Urban Studies

This paper develops the argument that post-COVID-19 recovery strategies need to focus on building back fairer cities and communities, and that this requires a strong embedding of ' age-friendly ' principles to support marginalised groups of older people, especially those living in deprived urban neighbourhoods, trapped in poor quality housing. It shows that older people living in such areas are likely to experience a 'double lockdown' as a result of restrictions imposed by social distancing combined with the intensification of social and spatial inequalities...

We use data on human mobility obtained from mobile applications to explore the activity patterns in the neighbourhoods of Greater London as they emerged from the first wave of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions during summer 2020 and analyse how the lockdown guidelines have exposed the socio-spatial fragmentation between urban communities. The location data are spatially aggregated to 1 km2 grids and cross-checked against publicly available mobility metrics (e.g. Google COVID-19 Community Report, Apple Mobility Trends Report)...

The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted public and scholarly debate about the relationship between infectious disease and the urban. Cities are considered contagious because they are hubs in (inter)national networks and contain high densities of people. However, the role of the urban and population density in the spread of pathogens is complex and is mediated by the wider bio-social environment. This paper analyses the role of population density in the outbreak of COVID-19 in the densely and highly urbanised context of the Netherlands...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing, mobility restrictions and self-isolation measures were implemented around the world as the primary intervention to prevent the virus from spreading. Urban life has undergone sweeping changes, with people using spaces in new ways. Stockholm is a particularly relevant case of this phenomenon since most facilities, such as day care centres and schools, have remained open, in contrast to cities with a broader lockdown. In this study, we use Twitter data and an online map survey to study how COVID-19 restrictions have impacted the use of different locations, services and amenities in Stockholm...

This paper examines the Self-Managed Housing Program (Law 341), in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This programme created 45 cooperative housing units between 2001 and 2020 in consolidated urban areas currently undergoing renewal processes. It investigates the conditions that the programme has generated for the realisation of the 'right to the city' in the context of 'actually existing neoliberalism' and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper analyses the origins of the process and mode of cooperative housing production, including tangible and intangible aspects and capacities acquired by the inhabitants...

The critical research agenda on smart cities has tended to assume a largely top-down orientation in which powerful actors like the state and corporations enact programmes to embed Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) in the urban landscape. Because of the way research has framed this relation of power, the dominant response has been to seek social justice by either contesting these top-down exercises of (digital) power or by reconceptualising the smart city 'from below'. In this paper, we join a growing chorus of voices recognising the importance of interstitial actors that influence the ways in which the smart city manifests...

Neighbourhood context is known to shape one's life chances, but much of neighbourhood disadvantage is passed down from parents to children. The gap in social and economic achievements between Black and White families in the United States may partially be explained by differences in the intergenerational transmission of neighbourhood context. Using census tract socio-economic data, we created a national ranking of US census tracts. We then examined intergenerational neighbourhood mobility using 2828 parent-child pairs from a longitudinal household survey...

Neighborhoods are fluid social and spatial constructs that vary by person and place. How do residential neighborhoods shift as people age? This mixed-method study investigates how perceived neighborhood boundaries and size vary by individual and contextual characteristics. Semi-structured interviews with 125 adults aged 55-92 living in the Minneapolis (Minnesota) metropolitan area suggested that neighborhood boundaries are "fuzzy". Qualitative thematic analysis identified duration of residence and housing stability, race, life-space mobility, social capital, sense of safety, and the built and social environment as key neighborhood determinants...

High-profile architecture and design, alongside integrated arts and cultural programming are now ubiquitous features of public transit networks. This article considers how and why transit-based arts and cultural programmes are proliferating globally as well as the impact of these programmes on transit and urban dynamics. Through critically analysing the discourses surrounding different transit art initiatives and the institutional structures which support them, this article shows how transit art is used today for varied - and often contradictory - ends...

Vietnam's capital city has recently witnessed the emergence of a new type of cultural space akin to what have been labelled creative hubs in other contexts: that is, locales that foster creation, collaboration, community engagement and business development in the cultural sector. During the 2010s, Hanoi saw a proliferation of small-scale, art-oriented creative hubs, most of them community-led and developed without state funding. In a context marked by a government historically wary of contemporary and experimental arts, these spaces face various forms of state control ranging from the censorship of events, to stiff fines or even closure...

