Is Comparative Gentrification Possible? Sceptical Voices from Hong Kong

This essay responds to a series of critical observations made in an intervention in this journal (vol. 41.3) concerning our earlier article on gentrification in Hong Kong (vol. 38.4). In the current rejoinder we bring this particular exchange to focus on the broader question of whether comparative gentrification research is even possible; a question that exemplifies the dualism in the literature between global urban theory and the emphasis inherent within comparative or regional urbanism. Our attempt to present an interpretation of urban transformation in Hong Kong that bridges this dualism was challenged by our critics on grounds that are similar to those identified by Jamie Peck in his 2015 analysis of a comparative urbanism that seeks to undercut global urban theory. We use this intervention to examine several of these arguments critically, and conclude by continuing to promote a comparative approach to the study of gentrification, dominated neither by planetary theory nor by regional specificity.     

Debate on Karen Bakker's Privatizing Water

In this IJURR debate, three critical urban scholars (Vinay Gidwani, Alana Boland and Roger Keil) and one water scholar (Farhana Sultana), who have done field research in different parts of the world, discuss and analyze different aspects of Karen Bakker's contributions to the question of water access in urban areas of the global South. Karen Bakker has the final word.     

低碳城市发展地域系统优化研究：以上海临港新城为例

城市地域系统的结构决定了城市低碳发展的基础。在反思传统城市地域系统规划低碳发展的局限性基础上,以临港新城低碳城市地域系统优化案例为研究对象,对空间结构、土地利用、交通体系等城市地域系统核心构成要素进行低碳优化分析。研究指出低碳城市地域系统在空间结构上具有高密度、高容积率、高层的紧凑型特征,多中心的梯级空间格局,分散组团式的空间开发;集约化、多样化的复合功能的土地开发;公共交通导向的走廊式空间规划,发达的小地域空间道路体系等特点。     

中国城市空间格局的演变

中国的城市化进程始于建国初期,由于受到国家区域发展战略的影响,呈现出明显的阶段性。以此为依据将建国以来中国的城市化历程划分为四个阶段,研究了各阶段城市空间格局的变迁。研究发现,从建国初期到改革开放之前,西部地区新增城市数量和城市化速度高于中东部地区,东部地区的城市化速度最慢;从改革开放之后到本世纪初,东部地区经历了城市化的快速发展,中国城市发展的总体格局呈现出东部快于中西部、南部快于北部的发展特征。     

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.     

If Urban Regions are the Answer,What is the Question? Thoughts on the European Experience

This essay contributes to the current debate in the field of critical urban and regional studies on the meanings of the ‘regional’ and the ‘urban’. From a political science perspective, we focus on the European case. Firstly, we argue that the conception of the regional scale is not the same in various languages and traditions. Regions in Europe carry meanings and connotations that are not always easy to translate without losing their specific histories. Secondly, our analysis of contemporary debates on the ‘regional’ in the field of urban studies reveals that both practitioners and academics consider the regional scale mainly as a functional space, as the space for economic competitiveness. However, urban regions are also to be regarded as spaces for social and political mobilization. I argue that the political dimension of the ‘regional’ deserves more attention and that further research needs to be undertaken in this respect.     

城市空间结构优化与区域经济协调发展——以江西省为例

城市是区域的增长极。随着区域与城市空间联系的不断加强,城市空间结构在区域经济协调发展中的地位和作用日益凸显。城市布局不合理、城乡发展不协调、城市体系不健全以及中心城市向心力不足等城市空间结构问题是制约江西区域经济协调发展的突出问题。为此,优化城市空间结构是推动江西区域经济协调发展的必由之路。     

基于空间结构的长江经济带可持续发展关联分析

科学合理的空间结构不仅能够促进区域资源高效利用,还能够有效避免交通拥堵、住房紧张、资源稀缺等“城市病”,是区域发展的“调节器”和“助推器”。首先从规模分布、中心结构、空间联系、紧凑性四个维度选取城市规模基尼系数、城市首位度、经济联系强度、空间紧凑度四大空间结构指标对长江经济带空间结构进行测度;其次,运用优化后的Super-SBM-Undesirable模型对长江经济带可持续发展现状进行综合评价;最后,构建基于区域空间结构的可持续发展关联分析模型,并分别基于长江经济带整体视角、11省市个体视角分析长江经济带空间结构与可持续发展间的关联关系。     

新疆区域城市经济发展的动态特征及战略选择

新疆城市化水平还处于较低发展层次。二元经济转化缓慢,虽然新疆城市密度低,但单个城市人口密度大,工业发展未能吸纳更多的乡村人口转入城市,工业化没有起到推动城市发展扩张的作用,城市化滞后也影响了工业化。运用主成分分析方法进行动态评价,从动态分布情况看,新疆地区各城市经济区域的差异十分明显。在城市发展战略上,新疆城市化的发展应当采取非均衡发展模式,扩大城市规模,提升城市经济发展水平,     

城市化与区域经济发展差异的相关性分析

本文采用人口规模和产业规模来度量区域的城市规模,进而评价一个区域的绝对城市化水平;从实证的角度分析了“城市化”对区域GDP的相关性影响,认为要缩小区域经济发展的差距,最有效的措施就是积极推进中西部地区的城市化进程。     

