Urban crisis

Η παρούσα εργασία καταπιάνεται με την έννοια της ανθεκτικότητας και την αντίστοιχη στρατηγική που έχει εκπονηθεί για το Δήμο της Αθήνας. Μία εκ των απαντήσεων του τελευταίου στην οικονομική κρίση της πόλης είναι η ένταξή του στο Δίκτυο των 100 Ανθεκτικών Πόλεων του ιδρύματος Rockefeller, παρουσιάζοντας την ανθεκτικότητα ως παράδειγμα αντιμετώπισής της. Εκκινώντας από την ανάδυσή της στις επιστήμες της οικολογίας και του περιβάλλοντος, στη συνέχεια παρουσιάζεται η μεταφορά της στις κοινωνικές επιστήμες και τα προβληματικά σημεία που έχουν εντοπιστεί σε αυτή τόσο σε θεωρητικό όσο και σε πρακτικό επίπεδο εφαρμογής της ως στρατηγική διαχείρισης των κρίσεων στο εξωτερικό. Το ενδιαφέρον κορυφώνεται από τη στιγμή που παρουσιάζεται μία δεύτερη προσέγγιση προερχόμενη από τις κοινωνικές επιστήμες, σύμφωνα με την οποία η επιβίωση (όρος που προτιμάται αντί της ανθεκτικότητας) αποτελεί κοινωνική πρακτική των πολιτών, προβάλλοντας σαφή διαχωριστικά σημεία με την προηγούμενη προσέγγιση. Η στρατηγική για την ανθεκτικότητα της Αθήνας τίθεται στο επίκεντρο και εξετάζεται σχετικά με τον τρόπο με τον οποίο εκπονήθηκε (πρόγραμμα 100 ανθεκτικές πόλεις του ιδρύματος Rockefeller) καθώς και τις καινοτομίες που εισάγονται στον τοπικό αναπτυξιακό και χωρικό σχεδιασμό. Έτσι, η εργασία καταλήγει στο νόημα και τη σημασία της ανθεκτικότητας στη συγκεκριμένη γωνιά του πλανήτη, με βασικό ισχυρισμό να είναι ότι η ανθεκτικότητα μετατρέπεται σε ένα εννοιολογικό αλλά και πρακτικό εργαλείο επίτευξης μίας εκ των βασικών αρχών του νεοφιλελευθερισμού, της προσαρμογής και της υποταγής προβάλλοντας την επιβίωση ως απώτερο στόχο.

This chapter considers Nairobi's multi-storey tenements and the increasingly frequent incidents of building collapse. It locates the state's reaction to the public and media outcry of these events within the context of construction industry regulations and of planning, and makes recommendations on this basis.

Dinamika pertumbuhan wilayah perkotaan yang tidak dikelola dengan baik dapat memunculkan krisis perkotaan, seperti kesenjangan. Tata ruang merupakan salah satu instrumen kebijakan yang dapat digunakan untuk mengatasi krisis tersebut. Salah satu provinsi di Indonesia yang menerapkan kebijakan penataan ruang adalah Provinsi DIY.
Kebijakan penataan ruang Provinsi DIY sudah sejak lama mengacu kepada kearifan lokal. Keberadaan Undang-Undang Nomor 13 tahun 2012 tentang Keistimewaan DIY kemudian berimplikasi pada penguatan kebijakan penataan ruang. Penataan ruang DIY dalam kerangka keistimewaan berfungsi untuk menyelesaikan krisis perkotaan yang ada. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk menilai keberhasilan penerapan tata ruang berbasis keistimewaan terhadap penyelesaian krisis perkotaan di Provinsi DIY.
Tulisan ini menggunakan metode penelitian kuantitatif dengan teknik analisis Sign Test untuk dua sampel. Data yang digunakan terdiri atas data persepsi masyarakat terhadap kebijakan penataan ruang di Provinsi DIY sebelum dan sesudah ditetapkannya Undang-Undang Keistimewan DIY, serta dokumen kebijakan yang menyangkut penataan ruang. Teknik pengambilan sampel yang digunakan adalah cluster sampling untuk pengambilan sampel wilayah. Selain itu digunakan juga teknik sampling kuota untuk mengambil sampel responden.
Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa penerapan kebijakan penataan ruang berbasis keistimewaan mampu mengatasi krisis perkotaan yang terjadi di Provinsi DIY. Masyarakat berpendapat bahwa implementasi kebijakan penataan ruang tersebut sudah mampu menyelesaikan masalah kesenjangan. Keberadaan pengaturan struktur ruang berbasis keistimewaan ini mampu memberikan kesempatan lebih luas bagi masyarakat untuk memanfaatkan ruang, serta berimplikasi pada peningkatan kualitas hidup masyarakat.

