Urban Cohesion

... 2005; Geis 2005; Greiffenhagen and Neller 2005, for a research overview see Vetter 2007 ... a public community,'Stadtumbau Ost'cannot be afforded,”(vhw 2003: 67; own translation). ... for Urban Development (Senatsverwaltung f€ ur Stadtentwicklung) and the housing corpora-tion. ...

In Lithuanian and English, on everyday rhythms, routes, urban rituals and collective behaviour in public spaces. | Anglų ir lietuvių kalbomis: kasdieniai ritmai, judėjimo trajektorijos, miesto ritualai, kasdieniai scenarijai viešosiose erdvėse.

"Kiekvienas architekto suprojektuotas objektas ilgainiui „apauga“ miestelėnų interpretacijomis. Naudodami miesto erdves, miestelėnai plečia architektų ir dizainerių numatytas erdvių ir jų elementų funkcijas, išvysto alternatyvius naudojimosi jomis scenarijus, steigia naujas vietų reikšmes ir priskiria įvairiems miesto objektams neoficialius pavadinimus. Pagrindinis miesto interpretacijos įrankis miestelėnui yra jo paties kūnas. Kai kurie kūniškosios interpretacijos pėdsakai lengvai aptinkami: tai nušlifuoti turėklai ir apsitrynę suoliukai, praminti takeliai ir asfalte įspaustos aukštakulnių žymės, tai tipiškose vietose pametamos pirštinės (ir ant stulpų bei sienų užklijuoti skelbimai apie pamestus ir rastus daiktus su nuplėštais kontaktų lapeliais). Architektų ir dizainerių suprojektuotų objektų naudojimas pagal paskirtį – tai elementariausias kūniškosios interpretacijos lygmuo: pvz., atpažindami originalios formos objekte suoliuką ir atsisėsdami ant jo, praeiviai „palaiko“ pirminę šio objekto funkciją. Savo ruožtu miesto erdvių organizavimas ir miesto objektai formuoja miestelėnų choreografiją: daro įtaką judėjimo trajektorijoms, ritmui, žvilgsnių ir gestų dinamikai. Siekdami kuo greičiau „prašokti“ nemielą objektą,
miestelėnai pagreitina tempą, nuleidžia galvą, stengdamiesi į jį nežiūrėti – arba spontaniškai ima koreguoti įprastus maršrutus. Ir atvirkščiai – kartais vienas nedidelis elementas virsta nauju traukos centru. Taip nutiko Gitenio Umbraso „Stebuklo“ plytelei Katedros aikštėje: ji ėmė keisti praeivių judėjimo trajektorijas ir ritmą. Supratę, kad plytelė su užrašu „Stebuklas“ yra vieta, kur sugalvojami norai, miestelėnai ėmė stotis ant plytelės ir suktis aplink savo ašį, taip užtikrindami sau, kad jų norai išsipildys.

Taip nedidelis elementas lėmė naujo miesto ritualo atsiradimą. Tokios mikrointervencijos „kviečia“ praeivius aktyviau naudoti miesto erdvęs ir taip skatina miestelėnų kūrybingumą. Kartais pakanka „įmesti“ į tam tikrą erdvę laikiną objektą, kad praeiviai įsitrauktų į žaidybinę komunikaciją. [...] Kitais atvejais, siekiant atkreipti miestelėnų dėmesį į „pamirštą“ miesto vietą, pakanka išvystyti miesto ritualą – t. y. periodiškai atkartojamą (ir kolektyviai palaikomą) veiksmą, kuris dažniausiai yra susijęs su tam tikra vieta"

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"Every object designed by an architect becomes covered by citizens' interpretations. By using city space, citizens broaden the functions foreseen by architects and designers for spaces and urban elements, and develop alternative scenarios for using them giving new meanings to localities and new, unofficial, names to various sites around the city. [..] In their turn, city objects and the organization of city spaces shape the choreography of city users: they influence movement trajectories, rhythm, the dynamics of glances and gestures [..] Seeking to appropriate new public spaces and to revitalize forgotten places, it is sufficient to develop urban ritual - i.e. a periodically recurring and collectively supported that is usually "embedded" in a certain place.

Keywords: urban rituals, temporal communities, communication, art interventions, symbolic appropriation of public space, revitalisation of public space

The rapid growth of human population, the ownership of the automobile, the rapid introduction of technologies and the science and the global form of economic development have led to an outrageous rapid change of the earthy landscape and the way we behave against it. Thoughts about the reasons, the results and the challenges of the new era.

