Urban Studies

"Issues of public space use have become a paramount
subject of research in the recent past. While research of an
overtly operative outlook has convincingly put forward design
and management recommendations for improving the use of
public spaces, it has struggled in approaching the issue as the
scope of urban policy and planning.
This research project aims at contributing to re-placing the
problem at an urban scope. It will do so by comparing three very
different policy and planning processes which, at an urban scale,
explicitly put forward use as a main objective of public space
production, namely Lyon, Louvain-la-Neuve and Lisbon.
This research adopts an inductive approach to the subject,
framed by readings in the intersection of pragmatic sociology,
policy and economics/management studies which suggest the
explanation of policy outcomes by in-depth analyses of the
processes leading to them. However, it maintains a geographical
standpoint as it is concerned, as well, with the “spatialization of
public policies”, i.e. the spaces that are actually produced by said
processes and the dynamics of use taking place therein."

"Since the end of the last century, there has been significant growth in the use of Web 2.0, which allows the user to enter information and thus make a contribution to its configuration. In this context throughout the world, though with marked regional differences, a mapping of predominantly urban crimes and conflicts has developed, for which individual and group collaborations are often requested. This article will analyze the eighteen webs of crime existing in Latin America during the year 2010. We will conduct research on their leadership, their membership and their format. We will put them on the context of the territory they are related to. The intention is to establish different categories and find the regularities that explain how these webs operate and their spatial influence.

Desde finales del pasado siglo ha habido un incremento importante de la web 2.0 que permite al usuario introducir información, contribuyendo así a configurarla. En este ambiente, ha proliferado en todo el mundo, aunque con diferencias re- gionales importantes, una cartografía de delitos y conflictos fundamentalmente urbanos, para la que a menudo se pide la colaboración de las personas, que se ha denominado web del delito. En este artículo se estudiará este fenómeno en América Latina a finales de 2010, donde encontramos dieciocho de estos lugares en internet. Se investigará su titularidad y su contenido, así como el formato que adoptan. Se contextualizarán en su ámbito territorial con la intención de estable- cer diferentes categorías y encontrar regularidades que permitan explicar su fun- cionamiento y su influencia espacial."

"This paper examines Ildefons Cerdà’s 1860 Plan for the Urban Expansion of Barcelona; specifically, how and why it was conceived in a unique way, in which the provision of services to the population was an important part. Cerdà based his expansion proposal on an in‑depth socio‑statistical study of old Barcelona’s population conditions. The high mortality rates of the working‑class population and poor health and education conditions pushed Cerdà to design a new type of urban planning, which he defined as “urbanism”. In his proposal for the new city, he planned the location of services such as marketplaces, schools and hospitals. The first part of this paper introduces the urban and political preconditions of Barcelona and the statistics on which Cerdà based his contribution. The second part uses location theory and a geographic information system (GIS) to analyse the pattern of location and the population served by markets and hospitals. In addition, topographic maps from 1926 and 1975 are used to study the development of the expansion up to when it was fully developed. The evolution of the city differed from Cerdà’s proposal, partly due to unexpected increases in population density, the built environment, and higher amounts of building occupation. Nevertheless, Cerdà’s layout of streets and avenues has prevailed.
Keywords: urban planning, location theory, optimisation, wellbeing, GIS, spatial decision support system"

The work is divided into two parts : the first one considers the singular city as a socio-spatial entity, identified through the intervention of the archaeologists' work. Beyond the recent conceptual arguments, it is a question of considering the practice of urban archaeology in its multifaceted aspects, institutional and methodological, before opening a reflection on its current developments in four specific scopes (archaeomorphology, chorematic, buildings archaeology and ancient environment) ; wherein lies a potential widening of the fields, of the approaches and the exploration of new paradigms. The second part considers the city in terms of networks and systems, from a theoretical viewpoint at first and then through three case studies, illustrating the idea that the city does not define itself only by its own characteristics but also, and no doubt chiefly, in the interactive spatial relationships that it entertains with other towns and with the territory.

