SEARCH THE DATABASE

This article presents commentary and analysis on the Urban Studies special collection on the night-time city. The collection highlights burgeoning interest in the urban night from across the social sciences and helps consolidate what might be referred to as the ‘third wave’ of research on the evening and night-time economy (ENTE). The collection addresses the challenges of 21st cen- tury place-making after dark in a variety of international contexts. This commentary interprets individual contributions to this collection in the light of the author’s research experience within an evolving and increasingly sophisticated field of knowledge. The articles have, I suggest, power relations, social exclusion and social sustainability as their most prominent meta-themes. I pro- pose a new conceptual model for the interpretation of situated assemblages of power, capacity and influence, as operating across four overlapping modes of urban governance.

N/A

The natural environment contributes to human wellbeing in a variety of ways, including providing outdoor recreation venues and underpinning cultural practices. Understanding whether the diversity of human-nature experiences significantly relate to overall subjective wellbeing, however, is rarely explored. Using results from 4418 respondents to an online survey conducted in Washington's Puget Sound region, we describe the relationship between overall life satisfaction and diverse metrics of how people engage with the natural environment. We found that eleven of the thirteen tested metrics had a small but positive correlation to overall life satisfaction and specific groupings of environment-specific social indicators were internally reliable constructs that predicted life satisfaction. These included: Sense of Place, Outdoor Activities, Good Governance, Social and Cultural Activities, Psychological Well- being, and Resource Access. This research empirically demonstrates that a variety of mechanisms for engaging the natural environment significantly contribute to overall subjective wellbeing.

This paper empirically explores the management of privately owned public space. It examines 163 spaces produced through New York City’s incentive zoning programme, whereby developers provide and manage a public space in exchange for fl oor area ratio (FAR) bonuses. Developers of these bonus spaces employ a variety of management approaches, each correlating with common theories of spatial control in publicly owned spaces. However, as developer priorities are often fi scally driven, most approaches severely limit political, social and democratic functions of public space and produce a constricted defi nition of the public. As such, privately owned public spaces have deleterious effects on concepts of citizenship and representation, even as they become the new models for urban space provision and management.

Public markets were once essential parts of the cityscape and they are becoming so again. Markets serve several purposes, social, political, and economic, and so planners interested in multipurpose tools for development will be interested in public markets. Markets can help achieve a variety of goals including place-making, employment, and entrepreneurship. This article focuses on markets as tools of business incubation. Archival data and literature shows how important markets once were to cities. Ethnographically collected data from Chicago's Maxwell Street market illustrates the individual and structural factors that account for businesses created at the market. Rural and urban markets are emerging or being rehabilitated all over the country — this research helps planners understand the history of markets, their multi-disciplinary nature, and the circumstances of people creating businesses at markets.

Following the distinction proposed by Banton, police work consists of two relatively different activities: "law enforcement" and "keeping the peace." The latter is not determined by a clear legal mandate and does not stand under any system of external control. Instead, it developed as a craft in response to a variety of demand conditions. One such condition is created by the concentration of certain types of persons on skid-row. Patrolmen have a particular conception of the social order of skid-row life that determines the procedures of control they employ. The most conspicuous features of the peace keeping methods used are an aggressively personalized approach to residents, an attenuated regard for questions of culpability, and the use of coercion, mainly in the interest of managing situations rather than persons.

This paper assesses and synthesizes the cumulative results of a new “neighborhood-effects” literature that examines social processes related to problem behaviors and health-related outcomes. Our review identified over 40 relevant studies published in peer-reviewed journals from the mid-1990s to 2001, the take-off point for an increasing level of interest in neighborhood effects. Moving beyond traditional characteristics such as concentrated poverty, we evaluate the salience of social-interactional and institutional mechanisms hypothesized to account for neighborhood-level variations in a variety of phenomena (e.g., delinquency, violence, depression, high-risk behavior), especially among adolescents. We highlight neighborhood ties, social control, mutual trust, institutional resources, disorder, and routine activity patterns. We also discuss a set of thorny methodological problems that plague the study of neighborhood effects, with special attention to selection bias. We conclude with promising strategies and directions for future research, including experimental designs, taking spatial and temporal dynamics seriously, systematic observational approaches, and benchmark data on neighborhood social processes.

