Reconfiguring Belonging in the Suburban US South: Diversity, ‘Merit’ and the Persistence of White Privilege

In the past few decades, a diverse body of scholarship has complicated the image of American suburbs as spaces of white, middle‐class homogeneity. Revisionist suburban histories and accounts of African American and immigrant suburbanization have drawn attention to the longstanding presence of non‐white others in US suburbs. Yet despite diversification, white privilege remains deeply entrenched in suburbia. This article explores the shifting character of white privilege in the US — especially in the US South — and asks how whites interpret diversity and identify those with whom they are, or are not, willing to share their privileges. This article uses the results of a pilot study in a subdivision near Columbia, South Carolina, to explore how white suburbanites articulate belonging in neighborhood space. This discussion highlights the ways in which respondents reject the pre‐civil‐rights order marked by overt racial discrimination, but also reveals the ways in which they evaluate the relative merit of minority groups and identify certain differences as unacceptable. While limited in scope, this study encourages scholars to further explore the ways in which shifting configurations of race become intertwined with processes of contemporary suburban change.     

Gentrification,Education and Exclusionary Displacement in East London

In this article we draw on Peter Marcuse's discussion of different types of displacement using evidence from a recent study we conducted in East London to argue that there is clear evidence of ‘exclusionary displacement’ and ‘displacement pressure’ in terms of education and specifically the choice of schooling. We show how the incoming middle classes in the Victoria Park area of inner East London have displaced not only existing poor residents but also many of the less affluent middle class from the favoured state schools in the area by adopting some schools and avoiding others. The preferred schools are often praised to the heavens whilst the shunned schools are similarly disparaged and deemed unacceptable. We suggest that it is this middle‐class dichotomization of schooling which accounts for the kind of educational displacement we have observed. The main form that this takes is direct exclusionary displacement when middle‐class pressure on favoured schools leads to local people being unable to get their children into them — normally because of ‘distance from school’ selection criteria.     

‘McJobs’, ‘good jobs’ and skills: job‐seekers' attitudes to low‐skilled service work

This article focuses on unemployed job‐seekers' attitudes towards entry‐level jobs in three areas of the service sector – retail, hospitality and call‐centre work. The article examines whether job‐seekers are reluctant to pursue these opportunities, and provides an analysis of the motives of those ruling out service work. A range of potential barriers is discussed, including the extent to which job‐seekers perceive the service economy as offering only so‐called ‘McJobs’– low‐skilled, low‐paid jobs with few opportunities for development. However, the article also focuses on perceived skills mismatches, with some job‐seekers arguably over‐qualified for entry‐level service jobs, while others consider themselves to lack the necessary ‘soft’ skills. The analysis is based on interviews with 220 unemployed people in Glasgow. The article concludes that policy action may be required to encourage job seekers to consider a broader range of vacancies and to provide tailored training in partnership with service employers. On the demand side, service employers must address the need for entry‐level positions that offer realistic salaries, decent work conditions and opportunities for progression and development.     

‘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.     

Glorified Fantasies and Masterpieces of Deception on Importing Las Vegas into the ‘New South Africa’

With the end of apartheid, Johannesburg and other South African cities are now part of a new global race to become ‘world‐class’ tourist and business centers. At the center of this development is the importation of Vegas‐style spectacle by local entrepreneurs, firms and other city boosters who create fantasyscapes such as the Emperor's Palace and GrandWest. Financed and run by South African impresarios — whose luxurious empires transcend the continent — these resorts represent not only the globalization of gaming but the way in which South African cities see themselves within the worldwide urban hierarchy. As such, this article seeks to untangle the global and local aspects of importing fantasy into the ‘new South Africa’.     

‘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.     

‘A Land of Milk and Honey’? Reengineering the ‘Past’ and ‘Present’ in a Call Centre*

ABSTRACT This article explores how managers, in the Call Centre of a Bank, (re)defined, and drew boundaries around ‘past’ cultural conditions, in relation to the introduction of a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) regime. Managers represented the ‘past’ negatively, in terms of conflict and coercion, whilst the ‘present’ was largely described as a Shangri‐La of teams and consensus. This eschewing of the ‘past’ and sublimation of the ‘present’ stood in opposition to the representations of the staff. Both the ‘staff’ and ‘managers’ seemed to reject or embrace discourses that challenged or coincided with their understanding of how things are or should be. In view of this, their understanding of the past/present is inseparable from a consideration of power and identity. The article examines the interplay between discourses and individuals, arguing that it is bound up with fear and anxiety, hope and aspiration, memory and nostalgia, among other, everyday life experiences.     

