Why homeowners’ documentation went missing under the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP)?: An analysis of strategic behavior of homeowners and servicers

This study investigated why documentation of certain homeowners who participated in the trial period plan (TPP) of HAMP went missing using a model of strategic behavior of homeowners and servicers. I found that the likelihood of cancellation of the TPP for missing documentation was higher for those who were current on their mortgage payments, compared to those 30 days delinquent, prior to entering the plan—both types of homeowners entered the program because they were in danger of imminent default. This finding, which is consistent with servicers “steering” homeowners with low credit risk away from HAMP to their own (proprietary) modifications, is more likely for loans owned or guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) than non-GSE loans—the GSE loans have relatively more homeowners with low credit risks. The outcome, not widespread across servicers, is possibly related to the lack of standardization across servicers in identifying borrowers in danger of imminent default. Missing documentation is also associated with severely delinquent homeowners who had less incentive or were unable to submit complete documentation. This cohort of borrowers could benefit from financial education and Treasury’s proposal that servicers provide a single point of contact for borrowers would help reduce the problem of missing documentation.     

Building,Marketing and Living in an Islamic Gated Community: Novel Configurations of Class and Religion in Istanbul

This article analyses the development and marketing of Islamic gated communities in Basaksehir, Istanbul. It demonstrates how a blueprint of public–private urban development was appropriated by middle‐class Islamists. The gated communities in Basaksehir—which, at the outset, were not explicitly religious—gradually became attractive to religious actors searching for enclosed urban enclaves where Islamic communities would be protected against perceived moral‐urban threats. While urban‐religious enclaves appear to bear similarities to pre‐modern Ottoman Islamic urban enclaves, the rise of contemporary Islamic gated communities should be understood in light of the recent coming to power of the Islamist Turkish government. In cooperation with this government, housing development agencies approached Islamic investors to find capital for their public–private housing projects. One of the results of this form of urban development is that, contrary to pre‐modern Ottoman Islamic urban enclaves, the Islamic gated communities are homogenous in terms of economic class, catering specifically to the Islamic middle classes. Moreover, people who invest in Basaksehir desire an urban‐religious lifestyle that differs from the ‘traditional' religious lifestyle experienced in ‘traditional' Islamic neighbourhoods. The specific urban‐religious configuration generates a new type of Islam that better fits middle‐class values and a middle‐class lifestyle.     

Resisting the 'Long‐Arm' of the State? Spheres of Capture and Opportunities for Autonomy in Community Governance

Efforts to promote community empowerment within regeneration management have been persistently critiqued. Particular concern regards the potential capture of civic organizations into the sphere of influence of more powerful governance stakeholders, leaving communities marginalized and frustrated. Although such ‘capture’ is a discernible threat, this article presents a more nuanced perspective demonstrating the scope for community‐based organizations to dissent from seemingly inexorable regimes of power. The article details a series of tensions that emerged across the evolution of a community‐led regeneration partnership. It then outlines how civil society organizations challenge ‘partnership orthodoxies’, seeking autonomy albeit nested within—and relative to—formal bureaucratic and administrative regimes. Community partners can therefore assume a hybridity of capture and autonomy—or a mutuality—that is rarely acknowledged by accounts that critique regeneration governance.     

Spaces of Extraction,Metropolitan Explosions: Planetary Urbanization and the Commodity Boom in Latin America

Through an exploration of the political economy of the current commodity boom in Latin America, and on the basis of recent appropriations of Henri Lefebvre's notion of planetary urbanization, this article proposes viewing spaces of resource extraction resulting from an escalating international demand for raw materials as particular morphological expressions of market‐driven processes of urbanization. Furthermore, the article draws on Lefebvre to argue that such burgeoning spaces of urbanization are the result of a contradictory tension between spatial homogenization—in the form of multiscalar governance frameworks and infrastructural programs—and territorial fragmentation—in the form of fixed capital allocations and state‐led spatial segregation. When considered jointly, these contradictory movements allow us to grasp fully the extent of the problematic explosion of spaces that, according to Lefebvre, characterizes capitalist urbanization. The article concludes by reflecting on the emancipatory promise that underlies the planetary extension of the urban form because, with the projection of material infrastructures required for resource extraction—especially information technologies—across the rural realm, local communities have been able to shed their isolated state and emerge as fully fledged political actors.     

