Cities

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

Kinds of Cities

  • african city
  • american city
  • asian city
  • australian city
  • big city
  • canadian city
  • capital city
  • central city
  • chi minh city
  • chinese city
  • colombian city
  • contemporary city
  • creative city
  • different city
  • edge city
  • european city
  • foster city
  • french city
  • gateway city
  • global city
  • guatemala city
  • ho chi minh city
  • industrial city
  • inner city
  • kansas city
  • lake city
  • large city
  • largest city
  • major city
  • many city
  • metropolitan city
  • mexico city
  • midwestern city
  • minh city
  • modern city
  • new york city
  • north american city
  • osaka city
  • other city
  • regional city
  • salt lake city
  • same city
  • small city
  • southern city
  • sustainable city
  • u.s. city
  • urban city
  • us city
  • virtual city
  • western city
  • world city
  • york city

  • Terms modified by Cities

  • city area
  • city centre
  • city council
  • city formation
  • city government
  • city hall
  • city hospital
  • city life
  • city network
  • city of
  • city of chicago
  • city of london
  • city of são paulo
  • city of toronto
  • city planning
  • city population
  • city resident
  • city size
  • city university

  • Selected Abstracts


    PROACTIVE POLICING AND ROBBERY RATES ACROSS U.S. CITIES,

    CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
    CHARIS E. KUBRIN
    In recent years, criminologists, as well as journalists, have devoted considerable attention to the potential deterrent effect of what is sometimes referred to as "proactive" policing. This policing style entails the vigorous enforcement of laws against relatively minor offenses to prevent more serious crime. The current study examines the effect of proactive policing on robbery rates for a sample of large U.S. cities using an innovative measure developed by Sampson and Cohen (1988). We replicate their cross-sectional analyses using data from 2000 to 2003, which is a period that proactive policing is likely to have become more common than that of the original study,the early 1980s. We also extend their analyses by estimating a more comprehensive regression model that incorporates additional theoretically relevant predictors. Finally, we advance previous research in this area by using panel data, The cross-sectional analyses replicate prior findings of a negative relationship between proactive policing and robbery rates. In addition, our dynamic models suggest that proactive policing is endogenous to changes in robbery rates. When this feedback between robbery and proactive policing is eliminated, we find more evidence to support our finding that proactive policing reduces robbery rates. [source]


    LOCAL POLITICS AND VIOLENT CRIME IN U.S. CITIES,

    CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 4 2003
    THOMAS D. STUCKYArticle first published online: 7 MAR 200
    Recent research has begun to examine the effects of politics on crime. However, few studies have considered how local political variation is likely to affect crime. Using insights from urban politics research, this paper develops and tests hypotheses regarding direct and conditional effects of local politics on violent crime in 958 cities in 1991. Results from negative binomial regression analyses show that violent crime rates vary by local political structures and the race of the mayor. In addition, the effects of structural factors such as poverty, unemployment, and female-headed households on violent crime depend on local form of government and the number of unreformed local governmental structures. Implications for systemic social disorganization and institutional anomie theories are discussed. [source]


    REGULATING CARS AND BUSES IN CITIES: THE CASE OF PEDESTRIANISATION IN OXFORD

    ECONOMIC AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2003
    Graham Parkhurst
    Debates about whether traffic regulations that limit car use will enhance or hinder a particular urban economy are complex and often emotive. The present article considers evidence from the implementation of a radical traffic restraint and pedestrianisation scheme in Oxford in 1999. The most important achievement was a 17% reduction in car trips to the centre, which did not affect overall visitor numbers. The local economy did though experience a period of difficult trading around the time of implementation. [source]


    CREATIVE CITIES: THE CULTURAL INDUSTRIES AND THE CREATIVE CLASS

    GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2008
    Andy C. Pratt
    ABSTRACT. The aim of this article is to critically examine the notion that the creative class may or may not play as a causal mechanism of urban regeneration. I begin with a review of Florida's argument focusing on the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings. The second section develops a critique of the relationship between the creative class and growth. This is followed by an attempt to clarify the relationship between the concepts of creativity, culture and the creative industries. Finally, I suggest that policy-makers may achieve more successful regeneration outcomes if they attend to the cultural industries as an object that links production and consumption, manufacturing and service. Such a notion is more useful in interpreting and understanding the significant role of cultural production in contemporary cities, and what relation it has to growth. [source]