Decentralizing Indonesian City Spaces as New ‘Centers’

Since the introduction of regional autonomy legislation in 1999, Indonesia has embarked on the world's biggest experiment with democratic decentralization. The intertwined processes of democratization and decentralization have dismantled Indonesia's centralized authoritarian system and reordered its governmental structures. These conjoined processes have set in motion conditions for the transformation of a number of Indonesia's secondary cities into regional ‘centers’ through the influx of new peoples, funding and ways of interacting within localized contexts and with the outside world. In this article I consider Indonesia's decentralization processes through the lens of the city, focusing on three key areas in the rising profile and development of urban centers. First, I look at the framing of Indonesian cities within contemporary urban discourses to highlight the array of urban spaces that coexist in the era of decentralization. Second, I describe how Indonesia's decentralization laws have structurally privileged cities by bypassing the provincial level and devolving most state powers directly to sub‐provincial administrations. Third, I explore how Indonesian cities compete and cooperate over limited state resources under the decentralized system and why some cities have been able to reinvent themselves as new centers in planning, practice and innovation, and why others continue to lag behind.     

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?     

Being Good Parents or Being Good Citizens: Dilemmas and Contradictions of Urban Families in Middle‐Class Enclaves and Mixed Neighbourhoods in Germany

In recent years, cities have become ever more attractive to middle‐class families. On the one hand, middle‐class families tend to withdraw into (often newly built) socially homogeneous middle‐class neighbourhoods. On the other hand, they are also known to move into inner‐city and socially mixed areas, thus triggering processes of gentrification. Academic literature has often denounced these housing choices as being either ‘separatist’ or ‘revanchist’, more broadly categorized as strategies of ‘middle‐class disaffiliation’. Although there is a grain of truth in these interpretations, the reality is certainly more complicated. In our research on middle‐class parents’ housing and neighbourhood choices as well as their patterns of neighbourhood use, carried out in each of the two types of residential area mentioned above, we have only very rarely found an explicit desire to draw boundaries that exclude those ‘beneath’ them. We rather argue that the housing choices and neighbourhood‐related activities of middle‐class family households are heavily influenced by the specific dilemmas the interviewees face as (working) urban parents. While a significant number of respondents worry about the social sustainability, justice and cohesion of urban society, they are also concerned about the future prospects of their children. Many find it difficult to reconcile these conflicting normative demands under the prevailing circumstances.     

Development by Decree: The Limits of ‘Authoritarian Modernization’ in the Russian Federation

The apparent success of state‐managed market economies has challenged the conventional wisdom that liberal democracy is the norm around which all capitalist countries tend to converge. If the link between democracy and development is more tenuous than we often think, the authoritarian variety of capitalism is not without its own problems, especially with respect to political legitimacy, innovation and regional development. This article explores these issues through the prism of ‘authoritarian modernization’ in Russia. We argue that this strategy is unlikely to succeed, even in its own terms, because (1) the political system fails to create favourable institutional conditions for modernization; (2) the economic system is beset by deeply embedded structural problems; and (3) the regional policy apparatus is torn between the goals of spatial equalization and spatial agglomeration. The article focuses on the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, the main symbol of Russian modernization, to demonstrate the territorial repertoire of the mega‐project, a state‐sponsored development strategy to create innovation clusters from above because they cannot emerge from below.     

‘Street Music’, Urban Ethnography and Ghettoized Communities

Hip‐hop is a definitively urban movement, born in the crisis of the Fordist city and rooted in the 1970s street culture of poor and working‐class African Americans and Latinos in New York City. Engaging with the contributions of Beer and Lamotte, this essay addresses two questions. Firstly, can we understand hip‐hop as a politics of resistance, a social movement rooted in a claim on urban space and a practice of urban citizenship? And secondly, is hip hop, and particularly rap music, a form of urban and regional research? I argue that as a primarily artistic movement and black expressive culture (subject to commercial imperatives), hip‐hop has a layered and complex relationship with the social, political and spatial fabric of urban America. The complexity of this relationship renders problematic attempts to understand hip‐hop as urban ethnography or as a resistance politics. I conclude by discussing the potential of an engagement between hip‐hop and critical urban studies.     

