Forced evictions,spatial (un)certainties and the making of exemplary centres in Indonesia

This article considers the relationship between forced evictions and the ‘exemplary centre’ through an examination of three urban waterfront sites in Indonesia in comparative perspective. How is the notion of the ‘exemplary centre’ related to forced evictions and the aspirations of marginalised populations in contemporary cities of Indonesia? What are the chances of asserting alternative ideologies when a capital‐centric and modernist vision of the city as ‘exemplary centre’ dominates official planning paradigms? Competing visions of the ‘exemplary centre’ arise from distinct centres of power, from the state level to the grassroots community level; however, the dominant state vision of urban space is often internalised by those most at risk of displacement by modernist projects. Strategies to thwart forced evictions in riverbank settlements in Jakarta, Solo, and Surabaya offer alternative imaginings of the ‘exemplary centre’ – imaginings that enable the urban poor to visualise their hopes and to overcome the spatial uncertainties that characterise their everyday lives. While these efforts indicate resistance to marginalisation, they also provide a distinct kind of ‘exemplary’ vision based on residents’ own understanding of ideal city living. Concurrently, some alignment to existing ‘exemplary centre’ narratives is traceable in the effort to assert these alternatives.     

From saving to survivance: Rethinking Indigenous Papuan women's vulnerabilities in Jayapura,Indonesia

Racism, sexism and gendered violence disadvantage Indigenous Papuan women, yet government responses often focus on individual interventions like ‘raising awareness’ or training. In this article, we build on efforts to challenge these narratives about women's vulnerabilities. We draw on life history interviews with older Papuan women in Jayapura to rethink vulnerabilities and everyday struggles in the context of structural inequalities. We interpret their stories as forms of ‘survivance’ and argue that contrary to dominant perspectives, Papuan women are not economic novices or passive victims. Rather, opportunities have narrowed over time, and women's long history of activity, strategy, persistence and resistance has largely been forgotten. Women's life histories shed light on urban colonialism and Indigenous survivance in Jayapura since the 1940s, when Jayapura was still a Dutch colonial capital and not yet an Indonesian frontier. In a time dominated by concerns about Papuan demise, their experiences are provocative for rethinking vulnerabilities.     

Public intervention,private aspiration: Gated communities and the condominisation of housing landscapes in Singapore

While the proliferation of gated communities worldwide has generated great interests and debates, the emergence of gated communities is by no means a ‘global’ urban phenomenon that displays uniform characteristics and genesis. Drawing on Singapore as a case study, this paper goes beyond the universalising and often polemical discourses on gated communities to provide a balanced account on how gated communities in the form of enclosed condominium estates are locally embedded in the city state where public housing dominates. As will be pointed out in the paper, gated communities in Singapore may be considered as a form of ‘club good’ that exists as part of the state's urban/national developmental agenda and are, arguably, less socially and spatially divisive than those depicted elsewhere. By teasing out the local specificities of gated communities, this paper underscores the need to read beyond the physical form of gated communities in order to understand the complex social and political production of housing landscapes.     

The ‘street politics’ of migrant il/legality: Navigating Malaysia's urban borderscape

Immigration control constitutes a particular technique for regulating urban space and for controlling and disciplining migrant subjects within it. Unlike other manifestations of state power in exemplary urban settings, the architecture of urban immigration control is not recognisable through grand buildings or walls, but rather through its momentary presence and continuously shifting location: ad hoc identity controls in public spaces, roadblocks in neighbourhood streets or raids against workplaces. Building on fieldwork conducted in the Malaysian city of George Town, this article takes an interest in how migrants navigate this urban borderscape in order to avoid exploitation and encounters with the police. Read through Asef Bayat's notion of ‘street politics’, the article shows how migrants use the means (made) available to them in order to extend their room to manoeuvre. While such tactics are often driven by the force of necessity, they do nonetheless cumulatively encroach on the state's ability to produce migrants as (un)wanted or even (il)legal subjects in the city. Through this, migrants also challenge the very notion of what an exemplary urban space is as well as who is considered a legitimate part of it.     

