SEARCH THE DATABASE

Although often intended to address injustices in food access, farmers markets tend to cater to affluent communities, and to exclude on the basis of race and class. One means of addressing this is federal subsidy programs, like the Senior Farmers Market Nutritional Program (SFMNP). We explore the dynamics of the SFMNP program in Memphis’ farmers market landscape in 2011. We examine the visible barriers experienced by SFMNP patrons to market access including delays in establishing the program in a largely African-American neighborhood, and the more subtle barriers such as perceptions of more affluent markets as white spaces. We then explore some successful efforts to make these issues visible and address them, including activism on the part of seniors and public dialog in social media. Despite this, we find that ongoing resistance to acknowledging farmers markets as spaces of racial inequality continues to challenge their food justice potential.

In Bangladesh, Dhaka is migrants' most important destination and has itself been fundamentally transformed through migration. But there is ‘no place’ for many migrants in Dhaka. Poorer migrants live in slums and many encroach on public space to sustain their lives – the new urbanites are taking their ‘right to the city’. In doing so, they not only draw on local resources. Their production of the urban space often relates directly to their migration trajectory, their translocal networks, and their simultaneous situatedness at multiple places. Migrants connect ‘the rural’ and ‘the urban’ and constitute translocal spaces, which contribute to re‐making Dhaka from below. This paper integrates current debates on translocality, informal labour, and subaltern urbanism to address two key questions on transient urban spaces: How do migration trajectories and translocality structure the urban poor's lives? How do migrants make use of local networks and translocal social relations to find work and appropriate ‘their place’ in the city? Empirical research on street food vendors in Dhaka, almost all of whom are internal migrants, builds the basis for my argument. I show that ‘translocal social capital’ and home‐bound identities can be important resources to gain access to urban labour markets and to appropriate one's place in the city. The paper argues that the poor use translocality for their livelihoods and thereby continuously re‐shape the face of the megacity of Dhaka.

Building on Whyte’s work on livable places, the present study developed a four-item scale to assess visitability and used it to test whether three attributes identified by Whyte—seating, food, and triangulation—increase visit- ability.The study used color slides of three plazas altered for the presence or absence of each attribute. Sixty participants (23 men and 37 women) rated slides of the plazas on each of four items on the Perceived Visitability Scale (PVS). The four items had high interitem reliability, and each item and their composite had high interobserver reliability.The visitability ratings showed that plazas with seats, food, or sculpture had higher scores than plazas without those elements; and the combination of seats and sculpture had higher scores than either element alone. Contradicting Whyte, there was no statistically significant effect of gender. Seats, sculpture, and the perceived compatibility of elements with one another may improve plaza visitability.

The rise of mobile food vending in US cities combines urban space and mobility with continuous online communication. Unlike traditional urban spaces that are predictable and known, contemporary vendors use information technology to generate impromptu social settings in unconventional and often underutilized spaces. This unique condition requires new methods that interpret online communication as a critical component in the production of new forms of public life. We suggest qualitative approaches combined with data-driven analyses are necessary when planning for emergent behavior. In Charlotte, NC, we investigate the daily operations, tweet content, and spatial and temporal sequencing of six vendors over an extended period of time. The study illustrates the interrelationship between data, urban space, and time and finds that a significant proportion of tweet content is used to announce vending locations in a time-based pattern and that the spatial construction of events is often independent of traditional urban form.

Urban agriculture (UA) is spreading across vacant and marginal land worldwide, embraced by government and civil society as source of food, ecosystems services and jobs, particularly in times of economic crisis. ‘Metabolic rift' is an effective framework for differentiating UA's multiple origins and functions across the Global North and South. I examine how UA arises from three interrelated dimensions of metabolic rift—ecological, social and individual. By rescaling production, reclaiming vacant land and ‘de-alienating’ urban dwellers from their food, UA also attempts to overcome these forms of rift. Considering all three dimensions is valuable both for theory and practice.

The popularity and impact of the High Line in New York mirrors the complex reality of contemporary provision of public space. The development of the project, its relation- ship to its surroundings and the evolving trend of elevated parks are analyzed in relation to the role of urban green space and impacts of Landscape Urbanism. The High Line shows the way to a new role for urban green space by utilizing abandoned infrastructure. In analysing the narrative of the High Line, this article stresses the importance of understanding localities and connectivity. Based on observations as well as a review of the literature and media, the article concludes that great landscaping does not create great places without careful consideration of the surrounding community and residents.