The network of European Union creative cities is a powerful new configuration of dynamic, innovative and action-oriented cities, able to transform the space using their network of cultural heritage and activities. From a vision in which the more competitive cities are those able to attract the creative class must go to a vision in which the city becomes generates creativity, presents itself as a powerful incubator of economies based on creativity, culture, research and artistic production. The cities will have to invest in the experience economy, strengthening their identity. The Creative City 3.0, therefore, is an active tension, that requires a long-term vision ability, and calls us to action. A creative city offers some relevant resources for city councils, planners, architects and designers, an indispensable guide towards innovation and quality production, balancing free enterprise and initiative and contributing to the overall happiness of the communities they seek to serve.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

The urban art expression gather two beautiful (but difficult to define) words, art and city. Between the “draw” the city and “draw” in the city, according with times1. Always not pretentious art, more connected with the craft (arts & crafts) of doing things well done not so much to the classical arts, academic conservative fields, galleries and museums, places were it disappears as it is and starts being other thing (for example: Popart2).

The designation “informal graphic appropriation”, reach a broad range of forms and intentions that are expressed in the urban environment (public/ collective space) typical by their mainly visual and non authorized components.

This are for example: not understandable scribbles, signatures (tags) or colorful graffiti pieces, small stickers or big pieces of paper glued to advertise some chimney cleaning, circus billboards or of the next rock mega concert, stencil from the most famous street art artists of the world, to the simple and anonymous love declarations, all competes for visibility, side by side with lots of other “authorized” forms of communication (advertisement, public art, etc...).

In definitive, the “informal graphic appropriation” practice, can be seen as simple search of visibility. Trying to call “the attention” of the city user to something that wants to be communicated in a non authorized form.

In this article (after the due contextualizations), it's given the overview of how in Lisbon the management processes of this phenomenons had been evolving, giving space or retracting in a more or less coordinated way, as a kind of “meta” project (Urban Art Gallery and Lab, project CRONO, among other). In the end there are taken some considerations about the usage of the gathered experience in other contexts (cities, municipalities, neighborhoods, etc...).

Desde una perspectiva histórico-arqueológica, esto es, manejando información de diversas intervenciones arqueológicas, documentación histórica de archivos y cartografía histórica, se plantea cómo el agua ha sido pieza fundamental a la hora de elegir y desarrollar los distintos asentamientos que se han producido en Alicante desde el Neolítico a época moderna, centrándonos sobre todo en la prehistoria (asentamiento del Tossal de les Basses) y en época tardo-antigua e islámica (laderas del Benacantil), éste último, el espacio en donde luego se consolidó el hábitat hasta nuestro días, subsistiendo hasta bien entrado el siglo XIX con el agua de las mismas fuentes naturales usadas por los musulmanes desde el s. VIII.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

This article examines the development of Constitution Hill on the site of the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg, South Africa. Constitution Hill is the location of the new Constitutional Court and has two main purposes. First, as a heritage site it attempts to address the divisions that characterise contemporary South African society by acting as a physical manifestation of the human rights ethos around which much of post-apartheid South African public discourse revolves. Second, it was conceived as a developmental node to encourage urban regeneration in Johannesburg’s inner city. However, while the Court and related heritage areas have been established, tensions regarding the site’s different purposes have remained and resulted in its incomplete development.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

The vanguard in Europe today is urban investment in culture and creativity. Cities considered to have the highest quality of living are those where culture, art, architecture and urban design have a powerful and active role. These cities represent a new generation and an evolving model for urban culture.

Creative City is a research-review and an atlas of urban, landscape and architectural projects, compiling creative practices that are transforming contemporary cities including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bilbao, Bordeaux, Genoa, Hamburg, Lyon, Lisbon, Marseille, Newcastle, Palermo, Rotterdam and Valencia.

From its colonial period onwards South Africa has persistently discriminated its non-White population. During the apartheid era, between 1948 and 1994, this discrimination reached its climax as the regime intended to exclude the indigenous population in all facets of life. Non-Whites were forced to move to dormitory Black and Coloured townships on the periphery and were only tolerated in the city centre as labourers using ‘separate’ train stations, streets, parks, beaches … In 1994, with the first democratic elections, this apartheid policy officially ended. The political turn raised the hope of the non-White South Africans for a future without racial segregation which was well expressed by president Mandela during his inaugural speech (Mandela, 05-10-1994): ‘We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both Black and White, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.’