Worlding aspirations and resilient futures: Framings of risk and contemporary city‐making in Metro Cebu,the Philippines

In the Philippines, calls for creating ‘global’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘resilient’ cities are placing urban poor communities in increasingly precarious positions. These communities have long been the targets of urban development and ‘modernisation’ efforts; more recently the erasure of informal settlements from Philippine cities is being bolstered at the behest of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management (DRM) agendas. In Metro Cebu, flood management has been at the heart of DRM and broader urban development discussions, and is serving as justification for the demolition and displacement of informal settler communities in areas classed as ‘danger zones’. Using Kusno's (2010) interpretation of the ‘exemplary centre’ as a point of departure, this paper interrogates the relationship between DRM, worlding aspirations (Roy and Ong, 2011) and market‐oriented urbanisation in Cebu, and considers the socio‐spatial implications of these intersecting processes for urban poor communities. Through analysing the contradictions inherent in framings of certain bodies and spaces as being ‘of risk’ or ‘at risk’ over others, I argue that the epistemologies of modernity, disaster risk and resilience endorsed and propagated by the state are facilitating processes of displacement and dispossession that serve elite commercial interests under the auspices of disaster resilience and pro‐poor development.     

Barrier-free Design of Public Rental Housing

With the aging of society,special groups have had increasing needs of integrating into social life,and higher requirements on life quality,and the society has attached increasing importance to barrier-free design.Taking public rental housing for example,both circulation space and furniture design have to fully consider needs of special groups such as the seniors and the disabled.Barrier-free design in living spaces can help improve their ability of self-care,reduce their dependence on family members,fully demonstrate the"human-centered"design concept of public rental housing,and show the designers’sense of social responsibility.     

Ordering the exemplary urban spaces: A critical analysis of Hanoi's embellishment projects

Vietnam has a long tradition of social engineering through which the ordering of urban space has effectively been used to enforce the state's vision of political and social order. With the country currently in transition from a centrally planned to a market‐oriented economy, the ordering of urban spaces is currently all the more important. This is prominently manifested in the numerous beautification projects that are being implemented in Vietnamese cities. This article explores recent ordering endeavours and considers the way they are legitimated and contested in Vietnam's new socio‐political context. Three beautification projects in Hanoi are examined using materials from policy documents, professional journals and media coverage. The article argues that state ordering actions and the ‘exemplary’ urban spaces they seek to create are embodiments of a complex system of orders of powers in transitional Vietnam, in which political visions of modernist socialism and the new market‐oriented agenda are sometimes in alignment and sometimes clash. Overall, the state's failure in sustaining these ‘exemplary’ urban spaces is emblematic of this hybrid system.     

Cross‐border ‘Traffic’: Stories of dangerous victims,pure whores and HIV/AIDS in the experiences of mainland female sex workers in Hong Kong

Abstract: In recent years, dramatically increasing numbers of mainland Chinese women have entered Hong Kong to engage in sexual labour. Public discourses on the threat of HIV/AIDS increasingly locate these women's bodies as sites of danger, colluding with pre‐existing imaginations of mainland rural women as ignorant, desperate and deceptive in representing these women's penetration of Hong Kong's border as a primary means of infection of the Hong Kong body. Drawing on state, media and popular representations, and the narratives of female sex workers themselves, this paper examines the interwoven bio‐medical, gendered, sexual and cross‐border relationships that intersect in the experiences of mainland Chinese sex workers in Hong Kong. I argue that while images of disease and danger have been used to regulate these women's bodies, mainland female sex workers challenge these images by drawing on other popular stereotypes of mainland women as pure, feminine and traditional. Although images of the related but still ‘other’ figure of the mainland Chinese woman are powerful mechanisms for the regulation of these women's bodies, mainland female sex workers skilfully use inherent tensions in those images in resisting that control and in struggling to achieve their own personal and economic goals.     

Violence and Memory in the Reconstruction of South Africa's Cato Manor

Among the most destructive legacies of apartheid in South Africa is the violent history of division, discrimination, and control through which the everyday injustices of racial order were experienced. This violence of ‘separate development’ was inscribed within particular spaces, as the apartheid state attempted to define and control where racially‐defined citizens could live, work, and travel. This paper examines the geography of violence and reconstruction in one such space, that of Cato Manor near Durban. The area is known for the large‐scale forced removals which took place there in the 1950s, destroying a multi‐racial community of Indian and African residents. Although zoned for white residence, Cato Manor remained vacant until the 1980s, when it became a safe haven for refugees fleeing violence in the Natal countryside. In the early 1990s, the area became the focus of a non‐racial development effort, which sought to overcome the violent social divisions of the apartheid era. This redevelopment, however, became a site of contestation when former residents of Cato Manor petitioned to reclaim land they once owned there, claims that the city of Durban attempted to nullify in court. The outcome of the land claims trial highlights the tensions between the present dictates of development and the process of negotiating the violence of the past, and suggests that the democratization of planning can be a means of ‘working through’ the legacies of displacement and dispossession that are so much a part of South Africa's present.     

Spectre of neoliberal gentrification in Fiji: the price Suva's poor must pay

This article seeks to examine Fiji's current housing crisis against the backdrop of neoliberal urbanism. In doing so, the article offers a fresh new perspective on the marginalisation, displacement and outright exclusion of the urban poor from the inner city areas of Suva. Among the trademark growth problems experienced by neoliberal cities across the globe, the crisis of urban housing affordability is perhaps more pronounced in Suva given economies of scale and constraints in Fiji's land tenure system. This article seeks to highlight that Suva's inner city spaces are being transformed along the lines of market fundamentalism and that this will exacerbate the social exclusion and displacement of Suva's poor.     

Defensible Space and Urban Public Environment Design

The significance of urban public environment doesn't consist only in meeting the demands of certain function. The public environment of a city can also be its important part through supporting and stimulating significant urban public behavior. From four main aspects of the theory of defensible space, the authors discussed how to establish good relationship between public environment and public life in the city; meanwhile, the authors provide some proposals and ways to enhance the quality of public environment of a city.     

The peri‐urban Pacific: From exclusive to inclusive cities

Abstract: As the Pacific Islands continue to urbanise, existing models of governance and planning are coming under greater pressure and scrutiny. Both the city council approach and the ‘good’ urban governance agenda of donors have weaknesses in the region, especially in dealing with peri‐urban settlements where the most rapid urban population growth is occurring. This is resulting in increased social discontent and conflict. This paper critiques the ways in which Pacific Island towns and cities are governed and calls for an approach which is more inclusive (and less hierarchical) and informed by concepts of citizenship and social justice. Indeed, policy makers will need to broaden their concepts and practices of governance if many Pacific cities are to be socially, politically, and envir‐onmentally sustainable. However, the political‐economy of urban development in the region is not proving conducive to consensus, with conflict a more likely outcome in the foreseeable future.     

Urban water supply and local neoliberalism in Tagbilaran City,the Philippines

The aim of this paper is to explore the processes and outcomes of neoliberalism in relation to urban water supply in the city of Tagbilaran, the Philippines, in order to provide a nuanced account of (an) actually existing hybrid neoliberal space. Using Bakker's typology of market environmentalist reforms in resource management as a guiding frame to link this case to a bigger ‘neoliberal’ conversation, I distinguish how reforms to resource governance at the national level, coupled with changes in the ways in which resource management institutions and resource management organisations function at the local level have acted to constitute local practices of neoliberal governance. Local articulations of (national and supranational) neoliberal and development discourses are revealed as a means for reconceptualising the role of the state and the emergence of new forms of hybrid governance in Tagbilaran. Analysis of the operation of BWUI, a public/private water utility, and the politics of privatisation/private sector participation enables a closer inspection of how water and water services are politicised and resisted by local publics.     

Recreating place,replacing memory: Creative destruction at the Singapore River

Abstract: The transformation of urban landscapes is as much a physical process as it is a symbolic one. Material changes in the form of demolition and redevelopment are often accompanied by changes in the image and identity of places, as well as the personal and collective memories associated with these places. Focusing on the Singapore River, we explore how waterfront redevelopment has rendered certain activities, people and place memories invisible, to be replaced by other landscape elements and their associative identities. Through ‘creative destruction’ and ‘destructive creation,’ the waterfront's transformation is evident in three areas: its built environment (‘builtscapes’), activities and events (‘eventscapes’) and displays of public art (‘artscapes’). We contend that landscapes reflect the tensions between ‘remembering to forget’ and ‘forgetting to remember’ in ‘New Asia‐Singapore,’ a city attempting to blend modern Asian dynamism with tradition and heritage.     

The Appreciative System of Urban ICT Policies: An Analysis of Perceptions of Urban Policy Makers

ABSTRACT Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become an important tool to promote a variety of public goals and policies. In the past years much attention has been given to the expected social benefits from deploying ICTs in different urban fields (transportation, education, public participation in planning, etc.) and to its potential to mitigate various current or emerging urban problems. The growing importance of ICTs in daily life, business activities, and governance prompts the need to consider ICTs more explicitly in urban policies. Alongside the expectation that the private sector will play a major role in the ICT field, the expected benefits from ICTs also encourage urban authorities to formulate proper public ICT policies. Against this background, various intriguing research questions arise. What are the urban policy‐makers’ expectations about ICTs? And how do they assess the future implications of ICTs for their city? A thorough analysis of these questions will provide a better understanding of the extent to which urban authorities are willing to invest in and to adopt a dedicated ICT policy. This study is focusing on the way urban decision‐makers perceive the opportunities of ICT policy. After a sketch of recent development and policy issues, a conceptual model is developed to map out the driving forces of urban ICT policies in cities in Europe. Next, by highlighting the importance of understanding the decision‐maker's “black box,” three crucial variables are identified within this box. In the remaining part of the paper these three variables will be operationalized by using a large survey comprising more than 200 European cities. By means of statistical multivariate methods (i.e., factor and cluster analysis), the decision‐makers were able to be characterized according to the way they perceive their city (the concept of “imaginable city”), their opinion about ICT, and the way they assess the relevance of ICT policies to their city. Next, a solid explanatory framework will be offered by using a log‐linear logit analysis to test the relationships between these three aspects.     

