the demolition of public housing projects and replacement with mixed‐income housing developments, public housing policy is producing a gentrified inner‐city landscape designed to attract middle and upper‐class people back to the inner city. The goals of public housing policy are also broadly consonant with those of welfare reform wherein the ‘workfare’ system helps to bolster and produce the emergence of contingent low‐wage urban labor markets. In a similar manner, I argue that public housing demonstration programs, such as the ‘Welfare‐to‐Work’ initiative, encourage public housing residents to join the lowwage labor market. Although the rhetoric surrounding the demolition of public housing emphasizes the economic opportunities made available by residential mobility, I argue that former public housing residents are simply being relocated into private housing within urban ghettos. Such a spatial fix to the problems of unemployment and poverty will not solve the problems of inner‐city poverty. Will it take another round of urban riots before we seriously address the legacy of racism and discrimination that has shaped the US city? Cet article démontre que la politique du logement public américaine, telle que la réglemente la Loi de 1998, Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, contribue à remodeler la structure par races et classes de nombreux quartiers déshérités des centres‐villes. En favorisant la démolition d'ensembles de logements sociaux et leur remplacement par des complexes urbanisés à loyers variés, la politique publique génère un embourgeoisement des centres‐villes destinéà y ramener les classes moyennes et supérieures. Les objectifs de la politique du logement rejoignent largement ceux de la réforme sociale oú le système de ‘l'allocation conditionnelle' facilite et nourrit la création de marchés contingents du travail à bas salaires. De même, les programmes expérimentaux de logements publics, telle l'initiative Welfare‐to‐Work (De l'aide sociale au travail) poussent les habitants des logements sociaux à rejoindre le marchéde la main d'?uvre à bas salaires. Bien que les discours autour de la démolition des logements sociaux mettent en avant les ouvertures économiques créées par la mobilité résidentielle, leurs anciens habitants sont simplement en train d'être déplacés vers des logements privés situés dans des ghettos urbains. Ce genre de solution spatiale aux problèmes du chômage et de la pauvreté ne viendra pas à bout du dénuement des quartiers déshérités du centre. Faudra‐t‐il une autre série d'émeutes urbaines pour que l'on aborde sérieusement l'héritage de racisme et de discrimination qui a façonné les villes américaines?