El texto sitúa el análisis de los procesos de gentrificación en las ciudades españolas en el contexto de una nueva etapa caracterizada por la crisis del modelo neoliberal. En primer lugar, se realiza una aproximación a dicho modelo y a su evolución desde la etapa de expansión hasta la irrupción de la crisis. Posteriormente, se analiza la vinculación entre el desarrollo de las nuevas políticas urbanas y los procesos de gentrificación, considerando un marco global de reestructuración socio-espacial de la ciudad en el que las periferias y los procesos de suburbanización también deben ser tomados en consideración. Por último, se plantean una serie de propuestas que tratan de alimentar el debate sobre la investigación hoy de los procesos de gentrificación en las ciudades españolas.

The term ‘urban crisis’ emerged in the USA in the 1950s. Ever since the term came into popular use, it has be mobilised to advance a range of political and economic interests. Utilising a genealogical approach, this article traces the evolution, uses and abuses of the concept. It suggests that the various meanings attached to the term are rooted in two overarching frameworks. While one finds the origins of urban crisis in structural, primarily material, forces, the other sees the crisis as grounded in culture and immorality. The article argues that the concept was deployed in the 1950s and 1960s to justify government intervention of various sorts to stimulate economic growth. However, it finds the fiscal crises of the 1970s gave rise to a dominant understanding of urban crisis that promoted the spread of urban neoliberalism.

Through the notion of “conjuncture” this paper explores the interplay of urban crises that have been unfolding in the city of Athens during the past 7 years (2008–2014). By focusing on specific “critical moments” that have significantly influenced
the narratives, discourses and subsequent policies concerning “Athens in crisis”, it examines a number of intertwined approaches and tactics that shaped the governmentality of such crisis. These approaches and tactics, that work in tandem, include emergency-driven policies and politics; politics of fear that occasionally transform into geographies of fear; processes of defining the “public” and “public enemies”; and redefinitions of (il)legalities. Yet, they have repercussions on people, places and politics. In this context, certain issues are deemed critical or urgent while others do not or are even obscured.

This article examines efforts by the John V. Lindsay administration (1966–1973) to deal with the New York City sanitation crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s. By this period, the Department of Sanitation could barely function in most low-income neighborhoods of New York City, and this resulted in a series of direct and indirect protest actions. The mass media blamed Mayor Lindsay for the situation and characterized him as an ineffectual city manager. This image has persisted with scholars contending that Lindsay never figured out how to run the city government. This article diverges from these accounts and argues that the Lindsay administration actually rebuilt the Department of Sanitation—a city agency that was operationally breaking down before Lindsay became mayor. In fact, the Lindsay administration popularized the notion that a modern city with global aspirations has to meet the basic spatial needs of its residents and that efficient and responsive sanitation delivery can be achieved through the rationalization of resources and services.

