Latest Urban Studies news 29/01/24

Latest articles on OnlineFirst

Urban heat islands and the transformation of Singapore by Yoonhee Jung

Yoonhee Jung's special issue study examines how Singapore’s mid-20th Century planning efforts have affected the thermal environment of the city in association with land transformation.

The changing social class structure of London, 2001–2021: Continued professionalisation or asymmetric polarisation? by Chris Hamnett

Chris Hamnett examines the geography of social class change in London by borough between 2000 and 2021, finding that the professional and managerial class (PMC) was the highest in the most gentrified inner London boroughs.

Deconstructing the urban viewpoint: Exploring uneven regional development with Nancy Fraser’s notion of justice by Kristina Grange, Nils Björling, Lina Olsson and Julia Fredriksson

Kristina Grange et al argue that a new critical viewpoint for a research agenda on urban processes needs to dedicate more attention to regional scales of justice in this open access paper.

Informality through the state: How overregulation and tolerance shape informal land development in metropolitan Brazil by João Tonucci

João Tonucci argues that land development control is better understood as an ambivalent state compromise between the need to regulate urban expansion and market-driven informal urbanisation.

Read the accompanying blog post here.

Constitutive outsides or hidden abodes? Totality and ideology in critical urban theory debates paper by William Conroy

New debates paper from William Conroy develops a revised conceptualisation of totality for critical urban theory, building on Nancy Fraser's work on 'hidden abodes'.

Sanitation configurations in Lilongwe: Everyday experiences on and off the grid by Cecilia Alda-Vidal, Alison L Browne, Mary Lawhon and Deljana Iossifova

Cecilia Alda-Vidal et al's open access study focuses on plots in Lilongwe with both indoor flush-toilets and backyard latrines, and the lived experiences of people as they navigate their sanitation choices.

Suburbanisation in East Germany by Matthias Bernt and Anne Volkmann

Matthias Bernt and Anne Volkmann's latest article analyses how suburbanisation unfolded in East Germany after reunification.

Back to the suburbs? Millennial residential locations from the Great Recession to the pandemic by Hyojung Lee, Whitney Airgood-Obrycki and Riordan Frost

Using census data, Hyojung Lee et al's article examines the geographic population distribution of young adults in the United States in recent decades. 

Local policy-making within the multilevel system: A study of governance in peripheral(ised) medium-sized cities undergoing socio-economic transformation in Saxony, Germany and Lower Silesia, Poland by Rafał Gajewski and Robert Knippschild

Gajewski and Knippschild use Polish-German borderland as a case region to verify the scope and results of public policies aimed at supporting peripheralised medium-sized cities, and to check how these policies have been perceived by stakeholders within these cities.

What is local government financialisation? Four empirical channels to clarify the roles of local government debates paper by Hannah Hasenberger

What role do local governments play in their own financialisation? Hannah Hasenberger combines a systematic literature review with the comparative analysis of country-level statistics to further clarify the process of local government in this open access debates paper.

Proximity as urban democratic legitimacy: Strategies of participation in Buenos Aires by Sam Halvorsen and Rocio Annunziata

Based on extensive qualitative research, Sam Halvorsen and Rocio Annunziata examine how and why mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and his city government of Buenos Aires deployed the strategy of proximity while also highlighting its limits in this open access article.

Inventraset assemblages: The spatial logic of informal street vending, transport and settlement open access debates paper by Kim Dovey and Redento B Recio

‘Inventraset’ is a portmanteau concept that moves beyond studies of informal street vending, transport and settlement to understand their interrelations - an urbanism that is inventive, transgressive and settled, and that sustains livelihoods.

Hukou type, hukou place and labour market vulnerability in Chinese megacities: The case of Beijing in the COVID-19 pandemic by Qiujie Shi, Tao Liu and Rongxi Peng

Tao Liu, Qiujie Shi and Rongxi Peng use pandemic-induced income loss in Beijing as a case study to shed light on the need to differentiate between the hukou place and type in studies about China’s hukou system.