Creative Mediations of the City: Contemporary Public Art as Compass of Metro Manila's Urban Conditions

In this article, public art is proposed as creative agency mobilized to form urban imaginaries. These alternate visions are largely facilitated by artists and art collectives using urban communities as performative grounds. These projects promote a view of art as an effective channel for ‘recentering’ — the identification of a multitude of centers that endlessly fracture and shift, very much resembling the nature of cities themselves. An alternate vision of the city through cartography informed by contrast, temporality and ephemerality is proposed alongside dominant representations of the city. Works by artists Alma Quinto, Mark Salvatus and Wire Tuazon are representative examples of such strategies. Diverse in tactics and platforms, defined by site‐specific mediations, the projects facilitated by these artists reveal the uneven conditions that beset Metro Manila and its outlying areas. Quinto's altered Urban Plan/Duyan is the result of her engagement with women in an informal settler community in San Andres Bukid, Manila, while Salvatus's web‐based Neo‐Urban Planner is an astute observation of the obsessive yet futile ordering of people and space by the state. Tuazon's Amphibian installation is a commentary on the encroachment of multinational interests in local communities. These interventions are foils to state‐ and private‐led urban development schemes. Their strength lies in their direct engagement with the sphere of public dialogue and self‐determination. These artistic practices and strategies are shaped by community interaction, revealing that meanings residing in urban forms are relentlessly negotiated by the numerous actors that inhabit the city.     

Technifying Public Space and Publicizing Infrastructures: Exploring New Urban Political Ecologies through the Square of General Vara del Rey

The aim of this article is to explore new ways of integrating technology, nature and infrastructures into urban public spaces. This is done through a case study, the design of General Vara del Rey, which is offered here as a model to explore a novel urban political ecology that calls into question dominant definitions of public spaces as self‐contained sites operating independently of natural and infrastructural spaces. Through the double movement of ‘the technification of public space’ and ‘the publicization of infrastructures’, the square aims to rethink the political ecology of urban public spaces by enabling the effective incorporation and participation of infrastructural and natural elements as active actors into the public and political life of the community. It is argued that the transformation of infrastructures into fully visible, public and political agents provides a useful model to address the growing proliferation of infrastructural and technological elements onto contemporary urban surfaces and to open up the possibility of new forms of civic participation and engagement.     

Territorial Stigmatization and Territorial Destigmatization: A Cultural Sociology of Symbolic Strategy in the Gentrification of Parkdale (Toronto)

Territorial stigmatization is one of the most powerful concepts for understanding how social, spatial and symbolic processes are intertwined in producing contemporary urban inequality. Through a detailed case study of Parkdale, a Toronto neighbourhood that has been profoundly shaped by its long association with poverty, single room occupancy housing and psychiatric survivors, this article works at the points of intersection between the rapidly expanding literature on territorial stigmatization and wider social scientific interest in gentrification‐led displacement. Drawing on archival research, participant observation and interviews with residents, it demonstrates how territorial stigmatization, and a new allied concept, territorial destigmatization, operate in Parkdale. Territorial stigmatization and destigmatization work across three dimensions: legal, material and discursive. Using conceptual tools from cultural sociology to foreground symbolic elements of these three dimensions, two strategies of territorial destigmatization are delineated: one that operates in concert with gentrification‐led displacement, and the other that works to symbolically reinscribe stigmatized persons and housing forms. To complement and sharpen territorial stigmatization research, recent findings from studies of stigma are integrated to show how psychiatric survivors and housing advocates in Parkdale use territorial destigmatization to offset gentrification‐led displacement.     

‘Post‐Third‐World City' or Neoliberal ‘City of Exception'? Rio de Janeiro in the Olympic Era

This article considers processes of urban development within the context of mega‐event preparations in Rio de Janeiro. We begin with a brief overview of these development processes, highlighting their connections to political and economic change in recent years. Proponents of these mega‐event‐led initiatives argue that Rio is undergoing a period of inclusive growth and integration: a perspective we call here a ‘post‐Third‐World city' narrative of urban renewal. Critics, however, contend that urban officials are harnessing mega‐events (e.g. the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games) to push forward a neoliberal agenda of socially unjust policies benefiting the interests of capital and marginalizing the city's poor and especially its favelas (i.e. the ‘city‐of‐exception' thesis). In this article we explore the insights of these two perspectives and consider why they have grown popular in recent years. Though we side generally with the city‐of‐exception thesis, we argue that important geographic and historical particularities must also be accounted for. Without carefully situating analytical perspectives empirically—in particular, cases in which theoretical models are drawn from European and North American contexts—urban researchers risk concealing more than they reveal in analyses of rapidly developing countries like Brazil.     