Urban Crisis, Urban Hope: A Policy Agenda for UK Cities dwells on the premise that criticality needs to harbour hope, despite all the precarity in people's access to food, housing, education, health, communal support, safety, and environment in the existing UK context. The editors argue against 'a dead criticality' (2020: 2) that is confined to criticism without pointing to possibilities for exit from the precarious living conditions. The book's support for 'a critical hope' that is predominantly an urban hope reflects from the chapters' structure. All chapters start with a diagnosis of the existing problematic situation and continue with applicable policy suggestions within their fields. The shortness of each chapter allows one to understand the overall situation of the contemporary UK cities without getting lost in details. First, we learn about the food insecurity in the UK after 2010 due to the austerity cuts, such as in the working-age social security. Growing socioeconomic inequalities lie behind widening food insecurity which is also related to the eroding community and stigma. The paradox regarding the food banks that assume the state responsibility also applies to the topics of other chapters. Most chapters blame the neoliberal state's austerity cuts for the urban crisis. Yet, most contributors also call the same state into action, for example, to end hunger in the UK cities. The Unhomed City chapters deal with the housing crisis as a crisis of affordability due to commodification, privatization, financialization of housing by the market, and the restricted welfare subsidy more than a matter of supply and demand. The UK housing crisis is exacerbated by the threats to council estates and gentrification in the neoliberal city. The emphasis on the city for economic growth versus sociability puts children, youth, and adults at risk physically and psychologically. People's reduced 'sense of mattering' appears as chronic anxiety, 'the Urbanicity Effect' or 'an "epidemic" of urban violence'. The underlying structural causes, such as privatizations, academization, and regeneration or environmental pollution create uneven effects for different city areas. We read that London's economically deprived areas with a higher ratio of Black residents are exposed to higher air pollution. Hence, structural inequalities lead to environmental injustices. People's access to good nature is dwindled in a context of 'landscape decline'. Against the loss of biodiversity and bioabundance due to wrong farming practices and the climate change, examples of good and bad practices from Sheffield, Ghent, and French cities are provided. The policy of 'tidying up' nature that is 'complex, messy, (and) untidy' is criticized. The neoliberal urban policy is about 'tidying up' council estates as much as the 1015812S RO0010.1177/13607804211015812Sociological Research OnlineBook Review book-review2021

The effects of climate change are already upon us. Here's what the 2020s and 2030s will look like if we fail to change things. he climate crisis is often imagined as a sudden, all-encompassing, simultaneous collapse in which agriculture fails, the seas flood in, disease spreads, and Hobbesian war of all against all. But in reality, some crises will appear more immediately and others will take a long time to arrive, and if we act with spee avoided. In the near term, perhaps starting in the 2020s or 2030s, the foremost problem will probably be a new climate-driven urban crisis of disinvestment, abandonment, and depop and large inundating storms that will leave rotting urban infrastructure. As the water rises and the floods increase in severity and regularity, the once posh shoreline will be th A new, climate-driven urban crisis could have major negative impacts on other parts of the global economy. The collapse of coastal real estate markets could trigger broader c loss of the communication and transportation links provided by major cities could hurt the real economy. A climate-driven economic depression is not out of the question. Here Comes the Ocean ven if we drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and stripped CO₂ from the atmosphere so as to stabilize temperature increases at no more than 2°C above th for significantly higher sea levels. Melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, mountain glacier loss, and the expansion of ocean water volume due to its highe level rise.

The post-liberalisation era in India has witnessed mobilisations among socially superior castes for reservation/affirmative action. I examine why Marathas have intensified their mobilisation in the past few years by using qualitative and quantitative data gathered over a period of 14 months in 2008-2009 and several visits during 2010-2019 in Mumbai and Maharashtra. I argue that a crisis of dominance explains the Maratha's mobilisation for reservation. Understanding this crisis involves paying attention to the link between two crises-'urban' and 'rural'. The former arises from the rapid disappearance of wellpaid jobs since the late 1990s in large-scale manufacturing and other industries in urban areas. The latter refers to the return of retrenched factory workers to their villages and the loss of their social status. It also refers to the inability of the rural youths with low or vernacular education to migrate to urban areas for well-paid employment, and the disturbance of caste hierarchy norms in rural settings. I conclude that the Maratha crisis of dominance will persist under the neoliberal Indian state due to the privatisation of higher education and absence of well-paid, secured jobs for individuals with low level or vernacular education. The price of this crisis will be paid by Dalits, who have been the victims of brutal atrocities carried out by the Marathas.