This article examines the ways in which individuals use MP3 players to shape their experiences of the London commute. To investigate MP3 listening practices, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with eight DJs and ‘listeners’ living in London. I argue that MP3 players enable individuals to use music to precisely shape their experiences of space, place, others and themselves while moving through the city. In doing so, individuals experience great control as they transform urban journeys into private and pleasurable spaces. While experienced effects of MP3 player listening were similar among respondents, pre-existing relationships to music appear to relate to motivations for use. This article draws on a variety of social theorists ranging from Simmel and Adorno to Lefebvre to interrogate the experience of control MP3 users describe, and to understand the implications for the autonomy of urban inhabitants.

Public space is a topic of great interest for urban scholars and urban planners. Such space, like parks, sidewalks, and plazas, it is argued, can provide the common grounds where the inhabitants of a city meet, exchange ideas, even engage in a variety of cultural performances. This article reports on fieldwork about the use of public space in Shanghai today. We find a great diversity of uses, ranging from vendors who sell their wares to people who engage in heated and extensive political discussions to performers of Beijing opera and ballroom dancing. We also find that the local authorities use a light, and sometimes covert, hand in their oversight of inhabitants in such spaces. Finally, we discover that powerful social differences and inequalities between native inhabitants and working-class migrants, which have emerged during the period of economic reform and market transition, are now actively in evidence in the quality and use of public space in Shanghai. The article puts these findings within a broader theoretical context, concluding in the end that for many—though not all—inhabitants public man is alive and well in Shanghai.

Using data from a national survey of public attitudes toward homeless people, this paper evaluates the applicability of the contact hypothesis to in-group/out-group relations that fail to meet the optimal conditions specified in the contact literature. Past efforts are extended by (1) moving beyond face-to-face encounters to consider multiple types of in-group exposure to a highly stigmatized out-group, (2) examining a variety of attitudinal outcomes, and (3) incorporating community context as a possible antecedent of such outcomes. Even after taking selection and social desirability processes into account, all types of exposure are found to affect public attitudes in the predicted (favorable) direction. Moreover, the size of the local homeless population—our primary measure of context—shapes opportunities for most forms of exposure and thus influences attitudes indirectly. These findings suggest that the scope of the contact hypothesis needs to be widened rather than narrowed.

Uses and perceptions of nine nearby, easily-accessible outdoor areas were studied by interviewing 89 residents of a multiple-family housing development. Judgments of perceived sizes, size adequacy, use frequencies, preferences, and perceived importance were elicited, along with descriptions of personal uses. The findings reveal consistent differences between three general types of areas which serve distinct functions. The yards serve territorial needs, the common areas and public athletic fields afford recreational opportunities, and a nearby wooded area with a pond provides a highly preferred setting for a variety of nature-related pursuits. Although most ratings varied across the different types, ratings of perceived importance were high for each. The findings of this study clarify the relationships among physical size, use patterns and preferences for different areas. They also illustrate the diverse affordances of different urban nature areas, and emphasize the important role that nature contacts play in the everyday lives of urban residents.

This paper discusses how the structure of urban public open space is created and interpreted in the mental image of its users in the case of Ljubljana, Slovenia. It reveals how spatially continuous urban open space is physically interconnected into the overall spatial structure of the city and how it is defined by a variety of the built form components. The question is how such space is present in the mental image of users and whether and how such space is structured into sub-units by its users. The paper aims to establish what its dimensions are, how it is divided into separate units at a mental level, and what the perceived hierarchical relations between such units are, in terms of spatial, functional and intangible characteristics of space that conditions this perception. It is argued that both the overall spatial structure of the city and its constituent components play an important role in how users conceptualize urban open public space.

