Fungible Space: Competition and Volatility in the Global Logistics Network

This article examines an emerging form of interspatial competition premised on attracting cargo traffic and value‐added logistics activities. Against the backdrop of economic globalization and the revolution in logistics, place‐based actors are increasingly vying to insert their localities into transnational supply chains. I explore the causes, conditions and consequences of this burgeoning growth strategy through a study of the dynamics surrounding the expansion of the Panama Canal, opened to shipping traffic in June 2016, and the consequent battle among North American ports to attract a new generation of oversized container vessels. The spatial practices of mobile actors in the logistics industry, I argue, represent the leading edge of capitalism's tendency to render places interchangeable—a condition I call fungible space. The abstract logic of spatial substitution, however, can never fully escape the concrete qualities of particular places, which form the very conditions of interchangeability itself. This dialectic of spatial fungibility and geographic specificity has intensified rivalries for volatile commodity flows and made logistics‐oriented development a particularly risky growth strategy for cities. What is at stake in these speculative ventures is the welfare of vulnerable communities and workers, who disproportionately bear the costs and risks of supply‐chain volatility.     

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.     

Why do Graffiti Writers Write on Murals? The Birth,Life, and Slow Death of Freeway Murals in Los Angeles

For three decades graffiti writers have marked the Olympic Festival freeway murals painted in celebration of the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles (LA). These high‐profile murals, which once symbolized LA's status as the ‘Mural Capital of the World', became palimpsests on which graffiti writers painted their monikers, perhaps unwittingly contributing to their eventual destruction. Local government, muralists and residents have bemoaned the murals' slow death, though have not been able to identify or understand the motives for such vandalism, interpreting it as ‘mindless', ‘animalistic' vandalism perpetrated by ‘kids' who simply lack respect. I argue that the burial of these murals under layers of paint must be understood in the context of competing claims made to public space. Relying on rare personal interviews with the graffiti writers who participated in their destruction, I answer the question ‘Why do graffiti writers write on murals?', while situating the birth and life of the Olympic murals within a larger historical discussion about Chicano/a mural making, urbanization, freeway construction, and the growth of the graffiti subculture in the United States' paradigmatic global city.     

URBAN REGENERATION IN SEOUL: Alternative Urbanism or the Resilience of Neoliberal Urbanism?

Park Won-soon, the former mayor of Seoul, put forward a new vision of Seoul as a progressive city, and one of his signatures was the promotion of a new urban regeneration policy called the Seoul-type Urban Regeneration Model (SUR). It was first presented as a solution to compressed and profit-oriented urban redevelopment but evolved into an alternative model which conveyed the worlding desire of the Seoul Metropolitan Government to redefine Asian urbanism beyond developmentalism or neoliberalism. In this article, we argue that the SUR demonstrates a mixture of post-developmentalist features and the lingering impact of neoliberal rationalities. Specifically, we problematize SUR's hybrid aspirations for urban competitiveness, improved quality of life and participatory governance by articulating how the pursuit of a globally competitive city conflicts with and overrides other values and how citizen-centered governance was exploited as an efficient mechanism of neoliberal urbanism.     

后现代的新城市主义与中国城市规划

讨论了现代主义、后现代主义与新城市主义在城市规划领域的思想核心和主要观点,结合中国城市规划的特点,从城市规划各个方面探讨了新城市主义对中国城市规划的启示,并论述了新城市主义在中国应用的实际与前景.     

Contextual Urban Theory and the ‘Appeal’ of Gentrification: Lost in Transposition?

The significance of practising theory in context reflects current debates in urban studies as well as the history of poststructural thought whose scholarship, informed by postcolonial critique and understandings of ethics and responsibility in international research collaboration, continues to give evident substance to the nature of epistemological violence. This essay takes up the challenge of contextual theory and empirical research through a critical comparative approach that ultimately finds how the expansive gentrification balloon pops as a consequence of assumptions and misassumptions that leave consequential data hiding in plain sight. The contributions of this essay include treatment of the transposition of ideas as a theoretical, methodological and ethical problem, and an original comparative summary of the frequency of ‘gentrification’ in the news media of ten major cities in addition to the print and online media of Hong Kong. The analysis demonstrates not only how context matters in research design, but also how distinction in the articulation of theoretical argument will be upheld or deflated by knowledge of, and acquired in, context. The essay summarizes the arguments for the larger Interventions forum, and concludes that a critical‐theoretical comparative international urban studies generates and builds through refinement of theory in iterative dialogue with historical processes.     

College Readiness: Are California Charter School Students Better Prepared?

Using US data from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) I analyse student outcomes from Advanced Placement tests and Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments to determine whether charter school students display higher levels of college readiness. Using panel data from 2011–12 through 2014–15 for the Advanced Placement tests, I find a gain of between 10.8 and 21.0 percentage points for charter students on average over students attending traditional public schools. For the Smarter Balanced Assessment using school years 2014–15 and 2015–16, I again find that charter students outperform traditional public students on average with gains in all categories for both the English and the mathematics portions of the exam. The results of this study seem to offer some support for the view that offering choice in schooling tends to improve performance.