Quality Construction of Public Space from the Perspective of Human Settlement: A Case Study of Public Space in the Downtown Area of Mianyang City,Sichuan Province

Concept, connotation and property of urban public space were interpreted, guidance of human settlement science for the construction of urban public space analyzed. Taking quality construction of public space in the downtown area of Mianyang City for example, this paper proposed that urban public space should be constructed from the perspective of human settlement to create positive spaces that satisfy human needs, ensure sustainable development of urban public spaces, and drive the development of a harmonious and prosperous city.     

Creating community‐based indicators of gender equity: A methodology

It appears that an almost unquestioned development pathway for achieving gender equity and women's empowerment has taken centre stage in mainstream development. This pathway focuses on economic outcomes that are assumed to be achieved by increasing women's access to material things, including cash income, loans, physical assets, and to markets. Gender equity indicators, which measure progress towards these outcomes, cannot escape reinforcing them. We argue that far from being neutral, indicators are embedded in political and ideological agendas that serve as guides to the appropriate conduct of those whose performance or behaviour is being measured. Drawing on participatory feminist, diverse economies and strengths based approaches, we outline a research methodology for developing community‐based indicators that recognises women's and men's participation and relationships in all spheres of life, including the ‘non‐economic’. If indicators are grounded in local meanings and realities, we propose that community members can use them to identify aspirational goals for gender equity, and measure progress towards these goals.     

Politics of Economic Adjustment: The Changing Nature of Women’s Work in Jharkand,India

This paper focuses on the ‘gendered’ politics of economic adjustment exemplified in India’s New Economic Policy (NEP) and interrogates NEP’s tacit appropriation of women’s labour (productive and reproductive) to maintain social reproduction during times of economic insecurity. Through a micro­study of an ‘Oraon’ village in the Jharkand region of Bihar, India, I explore the changing nature of women’s work and gender relations in response to the larger socio­economic transformation initiated by the NEP; and how in turn these changes are mediated through the interacting politics of the gendered ideology of the family and the household, class and ethnicity. Through the analysis of changing gender responsibilities within the household, I critique the ‘unitary model’ approach to household behaviour implicit in the NEP and argue for the need to move beyond it, to address the larger issues of gender equity and empowerment.     

Mode of Networked Equipment Remote Management System

Habitation is a basic problem in modern city.Fast developing housing industry is now changing urban form rapidly in contemporary China.This paper explores 5 classical urban communities of western countries during the developing period,and then discusses the community planning based on Transit-oriented and Neighborhood-oriented ones.Finally,through thinking about the 'Habitation Changes Urban Form',this paper reexamines urban planner and architect's social responsibility,with review on a huge changing ecological situation of housing industry in today's China.     

Turf wars: The livelihood and mobility frictions of motorbike taxi drivers on Hanoi's streets

In Vietnam's capital city Hanoi, the growing popularity of application based (app-based) motorbike taxis has offered many inhabitants new opportunities to pursue a mobile livelihood with ride-hailing platforms. Nonetheless, as this influx of app-based drivers has hit the city's streets, specific livelihood and mobility frictions have emerged, notably with informal, ‘traditional’ motorbike taxi drivers, or xe ôm. In this paper we analyse these evolving sites and moments of friction and their impacts on driver livelihoods and mobilities for both driver groups. We draw conceptually on debates regarding mobility, platform economies, and urban livelihoods, while specifically interrogating the concept of friction to highlight three possible analytical applications. Methodologically, we interpret static and ride-along interviews completed with over 130 drivers. We highlight a range of tactics ‘traditional’ and app-based motorbike taxi drivers have employed to respond to rising frictions, defend their ‘turf’, and maintain their street-based livelihoods. Driver responses reveal differing access to distinctive forms of social capital and social networks, and contrasting levels of agency regarding their mobilities. By conceptually teasing apart the notion of friction, we wish to expand and deepen understandings of the experiences of vulnerability, precarity, and other impacts of platformisation for different motorbike taxi driver cohorts.