This paper reports the findings from a research project that examines the relationship between urban design and the physical environment, and aspects of social and communal life in suburbs. Australian suburbs are perceived to be lacking in vitality and sociability. To address this, three suburban commercial streets were selected for investigation. Through documents and maps of the residents’ activities and behaviour, this study aims to identify the popular zones of activity and investigate the physical characteristics that encourage a sociable atmosphere in activity zones. The observation of activities in the three streets has been registered in tables relative to the date and time of occurrence. According to the behavioural mappings, the zones of activity are mostly shaped around pavement cafes and popular everyday food stores. Since more than half the activities have been observed to be initiated from the pavement cafes, this paper will investigate how the physical qualities of commercial streets such as the width of the pavements, personalization, soft edges and greenery have contributed to the pavement café culture in the selected neighbourhood centres.

The creation of public internet access facilities is one of the principal policy instruments adopted by governments in addressing ‘digital divide’ issues. The lack of plans for ongoing funding, in North America at least, suggests that this mode is regarded mainly as transitional, with private, home-based access being perceived as superior. The assumption apparently is that as domestic internet penetration rates rise, public access facilities will no longer be needed. Central to this issue are the varied characteristics of publicly provided and privately owned access sites and their implications for non-employment internet activities. What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of these two access modes? More fundamentally, how do people conceptualize public and private spaces and how does this perception influence their online activities? Finally, why do people choose one over the other, and how do they navigate between the two? This article attempts to answer these questions by drawing on data generated within the Everyday Internet Project, a ‘neighborhood ethnography’ of internet usage. It argues that the conventional view of private and public access facilities as immiscible, fixed alternatives is inadequate. Rather than ‘pure’ types, they are better understood as offering hybrid spaces whose identity and character are fluid, perceived differently by individuals in light of the activities being performed, life experiences, infrastructure and architecture. The picture emerging from our study is one where public and private access modes intertwine with each other in a variety of ways, their combination offering significant additional value for many users. From a public policy perspective, these findings suggest that if universal access is to be achieved, there is a continuing need for publicly supported broad-spectrum facilities with integrated technical support and learning opportunities, even if domestic penetration rates approach that of the telephone.

The socio-legal technology of licensing is one of the primary tools governments use to manage spaces and practices deemed risky or threatening to public order. Licensing requirements thus play a crucial role in shaping routine experiences in public space as well as the trajectories of emerging forms of public life. Yet licensing laws have largely been ignored in critical urban scholarship: too often concerned with the interpretation and critique of popular practices and public spaces, the mundane operations of urban governance are often left to practitioners and policy researchers. This article demonstrates how paying closer attention to licensure can provide valuable and unexpected insights into matters of social equality, urban amenity and economic opportunity. It does so through a comparative inquiry into practices of street food vending in New York City, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. Drawing on ethnographic study and interviews, the article demonstrates how licensing can be involved in the production of quite peculiar and unjust geographies of practice, but also how shifts in popular culture can force a reconsideration of taken-for- granted laws. In conclusion, it is argued that a focus on licensing offers a productive pathway for new forms of critical urban research and provides a potential point of leverage in efforts to configure better and more democratic forms of urban public life.

I use the concept of “engaged anthropology” to frame a discussion of how “spatializing culture” uncovers systems of exclusion that are hidden or naturalized and thus rendered invisible to other methodological approaches. “Claiming Space for an Engaged Anthropology” is doubly meant: to claim more intellectual and professional space for engagement and to propose that anthropology include the dimension of space as a theoretical construct. I draw on three fieldwork examples to illustrate the value of the approach: (1) a Spanish American plaza, reclaimed from a Eurocentric past, for indigenous groups and contemporary cultural interpretation; (2) Moore Street Market, an enclosed Latino food market in Brooklyn, New York, reclaimed for a translocal set of social relations rather than a gentrified redevelopment project; (3) gated communities in Texas and New York and cooperatives in New York, reclaiming public space and confronting race and class segregation created by neoliberal enclosure and securitization.