Nevertheless, anno 2013 Mandela’s wish is far from realised. Racial segregation still exists, be it on a non-racial basis. In this research the term ‘post-apartheid’ referring to the time after the apartheid regime is therefore replaced by ‘postapartheid’, putting stress on the continuity of segregation. The general implication is that income, social class and market forces have replaced race and state control in directing the pattern of urban development (Turok, 2011, p. 2362). Areas where the non-White population were relocated during apartheid lack the input of private investment due to their historically disadvantaged situation. The ultimate goal of this research was therefore to ‘re-imagine’ these former Black and Coloured townships, that is to demonstrate new ways of thinking about planning and developing these areas which could enable them to break with the continuing phenomenon of segregation.

The effect of globalization in the modern cities is decisive. The
configuration of new economic conditions, the import of new
technologies and the abandonment of older models of urban growth reshape the space of the city. The city is disconnected by the industrial production with the mass consuming models and turns itself in the flexible production and the fragmented consumption. Through this change new economic and social oppositions are given birth. At the same time the city extends, occupying vast areas and incorporating half of the world population. The urban landscape becomes complex and is altered dynamically. Architecture and urban planning are the tools that are used for the territorial expression of these dynamics.

The modern sociology of city uses the term “Global City” in order to describe the size, the role and the dynamics of modern big cities. The cities shape new geographic structures through a world urban net. In the global cities new territorial structures are presented that did not exist in the past. The economic capital takes the place of State as critical perpetrator that shapes the urban landscape, while the residents lose the control and are alienated by the environment of city. The architecture produces spectacular buildings that attract tourists and investors the same moment that the ghettos of the poor and immigrants are multiplied. The modern city presents new oppositions and problems that the architects, as co-formers of the urban landscape, should process and face.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

"Nanna Verhoeff's new book is a a must for anybody interested in visual culture and media theory. It offers a rich and stimulating theoretical account of the central dimension of our contemporary existence - interfacing and navigating both data and physical world through a variety of screens (game consoles, mobile phones, car interfaces, GPS devices, etc.) In the process of exploring these new screen practices, Verhoeff offers fresh perspectives on many of the key questions in media and new media studies as well as a number of new original theoretical concepts. As the first theoretical manual for the society of mobile screens, this book will become an essential reference for all future investigations of our mobile screen condition." - Lev Manovich

"Mobile Screens charts a “navigational turn” in contemporary media culture and recasts screened images as “performative cartographies.” Fusing intermediale discussions of hand-held devices, gaming consoles, urban screens, and cinema, Verhoeff eloquently demonstrates the multi-sensorial nature of screened life while revealing how screens are reading life back to us in new ways. Lucidly written and cleverly theorized, the book is vital for anyone interested in contemporary media culture." - Lisa Parks

"Nanna Verhoeff has produced a fascinating examination of mobilities, screens and their many intersections in the digital age. Well worth reading." - John Urry

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This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

Notre recherche a eu pour objet d’étude l’analyse d’une opération de relogement concernant les habitants du bidonville de Ben M’Sik à Casablanca. L’analyse de cette mutation résidentielle s’inscrit dans une problématique générale de “délocalisation” qui observe et interroge les pratiques et le sens des diverses ruptures et réaménagements socio-spatiaux et transformations à l’échelle micro sociale. Elle articule trois ordres de réalité : territorialité, lien social et ethos. Nous avons porté sur cette opération de relogement un regard de type ethnologique qui privilégie la vision emique du changement - à l’échelle d’une unité résidentielle – afin d’en relever la logique et la dynamique propres; et les confronter aux reformations exogènes inhérentes à l’intervention institutionnelle et à ses idéalités socio-politiques, architecturales et urbanistiques.

A partir de la información arqueológica de las excavaciones realizadas en el interior de la fortaleza y en sus laderas exteriores, así como de las realizadas en el resto de la ciudad, así como con información archivística y de cartografía histórica, se plante una historia comun evolutiva de madina-alcazaba islámica / villa-castillo bajomedieval cristiano, planteando nuevas propuestas interpretativas, una hipótesis de reconstrucción morfológica y evolutiva de este castillo. Se analizan aspectos diversos hasta el siglo XV, dejando para otra publicación las importantes transformaciones del mismo en el s. XVI que lo convirtieron en una de las fortalezas renacentistas más importantes del mediterráneo español.

