Understanding community empowerment in urban regeneration and planning in England: putting policy and practice in context

Community involvement in the fields of town planning and urban regeneration includes a wide range of opportunities for residents and service users to engage with networks, partnerships and centres of power. Both the terminology and degree of the transfer of power to citizens varies in different policy areas and contexts but five core objectives can be identified. This article approaches the subject of community empowerment by exploring the theoretical literature; reviewing recent policy pronouncements relating to community involvement in England and by discussing a recent case study of an Urban II project in London. The conclusions suggest that community empowerment is always likely to be partial and contingent on local circumstances and the wider context.

Unnoticed apocalypse: the science fiction politics of urban crisis

The slogan ‘capitalism is crisis’ is one that has recently circulated swiftly around the global Occupy movement. From Schumpeter to Marx himself, the notion that the economic cycles instituted by capitalism require periodic crises as a condition of renewed capital accumulation is a commonplace. However, in a number of recent texts, this conception of crisis as constituting the very form of urban capitalist development itself has taken on a more explicitly apocalyptic tone, exemplified by the Invisible Committee's influential 2007 book The Coming Insurrection, and its account of what it calls simply ‘the metropolis’. ‘It is useless to wait’, write the text's anonymous authors, ‘for a breakthrough, for the revolution, the nuclear apocalypse or a social movement.… The catastrophe is not coming, it is here.’ In considering such an apocalyptic tone, this paper thus situates and interrogates the text in terms both of its vision of the metropolis as a terrain of total urbanization and its effective spatialization of the present as itself a kind of ‘unnoticed’ apocalypse: the catastrophe which is already here. It does so by approaching this not only apropos its place within contemporary debates surrounding leftist politics and crisis theory but also via its imaginative intersection with certain post-1960s science fiction apocalyptic motifs. What, the paper asks, does it mean to think apocalypse as the ongoing condition of the urban present itself, as well as the opening up of political and cultural opportunity for some speculative exit from its supposedly endless terrain?

A Home at School: Building Stronger Indigenous People through Cultural Resurgence in an Urban Ontario Public School Context.

In this thesis, I work through the educational narratives of young Aboriginal women and men as I explore the relationship between cultural programming and student engagement. My analysis is structured through a collaborative Indigenous research project. My overarching task is to explore how a cultural support program, the Native Youth Advancement with Education Hamilton (NYA WEH) Program, offered at Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School, located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, attempts to re-imagine Aboriginal education in ways that directly challenge the residential school legacy. In particular, I work to illuminate how particular forms of Aboriginal education are connected to the graduation rates of Aboriginal youth. I argue that the ways in which the NYA WEH Program navigates Native Studies curriculum, relationships, and notions of culture and tradition are significant to the engagement of Aboriginal youth. This research develops theoretical connections between the contemporary experience of Aboriginal social inequality and educational initiatives which attempt to reverse that legacy. By placing the NYA WEH Program narratives side-by-side with literature supporting Aboriginal education for Self-determination, I work to learn how to best support and encourage Aboriginal student engagement in secondary schools across Ontario.

The neoliberalization of street vending policy in Lima, Peru: the politics of citizenship. property and public space in the production of a new urban marginality

Neoliberalism is having a significant and global impact on political, social and economic life across spaces. This work illustrates how neoliberalism is attempting to change the ways in which the urban poor - particularly those that participate in street vending - use urban spaces in Lima, Peru. Using municipal policies, newspaper articles and local academic texts I argue that there is a changing marginality in Lima that is being experienced by street vendors, and currently in los canas of Lima. In particular, I discuss formalization, a neoliberal strategy in street vending policy, which is used with eradication and social assistance strategies in attempts to re-regulate street vendors.

Associations between Exposure to Socio-Cultural Influences in Proximal Environments and Weight Concerns among Urban-Dwelling Women

Résumé Les préoccupations et comportements alimentaires entourant le poids sont omniprésentes chez les jeunes adolescentes et femmes qui habitent dans les cultures occidentales où les formes corporelles sont orientées vers un idéal ultra-mince. L’objectif de cette étude est d’examiner si une plus grande exposition aux endroits faisant la promotion de la minceur est associée à des préoccupations pour le poids plus élevées chez les femmes. Cette étude fait partie d’un projet intitulé ¨Social, cultural, and economic disparities and disordered eating: Understanding the contribution of neighbourhood and individual level factors¨ (Gauvin, Steiger, & Brodeur, 2009). Un échantillon de 1288 femmes âgées entre 20 et 40 ans et résidant à Montréal depuis au moins 12 mois ont répondu à un sondage téléphonique. Des régressions logistiques ont comparé les femmes se situant dans le quintile le plus élevé des préoccupations de poids avec les femmes dans les autres quintiles en fonction de leur exposition 15 jours ou plus dans des endroits faisant la promotion de la minceur. De plus, une analyse de sensibilité a vérifié si l’association demeurait significative à d’autres niveaux d’exposition. Les facteurs confondants ont été contrôlés statistiquement. Les résultats démontrent qu’une fréquentation d’au moins 15 jours par mois d’endroits faisant la promotion de la minceur est associée à des préoccupations plus élevées pour le poids. Aussi, fréquenter ces lieux entre 15 et 20 jours/mois est aussi associé à des préoccupations de poids élevées. Des interventions de santé publique pourraient viser la diminution des pressions socioculturelles vers la minceur.