Recently, there has been much debate about the rise of an Evangelical Left in the United States. This debate has focused on the emergence of influential evangelical leaders breaking away from the Republican Party, such as Rick Warren. This debate mistakes a hegemonic crisis of (neo-)conservatism with a hegemonic crisis of neoliberalism. Instead, the evangelical movement in the United States needs to be analyzed in the context of neoliberalism and the decline of class-based forms of solidarity, which it replaced. Throughout their ascent, the evangelical institutions have inscribed themselves into and become a part of the neoliberal state. At the same time, the depth of the economic crisis, the remaining class character of the evangelical movement, the importance of evangelical churches as arenas of hegemonic struggles and, finally, the existing shift in national discourse in terms of the ecological question, the social question and the rehabilitation of the state vis-à-vis the market mark an opening of the political situation in the US that may eventually lead to a replacement of the current evangelical centrism by the actual Evangelical Left as part of a counter-hegemonic post-neoliberal historic bloc.

"Accessibility and mobility have an important role in urban and regional development strategies, in a particular way for the touristic
uses of territories. Transport infrastructures constitute in fact necessary elements for the use of urban areas, but assume an extra function related to the valorization of the territory.
Furthermore structures for mobility are a component of the touristic supply system especially the rope transport structures
that offer dynamic and unique point of views. Cable ways in urban area have this characteristic more than other rope transport systems.
Starting from this assume, the article describes four projects developed in the last years in Campania Region and a transport system carry out in Perugia. The five study cases demonstrate how an increasing attention rope transport technology is diffusing in different contest especially for tourism uses.
The first case is the Giffoni Valle Piana inclined lift that should connect the city centre in the valley with the medieval Castle. This
project is strictly related to a general touristic strategy of the whole municipality. The second project regards the Ravello-Minori cable way and the objective to offer a sustainable alternative to the private car for travelling around two of the most beautiful areas in the Amalfi coast.
The third project is located in the centre of the city of Naples and regards a cable way for the connection between the principal museums of the metropolitan area: the National and the Capodimonte museums. The new infrastructure is well integrated in the multimodal transport network and will offer spectacular visuals for tourists and residents. The Perugia Minimetro is the fourth study case and constitute an example of good integration between sustainable transport and urban planning development. The last project is the Fisciano people mover that has the aim of connecting two university campus with the interchange station of the National rail network.
The description of the study cases give a general idea of the contest where the transport infrastructure is located, the general objective of the project and some information of the different technology used. In this way the general description of the cases can offer interesting remaks for students and professionals. Finally the article propose a comparison between the different transport technology, giving some construction data that have been synthesized in a table. In all the study cases emerge the importance of designing the new infrastructure not only for touristic uses, but also for systematic mobility. It is necessary in fact a strong integration of the new rope systems with the existing monility supply system.
"

"Neoliberal economics have emerged in the post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of countries in the global south. For much of the global south, however, the promise that markets will bring increased standards of living and emancipation from tyranny has been an empty one. Instead, neoliberalisation has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills.

This book deals with the post-conflict geographies of violence and neoliberalisation in Cambodia. Applying a geographical analysis to contemporary Cambodian politics, the author employs notions of neoliberalism, public space, and radical democracy as the most substantive components of its theoretical edifice. He argues that the promotion of unfettered marketisation is the foremost causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition. The book demonstrates Cambodian perspectives on the role of public space in Cambodia's process of democratic development and explains the implications of violence and its relationship with neoliberalism.

Taking into account the transition from war to peace, authoritarianism to democracy, and command economy to a free market, this book offers a critical appraisal of the political economy in Cambodia.
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Reviews:

Gunn, G. C. 2013. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43.1: 188-191.

Brickell, K. 2011. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52.3: 372-374.

Percival, T. 2011. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 32.2: 270-272.

Christie, R. 2010. South East Asia Research, 19.2: 349-372.

Ordóñez de Pablos, P. 2010. International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management, 1.4: 65-66."

This study concerns the urban periphery of Rome in the period 200 to 500 AD. Our thesis is that the periphery in this period obtained a new meaning and gradually began to surpass the centre in importance, and that this displacement of activity-nodes and movement created decisive prerequisites for the polycentric structure which was to dominate the urban development of Rome up to the nineteenth century. The main focus of thisinvestigation will be on areas and situations contextually related to the Via Tiburtina, mainly from the Clivus Suburanus inside the Porta Esquilina to and somewhat beyond the Aurelian Wall. The defined period begins with the Severan dynasty’s monumentalization of the area between Porta Esquilina and Porta Maggiore around 200. The following three centuries present a flourishing periphery all around Rome. However, after 500 this flourishing is concentrated in only two areas: the Lateran and Vatican, probably due to the huge loss in city population at that time. This marks the end of the period under investigation in this article. The years 200–500 comprise major shifts in the power structure of the Roman Empire and the rise of new driving forces which transform Rome’s spatial configuration and the physical and mental limits between centre and periphery.

"The aim of this thesis is to present and compare two exemplary works of culture, works in which the human body is conceptualised as a city. Such comparisons between human bodies and social structures appear perennially in the Western culture: offshoots of the micro-macrocosmic analogy, they more often than not compare an existing society to a body, which may prosper (be healthy) or ail (be sick). The following thesis focuses on a slightly different subset of these analogies, in which the human body literally becomes a land on which to build an urban society, with all resultant conceptual consequences. In terms of Cognitive Poetics, such analogies may be reclassified as examples of THE HUMAN BODY IS A CITY metaphors. I have chosen two works in which the said metaphor is developed to the fullest extent: The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man (1633), an English allegorical poem and Osmosis Jones (2001), a part-live action, part animated American movie. I demonstrate that metaphorical underpinnings of both works reflect socio-political tensions of times they originated in.

In the first chapter of the thesis, I develop a research methodology suitable for analysing how THE HUMAN BODY IS A CITY metaphor is mapped in Osmosis Jones and The Purple Island. I discuss basic tenets and limitations of Cognitive Poetics—a relatively novel school of literary criticism, of particular use when researching metaphors in works of culture. However, this school has been often accused of sacrificing literariness for the sake of exactness. Thus, it becomes necessary to supplement Cognitive Poetics with another school of thought, more focused on traditionally understood literariness. For my analysis, I decided to adopt the New Historicist approach.

The second chapter presents The Purple Island, a poem which reconceptualises a depersonalised human body as an insular society governed by a dynastic aristocracy. The following issues are discussed: the structure of mappings between HUMAN BODY and CITY domains, interactions between building-block micrometaphors and their consequences and finally the body politic mappings in the poem. As for the social discourse, particular attention has been devoted to topics such as power circulation in The Purple Island society, anthropomorphic personifications and their disenfranchising of lesser body parts, the minimal agency of lowest social strata and co-optation practices they are subject to.

The third chapter analyses Osmosis Jones, a movie which presents the body of a slovenly zookeeper Frank as a sprawling, decaying metropolis, inhabited by cells and germs. The main problem to consider is the dialectic interplay of axiological opposites in the space of Frank. I investigate tensions between such extremes as centre and periphery, poverty and affluence or health and disease, tensions which determine how mappings between HUMAN BODY and CITY are realised. Additionally, I discuss topics such as the urban space as embedded in the organic space, reasons for personifying cells and the peculiar position of the germ community in the body politic of Frank.

The last chapter contrasts and compares findings of the previous chapters in order to present the universals of mappings between the urban and the organic and how these mappings change when reflecting certain socio-political systems. I demonstrate that works employing THE HUMAN BODY IS A CITY metaphor more often than not reflect political inclinations of their authors; what is more, they reflect social tensions of contemporary regimes and ways of defusing them. "