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

The program of development of the mountainous landscape surrounding the altopiano aims to “signal things” rather than directly to transform them. A project of cultural reading, rather than strictly regulate, which aims to produce long-term results
beyond the architectural and territorial individual projects. Today the landscape is no longer reducible merely to an aesthetic and cultural event; but through the integration of the economic, social and environmental landscape is a real economic resource, perhaps the most important of our
national territory, able to activate new processes of development and different growth models.
This “descriptive planning” suggests a gradual transformation – or at least tries to promote a progressive diversification – of the places, today a fast and careless touristic destination, to a diversified and “low impact” tourism, aware of the environmental value of places, driven to discover new landscapes and to cross them instead of just to watch them from “outside”. These proposed measures are intended to focus attention on some specific places that do not currently enjoy the right value but which may become the subject of a back enjoyment of the landscape through a series of sports activities that could be called complementary to snowboarding and alpine skiing. The altopiano has a beauty connected with
the limits; narrowness to be understood as unity and ability to embrace the whole with a single glance, one of the features that make it so unique the altopiano delle Rocche. This completeness establishing a dialectical relationship with the goals “external” to the territory of the basin, establishing – through the presence of close and long views – a double-scale landscape of the plateau.

Anarchism and geography have a long and disjointed history, characterized by towering peaks of intensive intellectual engagement and low troughs of ambivalence and disregard. This paper traces a genealogy of anarchist geographies back to the modern development of anarchism into a distinct political philosophy following the Enlightenment. The initial rise of geographers’ engagement with anarchism occurred at the end of the nineteenth-century, owing to Élisée Reclus and Peter Kropotkin, who developed an emancipatory vision for geography in spite of the discipline’s enchantment with imperialism at that time. The realpolitik of the war years in the first half of the twentieth-century and the subsequent quantitative revolution in geography represent a nadir for anarchist geographies. Yet anarchism was never entirely abandoned by geographical thought and the counterculture movement of the 1970s gave rise to radical geography, which included significant interest in anarchist ideas. Unfortunately another low occurred during the surge of neoliberal politics in the 1980s and early 1990s, but hope springs eternal, and from the late 1990s onward the anti-globalization movement and DIY culture have pushed anarchist geographies into more widespread currency. In reviewing the literature, I hope to alert readers to the ongoing and manifold potential for anarchist geographies to inform both geographical theory and importantly, to give rise to more practice-based imperatives where building solidarities, embracing reciprocity, and engaging in mutual aid with actors and communities beyond the academy speaks to the ‘freedom of geography’ and its latent capacity to shatter its own disciplinary circumscriptions.

Neoliberal economics have emerged in the post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of countries in the global south. For much of the global south, however, the promise that markets will bring increased standards of living and emancipation from tyranny has been an empty one. Instead, neoliberalisation has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills.

This book deals with the post-conflict geographies of violence and neoliberalisation in Cambodia. Applying a geographical analysis to contemporary Cambodian politics, the author employs notions of neoliberalism, public space, and radical democracy as the most substantive components of its theoretical edifice. He argues that the promotion of unfettered marketisation is the foremost causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition. The book demonstrates Cambodian perspectives on the role of public space in Cambodia's process of democratic development and explains the implications of violence and its relationship with neoliberalism.

Taking into account the transition from war to peace, authoritarianism to democracy, and command economy to a free market, this book offers a critical appraisal of the political economy in Cambodia.
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Reviews:

Gunn, G. C. 2013. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 43.1: 188-191.

Brickell, K. 2011. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52.3: 372-374.

Percival, T. 2011. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 32.2: 270-272.

Christie, R. 2010. South East Asia Research, 19.2: 349-372.

Ordóñez de Pablos, P. 2010. International Journal of Asian Business and Information Management, 1.4: 65-66.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

The rhetoric of dialogue is sometimes adopted rather uncritically in academic, organizational, and policy circles. Too often that rhetoric is deployed with little understanding of the variety of principles and practices enacted in dialogic communication. How can dialogue be conceptualized and distinguished from other forms of communication? On what assumptions is it based? How is communication understood? What does it take to facilitate it? What kinds of processes make it possible? What ideas about democracy underpin it? What kind of changes in academic and policy-making cultures does it call for?

This booklet seeks to speak to people involved in creating public forums for meaningful conversations. In particular, I have taken as imaginary readers those practitioners and students that I have had the fortune to work with. If, with pragmatist and deliberative thinkers, we agree that communication is the very fabric of democratic life, then pondering over the quality of communication in public forums becomes critical. Thinking about dialogic communication encourages us to interrogate our public engagement work, the role our research institutions should play in society, and the ways in which we can develop collective capacity to deal with complex problems.