The term “food desert” has recently come into use to describe areas that, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, are “parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers.”  While identifying these areas is key, perhaps just as important is determining how these areas came to be “vapid” of healthful foods. Certainly these areas are not and have not been void of consumers. Activists groups including the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords saw this problem as early as the 1960s and instituted breakfast programs to assist members of their communities. Certainly there is a demand for whole rather than highly processed foods. Why then do these areas have a dearth of grocery stores? What caused this to happen, and because it is certainly not a phenomenon restricted to certain areas of the country, how, if at all, are the federal government, public policy and private business decisions complicit in the evolution of food deserts? 
My study focuses on Chicago, as many prominent historians have determined it to be largely representative of the country as a whole, and I begin my research in the New Deal era when many programs designed to assist the middle class were initiated. These programs created an urban environment that disproportionately affected minorities and the poor negatively and facilitated the decline of urban communities. This study will add to the literature on the urban crisis, policy history and business history, while most significantly examining the origins of food deserts, a field that at present has not been studied. Using city directories, census data, newspapers, Federal Housing Authority maps and policies, historical society and grass roots organizations records, I will trace the roots of the food desert to the present and in doing so will determine how food deserts came to be.

This is a survey of Richard Florida's new book, The New Urban Crisis:  How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failin the Middle Class, and What We Can Do about It. (Basic Books 2007).  For Florida, the crisis has to do with economic geography, and the raising of rents and mortgages due to concentrations of wealth and technology in "superstar cities," which results in the "expulsion"  not just of the poor, but of the middle and working classes.  Florida offers an analysis of this global urban phenomena, with a set of public policy proposals built on the assumption that cities must become solutions to the urban crisis, not just the source of our problems.

◮ De la croissance à la crise espagnole
La place de l’immobilier dans les cycles de développement
économiques
Pour situer l’histoire de l’Espagne contemporaine, on revient sans cesse à
quelques dates-clés : 1978, année fondatrice des institutions politiques avec
l’adoption de la Constitution ; 1986, année de l’intégration de l’Espagne à
l’espace européen. Pourtant, ces tournants majeurs ne doivent pas occulter
une autre manière d’approcher la réalité de l’Espagne contemporaine, celle
qui consiste à scruter les modifications qui se produisent dans la durée.Si on
considère la période récente, non comme une succession de dates, mais comme
une suite de phases, on identifie trois poussées de croissance entrecoupées
de repli (Baron-Yellès Nacima, 2010). La première vague de développement
saisit l’Espagne dans les années 1960, quand le pays s’engage sur de grands
axes de développement (tourisme international, intensification agricole). La
deuxième vague apparaît dans les années 1990, sous l’effet de l’intégration
européenne et des subventions qui en découlent, et qui engendrent ouverture
économique et réindustrialisation. La troisième vague, celle des années 2000,
est la plus vigoureuse. L’intégration dans la zone euro suscite une envolée de la
spéculation associée à un urbanisme débridé (De la Dehesa, 2009).
Pendant cette courte période, l’articulation d’une série de mécanismes associant
les flux de capital et l’évolution du marché du travail paraît vertueuse (Shiller
Robert, 2009). Côté capital, des apports financiers irriguent le marché espagnol,
grâce à l’incorporation du pays dans la zone euro (donc la possibilité pour
les banques d’emprunter auprès de la Banque Centrale européenne à des taux
très bas), mais aussi grâce à l’apport des fonds structurels européens (notamment
le plan de développement régional 1999-2006). De ce fait, les banques
prêtent massivement à tous les acteurs économiques : prêts aux ménages pour
l’investissement immobilier et la consommation, prêts aux entrepreneurs et
aux collectivités afin qu’ils dégagent du foncier et développent des projets
d’aménagement et d’infrastructure. L’afflux d’argent se dirige prioritairement
vers l’immobilier (Montalvo José Garcia, 2009, Fernandez Duran, 2009). On
rticle on line Information géographique n°1 - 2014 1
“4-Baron02” (Col. : RevueInfoGeo) — 2014/5/2 — 23:44 — page 1 — #1
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Seseña, la charge poétique d’un urbanisme en déroute
constate, pendant une douzaine d’années, un mouvement conjoint – et paradoxal
– d’ascension des quantités produites et des prix. Entre 2004 et 2007, le
taux de croissance annuel du mètre carré, dans le logement neuf, est compris
entre 15 % et 18 %.
La bulle immobilière qui se prépare alors s’explique certes par la spéculation,
mais aussi par un contexte particulier : celui d’un gonflement démographique
et de la mutation sociologique de l’Espagne. Deux phénomènes massifs s’articulent
ici encore. D’un côté, l’intense courant de l’immigration de travail
(facilitée par des régularisations collectives) crée des besoins de logement. De
l’autre, l’entrée des femmes espagnoles dans le marché du travail assure des
conditions de solvabilité nouvelle pour les ménages qui souhaitent, vu la hausse
des prix, accéder le plus vite possible à la propriété (Campos Echeverria, 2008 ;
Vorms, 2009).