Public spaces constitute one of the first urban elements to be threatened in times of instability. Their efficient supply and management becomes a concern for both public authorities and individual users. This paper examines the role and objectives of social entrepreneurs in supplying temporary public spaces within an unstable setting and focuses on small group collective action. The mechanisms used to identify potential land, negotiate use-rights and promote these spaces are discussed for the case of Beirut, Lebanon, a society segregated by the effects of war and political upheaval. The case of an organic food market is used to illustrate temporary public spaces in the critical period of 2005–2007, when political instability reigned in the country and rendered conventional public spaces undesirable. The paper concludes by drawing lessons for land readjustment in crisis situations from the movement of temporary public spaces within a city while still attracting people that formerly had difficulties meeting elsewhere.

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.

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Parks provide important physiological and psychological benefi ts to seniors, improving their quality of life; they are particularly important for low-income, inner-city seniors who lack access to open and green space. However, seniors do not often use parks partly because park design and programming are not responsive to their diverse needs and values. To identify what low-income, inner-city seniors seek and value in neighborhood parks, and to provide guidance to planners on how to better design senior-friendly parks, we conducted a literature review and held focus groups with 39 low-income, ethnically diverse seniors in an inner-city neighborhood in Los Angeles (CA). We asked these seniors about their preferences as well as the challenges and barriers they encounter in using neighborhood parks. Seniors report many impediments to park use; they are not provided appropriate programming that allows opportunities for socializing, safety, and security within the park and along access routes; opportunities for exercise and walking; and aesthetic and natural elements that provide contact with nature.Takeaway for practice: Park planners and designers should seek to incorporate senior voices in park design and programming in four ways by developing appropriate programming sensitive to diverse needs, accommodating the desire for �seniors-only� parks, promoting security and safety in the park and along access routes, and offering open and green space. We also fi nd the need for additional research on seniors from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Children growing up in the inner city are at risk for a range of negative developmental outcomes. Do barren, inner-city neighborhood spaces compromise the everyday activities and experiences necessary for healthy development? Sixty-four urban public housing outdoor spaces (27 low vegetation, 37 high vegetation) were observed on four separate occasions. Overall, inner-city children's everyday activities and access to adults appeared remarkably healthy; of the 262 children observed, most (73%) were involved in some type of play, and most groups of children (87%) were supervised to some degree. In relatively barren spaces, however, the picture was considerably less optimistic: Levels of play and access to adults were approximately half as much as those found in spaces with more trees and grass, and the incidence of creative play was significantly lower in barren spaces than in relatively green spaces

Privately owned public spaces are frequently criticized for diminishing the publicness of public space by restricting social interaction, constraining individual liberties, and excluding undesirable populations. This study empirically determines whether, as is commonly believed, privately owned public spaces are more controlled than publicly owned spaces. To frame our empirical work, we propose a conceptual model that identifies publicness as the interaction between the ownership, management, and uses/users of a space. We then examine the management dimension using an observation-based index to assess spatial management paradigms in publicly and privately owned spaces. We find that the use of the private sector to provide publicly accessible space leads to increased control over use, behavior, and access. Furthermore, while both publicly and privately owned public spaces tend equally to encourage public use and access, managers of privately owned spaces tend to employ more features that control behavior within those spaces. More specifically, spatial control in privately owned spaces is normally achieved through the use of surveillance and policing techniques as well as design measures that ‘code’ spaces as private. Important findings are presented for planners, policy makers, and others concerned with the future of publicly accessible spaces.

This article investigates the relationship between political identity and public space in the communities of the Colca Valley, in Peru’s rural Andes, by examining two moments in which the built environment became a medium for formatting and engaging a local indigeneity. The first is the colonial invasion, during which the reducci´on plan condensed and dispersed “unruly” native subjects around a public square and a church. The second is the contemporary moment, in which that same space is used to stage audits, evaluations, and competitions in the context of a development paradigm shifting from service provision to investing in indigeneity by financing the promotion of entrepreneurial and agricultural practices that organizations classify as typically indigenous. This article offers two arguments: (1) in the colonial era, notions of indigenous identity configured efforts to improve and regulate daily life—or, to achieve development; and (2) through changing historical contexts, the built environment is used as a medium for defining Colcan indigeneity, deploying it to generate strategic knowledge and regulatory force, and investing it with the potential for various kinds of salvation. This approach suggests that transnational paradigms do not simply “touch down,” but also, adjust and push existing dynamics through the local media at their disposal.