This article discusses successful common grounds for children public settings that enable the harmonious intermingling of children of different backgrounds, races, and ethnicities and that encourage their social interchange, play, educational development, and collaboration. Our study focused on three types of public space that tend to bring these children together: the public school, the park, and the neighborhood community center. The research employed a variety of methods to study the interaction of children 9 to 12 years of age. Field work took place at four sites in West Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and the San Fernando Valley that enjoy a high level of intermixing and have a reputation for promoting diversity. Subjects in the research included children, teachers, and administrators. The article highlights the findings of the field work and concludes with a comparative analysis of the different settings and a discussion of the environmental and programmatic attributes that contribute to their success.

Urban parks are community assets, providing people places to play and rest. Access to parks in urban environments promotes social equity and improves quality of life for surrounding neighborhoods. In this context, social equity is related to accessibility, i.e. the possibility of walking or biking from home to a public park, giving people who do not have access to a variety of entertainment an option that is a public good. This paper examines the spatial distribution of urban parks in the city of Curitiba, Brazil, and how it relates to the socio-economic conditions of surrounding neighborhoods. Curitiba is known for its urban parks; however, no systematic study has been conducted to verify which neighborhoods enjoy park access within walking distance and what the socio-economic differences are between the better and worse served neighborhoods. In addition, we investigate if access to green open space has improved between the last two decennial census, a period marked by unprecedented socio-economic affluence in Brazil. Research questions, to be addressed using spatial analysis, focus on equitable distribution, and spatial evolution of parks and social equity. Variables include measurable walking distances from census tracts to parks, income data from the 2000 and 2010 Brazilian decennial censuses, and qualitative data of urban parks in Curitiba. Findings offer recommendations for future implementation of additional parks in Curitiba so that all areas of the city have adequate green open space and all citizens have equal access to recreation and leisure opportunities.

To date, research into the subjective aspects of high density has focused mainly on the negative consequences of overcrowding. This study, in contrast, outlines some of the positive aspects of high density in neighborhoods, exploring the physical-spatial environment of two neighborhoods in the city of Haifa, Israel. It was found that while the relatively high residential density was similar in both neighborhoods (40 housing units per acre), this was more positively evaluated in one neighborhood as compared to the other. This can be attributed to some specific environmental and planning features. In particular, where physical planning enabled the potential advantages of high density to be realized, this was positively perceived and evaluated by local residents. Such advantages mainly comprised accessibility to a variety of services, more frequent public transportation, and access to open spaces within walking distance. Particularly advantageous were the increased opportunities for social gathering. At the same time, however, high density did not foster social relationships at the neighborhood level. The study further identified the gender and age groups that benefited most from the high density. Thus, women evaluated high density more positively than men. Young families with children and senior citizens (over 65) were also more likely to benefit, and to evaluate the high density environment more positively than other social groups.

Feeling maps survey and map people's emotional responses to their environment as they walk through the streets of a particular urban area. This study describes the first application of feeling maps in long-term, ethnographic field research. It was conducted in Mitzpe Ramon, a small town in Israel's Negev Desert Highlands. Over the course of one year, an ethnographer individually accompanied 55 participants with diverse social characteristics on a set of seven walking routes. These routes included neighborhood spaces, open public spaces, and at least one view of the surrounding natural desert landscape. The locations where between two and seven participants spontaneously reported experiencing strong feelings (positive, negative, or mixed) based on a numerical rating scale and open-ended narration were identified as "affective clusters." Results suggest that people's shared feelings about specific places are influenced by the particular physical properties and characteristics of a given place. Making a contribution to cognitive mapping and environmental preference techniques, feeling maps enable researchers to share a participant's position and views of the landscape as he or she articulates emotions and memories related to those views. Replicable in any setting, this technique could be used to create and maintain spaces that are attractive, inviting, and emotionally pleasing variety of users.