This volume includes the material of the scientific workshop " Metropolitan Interventions Athens 2021: From the Idea to the Implementation. Exchange of experiences , Hamburg, Vienna, Munich, Athens " , that took place on February 12th and 13th, 2015 in the historic Athens Town Hall, and in the historic NTUA Deanery. The subject of this work regards the debate on certain significant metropolitan interventions in the broader area of Athens, which is of particular importance and weight due to the unprecedented social, economic, and urban crisis, which the country and, namely , the Athens city centre are undergoing during the last few years. Under the term " metropolitan interventions " , the workshop examines mainly two big categories: the first one regards metropolitan interventions in the centre of Athens, while the second focuses on interventions related to the city's waterfront along the Saronic Gulf. Guests from Germany and Austria were given the chance to present their experience from their own cities, Munich, Hamburg, and Vienna, whereas, in a following part, two " dialogues of experts " were organized. In this framework foreign guests and Greek scientists coming from either the academia or other entities involved in planning, policy-making, and decision-making concerning the management of space, were given the opportunity for a more intensive process of exchanging their views. The main goal was to discuss issues regarding the processes of intervening, implementing , and achieving participation, and especially the question of the acceptance of the urban interventions by the citizens.

paper presentation at the panel "GAMESTUDIES XI: (RE)DEFINING GAMING"

Survival is a main driver of action in video games. Gamer's quest to survive zombie attacks, to end the siege of the earth by aliens, and to outlive and curb global natural disasters makes games not only appealing, but, more importantly, possible, that is playable. Among these instances of survival, the focus of my presentation is on 'global disaster games' (GDGs) – a rather recent development in the world of video games that, to simplify, cast a critical look at globalization and its repercussions on the local level. From indie game Saragame to the commercial hit This War of Mine, GDGs probe the various scales of being human in a globalizing world on the brink of local, national, or global environmental and human disasters. In the case of This War of Mine, for instance, the game takes the 1992 Siege of Sarajevo as its departure point, removes the game's specific historical context, and anonymizes the urban space in which the game takes place. This way, the title relates the experiences of individual gamers to the supposedly global human will to survive. The presentation introduces the sub-categories 'referential' and 'supra-referential' in order to identify the differences between historically specific (such as Saragame) and generalized games (like This War of Mine) – titles that take inspiration from modern history and collective memory to tell the tale of individual suffering and survival either to commemorate specific disasters or to signpost survival as a common human fate in a world closely and chaotically wired through globalization.

Taking one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Barcelona as a paradigmatic case, the aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which contestation organised by sublocal grassroots movements in the context of the current urban crisis operates, both in terms of content and form of protest. Our thesis is that resident mobilisation in the neighbourhood of Ciutat Meridiana is expressive of a new cycle of (urban) social mobilisations in Spanish cities. In such mobilisations, more or less spontaneous initiatives which emerged to counteract the effects of the crisis at the community level are simultaneously serving as platforms for reciprocity and political contestation. Establishing a dialogue with the literature on social innovation, in this paper we claim that these micro-local urban practices are linked to broader social movements and thus play a fundamental role in the political empowerment of citizens living in highly segregated and vulnerable urban areas.