    RACIALIZED TOPOGRAPHIES: ALTITUDE AND RACE IN SOUTHERN CITIES,

    GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2006
    JEFF UELAND
    ABSTRACT. This study examines altitudinal residential segregation by race in 146 cities in the U.S. South. It begins by embedding the topic in recent theorizations of the social construction of nature, the geography of race, and environmental justice. Second, it focuses on how housing markets, particularly in the South, tend to segregate minorities in low-lying, flood-prone, and amenity-poor segments of urban areas. It tests empirically the hypothesis that blacks are disproportionately concentrated in lower-altitude areas using gis to correlate race and elevation by digital elevation-model block group within each city in 1990 and 2000. The statistical results confirm the suspected trend. A map of coefficients indicates strong positive associations in cities in the interior South-where the hypothesis is confirmed-and an inverse relationship near the coast, where whites dominate higher-valued coastal properties. Selected city case studies demonstrate these relationships connecting the broad dynamics of racial segregation to the particularities of individual places. [source]


    BUILDING BIOGRAPHIES: TO KNOW CITIES FROM THE INSIDE OUT

    GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 1-2 2001
    LARRY R. FORD
    First page of article [source]


    CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP AND URBAN PROBLEM SOLVING: THE CHANGING CIVIC ROLE OF BUSINESS LEADERS IN AMERICAN CITIES

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2010
    ROYCE HANSON
    ABSTRACT:,Our concern in this article is corporate civic elite organizations and their role in social production and urban policy in the United States. Recent urban literature has suggested that the power and influence of CEO organizations has declined and that there has been some disengagement of corporate elites from civic efforts in many urban areas. Yet while these trends and their likely consequences are generally acknowledged, relatively little empirical research has been conducted on the nature and extent of the shifts in corporate civic leadership and on how these shifts have affected the civic agendas of central cities and metropolitan regions. In this study we obtain data from 19 large metropolitan areas in order to more systematically examine shifts in corporate civic leadership and their consequences. Our results suggest that the institutional autonomy, time, and personal connections to the central cities of many CEOs have diminished and that the civic organizations though which CEOs work appear to have experienced lowered capacity for sustained action. These trends suggest that while many CEOs and their firms will continue to commit their time and their firms' slack resources to civic enterprises, the problems they address will differ from those tackled in the past. We discuss the important implications these shifts have for the future of corporate civic engagement in urban problem solving and for the practice of urban governance. [source]


    GOING ONLINE WITHOUT EASY ACCESS: A TALE OF THREE CITIES

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 5 2008
    KAREN MOSSBERGER
    ABSTRACT:,Building on a national study that showed that concentrated poverty matters for the "digital divide," this research compares the influence of the neighborhood-level context in three cities that vary in racial composition and income. We use a 2005 random digit-dialed survey of respondents in Northeast Ohio communities, and find unexpectedly that residents in areas of concentrated poverty demonstrate efforts to go online despite lacking home or work access. We analyze the results using regression models that include contextual "buffers" that create a unique geography for each respondent within a half-kilometer radius. Respondents who live in areas with a high percentage of African Americans or college graduates are more likely to go online even if they lack convenient Internet access, although the percentage of college graduates has a greater effect. At the neighborhood level, race and education influence the context for technology use. [source]


    PLACE-BASED AND RACE-BASED EXCLUSION FROM MORTGAGE LOANS: EVIDENCE FROM THREE CITIES IN THE NETHERLANDS

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2007
    MANUEL B. AALBERS
    ABSTRACT:,Do place and race matter in mortgage loan applications? This article presents evidence from mortgage markets in the Dutch cities of Arnhem, The Hague, and Rotterdam, suggesting that place, and to a lesser extent also race, do matter. In general, race and place are not factors of direct exclusion, but (1) zip codes are included in credit scoring systems, and (2) both place and race are significant factors in the assessments by loan officers because applicants who do not meet all formal criteria are more often accepted ("overrides") for indigenous Dutch and low-risk neighborhoods than for ethnic minorities and high-risk neighborhoods. In addition, a "national mortgage guarantee" is compulsory for loan applications in high-risk neighborhoods and thereby used as a substitute for redlining, comparable to the compulsoriness of private mortgage insurance in the United States. Some lenders also engage in direct redlining by rejecting low-risk "national mortgage guarantee" loans in high-risk neighborhoods, a practice potentially explained by transaction cost economizing. Since the high-risk neighborhoods in all three cities accommodate relatively large shares of ethnic minority groups, they are hit twice: through place-based and through race-based exclusion. In other words, place-based disparate treatment results in race-based disparate impact. The neighborhood does matter; place-based exclusion in the mortgage market has a neighborhood effect. [source]


    SLOW CITIES: SUSTAINABLE PLACES IN A FAST WORLD

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2006
    HEIKE MAYER
    ABSTRACT:,This article examines the Slow Food and Slow City movement as an alternative approach to urban development that focuses on local resources, economic and cultural strengths, and the unique historical context of a town. Following recent discussions about the politics of alternative economic development, the study examines the Slow City movement as a strategy to address the interdependencies between goals for economic, environmental, and equitable urban development. In particular, we draw on the examples of two Slow Cities in Germany,Waldkirch and Hersbruck, and show how these towns are retooling their urban policies. The study is placed in the context of alternative urban development agendas as opposed to corporate-centered development. We conclude the article by offering some remarks about the institutional and political attributes of successful Slow Cities and the transferability of the concept. [source]


    CREATIVE CITIES: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES AND POLICY QUESTIONS

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2006
    Allen J. Scott
    I seek to situate the concept of creative cities within the context of the so-called new economy and to trace out the connections of these phenomena to recent shifts in technologies, structures of production, labor markets, and the dynamics of locational agglomeration. I try to show, in particular, how the structures of the new economy unleash historically specific forms of economic and cultural innovation in modern cities. The argument is concerned passim with policy issues and, above all, with the general possibilities and limitations faced by policymakers in any attempt to build creative cities. The effects of globalization are discussed, with special reference to the prospective emergence of a worldwide network of creative cities bound together in relations of competition and cooperation. In the conclusion, I pinpoint some of the darker dimensions,both actual and potential,of creative cities. [source]


    CONTRACTING FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM U.S. CITIES,

    THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2010
    JONATHAN LEVIN
    Local governments can provide services with their own employees or by contracting with private or public sector providers. We develop a model of this ,make-or-buy' choice that highlights the trade-off between productive efficiency and the costs of contract administration. We construct a dataset of service provision choices by U.S. cities and identify a range of service and city characteristics as significant determinants of contracting decisions. Our analysis suggests an important role for economic efficiency concerns, as well as politics, in contracting for government services. [source]


    URBAN HISTORY AND THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN CITIES

    AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
    Lionel Frost
    Australian cities; sustainability; urban history; urbanisation Urban growth is a major theme in economic development and a policy imperative for developed countries that seek to create sustainable cities. We argue that the past weighs heavily on the ability of societies to sustainably manage urban environments. The policy implications of urban history are revealed in comparisons of cities across times and between places. The special issue presents some of the best recent work on the economic and social history of Australian cities. We aim to encourage historians to incorporate urban variables into studies of historical processes and to persuade policymakers to consider historical trends in their analysis. [source]


    IDEAS FROM AUSTRALIAN CITIES: RELOCATING URBAN AND SUBURBAN HISTORY

    AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
    Andrew May
    Melbourne; suburbia; urban history This article draws on preliminary research into the social history of Melbourne, on the ways that suburban life in the post-World War II era provides both explanation and counterweight to persistently negative stereotypes of suburbia. Over recent decades, suburban histories have been eschewed in favour of historical reconsiderations of the inner city or the bush. The history of the Australian suburb, particularly since 1945, is yet to be written. Oral history and municipal archives will be crucial to the writing of such histories. The article suggests several research pathways, including intergenerational life stories, a wider scale of geographical analysis, and a subtler reading of cultural conformity and social differentiation. [source]


