Citizenship agendas,urban governance and social housing in the Netherlands: an assemblage approach

This article combines recent conceptualizations of citizenship beyond the nation state with new perspectives on governance assemblages comprising both state and non-state actors. Focusing on Dutch social housing, this study explores how such governance assemblages produce agendas that attempt to shape citizenship. Employing an assemblage approach, this study first demonstrates how state and non-state actors amalgamate by providing a historical overview of the urban governance of social housing in the Netherlands. Second, taking account of the territory that the assemblage claims, it shows how underprivileged neighbourhoods become the spatial locus of these assemblages. Third, examining what this amalgam produces, the article shows how the assemblage imposes a citizenship agenda on the population of these neighbourhoods, distinguishing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ citizens. Acknowledging that citizenship agendas are produced by a multifaceted amalgam of state and non-state actors, this article emphasizes the need for rigorous academic analysis of such governance assemblages.     

城市积水考问政府公共服务能力

城市积水处理是城市基础设施建设的一部分,也是政府公共服务的一部分,更是对政府提供公共服务的能力和水平的考问和检验,面对严竣的积水现状,我国政府唯有强化公共服务能力,完善公共服务体系,才是治理之道。     

Design determinism,post-meltdown: urban planners and the search for policy relevance

This commentary explores the roles of planning and urban design in contemporary US urbanization following the global financial crisis in Fall 2008. We focus on the tendency to discuss the planning profession in recovery metaphors – a perspective that has been emphasized in establishing how the profession's past and future relevance may be asserted. In the recent past the planning profession has sought to recover its standing and policy relevance through its contributions to real estate development. In doing so, the profession has gravitated toward design and determinism in order to satisfy pluralist demands within the loosely regulated political economy of neoliberal urban growth. But while design determinism offered numerous practical advantages to the planning profession for the short term, it also served to preclude the profession from engaging with social justice, the social construction of place, and civil society.     

Growing disparities in an urban food desert: Downtown Albany longitudinal food environment studies

This paper presents findings from our longitudinal study of food environments in two exemplary, contrasting urban neighborhoods in Downtown Albany, New York. The “minority neighborhood” (74% racial/ethnic minority population) is a “food desert” by the United States Department of Agriculture's definition, whereas the adjacent “mixed neighborhood” (33% minority population) is not. The long‐term trend analysis (1970–2018) of the macro‐level food environment found that although the minority neighborhood lost all supermarkets and remains supermarket‐less since the late 1990s, the mixed neighborhood was able to retain several supermarkets and since 2008, it gained a new supermarket every 3–5 years. The medium‐term trend analysis (2003–2015) of the micro‐level food environment revealed a more complex picture of changing food environments. The total number of food stores in the minority neighborhood increased in much greater rates than the mixed neighborhood in the 12‐year period, and accordingly, the standardized availability measures for “any” fresh fruits and fresh vegetables increased significantly in the minority neighborhood. The standardized availability measure for adequate (five or more) varieties of nutritionally desirable fresh fruits and vegetables, however, did not increase in the minority neighborhood. Because the mixed neighborhood saw steady increases in such measures, disparities between the two neighborhoods grew incrementally and reached the highest point (rate ratio of over 5.0) in 2015. In this paper, there are also sections to provide historical and contextual background of our food environment research, as well as discussion on intervention ideas to address the disparities in fresh produce availability focusing on ethnic markets.     

城市功能及其服务转型趋势分析

21世纪是城市的世纪，城市发展对中国经济发展将起决定性作用。而城市功能是城市发展的重要课题，其发展转型决定着城市的盛衰存亡。本文以城市功能的辞意剖析为切入点，透视城市发展的历史天际线，概括历史中的城市功能类型．探寻其变化、演进特征属性，并进一步提出创造和使用城市的人调控城市功能转型的必然与可能路径。     

The discourse of counter-monuments: semiotics of material commemoration in contemporary urban spaces

