Latest Updates on Urban Studies 08/07/19

Latest articles on OnlineFirst

The obesity epidemic and the metropolitan-scale built environment: Examining the health effects of polycentric development by Jiawen Yang and Peiling Zhou

Yang and Zhou document the impact of metropolitan-scale built environment characteristics, like polycentricity, on obesity levels through a multi-level path analysis: living in a relatively polycentric region is significantly associated with lower obesity.

In search of the Smart Citizen: Republican and cybernetic citizenship in the smart city by Dorien Zandbergen and Justus Uitermark

Drawing on an Amsterdam project which encourages citizens to collect and share air quality data, Zandbergen and Uitermark problematize vertical readings of Smart City politics as a struggle between aspirations for bottom-up participation and authoritarian control.

On contested water governance and the making of urban financialisation: Exploring the case of metropolitan São Paulo, Brazil by Jeroen Klink, Vanessa Lucena Empinotti and Marcelo Aversa

Klink provides an illustration of how a more articulate approach between political economy and social studies of finance might contribute to understanding the making of urban financialisation, with a particular relevance for less developed capital markets.

The real estate foothold in the Holy Land: Transnational gentrification in Jerusalem by Hila Zaban

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue: Transnational Gentrification.

Zaban draws on research in the UK and Israel to argue that while Transnational Gentrification is economically driven, we need to reinstate the cultural to the core of theory and unpack what motivates people to purchase homes in particular foreign locations.

School choice and the city: Geographies of allocation and segregation by Deborah Wilson and Gary Bridge

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue: School segregation in contemporary cities: socio-spatial dynamics and urban outcomes

Wilson and Bridge provide a systematic review of the connections between parental choice and pupil allocation in school systems across the globe: School choice is associated with higher levels of segregation across socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.

Pupils on the move: School catchment area segregation and residential mobility of urban families by Venla Bernelius and Katja Vilkama

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue: School segregation in contemporary cities: socio-spatial dynamics and urban outcomes

Bernelius and Vilkama find a systematic relationship between socio-spatial segregation and catchment area differentiation, where the disadvantaged areas are consistently left behind in the general socio-economic development.

Digital nomads in siliconising Cluj: Material and allegorical double dispossession by Erin McElroy

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue: Transnational Gentrification.

McElroy argues for a connected rather than comparative approach in understanding double dispossession, one focused upon connections across time, space, and genre.

Ethnic school segregation in Copenhagen: A step in the right direction? By Rikke Skovgaard Nielsen and Hans Thor Andersen

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue: School segregation in contemporary cities: socio-spatial dynamics and urban outcomes

Nielsen and Andersen identify decreasing levels of ethnic school segregation in public schools but a markedly higher and increasing level in private schools.

Housing abandonment in shrinking cities of East Asia: Case study in Incheon, South Korea by Youngmee Jeon and Saehoon Kim

Jeon and Kim investigate urban factors associated with vacant houses in shrinking cities based on the context of inner-city areas of Incheon, South Korea, providing an opportunity to explore different paths of housing abandonment in East Asian cities.

Living with difference: Refugee education and school segregation processes in Greece by Pinelopi Vergou

This article is part of a forthcoming Special Issue: School segregation in contemporary cities: socio-spatial dynamics and urban outcomes.

Vergou argues that in Greece refugee school segregation is connected not only with immigration and education policies but also with the social practices of local communities and the social-spatial characteristics that determine school education.

Green gentrification or ‘just green enough’: Do park location, size and function affect whether a place gentrifies or not? by Alessandro Rigolon and Jeremy Németh

New research from Rigolon and Németh looking at a diverse sample of 10 cities across the United States, calling into question the "just green enough" claim that small parks foster green gentrification less than larger parks.

Book reviews now available on Urban Blog

Book Review - Rent and Its Discontents: A Century of Housing Struggle Edited by Neil Gray and reviewed by Ana Drago As ‘the spectre of a housing crisis is haunting neoliberal economies’, Rent and its Discontents ‘provides an array of different disciplinary and activist perspectives on a century-long history of struggles in Britain and Ireland’ writes Ana Drago.