    SELECTED DEMOGRAPHIC, SOCIAL AND WORK CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AUSTRALIAN GENERAL MEDICAL PRACTITIONER WORKFORCE: COMPARING CAPITAL CITIES WITH REGIONAL AREAS

    AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 6 2000
    David Wilkinson
    ABSTRACT: The aim of the present study was to compare selected characteristics of the Australian general medical practitioner workforce in capital cities and regional areas. Data were derived from the 1996 Census of Population and Housing. Characteristics included age, sex, full- or part-time work, place of birth and change in residential address. Analyses were performed for each state and territory in Australia, the statistical division containing each capital city and all other statistical divisions in each state and territory. Of the 26 359 general medical practitioners identified, 68% were male. More female than male general medical practitioners were aged < 45 years (74 vs 52%, respectively; P < 0.0001). The proportion of general medical practitioners aged < 35 years was higher in capital cities (30%) than regional areas (24%; P < 0.0001). Overall, 32% of the general medical practitioner workforce was female and almost 50% of those aged < 35 years were female. The proportion of female general medical practitioners was higher in capital cities than regional areas, by up to 30%. While 13% of male general medical practitioners reported part-time work, 42% of females also reported part-time work and these figures were similar in capital cities and regional areas. Approximately 40% of the Australian general medical practitioner workforce was born outside Australia and while fewer migrants have entered in recent years they were more likely to be living in regional areas than the capitals. The census provides useful medical workforce data. The regional workforce tends to be made up of more males and is older than in capital cities. Monitoring trends in these characteristics could help to evaluate initiatives aimed at addressing regional workforce issues. [source]


    SMACK: HEROIN AND THE AMERICAN CITY

    ADDICTION, Issue 8 2010
    DAVID COURTWRIGHT
    No abstract is available for this article. [source]


    CULTURAL ECONOMY AND THE CREATIVE FIELD OF THE CITY

    GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2010
    Allen J. Scott
    ABSTRACT. I begin with a rough sketch of the incidence of the cultural economy in US cities today. I then offer a brief review of some theoretical approaches to the question of creativity, with special reference to issues of social and geographic context. The city is a powerful fountainhead of creativity, and an attempt is made to show how this can be understood in terms of a series of localized field effects. The creative field of the city is broken down (relative to the cultural economy) into four major components, namely, (a) intra-urban webs of specialized and complementary producers, (b) the local labour market and the social networks that bind workers together in urban space, (c) the wider urban environment, including various sites of memory, leisure, and social reproduction, and (d) institutions of governance and collective action. I also briefly describe some of the path-dependent dynamics of the creative field. The article ends with a reference to some issues of geographic scale. Here, I argue that the urban is but one (albeit important) spatial articulation of an overall creative field whose extent is ultimately nothing less than global. [source]


    THE CO-PRODUCTION OF NARRATIVE IN AN ENTREPRENEURIAL CITY: AN ANALYSIS OF CINCINNATI, OHIO, IN TURMOIL

    GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2009
    Jamie Gillen
    ABSTRACT. In April 2001 Cincinnati, Ohio, erupted into violence and protracted unrest after the police shooting of an unarmed African-American named Timothy Thomas. African-American interest groups in the city subsequently organized an economic boycott of downtown businesses. In response to the demonstration and the boycott, the Cincinnati government issued a marketing campaign entitled ,We're On the Move!', intending to give nod to past failures and launch forward movement on their part. In this article I investigate the entirety of these events as narrative moments under the auspices of urban entrepreneurialism to answer the question: How does the local population inform, rather than simply mediate, the narrative administration of an urban entrepreneurial form of governance? I then turn to a response to the campaign by an African-American newspaper columnist in Cincinnati to underscore a dialogic relationship between an entrepreneurial city and its citizens as it forms the presentation of entrepreneurialism. In turn, this conception allows for a more nuanced version of entrepreneurial governance more generally. [source]


    A CITY IN MOTION: TIME-SPACE ACTIVITY AND MOBILITY PATTERNS OF SUBURBAN INHABITANTS AND THE STRUCTURATION OF THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE PRAGUE METROPOLITAN AREA

    GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2007
    Jakub Novák
    ABSTRACT. This contribution attempts to reveal the relations between new suburban areas and other parts of the Prague metropolitan area by investigating the time-space activity and mobility patterns of the inhabitants of newly built suburban districts. The focus on some aspects of the everyday life of people in new suburbs helps us to identify the impact of suburbanization on the changing geography of the metropolitan region and to better understand how the spatial organization of the Prague metropolitan area is produced, reproduced and transformed. We use several interrelated concepts, which serve the theoretical foundation of our work, namely time geography, structuration theory and the post-communist city. The empirical data utilized are primarily based on 262 diaries completed by eighty-eight individuals from thirty-eight households, accompanied by household questionnaires and interviews with the heads of households. The research confirmed the implicit, generally unspoken view that new suburbs in the Prague metropolitan region are heavily dependent on the core of the metropolitan area for the provision of jobs and services. However, newly built suburban shopping facilities to some extent disrupt this pattern, keeping some daily activities of inhabitants within the suburban zone. In addition to empirical observations, the key purpose of this contribution has been to discuss and apply time geography concepts and methods to the research of urban restructuring, and to understand the structuration of metropolitan spatial organization. [source]


    COMMUNITY GARDENS AND POLITICS OF SCALE IN NEW YORK CITY,

    GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 2 2003
    CHRISTOPHER M. SMITH
    ABSTRACT. New York City community gardens have been the subject of political contestation over the course of their thirty-year existence. In 1999, 114 gardens were slated for public auction and redevelopment. This article examines the controversy over the garden auction as a politics of scale in which garden advocates successively raised the scope of the controversy beyond the scale of individual gardens, and ultimately beyond that of the city. Analysis of this land-use conflict highlights the significance of politics of scale for grassroots organizations within a market-centric, neoliberal economic framework. [source]


    TRAGEDY AND TRANSFORMATION IN NEW YORK CITY

    GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
    BRIAN J. GODFREY
    First page of article [source]


    HEALING LOSS, AMBIGUITY, AND TRAUMA: A COMMUNITY-BASED INTERVENTION WITH FAMILIES OF UNION WORKERS MISSING AFTER THE 9/11 ATTACK IN NEW YORK CITY

    JOURNAL OF MARITAL AND FAMILY THERAPY, Issue 4 2003
    Pauline Boss
    A team of therapists from Minnesota and New York workied with labor union families of workers gone missing on September 11, 2001, after the attack on the World Trade Center, where they were employed. The clinical team shares what they did, what was learned, the questions raised, and preliminary evaulations about the multiple family meeting that were the major intervention. Because of the vast diversity, training of therapists and interventions for families aimed for cultural competence. The community-based approach, preferred by union families, plus family therapy using the lens of ambiguous loss are proposed as necessary additions to disaster work. [source]


    VANCOUVER: THE SUSTAINABLE CITY

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2008
    EMMANUEL BRUNET-JAILLY
    ABSTRACT:,Vancouver exemplifies the richness of the many processes that set the civic culture of large contemporary cities. This paper focuses on what drives the social and economic construction of Vancouver, pointing to the complex linkages that tie agents to their environment. It shows that, in Vancouver, power arises from strong popular control and local democratic and participatory values, where group interactions produce and co-produce community development. The Vancouver regime is open yet stable, socially progressive yet fiscally conservative and pro-development. It is a regime that upholds an activist, tolerant and entrepreneurial civic culture. It emerges from an on-going process where the openness of the regime is re-negotiated in each neighbourhood and around each policy arena leading to the emergence of a culture of ongoing participation where civic, neighbourhood, ethnic and business groups constantly re-invent the city. [source]


    BIG CITY, BIG TURNOUT?

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2007
    ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION IN AMERICAN CITIES
    ABSTRACT:,This article seeks to describe and explain variation in voter turnout in American big city municipal elections using data from 332 mayoral elections in 38 large U.S. cities over 25 years. In my cross-sectional time-series analysis of turnout in mayoral elections, I find that city-level demographic factors are only weakly correlated with turnout. By contrast, institutional and campaign factors explain much of the variation. The effect of Progressive era reforms on depressing turnout is greatest in the most competitive elections. I conclude by discussing the implication of the overall downward trend in turnout and changes cities can make to increase participation. [source]