Primary-school class composition and the development of social capital

We study the development of social capital through adult civic engagement, in relation to social capital exposure having occurred during childhood based on experiences outside the family at primary school. We assume that the types of classmates in attendance at a child's school would have influenced her/his social capital. To identify the types of classmates, we take advantage of the heterogeneity in the ability levels of British primary-school classes during the 1960s. At that time, some schools were practicing a method of streaming, whereas others were not. Using British National Child Development data, we construct a single score of civic engagement and evaluate the effect on adult civic engagement of attending homogeneous-ability classes versus nonhomogeneous-ability classes and being in high-, average- or low-ability classes when enrolled in streamed schools. Our results show that children who were grouped in homogeneous-ability classes developed a lower interest in civic engagement than their peers who attended mixed-ability classes (nonstreamed schools). Moreover, among children who attended streamed schools, a lower attitude toward civic engagement was observed among low-ability students. Thus, streaming appears to be detrimental to social capital development, especially for low-ability individuals.     

Civic Engagement in the Performance Evaluation of the Public Sector in China: Building horizontal accountability to enhance vertical accountability

Abstract

This article accounts for the logic of building of an accountability mechanism with elements of civic engagement in an authoritarian regime. It is elaborated by a performance evaluation programme ‘Democratic Review of Administrative and Business Style’ (DRABS) in Wuhan in central China. The author argues that the DRABS does help form government agencies’ responsiveness to the public with various public scrutiny instruments including mass media and the internet, and that it is more accurate to frame the mechanism as having the function of building horizontal accountability to enhance vertical accountability.     

Recovering Sociology from the Trash Heap: Of Waste Politics and the Spatialization of Local Representation in Lagos

This article excavates the debate that unfolded during the 1980s between Jacques Rancière and Pierre Bourdieu to shed light on the theoretical divide that still cuts across the field of urban studies today. Looking at contemporary Rancièrian scholarship through a Bourdieusian lens, it points to their main theoretical shortcomings and reasserts the value of relational, field‐based and empirically grounded approaches to urban politics. At the same time, this article engages seriously Rancière's critique of Bourdieu's failure to account for space in order to question the territoriality inherent to the notion of field. We put this theoretical discussion to the test of Lagos's garbage. Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted in Lagos from 2015 to 2016, we propose analyzing the process of spatialization of the field of local representation by looking at the ways solid waste—here conceived as a political opportunity—is mobilized by different actors. We argue that the deployment of a waste infrastructure in Lagos is congruent with a relative disinvestment in practices of territorial control that reshapes the structure of local representation, reconfiguring the ‘stage’ on which politics is played out in the Nigerian metropolis.     

When territory matters: Employer associations and changing collective goods strategies

Recent research shows employer associations strategically responding to external challenges, from collective bargaining decentralisation, by altering their offerings of “selective” goods (to directly address threats to membership levels) and of “elective” goods (to revenues). Implicit is that traditional “collective goods” are irrelevant for achieving sustainability. That literature also suggests that territorial associations are more vulnerable than sectoral ones. In this qualitative, longitudinal comparative case study, we explore why and how two territorial associations, the largest each in Italy and Australia, have pursued sustainability by also innovatively enlarging their collective goods activities. This has involved shifting from bargaining leadership to promoting economic dynamism within their territories. Using metaorganisation theory and the resource‐based view, we explain how these associations realised their strategic advantages. Our evidence suggests that innovatively developing new collective goods may be another important way associations can improve their competitive positions.     

