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The success of a city’s retail core is largely dependent on the composition and organization of its merchant constituents. Not only should the price-point and products of a city’s retail align with its resident and visitor demographics, but the stores should be strategically balanced to maximize consumer spending and interest. Heritage destinations dependent on the tourism market should pay special attention to this issue, assuring their visitors a valuable shopping experience while simultaneously preserving the destination’s cultural appeal. This case study considers the rapidly evolving shopping district of Charleston, South Carolina, focusing specifically on the retail core’s recent influx of chain merchants to what was once predominantly a local main street. An historical account, paired with and an in-depth survey of merchants, is presented. The research builds upon previous studies that have considered the issue of merchant mix from the perspective of the city’s stakeholders, tourists and residents.

While the age of physical environments is the central tenet of historic preservation, there is a lack of empirical evidence about how everyday people actually value, perceive, and experience age as an intrinsic part of an urban environment. In order to ameliorate this knowledge deficit, this study employs phenomenology to understand the lived experience of being in a “new” versus an “old” or “historic” urban residential environment. The new environment is the I’On new urbanist development in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, and the old environment is the location of the United States’ first historic district in Charleston, South Carolina. These locations are approximately within five miles of each other. In both places, the physical characteristics of the built environment are remarkably similar in density, form, layout, and design, but the age is dramatically different. Through photo elicitation techniques and interviews, the results of this study reveal that residents of historic Charleston and I’On value their built environments in remarkably similar ways. Surprisingly, elements that evoke a strong sense of attachment tend to be landscape features, such as gates, fountains, trees, and gardens rather than buildings. The informants valued the “mystery” that they felt was part of the landscape and which consisted of layered elements such as fences, gates, and paths, such that these features (including buildings) had to be “discovered.” Lastly, the informants strongly valued landscapes that showed “people care” through regular maintenance. The essential difference in people’s experience and valuation of the new environment (I’On) and the old environment (historic Charleston) is in the older environment’s ability to instill creative fantasies in the minds of the informants based on a hypothetical past of their own creation. The informants in I’On did not share these kinds of meanings.

Drawing from ethnographic research in the Research Triangle of North Carolina and Williamsburg, Virginia, the authors build on Anzaldúa’s conceptualization of “borderlands” to analyze how borders of social membership are constructed and enforced in “el Nuevo South.” Our gender analysis reveals that intersecting structural conditions—the labor market, the organization of public space, and the institutional organization of health care and other public services—combine with gendered processes in the home and family to regulate women’s participation in community life. Enforcers of borders include institutional actors, mostly women, in social services and clinics who occupy institutional locations that enable them to define who is entitled to public goods and to categorize migrants as undeserving “others.” We reveal how a particularly configured matrix of domination transcends the spheres of home, work, and community to constrain women migrants’ physical and economic mobility and personal autonomy and to inhibit their participation in their societies of reception.

We generate a number of hypotheses about face-to-face groups using the energy distribution principle: the frequency of an event is inversely related to the amount of energy expended in that event. The principle predicts that (1) the size of groups will be inversely related to the frequency of their occurrence; (2) at any group size, the composition of social positions will be less heterogeneous than chance; and, (3) as group size increases, observed compositional homogeneity will decline at a slower rate than chance. We test these hypotheses using data on more than 100,000 naturally occurring, public, face-to-face groups gathered in sampling sweeps through two communities over a three-year period. The data support the hypotheses and yield interesting differences in the strength of sex and race heterogeneity. We discuss the findings as they relate to the general energy distribution principle and to other sociological perspectives.

Geographers have effectively examined girls’ reactions and resistances to adult control in public space, but the ways that girls learn about and rein scribe social differences like race and class through ‘hanging-out’ practices in public, urban space have yet to be sufficiently explored and theorized. Therefore, in this paper I consider the normative productivity of girls’ spatial practices, as well as girls’ resistances to adultist space. I examine the case of consumption space and focus on how girls utilize, create and reproduce myriad social identifiers as they hang out in public, urban space. Consumption space and consumerism dominate the urban spaces and hanging-out practices of teenagers, and while girls complain about the ubiquity of consumption space, girls’ public social-spatial activities inevitably involve consumption space. Therefore, consumption’s symbols and spaces are central to the normative production of girls’ identities like class and race, and of social difference more generally in urban space.

In the past five years the numbers of enclosed neighbourhoods have significantly increased in South Africa. These are existing neighbourhoods that are closed off through gates and booms across the roads. Many of these neighbourhoods are fenced or walled off as well, with a limited number of controlled entrances/exits, manned by security guards in some cases. The roads within these neighbourhoods were previously, or still are public property and in most cases the local council is still responsible for public services to the community within the enclosed neighbourhoods. In this way public urban space is privatised, whether formally or informally. I will explore the distribution of enclosed neighbourhoods in South Africa on a national scale and within two metropolitan municipalities, viz., the cities of Johannesburg and Tshwane. Then I proceed to highlight the nature and impact of these neighbourhoods on the privatisation of public space and draw on a wide basis of empirical data obtained through a national survey and in-depth case studies. Finally I will conclude with examples of lessons learnt from South Africa and how these may relate to international experience and future research on gated communities.