    TEARING THE CITY DOWN: UNDERSTANDING DEMOLITION ACTIVITY IN GENTRIFYING NEIGHBORHOODS

    JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2006
    Rachel Weber
    We perform a logit analysis of address-level data for every privately initiated demolition permit issued in three Chicago community areas between 2000 and 2003. We find that smaller, older, frame buildings with less lot coverage had a greater probability of being demolished during this period. Political jurisdiction and socioeconomic factors, other than the change in Hispanic population, were less important than expected. Demolished structures were located in appreciating areas, further away from Tax Increment Financing districts. We speculate that this popular redevelopment tool has been used in areas with primarily commercial land uses on the periphery of residential neighborhoods and that rent gaps are reduced by the negative externalities associated with conflicting land uses. [source]


    COURNOT COMPETITION IN A TWO-DIMENSIONAL CIRCULAR CITY

    THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 1 2005
    MARÍA ISABEL BERENGUER MALDONADO
    In this paper we develop a Cournot competition model between two firms located in a two-dimensional circular city. This city consists of a circumference and all the points in its interior for which movement between any two points can be made in a straight line. Firms have zero costs and market demand is symmetrically linear. We show that there exists a single state of equilibrium in which the firms agglomerate in the centre of the circle. [source]


    AUSTRALIA'S SMOKE CITY: AIR POLLUTION IN NEWCASTLE

    AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
    Nancy Cushing
    air pollution; climate change; coal trade; Newcastle; smoke abatement The City of Newcastle has been viewed as marginal to the main narratives of Australian history, despite its contribution to industrial development being likened in importance to that of a Pittsburgh or Birmingham. A focus on visible air pollution makes it possible to reposition Newcastle as the centre of environmental innovation, largely because of the knowledge gathered by Novocastrians about smoke abatement in the Anglo-American industrial cities upon which it modelled itself. The reduction of smoke in Newcastle since World War II is attributed partially to the City Council activities, but also to the displacement of pollution elsewhere, both within Australia and to the Asian cities to which coal is exported. [source]


    THE 200 KM CITY: BRISBANE, THE GOLD COAST, AND SUNSHINE COAST

    AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
    Peter Spearritt
    Brisbane; infrastructure; Southeast Queensland; traffic; urban planning Since the 1970s, several Southeast Queensland coastal towns in areas marketed as the ,Gold Coast' and the ,Sunshine Coast' have merged with each other and joined with Brisbane to become one of the world's longest urban coastal strips. The population of this 200 km long city is fast approaching three million. This urban pattern reflects the preferences of many Australians about where and in what type of housing they would like to live. The unplanned nature of this growth raises several policy challenges relating to resource use and traffic congestion. [source]


    A View on Creative Cities Beyond the Hype

    CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2008
    Gert-Jan Hospers
    Fuelled by the influential work of urban guru Richard Florida, the European knowledge economy is seeing a rise of cities calling themselves ,creative cities'. In this paper we have a look at the concept of creative cities and offer a view on them beyond the hype. We understand ,creative cities' as competitive urban areas that combine both concentration, diversity, instability as well as a positive image. Examples of creative cities in history and recent best practice of two such urban areas in Europe (Øresund and Manchester) show that local governments cannot plan knowledge, creativity and innovation from scratch. We conclude, however, that local governments can increase the chance that urban creativity emerges by providing the appropriate framework conditions. [source]


    THE CITY AS BARRACKS: Freetown, Monrovia, and the Organization of Violence in Postcolonial African Cities

    CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2007
    DANNY HOFFMAN
    Responding to characterizations of the postcolonial African city as a negative space, theorists of African urban processes have begun to focus on the city's unique modes of production. But what does this emphasis on productive capacity mean if "the city" is not Johannesburg or Nairobi but the West African urban warscape of Freetown or Monrovia? I explore that question by examining how the labor of male urban youth is organized according to the logic of the barracks. I suggest that these West African capitals make labor simultaneously available for use on regional battlefields or mines, logging camps, or rubber plantations. Focusing on the Brookfields Hotel in central Freetown and Monrovia's Duala neighborhood underscores how urban spaces are increasingly configured by the structure and function of the barracks: as spaces for the organization and deployment of violent labor. [source]