Manuel Castells’The City and the Grassroots

Castells’ definition, developed in The City and the Grassroots, of urban social movements as movements which combine struggles over collective consumption with those for community culture and political self‐determination, reflects the dynamics of movements in the 1960s and 1970s — which have since undergone a series of transformations. In spite of these transformations and fragmentations, Castells’ analysis remains relevant to contemporary studies of urban movements. One of its legacies is the identification of the conflict lines along which, still today, the major urban contestations take place, even though most of the individual movements no longer converge in one multi‐class actor intent on urban social change. The issue of collective consumption is more topical than ever in the current conjuncture, as public infrastructure and services are curtailed, and as local as well as supra‐national manifestations of the anti‐globalization movement are zeroing in on the neoliberalization of the public sector. Also, Castells’ highlighting of the contesting of state power has proved prophetic, not only in the continued presence of autonomous strands in the varied protests against commercialization, privatization, surveillance and exclusion, but also because it implies a sharp critique of the limitation of the civic engagement discourse currently in vogue.     

Good Governance and Norms of Citizenship: An Investigation into the System‐ and Individual‐Level Determinants of Attachment to Civic Norms

Norms of citizenship are seen as a precondition for a functioning polity and society. But what determines the importance citizens attach to these norms? Are individual‐level features, like education or social embeddedness, relevant? Do system‐level features like the economic situation or quality of governance matter? Our findings from a multilevel analysis indicate that, paradoxically, a political system's effectiveness and legitimacy undermine the very norms on which it depends for both effectiveness and legitimation. In well‐functioning states, citizens' attachment to civic norms declines. As for the effect of welfare policies, there is no “crowding‐out” effect in the sense that if the state provides for citizens who are less well off, solidarity among citizens was reduced. Few individual‐level characteristics that relate to the public sphere—such as social embeddedness—are found to matter, indicating that norms are perpetuated in the private sphere.     

Suburban Inertia: The Entrenchment of Dispersed Suburbanism

During the years following the second world war, an urban development model—dispersed suburbanism (DS)—came to predominate in North America. The low‐density functional specialization and all‐out automobile orientation of this new urban form were ideally suited to the circumstances of the time, thus accounting for its rapid adoption. DS also proved to be adaptable to changing societal circumstances, which explains its predominance as an urban development model under both Fordism and neoliberalism. The adaptability of this urban form also contributed to its spread across much of the world, including Europe. This essay contends that powerful path dependencies maintain DS in place, despite planning efforts to achieve more compact, public‐transit oriented urban development. It also argues that the persistence of DS is a source of hardship for low‐income households forced to live in suburban environments, and entrenches conservative political values.     

The onward sweep of social capital: causes and consequences for understanding cities,communities and urban movements

This article examines the way ‘social capital’ has been deployed by researchers and practitioners in the field of urban movements and community development. It reveals the powerful and in many ways effective role the concept is playing in framing the contemporary reconfigurations of local state‐society relations which impact especially on the trajectory of third or voluntary sector development. The article identifies the gaps and weaknesses the ‘social capital’ perspective responds to, thereby explaining why it looms so large within the urban development discourse. Its own blind spots and ambiguities, however, limit our understanding of contemporary urban change. By prioritizing specific forms of civic engagement (and neglecting others), the concept filters the contemporary reconfigurations in the relationship of civil society, state and market in a peculiar way, which is conducive to supporting the spread of market forces to areas so far beyond the reach of capital. By directing attention to the self‐activation potential of different communities, whether in the form of civic engagement of well‐to‐do volunteers or in the form of activation/reinsertion (into the low‐wage labour market) of the marginalized, this new discourse plays a crucial role not only in current efforts to unburden the local (welfare) state, but also in the expansion of market forces into new areas. L'article examine comment les chercheurs et spécialistes ont fait usage du ‘capital social’ dans le domaine des mouvements urbains et de l'évolution des communautés. Il dévoile le rô le dynamique et, par bien des aspects, efficace que ce concept joue en structurant les reconfigurations contemporaines des relations société‐gouvernement local, lesquelles influent notamment sur les tendances du secteur associatif ou du bénévolat. L'article identifie les lacunes et faiblesses que comble la perspective du ‘capital social’, expliquant ainsi les raisons de son omniprésence dans la rhétorique de l'urbanisme. Ses propres faiblesses et ambiguïtés limitent toutefois notre compréhension du changement urbain contemporain. En mettant en avant des formes spécifiques d'engagement civique (et en en négligeant d'autres), le concept dégage les reconfigurations modernes qui interviennent sur la relation entre société civile, É tat et marché, et ce d'une manière particulière qui contribue à la propagation des forces du marché dans des zones jusqu'alors inaccessibles au capital. En s'intéressant au potentiel d'auto‐activation de diverses communautés, que ce soit sous la forme d'un engagement civique de nantis volontaires ou de l'activation ou la réinsertion (sur le marché du travail des bas salaires) des marginaux, ce nouveau discours est essentiel, non seulement dans le cadre des efforts actuels visant à soulager l'É tat (providence) local, mais aussi dans l'expansion des forces du marché vers des zones nouvelles.     