Definitions of environmental child friendliness offer broad criteria that are not easy to study or assess. We suggest that due to this broadness, these definitions have produced surprisingly few attempts to evaluate how child-friendly various types of physical environments are. The purpose of this study is to analyse how the structure of the built environment contributes to environmental child friendliness. We define child friendliness by two central criteria: children’s possibilities for independent mobility and their opportunities to actualize environmental affordances. We study how built environment qualities condition environmental child friendliness in place-based ways by asking children and youth in Turku, Finland, to tell about their meaningful places and their mobility to these. The data consists of over 12,000 affordances, localized by the respondents. This experiential and behavioural place-based knowledge is combined with objectively measured data on residential and building density, and quantity of green structures. Moderate urban density seems to have child-friendly characteristics such as an ability to promote independent access to meaningful places and the diversity of affordances. We find that affordances situated on residential areas are likely to be reached alone, whereas access to affordances situated in densely built urban cores is less independent. The proportion of green structures is not associated with independent access. The diversity of affordances is highest in areas that are densely populated and not very green. Green areas are important settings for doing things, and green structures around emotional affordances increase the likelihood of liking the place significantly. Combining children’s place-based experiences with information derived from objective measurable qualities of the physical environment provides a valuable methodological contribution to studies on environmental child friendliness, and the two proposed criteria of child friendliness are supported by this study. There is no one environment that is child-friendly, but different environments have different uses and meanings.

Accessibility and mobility within the urban environment has been dictated by the design and layout of buildings and road infrastructure. Both, in their separate ways, have created problems of safety and crime which have conspired to limit pedestrian confidence and therefore movement and travel choice amongst particular groups. Benchmarking of accessibility does not tend to reflect everyday journeys and trips taken or desired, and the perceptual barriers felt by many people. This article reports on a five year research study into accessibility, urban design and social inclusion (AUNT-SUE), funded under the EPSRC's Sustainable Urban Environment programme. The development and validation of a street design index and evaluation of routes is presented through a test bed case study based on user consultation with groups experiencing barriers to pedestrian access, 'fear of crime' and therefore to engagement with the transport system and wider social inclusion. This involves the use of GIS-participation techniques and map walks with residents, integrated with digital data analysis and visualization of the whole journey environment. Particular attention is paid to the mobility and journey needs of users, as well as perceptual and safety issues, since these present some of the major barriers to transport access for vulnerable groups.

In this paper I present childhood biographies of three people who grew up in or near a public housing development located on the border between the contrasting communities of Yorkville and East Harlem in New York City. Stories of their middle childhood (ages 11-13) poignantly capture the social and spatial evolution of play and recreation in New York City from the 1930s until present time. Based on in-depth childhood autobiographies and archival materials from the New York Times, I demonstrate changes in children’s access to play and recreation space, how children negotiate their lived experiences in these spaces, and how these spaces reflect differing representations of childhood over time. While play and recreation are, of course, a broad range of activities that occur in multiple settings and under various forms of supervision, the focus of this paper is upon the role of the streets, public parks and playgrounds in children’s everyday lives. Preliminary results suggest that children’s access to public play spaces in New York City has declined over time. This decline can be attributed to public disinvestment in neighborhood parks and playgrounds, perceived (and real) violence in these spaces, and more recently, to the commercialization and privatization of playtime activities.

Despite an increasing interest in issues surrounding environmental equity, much research evidence to date is based on studies adopting cross-sectional approaches which do not adequately capture the processes and mechanisms generating inequities. Longitudinal studies may better inform policy measures to remedy inequity between populations, but the few that have been undertaken have mostly been focused solely on environmental risks—ignoring access to amenities. As a case study, we adopt a longitudinal approach in this work to investigate the association between sociodemographic indicators and public park provision over an eighteen-year period in the city of Yokohama, Japan. We show that inequities in park provision are present over the whole time period. Hedonic modelling shows that park accessibility is positively associated with house and land prices in the city. Our results suggested some, relatively weak, evidence of two causal processes: new parks are located in more affluent communities; yet new parks also appear to encourage further move-in of affluent populations. We suggest that park provision by administrative authorities in less-affluent neighbourhoods may be required to maintain equity in access to these valuable community resources. Economic incentives, such as subsidy provision, may have a role to play to encourage park provision by developers.