This article analyses strategies of material commemoration in contemporary urban spaces. Deploying a philosophical and social-theoretical interpretation systematised by, in particular, Multimodal Critical Discourse Studies and its analysis of material commemoration, the article compares the semiotics of modes of commemorating through monuments and counter-monuments. As is argued, counter-monumental commemoration aligns much better than the traditionally static and non-dialogic monuments with the ongoing post-modern transformation and fluidity of contemporary urban spaces. By the same token, counter-monuments also allow commemoration of complex and difficult past events – such as the Holocaust – that are traditionally surrounded by multiple interpretations and often-conflicting attempts to commemorate them. The analysis at the core of the paper looks in-depth at counter-monumental installations known as Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Blocks, developed since the early 1990s by the German artist Gunter Demnig as a form of commemoration of victims of National Socialism and especially the Holocaust. As is suggested, counter-monuments such as the Stolpersteine carry multiple meanings and have multiple functions which allow for diverse patterns of interaction with past/present. They also allow embedding the dialogue between forms of commemoration (monument/counter-monument) various recipients (locals/tourists, spectators/passers-by) as well as their varied interpretations and expectations of commemoration in the discourse of contemporary urban space.     

我国的社会公正与政府责任

社会公正是我们评判现代化成就的＂阿基米德支点＂。随着新时期的到来,关于社会公正的各种问题进一步凸显。从主客观两方面加以阐述,提出作为社会方向标和引导者的政府应当承担的责任。     

Creating an enabling environment for housing: Recent reforms in Mexico

Abstract

A recent World Bank policy statement on housing advocates the reform of government policies, institutions, and regulations to enable housing markets to work more efficiently. The policy statement identifies several instruments that governments can use to address housing market constraints, and to improve the performance of the housing sector as a whole, while paying particular attention to the needs of the poor.

In recent years, the government of Mexico has employed many of the enabling instruments described in the World Bank's housing policy statement. This article reviews the role of housing in the Mexican economy and the major reforms that the Mexican government has implemented to improve the operation of the housing market so that private lenders and home builders can play an expanded role in addressing the country's housing needs. The World Bank has supported the government's reform program, and since 1985 it has lent more than $1.2 billion to Mexico for low‐income housing projects.     

Progressive setback in East Asia: why and how urban citizens challenged the new politics

Abstract

Referring to the short-term survival of new progressive governments, ‘progressive setback’ has been a remarkable political phenomenon in many East Asian countries during the recent decades. Regarding this phenomenon's background, this paper investigates why and how urban citizens challenged their progressive governments in Thailand, South Korea, and Japan. First, this paper argues that the progressive setback across East Asia reflects the difficulty progressive governments faced in overcoming the legacy of longstanding conservative regimes, which had locked urban citizens into specific modes of subsistence. The progressives invoked the protest of urban populations as their new socioeconomic policies undermined these populations’ traditional basis of subsistence. Second, an investigation of the primary modes of urban subsistence in each country makes the cross-national comparison of progressive setback possible. Urban middle classes in Thailand, as an exclusive group incorporated into the mainstream political economy, engaged in a fierce contest with a progressive government that denied their privileged status in Thai society. In Korea, the self-employed turned to the conservative party since market restructuring programs of the progressive government made it difficult for these self-employed to maintain profits and sustain their livelihood. Finally, Japan's urban workers could not welcome the welfare expansion of the new labor-friendly government, because this class was too dependent upon wage incomes to agree with the consumption tax hike that welfare expansion required as its precondition. This paper implies that the old habits of urban citizens are an important hurdle for East Asia's progressives to overcome.     

缺乏理论创新是阻碍苏联改革的一个重要原因

本文考察三个问题:一是缺乏理论创新对苏联经济体制改革的阻碍作用;二是苏联长期坚持产品经济观和批判“市场社会主义”而导致历次改革失败所造成的严重经济后果;三是对中国今后在推进理论创新方面提出的几点思考。     

Gender,HipHop and Pop-Islam: the urban identities of Muslim youth in Germany

While many opponents construe the growing presence of Muslim headscarves in Germany as evidence of creeping Islamicization, religious activism can also be interpreted as an attempt on the part of migrant offspring to forge positive ‘hyphenated identities’, rooted in urban culture, material consumption, and specific mosque communities. Islam has become ‘young, chic and cool’ among ethnic minorities, often denied citizenship and opportunity in their country of birth owing to jus sanguinis and/or other complex naturalization requirements. Religiosity, in turn, is slowly giving rise to new types of civic engagement, leading more ethnic youth to pursue German citizenship. Drawing on representative surveys, inter alia, this essay argues that while not problem free, an emerging Pop-Islam movement has provided Muslimas especially with an important platform for breaking with traditional gender roles, building social capital and acquiring the participatory skills necessary to bring ‘civil society’ into their own communities. It moreover infers that national policies banning headscarves in public service professions are increasingly at odds with European Union directives addressing gender equality and religious discrimination.     