In March 2020, many workers were suddenly forced to work from home. This brought into stark relief the fact that urban economic activity is no longer attached to specific workplaces. This detachment has been analysed in research on organisations and workers, but has not yet been incorporated into concepts used to document and plan the economic geography of cities. In this article, three questions are explored by way of an original survey: first, how can a shift in the location of economic activity be measured at the urban scale whilst incorporating the idea that work is not attached to a single location? Second, what is the nature of the shift that occurred in March 2020? Third, what does this tell us about concepts that have underpinned the study of urban economic form by geographers and planners? Applying concepts developed in organisation studies and sociology, we operationalise the idea that economic activity happens across multiple spaces: it occurs within a probability space, and since March 2020 it has shifted within this space...

Eviction is a powerful form of displacement that perpetuates and amplifies socioeconomic and racial inequalities through the rental housing market. Examining the relationship between evictions and property turnover through Neil Smith's theories of gentrification and uneven geographical development, this article considers the argument that eviction provides a mechanism for property owners to facilitate displacement prior to property redevelopment and neighborhood change. Models of property-level turnover in the city of Seattle reveal that evictions are more likely to occur at properties that are sold in the same year, properties where planned demolition or remodeling activity is imminent, and buildings that were recently constructed...

The concentration of students in neighbourhoods through processes of studentification has often precipitated conflicts with other residents centred on behavioural issues and perceived neighbourhood decline. Dominant policy responses have been exclusive in nature, attempting to restrict where students can live or to encourage them to live in purpose-built student accommodation in designated areas. Drawing primarily on interviews with key informants in Waterloo, Canada, I examine a process of 'post-studentification' where non-student residents are instead integrated into student-dominated neighbourhoods through urban intensification, promoted by an alternative policy approach...

The manner in which urban locations are drawn into the global economy defines their spatial organisation, distribution and utilisation. The relationships that are generated by this process include economic exchanges, racialised dynamics between workers and owners, gendered divisions of labour and the use and abuse of natural resources and infrastructure. These encounters of globalisation are often unequal or awkward and mediated by varying forms of violence, from structural to interpersonal, as these are used to rebalance the terms on which they meet...

Would increasing allowable housing densities in expensive cities generate more housing construction and make housing more affordable? In a provocative article, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Michael Storper survey the evidence and answer no. Restrictions on housing density, they contend, do not substantially influence housing production or price. They further argue that allowing more density in growing metropolitan areas would only improve housing outcomes for the affluent, and most likely harm the poor...

The inadequacies of residential census geography in capturing urban residents' routine exposures have motivated efforts to more directly measure residents' activity spaces. In turn, insights regarding urban activity patterns have been used to motivate alternative residential neighborhood measurement strategies incorporating dimensions of activity space in the form of egocentric neighborhoods-measurement approaches that place individuals at the center of their own residential neighborhood units. Unexamined, however, is the extent to which the boundaries of residents' own self-defined residential neighborhoods compare with census-based and egocentric neighborhood measurement approaches in aligning with residents' routine activity locations...

Neighbourhood associations are major players in urban politics throughout North American cities and increasingly are becoming a political force in other parts of the world. However, while there is a rich and well-developed literature on the role played by neighbourhood associations in urban politics, few studies examine whether their membership reflects the socio-demographic composition and interests of the broader public. This paper addresses this gap in the literature using survey data from voters conducted during the Vancouver and Toronto 2018 municipal elections...

In this paper we focus on LGBTQ+ travel guides and the creation of a North American LGBTQ+ urban imaginary as forms and facilitators of activism. Specifically, we consider one of the few continuously published sources detailing such an imaginary in the mid-20th century and its construction of an 'epistemological grid' onto which entries were placed. We briefly situate the guides in the context of an emerging (and frequently politicised) mid-20th-century LGBTQ+ media ecosystem, then proceed to a detailed analysis of the imaginary they evoke...

Ethnic and socioeconomic segregation levels vary over time and so do the spatial levels of these segregations. Although a large body of research has focused on how residential mobility patterns produce segregation, little is known about how changing mobility patterns translate into temporal and scale variations in sorting. This article develops a methodological framework designed to explore how changing mobility patterns reflect such trends. It introduces a measure of sorting that reflects the extent of disparities among groups in their socio-spatial mobility...

There has been a growing research interest in measuring the impact of planning and land-use regulations on housing market outcomes, but parallel development of the evidence base for the business sector has yet to occur. This article examines the impact of planning intervention on the amount of building investment taking place at sites allocated for industrial and business development. Measures that capture different dimensions of planning intervention are incorporated into models of industrial building investment...