L'Afrique du XXIe siècle sera urbaine. En trente ans, la population des villes a triplé et, dans quelques décennies, la majorité des habitants du continent sera citadine. Le nombre de villes moyennes ne cesse d'augmenter et le processus de décentralisation politique et de déconcentration administrative s'étend. En Afrique de l'Ouest, le débat local s'est instauré et prend de plus en plus d'importance. Les nouvelles collectivités urbaines s'imposent désormais comme des acteurs nationaux incontournables et comme les points d'attaches des réseaux transnationaux. Pourtant, d'un point de vue théorique comme d'un point de vue empirique, les approches anthropologiques des phénomènes urbains semblent insatisfaisantes pour étudier les villes moyennes. Le travail de terrain permet d'observer l'existence de phénomènes sociaux qui cadrent mal avec les analyses contemporaines de la ville. Pour des raisons liées au développement de la discipline, la plupart des travaux se refusent à étudier les villes moyennes de manière globale et renoncent ainsi à mettre au jour l'espace symbolique et pratique partagé par les populations au sein du cadre commun que constitue leur localité. Cet ouvrage fait l'hypothèse que l'analyse de cet espace permet de mieux saisir les transformations sociales en cours et leurs implications politiques. Pour développer une analyse des villes qui ne soit subordonnée ni à l'étude des métropoles et ni à celle des communautés, ce livre pose les jalons d'une nouvelle approche méthodologique et théorique inspirée de la théorie des représentations sociales. Le livre ébauche un bilan de la littérature anthropologique consacrée à la ville en Afrique et esquisse une nouvelle anthropologie des villes moyennes. Elle se déploie à travers une étude de cas consacrée à la troisième ville du Burkina Faso : Koudougou. Son histoire tumultueuse et les manipulations politiques ont donné à cette agglomération la réputation d'être une ville rebelle. La position de la ville dans l'espace national reflète les transformations qui ont marqué le pays depuis le siècle passé. A travers l'analyse de trois représentations sociales - l'urbanité, l'autochtonie, la réputation de la ville - l'auteur engage une réflexion sur l'évolution socio-politique du Burkina Faso dont la portée s'étend bien au-delà de ce pays et concerne plus largement les villes moyennes de l'Afrique sub-saharienne.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are computer-based tools used to collect, store, manipulate and display spatially-referenced information. They are used to support decision-making in a wide variety of contexts, including spatial planning and environmental management. Because the process of GIS production, from software development to visualization of GIS output, is characterized by political, economic and social motivations, it is important that GIS practitioners are aware of issues such as access to data and the political economy of information, and the nature of GIS epistemologies vis-à-vis multiple coexisting perceptions of reality. Lack of such appreciation can lead to social and spatial marginalization of communities. Use of GIS in a research program for environmental management of the Cooum River in Chennai, and in support of participatory processes for managing environment and health in slums are used to demonstrate appropriate applications of GIS in India. Internet-distributed GIS as a potential avenue to address issues of public access to data is also considered.

San Juan Ixtayopan is an ancient town in the rural area southwest of Mexico City. There, the practice of Basque pelota in the specialty of mano, is in addition to sports, sense of belonging and community representation of their identity, so it is very popular and is carried out at an early age in an organized manner. Its front is a space for meeting and socializing, where they dispute the supremacy sport with their peers from neighboring towns, which are much larger in population size and economy. Together they form a micro region whose manistas have achieved more world championships and Olympic medals for Mexico that all athletes in the country.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the influential state and non-state stakeholders interact, conflict and collectively shape the urban transformation of downtown Cairo. The stakeholder analysis revealed interesting positions and power levels of the influential stakeholders impacting urban transformation in downtown. It also illustrated alliances and dependencies between entities within the same stakeholder group and between state and non-state stakeholders. Collaborations between influential stakeholders in the private sector interested in establishing lobby groups to further their interests in downtown. Despite the commonalities between the interests of the state and private investors, the state prefers to maintain development monopoly and control over the area in its beautification-focused development efforts. Influential stakeholders who do not have particular interest in the development of downtown, such as legislative authorities and large financial institutions, whose power and influence can be tapped into and directed towards a more sustainable transformation of the area. The thesis findings revealed that the ingredients of gentrification are present in downtown however it is currently inhibited by legislative and other parameters. This brings up the question as to how the state is planning on regulating potential urban transformation in downtown Cairo in the current stakeholder power dynamics to minimize negative socioeconomic impacts. A clear comprehensive vision for the development of downtown can only be successfully implemented through the buy-in of all stakeholder groups.