‘Stop Being a Tourist!’ New Dynamics of Urban Tourism in Berlin‐Kreuzberg

Berlin is witnessing a massive tourism boom, and parts of it can be described as ‘new urban tourism’, which shows a preference for off the beaten track areas and ‘authentic’ experiences of the city. This form of tourism seems especially salient in Kreuzberg. It is here that an openly articulated critique of tourism attracted national attention in 2011 and has not ceased to do so since. This article aims to better understand the conflictive potential of (new urban) tourism in Kreuzberg. We argue that the readily expressed negative attitudes against tourists and the easily accepted link between tourism and gentrification have to be explained against the backdrop of certain housing‐market dynamics. Rising rents and a diminution in the number of flats available for rent are fuelling fears of gentrification in Kreuzberg, while the interest shown in new urban tourism and the comparatively low‐priced real‐estate market in Berlin result in a growing number of holiday flats. Although adding only slightly to the tightening of the housing market, holiday flats render complex processes of neighborhood change visible and further sustain an already prevalent tourism critique.     

The ‘Graying’ of ‘Green’ Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco,Mexico City

This article details the evolving social and spatial dynamics of a planning approach that is now being used to regulate irregular or informal settlements in the conservation zone of Xochimilco in the Federal District of Mexico City. As part of the elaboration of ‘normative’ planning policies and practices, this approach counts, maps and then classifies irregular settlements into different categories with distinct land‐use regularization possibilities. These spatial calculations establish a continuum of ‘gray’ spaces, placing many settlements in a kind of planning limbo on so‐called ‘green’ conservation land. The research suggests that these spatial calculations are now an important part of enacting land‐use planning and presenting a useful ‘technical’ veneer through which the state negotiates competing claims to space. Based on a case study of an irregular settlement, the article examines how the state is implicated in the production and regulation of irregularity as part of a larger strategy of spatial governance. The research explores how planning ‘knowledges’ and ‘techniques’ help to create fragmented but ‘governable’ spaces that force communities to compete for land‐use regularization. The analysis raises questions about the conception of informality as something that, among other things, simply takes place outside of the formal planning system.     

Technology vs ‘terrorism’: circuits of city surveillance since September 11th

Since September 11th 2001 ‘terrorism’ has understandably become the preoccupation of many, especially in urban areas, where the threat of ‘terrorism’ is greatest. High on the list of priorities is tightening up the technological means of ensuring security, by adopting in particular new surveillance measures. While these are mainly expansions of already existing systems — biometrics, ID cards, CCTV and communications interception — an interesting and perhaps disturbing new feature of these is the apparent willingness to create modes of integration between previously separate systems. Similar software and dependence on algorithmic techniques permit data‐sharing across several boundaries that were previously less porous. The dispersed data‐gathering of the surveillant assemblage, that includes relatively ‘innocent’ items such as consumer transaction trails —‘categorical seduction’— converges with the more centralized activities of policing and intelligence —‘categorical suspicion’— in the effort to make urban areas safe. The consequences of this are likely to be far‐reaching, reinforcing our reliance on technological solutions, and increasingly inserting them into the routines of everyday life in the city. Depuis le 11 septembre 2001, le ‘terrorisme’ est naturellement devenu la préoccupation de beaucoup, surtout dans les zones urbaines où la menace ‘terroriste’ est la plus forte. Aux premiers rangs des priorités, on trouve les moyens technologiques d'assurer la sécurité, notamment l'adoption de nouvelles mesures de surveillance. Si certaines consistent principalement àétendre les systèmes existants (biométrie, cartes d'identité, circuits de télévision et interception des communications), l'une des nouvelles méthodes, intéressante mais quelque peu troublante, est la volonté apparente de créer des modes d'intégration entre des systèmes jusqu'alors indépendants. Des logiciels similaires et une subordination à des techniques algorithmiques permettent le partage de données à travers plusieurs frontières auparavant moins perméables. La collecte de données éparses dans l'assemblage de surveillance, incluant des éléments relativement ‘innocents’ tels que le suivi des transactions de clients s'allie aux activités les plus centralisées de la police et du renseignement afin de sécuriser les zones urbaines. Les conséquences sont susceptibles d'aller plus loin, renforçant notre dépendance à l'égard de solutions technologiques et multipliant celles‐ci dans les routines de la vie quotidienne urbaine.     

The Middle Class ‘at Home among the Poor’ — How Social Mix is Lived in Parisian Suburbs: Between Local Attachment and Metropolitan Practices

How do households belonging to the middle classes decide to come live in a ‘poor’ city in the Parisian suburbs? What makes them stay? What are the judgements and strategies that have been brought to bear both individually in their daily lives and as a social group in terms of their collective involvement and their relationships with other social groups? What does this kind of ‘social mix’ imply in terms of social practices, local and social belonging? This article shows that attitudes towards social mixing have to be considered in terms of their sociological dimensions. This analysis thus takes into account middle‐class diversity in socio‐residential terms, in terms of trajectories, values and attachment to a particular area. The article also emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between different dimensions of attitudes towards social mixing: depending on the issues at stake, people can accept and sometimes promote a form of cohabitation, or, quite to the contrary, reject it. Finally, the article emphasizes the importance of local contexts and their temporality: for someone belonging to the middle classes, living in a poor city may also mean holding a relatively higher position than elsewhere.     