Shareholder value in an adverse environment: the German case

The German political economy has often been cited as a classical case of non-shareholder value orientation. Its productionist, long-term, consensus orientation has often been contrasted with the 'Anglo-Saxon approach'. The influence of shareholders who press for shareholder value and the importance of the equity market have traditionally been low. But there are signs of change. In this article we describe some of these changes and try to assess the dynamics of this change process. First we show that the limited role of the equity market for company financing and for private household savings still provides a very narrow base for a shareholder value economy in Germany. The central pillars of the German system of corporate governance - the dominating role of banks, the system of co-determination and the company centred management system - are not crumbling. Change in the direction of shareholder value is therefore limited.     

制度建党的一项重大举措

党章是以全党的名义所确认的,以制度化的形式所规范的,包括党的纲领和章程的基本文献。当前,中央强调要求把学习党章、遵守党章、贯彻党章、维护党章作为一项重大任务来抓紧抓好,其目的的指向性,就是要从制度上加强执政党建设,以章治党,把党章的规范性要求真正变成党员的实际行动。     

Repositioning urban bias: Non-state providers' use of spatialised networks in Bangladesh

Urban bias theory predicts urban areas of developing countries receive disproportionately more resources than rural areas due to their concentration of numerically large, politically important “vote banks.” This has not been the case in Bangladesh. This study finds that this variation occurs due to non-state providers (NSPs) changing the landscape of resource allocation. Operating on the premise that state control leads to more services in urban areas, urban bias fails to account for NSPs as critical service providers. Employing a grounded theory strategy to explore urban-rural dynamics in service provision and to build on urban bias theory, this research highlights interactions between state and non-state actors. It argues that spatialized political networks, networks of formal and informal leadership more difficult to access in urban areas, influence the locality of service provision. Though NSPs recognize increased need in urban areas of Bangladesh, their interventions in those areas remain peripheral due to differing structures of government accountability and differing levels of community acceptance facilitating these networks. The need for NSPs to adapt their activities to restrictive governance mechanisms reflects the changing space for NSPs in the context of semi-democratic regimes.     

Effects of organizational change on managerial trust in the context of employee buyout in India

Tea gardens face a threat of closure. Due to labour problems and pricing mechanism, Indian tea companies are unable to perform well on the global scene. The case of Tata Tea plantations in South India has been taken for this research study. An employee buyout strategy is introduced in a select number of tea estates. Results prove unfruitful initially. However, employees agree with this idea with a fear of loss of job. The new strategy turns out to be a success. The relationship between organizational change and managerial trust in the context of employee buyout is studied. A questionnaire is administered upon a sample of 100 respondents. Results are shown as a table. The article concludes by citing key issues for a successful buyout programme.     

Semiotics and urban culture: architectural projections of structuralism in a socialist context

The paper studies the relations between architecture, urbanism and structural anthropology, and makes a contribution to the interpretation of how the architects of former Yugoslavia translated structuralism into architectural theory and practice as a means of reading and shaping Yugoslav culture in the context of radical socio-political change. In striving for freedom of opinion, expression, communication and action, and autonomy of scientific and cultural practices, the Yugoslav society through its avant-garde cultural role initiated a shift of focus in urban culture towards semiotics, historicity, dialectics, creativity, criticism and a revival of the humanistic values of traditional culture. From this viewpoint, the paper examines the interests in theory and practice of the most influential Yugoslav architects in the context of structuralism: Mutnjakovi?, Neidhardt, Grabrijan, Bogdanovi? and Delalle. Their theoretical approaches effected a change of functionalist principles and values and advocated the return of values of the old city centre and vernacular architecture, specifically its vitality, symbolism, historical continuity, environmental values and diverse urban forms.