In the prevailing literature on contemporary public spaces, two contested sets of arguments become apparent: one depicts the ‘end of public space’, while the other challenges with this ‘end of public space’ discourse. Following the debates, one can ask the question of whether there has been any ideally ‘public’ or ‘inclusive’ public space ever in cities, or the inclusivity (thereby ‘publicness’) of public spaces can or may change in time based on a variety of factors. This research, addressing these questions, contributes to this ongoing discussion, first by providing a model of inclusivity for the qualitative assessment of public spaces, and second by using this model to provide an empirical analysis on the largest urban park in the historic city centre of Ankara, namely Gençlik Park (GP). After in-depth analysis of the changing inclusivity of GP from its heydays to nowadays regarding four dimensions of ‘access’, in relation with its design, manage- ment, control and use processes, as well as the contextual aspect of the inclusivity–exclusivity continuum of public–private spaces, it concludes that the ‘inclusive’ nature of public spaces might change and evolve depending on time dimension, as well as the local and global contexts within which the public space is set and bounded. Although the causes and issues regarding the inclusivity capacity of public spaces are complex – that is, ‘multiple’, ‘site-specific’ and ‘interrelated’, the continuous presence of democratic and egalitarian procedural accessibility, which embraces all segments of the public, which gives them the opportunity to raise their voices and opinions about the public spaces, and which deliberation is used as the mechanism to endure a consensual rather than authoritarian style of interaction is a requirement for generating and maintaining inclusive public spaces.

Urban sociology has tended to study interactions between passersby and "street persons" with an emphasis on the ways street persons become bothersome, harassing, or dangerous. This article moves away from the focus on the ways interactions in public go awry and focuses on how individuals account for the mundane, everyday exchanges they have with strangers who seek their help. Based on interview data (N = 31) and qualitative analysis of data from an Internet survey (N = 110), this article suggests that the presence of beggars does not inherently symbolize urban decay to passersby and does not necessarily elicit anxiety, but instead provides a valuable texture of urban life. Further, the article argues that individuals, when justifying their responses to requests for help from needy persons (beggars) in urban spaces, use a variety of cultural strategies to maintain their perception of themselves as moral persons, both when they choose to help and when they refuse. Drawing from these findings, the article suggests that urban sociology and the sociology of risk would benefit from sensitizing their studies of public interactions to the diverse meanings individuals assign to them, rather than presupposing annoyance, anxiety, or fear as their predominant characteristic.

Contemporary provision of open spaces within cities rests largely on professional assumptions about its significance in the lives of residents. This paper presents results from the Greenwich Open Space Project which used qualitative research with four, in-depth discussion groups to determine the design of a questionnaire survey of households in the borough. The research shows that the most highly valued open spaces are those which enhance the positive qualities of urban life: variety of opportunities and physical settings; sociability and cultural diversity. The findings lend some support to the approach of the urban conservation movement but present a fundamental challenge to the open-space hierarchy embodied in the Greater London Development Plan. The Project identifies a great need for diversity of both natural settings and social facilities within local areas and highlights the potential of urban green space to improve the quality of life of all citizens.

‘Green infrastructure’ is a term used to describe systems of parks, greenways, open spaces and other natural landscape elements that provide community benefits. Although we have some understanding of how people use parks and developed greenways, little has been documented about use of the undesignated public and private spaces along green infrastructure features such as stream corridors. The purpose of this research was to examine characteristics that may influence people’s use of undesignated open spaces along the stream corridors that form the skeleton of many green infrastructure systems. Data were obtained from a Recreational Use Attainability Analysis (RUAA), an evaluation performed for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The RUAA was conducted for 85 survey sites along 243 km (151 miles) of streams in Houston’s Buffalo Bayou watershed. Results indicate that the proximity of stream corridors to local residents, the level of pedestrian access available and tree cover were the best predictors of recreational use while the presence of water, fish or other wildlife were not significant predictors. Observations also indicated that urban and suburban stream corridors afford a variety of recreational and aesthetic values to residents. Implications for policy, planning and design of green infrastructure are discussed.