Combating environmental repercussions through ‘TQEM’ and ‘ISO 14000’

Business is totally dependent on society although we sometimes do not experience it that way. All business, even in their most limited form, confront environmental issues, some more than others. Business leaders will be actively addressing social and environmental issues. These companies will be going for certification to ISO 14001 (EMS) and progressive organizations have moved beyond EMS requirement, seizing control of environmental operations through Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM). Industry leaders are incorporating environmental thinking into every aspect of their operations. As a long‐range plan towards TQEM, an organization can have a road map and a clear model for achieving excellence in the area of Environmental Management. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Mumbai’s Mysterious Middle Class

Mumbai forms the décor to an interesting set of relationships among economic liberalization, globalization, class restructuring and an unprecedented housing construction boom. The much talked about new Indian middle class is primarily an urban phenomenon and seems nowhere more salient than in India’s commercial capital and largest city. This article seeks to undo some of the mysteries that surround the new middle class: how it can be empirically defined, whether and how it is growing, how class restructuring in Mumbai conforms (or not) to Western arguments about social polarization, and how any such class restructuring can best be explained. The empirical analysis employs existing data from various sources on income and consumption in Mumbai (and India at large) and reports on selected findings from a recent survey by the author on housing, class and upward mobility among households in newly constructed homes in Greater Mumbai. Data on the distribution of household incomes show that the upper‐middle income classes have grown relative to the total, that the lower‐middle income classes have shrunk, and that the ranks of the poor have expanded slightly. Survey data among new home buyers in Mumbai suggest little upward mobility. Discourse about the ‘new middle class’ tends to focus on consumption rather than income and additional findings indicate that much of the growth in consumption is credit‐based.     

A Global Value Chain Analysis of the ‘Regional Strategy’ Perspective

In this counterpoint paper we argue that the findings presented by the ‘regional strategy’ literature do not capture the full array of global activities of the multinational enterprise (MNE). While this literature makes an important contribution to the field by showing that sales and production activities in the MNE are regionally structured, we argue that this assessment is biased for two reasons. First, this approach overly focuses on geographical location of downstream activities, while disregarding that of knowledge creation and other relevant upstream activities in the MNE. Second, the approach associates the firm's value creation only with its internalized activities and does not capture the value created through any activities that are externalized. Many MNEs rely to a significant extent on value creation outside the firm's legal boundaries. We argue that such omissions are likely to lead to biased interpretations using different theoretical lenses, such as the knowledge‐/resource‐based view, internalization theory and more general transaction cost economics. Based on our reasoning, we provide recommendations for future research both within and beyond the ‘regional strategy’ literature.     

Loïc Wacquant's ‘Ghetto’ and Ethnic Minority Segregation in the UK: The Neglected Case of Gypsy‐Travellers

This article utilizes Loïc Wacquant's concept of the ghetto as an analytical tool in understanding the marginal and ambivalent position of Gypsy‐Traveller populations resident on sites (or camps) in Britain. The article argues that the fruitful work of quantitative urban scholars on ethnic segregation in the UK has neglected Gypsy‐Travellers. It suggests that the theoretical concept of the ghetto can elucidate the ways in which the spatial marginality of sites serves as a weapon of ‘confinement and control’ for the dominant, and an ‘integrative and protective device’ for the stigmatized Gypsy‐Traveller population. Drawing on qualitative empirical data, key characteristics in Wacquant's definition of the ghetto are shown to hold true for Gypsy‐Traveller sites; these include ethnic homogeneity, spatial confinement, shared cultural identity, mutual distancing and a retreat into the private sphere of the family. This comparison also reveals key differences in terms of economic function, parallel institutionalism and the relationship with the state. The article points to the potential offered by Wacquant's theory and suggests that the dismissal of the ghetto concept within the UK ignores its power as a tool of comparison. The article suggests that qualitative and theoretical approaches should seek to complement the work of quantitative social scientists through focusing on everyday social relations and encounters between ethnic minority groups and ‘host’ populations — both within and outwith residential boundaries. It also questions the urban‐centred focus of debates on ethnic segregation.