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.

This article examines park use in relation to neighborhood social (safety and poverty) and urban form (pedestrian infrastructure and street network pattern) characteristics among youth and adult subpopulations defined by age and gender. We utilized System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) and Geographic Information Systems to objectively measure park use and park and neighborhood characteristics in 20 neighborhood parks. Heterogeneous negative binomial regression models indicated that the relationship between park use and types of activity settings, and park use and neighborhood attributes vary by age and gender. In general, the study found that park and activity setting size; activity settings such as playgrounds, basketball courts, pool and water features, shelters, and picnic areas; and availability of sidewalks and intersections in the park’s neighborhood were positively associated with park use, whereas crime, poverty, and racial heterogeneity of the surrounding neighborhood were negatively associated with park use.

This essay considers public art practice in post-apartheid Cape Town within the notion of symbolic reparations—a concept deriving out of South Africa’s Trust Reconciliation Commission. The paper situates developments in public arts practice in the context of developments in cultural politics in South Africa and globally. More especially, it discusses new genre arts projects, which focus on a range of issues related to identity, space and place. The projects—the District Six Museum, District Six Sculpture Project, PTO, Y30, BLAC, Returning the Gaze, and the In Touch Poetry Bus Tour—focus on issues such as rethinking monuments, the memorialising of ‘hidden histories’, engagements with racism and the abuse of power, and the reimagining of the city. The paper asks how these contemporary and often ephemeral projects, critically engage with issues of history, geography, memory and transformation and, in so doing, mark the landscape of Cape Town, making spaces for dialogue and/or standing as poetic symbols and challenges to the inequalities of the city.

This study strives to determine ways to increase the use of outdoor spaces, particularly spaces that have an abundance of natural elements, in environmentally friendly housing developments. Empirical data were obtained by observing residents' behaviors (445 observations) and interviewing 61 residents in Kuemhwa Greenvill, a new housing project in Giheung Sanggal, South Korea. The outdoor natural environments were classified into four categories: reserved natural environment, built environment with a natural appearance, built environment as a green buffer, and built environment with natural elements. The survey revealed that, typically, the natural environments were utilized less than the non-natural environments. Because natural environments did not support various outdoor activities, only persons in certain limited age groups (adults and adults with children) and small groups of one or two people used them. In particular, children's play activities and social gatherings rarely occurred in the natural environments. Apart from physical, psychological, and social accessibility issues, the residents' preferences for the use of non-natural environments were related to their needs and the physical features of the environments.

Despite a burgeoning literature on mobilities in general and cycling in particular as a transport, leisure, and political practice, there remains a lack of research on cycling in pedestrian public spaces. There is, however, a substantial body of literature in relation to skateboarding in public spaces which with few exceptions theorises it as resistant to preexisting dominant design codes and social norms. Using the example of London's South Bank this paper focuses on the urban cycling practices of bike trials and BMX in order to illustrate that these practices are perhaps not as `resistant' as previous accounts have argued. Whilst accounts of skateboarding have tended to draw upon a body ^ architecture dialectics and subcultural theory, using ethnographic methods this paper discusses the practice and reception of display, sociality, and authority inherent in these public performances. In doing so the paper demonstrates that these styles of riding largely perform the social and cultural norms enshrined in the redevelopment of the South Bank. The result is a performed reading of these practices and spaces which sees power as always becoming. In line with this, the paper also questions the logic of current strategies which seek to displace riders and skaters to peripheral `private' skate parks based on an erroneous reading of such practices as always resistant.

Within the International debates about the roles and relevance of planning and architecture, urban design is trying to find its place and clarify its contribution to city making. The products and the practice of urban design vary significantly in different global and socio-economic contexts and in relation to varying theoretical foundations. In South Africa, as in other developing countries, urban design is only beginning to feature as a valid mainstream concern within city development and among built environment practitioners. This paper presents the case of the City of Cape Town’s Dignified Places Programme as an example of implementation-focused urban design undertaken in a context where the conscious design and management of the public realm does not feature on the agendas of cash-strapped, basic needs-focused local government. The design and construction of new public spaces is the focus of this programme, but a parallel objective is to place the central concern of urban design – the quality of the public environment – squarely on the agenda of local government in Cape Town. The paper outlines the urban context in which it is being implemented sketches the issues that prompted its initiation and traces its theoretical origins focusing on the linkages between this theory and practice. The paper gives an account of the origins, objectives and strategy as well as the design principles that directed the form and location of the projects in the Programme. The paper finally reflects on the key successes and challenges of the programme and attempts to tease out lessons for both the theory and practice of urban design.

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.