A Transposition of Territory: Decolonized Perspectives in Current Urban Research

In this article, we discuss the concept of territory from a decolonized perspective. We engage with the ongoing debate on decentralizing urban studies to outline the potential drawbacks of essentializing, generalizing or objectifying the urban. Through the socio‐territorial approach utilized here we seek to address these issues by shifting attention, first, to the social production of territory, and secondly, from an analysis of state strategies to the urban scale. We understand territory as being produced when subjects struggle over the practices, meanings and tenures of urban space. An example from Mexico City is employed to illustrate how territory becomes both the site and stake of social struggle. By focusing on the subjects involved in the production of territory, and on the way different subjects produce and reproduce hegemonic spaces and counter‐spaces, we emphasize three aspects in particular: first, a territory's specific material conditions; secondly, the imaginarios (social imaginaries) various actors inscribe into it; and thirdly, the communal land use form of the ejido as a unique territorial regulation. Finally, we argue for the empirical groundedness of the concept of territory with the aim of further pluralizing the field of urban studies. The socio‐territorial approach we propose explicitly focuses on power relations in the production of both urban space and knowledge.     

An examination of the effects of rescue workers meaning transfer,attitudes and subjective norms towards being voluntarily involved in civic activities on civic engagement intention

The present investigation used the transfer‐meaning model to assess the influence of rescue workers meaning after a major catastrophic event. Specifically, we examined the influence of rescue workers meaning on subjective norms and attitudes towards being voluntarily involved in civic activities and the influence of these on online and offline civic engagement intention. 300 Mexican undergraduate and graduate students completed a battery of questionnaires assessing meaning transfer, subjective norms, attitudes and behavioural intentions towards offline and online civic engagement. Results showed a significant positive effect of rescue workers meaning on subjective norms and attitude towards being voluntarily involved in civic activities. In addition, subjective norms and attitudes were significant antecedents of offline and online civic participation intention. The theoretical and managerial implications of our results were discussed.     

The Neoliberalization of Municipal Land Policy in Sweden

In Sweden, local governments’ practice of the ‘municipal land instrument’—that is, the use of public land ownership as a tool for facilitating urban development—has a long tradition. In the post‐war era, public land ownership constituted an important component of state‐led housing production, which had both a productive and a redistributive purpose. Departing from a political economy perspective, this article demonstrates how the redistributive aspect of the municipal land instrument has been dissolved under neoliberalization, and discusses why the use of this instrument is problematic from both a democratic and ethical point of view. Based on a case study in Helsingborg, the article argues that, in using public land to leverage private investment in urban development, local decision makers adopt an interest in supporting rent extraction from tenants and housing owners, while subsidizing investment costs for developers. The dual role that municipalities assume as landowner‐developers and planning authorities enable them to facilitate urban development effectively, but it is also problematic because it transgresses the public–private law divide inherent to Swedish law. Assuming this dual role, municipalities place themselves in a biased position that risks undermining the legitimacy of governmental actions in general, and the planning system in particular.     

Provincializing Critical Urban Theory: Extending the Ecosystem of Possibilities

Advocating a provincialization of critical urban theory, we seek to move beyond current polarizations and disputes over the basis of urban theory, creating space to take seriously the possibility that no single theory suffices to account for the variegated nature of urbanization and cities across the world. Such provincialization requires a serious engagement with both mainstream and critical Anglophone urban theory, challenging the seeming naturalness of knowledge claims through rigorous theoretical and empirical scrutiny from the standpoint of peripheral perspectives located outside the core. This entails recognizing the existence of a shifting ecosystem of critical urban theories, putting these into even‐handed critical conversation with one another. The collective resilience of urban theory will be dependent upon ongoing engagement across such diversity. At the heart of such an ecosystem are shifts in practice, seeking a new comparative analytic that destabilizes the universalism of the dominant norm, against which all other exemplars are to be compared, with the imperative of taking the field seriously.