Protection of Urban Lands: Advances in Medellin’s Public Policy

The problem of land ownership protection in this country is an issue that must be faced by those who have as part of their responsibilities the recognition, the restitution and the reparation of victims of forced displacement. One of the points that must be analyzed is the protection of ownership of urban lands, a subject falling under municipal responsibility. The development of a public policy by the City of Medellín for the protection of such lands is a significant advance for the creation of protocols and for the return of rights to those who have adandoned their lands because of violence or who have been divested of their homes in urban areas.

Globalization and urban policy at the periphery of capitalism

Este artigo discute um tema complexo como é o planejamento urbano e que está passando por uma grande mudança no mundo revolucionado pela reestruturação da produção capitalista iniciada no fi nal do século XX. Esta análise permite uma série de recomendações: dar visibilidade a cidade real ou desconstruir a cidade virtual edifi cada pelo marketing urbano e interessesglobais, dar visibilidade aos confl itos, contruir reforma administrativa, capacitar agentes para o planejamento da ação, desenvolver reforma fundiária.

La resignificación cultural mediante la acción colectiva frente a la expansión urbana. Un estudio diagnóstico sobre la problemática del territorio del cabildo indígena muisca-bosa periodo 1999-2013

El propósito del presente estudio diagnóstico, es el de analizar el proceso de reconstrucción de la identidad del Pueblo Indígena Muisca de la Localidad de Bosa, en la ciudad de Bogotá D.C desde el año de 1999 hasta el 2013. Este diagnóstico tiene como punto de partida, el análisis de la pérdida del territorio ancestral por parte de esta comunidad de indígenas urbanos, debido a los proceso de expansión y de urbanización legales e ilegales que tienen lugar en el territorio. Con base en el análisis de los anteriores fenómenos, se estudian las características principales de las comunidades e individuos indígenas presentes en las ciudades, y los retos que enfrentan las instituciones oficiales en materia de desarrollar políticas de reconocimiento con base en modelos de planificación indígena.

La diplomacia cultural como herramienta para el mejoramiento de la relación económica de Colombia con Corea del Sur y Australia

Esta investigación se preocupa por dilucidar la función de la diplomacia cultural como herramienta para mejorar la relación económica de Colombia con Corea del Sur y Australia. Así, se analiza a la diplomacia cultural y lo que hace Colombia en esta materia en ambos países; así como el estado de la relación económica de Colombia en un periodo de ocho años con dichos países, y cómo las acciones culturales colombianas podrían llegar a mejorar dicha relación económica. De esta manera además del desarrollo conceptual de diplomacia cultural y los indicadores económicos, a saber; exportaciones; Inversión Extranjera Directa y turismo; se corrió un modelo de regresión lineal para saber si efectivamente hay relación entre ambas variables y una contribución final que consiste en una propuesta de generación de indicadores de gestión a utilizarse al momento de implementar la diplomacia cultural como herramienta en política exterior.

Overcoming Gender Disadvantages. Social Policy Analysis of urban middle-class women in Colombia

The World Bank Report 2012 starts with this statement: “Gender equality matters in itself andit matters for development because, in today’s globalized worlds, countries that use the skillsand talents of their women would have an advantage over those which do not use it.” With theframe that suggest that gender equality matters, this paper describes some policy alternativesoriented to overcome gender disadvantages in the formal labor market incorporation of theurban middle class women in Colombia. On balance, the final recommendation suggest that itis desirable to adopt policy alternatives as Community Centers, which are programs orientedto a social redistribution of the domestic work as a way to encourage women participationin the formal labor market with the social support of the members of their own community.The problem that the social policy needs to address is the segregation of women in the formallabor market in Colombia. Although the evidence shows that the women overcome theeducational gap by showing better performance in education that their male peers, womenare still segregated of the labor market. The persistence of high rates of unemployment on thefemale population, the prevalence of the informal labor market as a women labor market, andthe presence of the payment difference between men and women with similar professionaltrainings are circumstances that sustain the segregation statement. These circumstances areinefficient for the society because an economic analysis shows that the cost of maintain the statuquo is externalized in the social security system that includes health, pension and maternityleave regimens. Therefore, the women segregation involves a market failure.This paper evaluates five policy alternatives each directed to the progress of a different causaldimension of the problem: (i) Quotas in the private market, (ii) Flexible working hours,(iii) replace the maternity leave with a family leave, (iv) Increase the Community Centers forredistributing the care work, and (v) Equal payment enforcement. The first alternative looksto increase women’s participation in the formal labor market. The second, third, and fourthalternatives constitute a package addressed at redistributing care work by reducing women’sresponsibility for reproductive work in the household with the help of husbands and the localgovernment. The fifth alternative intervenes to resolve the equal payment problem.After a four criteria evaluation that measure effectiveness, robustness and improbability inimplementation, efficiency and political acceptability or social opposition, the strongest alternativeis the fostering of Community Centers that promote a redistribution of care work. Thispolicy performs well in the assessment process because it combines gender focus with importantindirect effects: child support and human capabilities. The policy also shows a bottomup implementation process that overcomes the main adoption difficulties in the gender focusprograms and is supported by strong evidence of success in the Colombian context; this evidenceis produced by both transnational actors as a World Bank and also in local accountabilityreporters executed by local institutions like Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF).