Since the 1970s, in the Philippines, increasing rural to urban migration and a lack of income-generating employment have led to new forms of livelihood characterized by complex intersections of formal/informal and legal/illegal work and public space use. This paper uses Baguio City’s new Harrison Road Night Market to argue that both street vendors and city officials are complicit in reconfiguring informality and legality as urban organizing logics—unmapping and remapping urban public space and livelihoods to their mutual advantages—increased rental income for the city and viable jobs for vendors. To this end, street vendors use everyday and insurgent public space activism to secure their right to street-based work. Simultaneously, the municipal government,
variably tolerates, regularizes, or penalizes street trade as it gauges its potential to enrich city coffers. Such political-economic manoeuvering by both parties, moreover, also reveals insights about the intersection of different forms of power—that between vendors and the city, between vendor associations, and among vendors themselves. By successfully securing government permission to establish a “legal” used clothing night street market on Harrison Road, a main city artery, Baguio City’s previously marginalized street vendors visibly assert their legitimacy and rights to livelihood in arenas of power from which they have been largely excluded.
Definitions of neighbourhood in the Social Sciences are complex, varying in their characteristics (for example, perceived boundaries and content) and between residents of that neighbourhood (for example, by class and ethnicity). This study employs an under-utilised methodology offering strong potential for overcoming some of the difficulties associated with neighbourhood definitions. A mental mapping exercise involving local residents is showcased for an ethnically diverse working-class neighbourhood in south Liverpool. The results demonstrate distinctions between residents in the geographical demarcation of the area and the features included, with important implications for how neighbourhood is best measured and understood. We suggest that one size does not fit all in definitions of neighbourhood, and that mental mapping should form a more common part of a neighbourhood researcher’s toolkit.
This paper focuses on the development and meaning of informal social control experiences when strangers intervene face-to-face in instances of child punishment in public. The central question is, in the absence of formal authority and institutional resources, how do strangers construe wrongful punishment, negotiate deviant import, and manage control outcomes? Thirty-seven interviews were conducted with people who intervened on at least one occasion, and seven more with witness-participants. Interviewees described the meanings, events, and circumstances surrounding 50 acts of face-to-face intervention. The analysis focuses on some of the micro-political forces, such as claim themes and audience norms, that shape control outcomes. The interpersonal predicament for interveners reflects the cultural tension created when approval of physical punishment is widespread, when distinctions between normal and deviant punishment are ambiguous, and when interaction rules for informal intervention are not institutionalized.
Brown, B. B., Werner, C. M., Amburgey, J. W., & Szalay, C.
Guided walks near a light rail stop in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, were examined using a 2 (gender) × 3 (route walkability: low- mixed-, or high- walkability features) design. Trained raters confirmed that more walkable segments had more traffic, environmental, and social safety; pleasing aesthetics; natural features; pedestrian amenities; and land use diversity (using the Irvine-Minnesota physical environment audit) and a superior social milieu rating. According to tape-recorded open-ended descriptions, university student participants experienced walkable route segments as noticeably safer, with a more positive social environment, fewer social and physical incivilities, and more attractive natural and built environment features. According to closed-ended scales, walkable route segments had more pleas- ant social and/or environmental atmosphere and better traffic safety. Few gender differences were found. Results highlight the importance of under- standing subjective experiences of walkability and suggest that these experiences should be an additional focus of urban design.