Safety from crime in multifamily housing environments, where residents usually share hallways, common outdoor facilities, and parking spaces, has been a subject of research for decades. Strategies and tactics employed to enhance the safety of these environments may differ depending on residents' characteristics. This study explored residents' perceived and actual safety in multifamily environments in the United States and South Korea, as well as significant environmental variables. Using Newman's defensible space theory as the primary theoretical framework, we focused on how perceived safety in public and semipublic spaces relates to overall perceptions of safety in residential environments. We also examined crime experience in these environments and verified significant demographic and socioeconomic variables associated with residents' perceptions of safety. Data were collected from site visits and questionnaires administered to residents living in multifamily environments. The level of residents' safety perceptions differed between the two groups of residents. However, both groups exhibited strong correlations between perceived safety from crime in their communities and perceived safety in public spaces, such as recreational areas and parking lots, and semipublic spaces, such as building entrances and the vicinity. These findings underscore strong relationships among residents' perceptions of safety in different outdoor spaces, which the defensible space theory also supports. Based on these findings, we suggest ideas to improve residents' actual safety and perceptions of safety from crime.

Art in public space in South Africa is increasingly a more visible locus of sociopolitical resistance and recalibration of the public sphere. This article focuses upon an emblematic example: the sculpture of a former colonialist, removed from its public university site in Cape Town following sustained protests. Since April 2015, the empty plinth of Cecil John Rhodes has become a site of re-imagination – from graffiti interventions to performance and installation art. While the plinth continually morphs in symbolism and significance, its ousted artwork waits at an undisclosed location for its fate to be decided. This interregnum represents a liminal condition that theorists call ‘third space’, extended in this research towards a fourth dimension of performativity. The physical disappearance of the artwork has triggered a second life, its apogee a national protest movement with global resonance. Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall are student-led calls for university decolonisation and free education arguably best understood as provocation around systemic issues in society. As this deeper work ensues amid fractious contestations, the artwork's re-animation of the public sphere is clear. Its leftover plinth is political, making visible other kinds of structural voids. It is also poetic: a zombie monument demonstrating through its reinventions public space as common space – contested, negotiated and performed in the daily creation of city futures.

This paper is based on an empirical study of users of an internet café in South east England. It picks out some of the key distinctions between internet use within domestic spaces and as a technology accessed in a public economy of consumption. The research findings are contextualized and tested against existing work on public internet access. The material derived from interviews with customers is used to explore the ways in which the internet is differently perceived, used and gendered in the public spaces of an internet café. The paper argues that public use of the internet is not just a transitional phenomenon which precedes home internet adoption. The research revealed that the internet café provided a distinct and dedicated use space which was intimately bound up in the domestic and work routines of its users.

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.

This study tests the crime impact of the Boston South-west Corridor parkland, a 5-mile transit and linear park, on its adjoining neighbourhoods 15 years after its completion in the early 1980s. The study responds to concerns of local neighbour- hoods during the time of planning and construction, and to evidence of general public uneasiness about the dangers of linear parks to communities. In an analysis of two residential neighbourhoods adjoining the corridor, the study searched ®rst for evidence of crime spill-over from the corridor, and secondly for neighbours’ perceptions of corridor safety. To test crime spill-over, police calls from houses adjacent to the corridor were compared with calls from houses further away; interviews with residents investigated perceptions of the corridor’s safety. Findings revealed that though police calls were marginally more frequent from houses next to the corridor, these were considerably less frequent than calls from houses next to commercial streets. Interviews with residents revealed generally positive estimates of park safety by day, with low estimates of night-time safety and mixed estimates of its safety during twilight hours. Interviews also revealed heavy reliance on the corridor by the elderly and people with small children. The study concludes with recommendations for the future design of linear parks in cities.

Postmodernity and economic globalization incite countries, regions, and cities to compete for investments, consumers, and resources. In aspiring for a new position in this global market, cities utilize new urban practices that lead them to rediscover and reinvent identities and traditions. In Rio de Janeiro, the mythical dimension of the South Zone is inseparably incorporated to its identity. In evaluating the history of the imagery linked to the beaches and the projects for the waterfront, one may observe a social construction of a reality that is marked by a continuous redesigning of symbols but also by a discontinuity in the history of urban interventions. Although tourism and marketing continually praise the waterfront as a fundamental factor in the image of the city, a continuous public management process never really existed. The city managers must understand the beaches, the waterfront, and development along the shoreline as important resources in a continuous process of social construction of a reality that should not only address their images as commodities but should treat them as inseparable from the city's daily public and social lives.

Infrastructure convenes social relations, thereby revealing how city dwellers access shared resources in the context of growing inequality. Our exploration of migrant infrastructure engages with how highly variegated migrant groups develop a ‘transaction economy’ (Simone, 2004) within marginalised city streets, exchanging goods and services, and information and care. In the context of ethnically diverse and deprived urban places, where state resources are increasingly diminished, we explore how a precarious yet skilled resourcefulness emerges through the street. Our empiri- cal exploration of migrant infrastructure is located on Rookery Road in Birmingham and on Narborough Road in Leicester, and draws on qualitative surveys with 195 self-employed proprie- tors from many countries of origin. The streets reveal transaction economies that intersect local and migratory resources, eluding the categorisation of cities associated with either a global North or a global South. Further, the lively nature of street transactions decentres western- centric measures of economic value. From the street, we develop a postcolonial analysis of infra- structure that relates properties of historic depth (power), socio-spatial texture (materiality) and locality (place).