中国城市化水平测定研究综述

城市化水平测度的方法主要有两种 :主要指标法和复合指标法 ,而人口比例指标则又是主要指标法中最常用的城市化测度指标。文章回顾了我国城镇人口统计口径的历次演变 ,阐明了其中存在的主要问题 ,综合论述并评价了国内学者对这些问题的解决办法 ;同时进一步讨论了对其它主要指标法和复合指标法的研究 ,分析了存在的缺陷。     

Evidence of Place: Becoming a Region in Rural Canada

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether place is emerging in practice as a critical dimension in the development of Canadian rural regions. Recently, Jones and Paasi set regional researchers the task of better understanding how regions ‘become'. In researching this question, we are particularly interested in the definition and expression of place‐based identity as a mobilizing force for regionalism. Our findings suggest that, while identity plays a critical role in fostering regional development processes, it is either too emergent or actively resisted within our research sites to be a significant force for place‐based regional development.     

德国的城市化模式

德国的城市化采用了以大城市为核心、建立互补共生的区域城市圈的模式。在城市圈内,大中小城市均衡发展,中小城市是城市体系中的主体。德国的这种城市化模式保证了低房价,减少了居民上下班通勤时间和成本,完善了中小城市的基础设施和公共服务,降低了城市居民的生活成本,保持和发展了各城市独特的城市文化,形成和发展了多样化的旅游业。     

区域协调下的昆明市域城镇空间发展布局研究

文章以研究昆明市域城镇空间结构演进和重组的导向为主要内容。对昆明市市域城镇空间发展布局的成因布局进行研究,分析了昆明市域城镇空间发展布局的影响因素及存在的问题,进而对昆明市域城镇空间的发展布局提出相应的原则和对策。旨在区域协调下的昆明市域城镇空间发展布局更加完整、稳定的前进。     

Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism

Urban political ecology (UPE), an offshoot of political ecology that emerged in the late 1990s, has had two major impacts on critical urban studies: it has introduced critical political ecology to urban settings, and it has provided a framework for retheorizing the city as a product of metabolic processes of socionatural transformation. However, there was another goal in early UPE programmatic statements that has largely fallen by the wayside: to mobilize a Lefebvrian theoretical framework to trouble traditional distinctions between urban/rural and society/nature by exploring urbanization as a global process. Instead of following this potentially fruitful path, UPE has become bogged down in ‘methodological cityism’––an overwhelming analytical and empirical focus on the traditional city to the exclusion of other aspects of contemporary urbanization processes. Thus UPE's Lefebvrian promise, of a research program that could work across traditional disciplinary divisions and provide insights into a new era of planetary urbanization, has remained unfulfilled. In this article we trace UPE's history to show how it arrived at its present predicament, and offer some thoughts on a research agenda for a political ecology not of the city but of urbanization.     

城市区域交通状态判别方法研究

随着新一代智能化交通控制系统的出现,城市区域交通状态判别方法的研究显得尤为重要。本文在已知各个子区交通状态的基础上,用层次分析法确定出各个子区在区域中所占的权重,然后用加权平均法得出区域的交通状态。最后利用VISSIM软件模拟验证了本文算法的合理性。     

地域性城市设计

根据现代城市设计的发展历程和我国现阶段的具体国情,提出了地域性城市设计的概念.认为这一概念将文脉、场所与生态设计结合了起来,是以时代发展的特点以及地域自然条件和人文条件的特点为依据的;认为地域性城市设计将会成为我国未来城市设计的趋势和方向,在地域性城市设计中应坚持设计与地域相结合,其中包括两个方面:设计与文脉相结合;设计与生态相结合.     

Urbanization and the City Image in Lowry at Tate Britain: Towards a Critique of Cultural Cityism

This article explores cultural cityism at a time when a more expansive, ‘planetary’ urbanization is argued to have superseded ‘the city’ as the dominant urban form. It takes an essentially Lefebvrian problematic and works this through an examination of one aspect of contemporary metropolitan culture, the L.S. Lowry exhibition at Tate Britain, held in the summer of 2013. The article scrutinizes the juxtaposition of Lowry's images of the industrial city with the image of ‘global’, corporate London provided by Tate Britain itself. The exhibition is presented as evidence of Lefebvre's argument that although the urban core has imploded and exploded, through images the city ‘can perpetuate itself, survive its conditions’. Taking stock also of the preponderance of city images in culture more widely, it is argued such images make a fetish of the city, producing also an ‘urban pastoral’ that obscures the defining characteristics of urban life today. Finally, Benjamin's concept of the ‘dialectical image’ and Rancière's notion of the ‘sentence image’ are invoked to capture the flashing together of past and present city images and the opportunities for critical reflection this constellation presents.     

城市环境色彩形成的地域性因素

以色彩地理学理论为基础,对城市环境色彩形成与自然环境和社会人文环境的关系进行了研究。并对具体案例进行具体分析,提出城市环境色彩的形成和发展与其地域因素密不可分,并由此形成不同地域的城市环境色调。     

我国城市化进程的原则框架

适合我国的城市化进程的原则框架,是制定我国城市化具体道路、城市化合适水平、城市化恰当发展速度等方面的原则基础,是我国城市化进程能否持续、顺利发展的关键。本文就宏观调控指导我国城市化进程、促进我国城市化进程中的城市现代化建设、促进城市和区域的经济、社会、资源和环境的协调发展和加快城乡一体化进程等四个方面七条原则进行了分析。