Search results
1 – 10 of 159Purpose: Urban centres have been argued to be crucial in the battle for sustainability. With more than half of the global population presently living in cities, the sustainability…
Abstract
Purpose: Urban centres have been argued to be crucial in the battle for sustainability. With more than half of the global population presently living in cities, the sustainability challenges of global warming, environmental degradation, social inequality, and economic recessions have continued to thrive. To this end, there have been efforts to revive and improve the existing physical and social structure of cities in a process known as urban regeneration. The aim of this paper is to explore the role of sustainability assessment frameworks in urban regeneration.
Approach: Aligning with the positivism philosophical position, and using document analysis as a data collection method, the study discusses the state of the art of urban regeneration and its application in recent times. The study also reviewed selected neighbourhood sustainability assessment frameworks as a tool for decision-making towards sustainability to know the extent in which they capture the goals of urban regeneration.
Findings: Findings showed that the uptake of the sustainability assessment frameworks could play a role in enhancing integration of local context, social wellbeing and economic prosperity, environmental quality, and stakeholder engagement at the neighbourhood level which are the main aspects of urban regeneration.
Theoretical and practical implications: In theory, this paper establishes the assumption that with some revisions, sustainability assessment frameworks could serve as a tool for decision-making in urban regeneration process. Practise-wise, urban regeneration at the neighbourhood level can now be measured against sustainability benchmarks and indicators.
Details
Keywords
Vincent Patsy Katutsi, Will Kaberuka, Muhammed Ngoma, Bruno Lule Yawe, Ronnett Atukunda and Dickson Turyareba
This study aims to investigate the influence of specific socioeconomic factors, namely neighborhood, gender roles and affordability, on the continuous use of clean cooking…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the influence of specific socioeconomic factors, namely neighborhood, gender roles and affordability, on the continuous use of clean cooking technologies (CCTs) in households, using evidence from Uganda.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted an explanatory quantitative design. A questionnaire survey with 379 clean household responses was conducted. The data were analyzed using the Smart Partial Least Squares (PLS) software.
Findings
The results indicate that the sustained use of clean cooking technologies in households in Uganda is significantly associated with neighborhood influence, shared gender roles and affordability, collectively accounting for 27.7% of the variance.
Research limitations/implications
The three dimensions of socioeconomic factors under study partially explain the sustained use of CCTs in Uganda. The study does not delve into other socioeconomic factors that could probably account for 72.2% of the variance not explained. The quantitative design may have overlooked the social reality perspectives inherent in qualitative studies that other researchers may endeavor to exploit.
Originality/value
The authors integrated three dimensions of socioeconomic factors – neighborhood influence, gender roles and affordability – with the diffusion of innovation theory (DIT) using Smart PLS to explain the continuous use of CCTs within households.
Details
Keywords
Mat Jones, Amy Beardmore, Michele Biddle, Andy Gibson, Sanda Umar Ismail, Stuart McClean and Jo White
Background: Evidence from a range of major public health incidents shows that neighbour-based action can have a critical role in emergency response, assistance and recovery…
Abstract
Background: Evidence from a range of major public health incidents shows that neighbour-based action can have a critical role in emergency response, assistance and recovery. However, there is little research to date on neighbour-based action during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. This article reports on a survey of people engaged in supporting their neighbours in weeks three and four of the UK COVID-19 lockdown.
Methods: Members of area-based and community of interest COVID-19 support groups in the Bristol conurbation were invited to complete an online survey. Of 1,255 people who clicked on the survey link, 862 responded; of these, 539 responses were eligible for analysis.
Results: Respondents reported providing a wide range of support that went beyond health information, food and medical prescription assistance, to include raising morale through humour, creativity and acts of kindness and solidarity. A substantial proportion felt that they had become more involved in neighbourhood life following the lockdown and had an interest in becoming more involved in future. Neighbour support spanned all adult age groups, including older people categorised as being at-risk to the virus. With respect to most measures, there were no differences in the characteristics of support between respondents in areas of higher and lower deprivation. However, respondents from more deprived areas were more likely to state that they were involved in supporting certain vulnerable groups.
Conclusions: As with previous research on major social upheavals, our findings suggest that responses to the viral pandemic and associated social restrictions may increase existing social and health inequalities, and further research should explore this issue in more depth.
Details
Keywords
David McGillivray, Trudie Walters and Séverin Guillard
Place-based community events fulfil important functions, internally and externally. They provide opportunities for people from diverse communities and cultures to encounter each…
Abstract
Purpose
Place-based community events fulfil important functions, internally and externally. They provide opportunities for people from diverse communities and cultures to encounter each other, to participate in pleasurable activities in convivial settings and to develop mutual understanding. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the value of such events as a means of resisting or challenging the deleterious effects of territorial stigmatisation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors explore two place-based community events in areas that have been subject to territorial stigmatisation: Govanhill in Glasgow, Scotland, and South Dunedin, New Zealand. They draw on in-depth case study methods including observation and interviews with key local actors and employ inductive analysis to identify themes across the datasets.
Findings
The demonstrate how neighbourhood events in both Glasgow and Dunedin actively seek to address some of the deleterious outcomes of territorial stigmatisation by emphasising strength and asset-based discourses about the areas they reflect and represent. In their planning and organisation, both events play an important mediating role in building and empowering community, fostering intercultural encounters with difference and strengthening mutuality within their defined places. They make use of public and semi-public spaces to attract diverse groups while also increasing the visibility of marginalised populations through larger showcase events.
Research limitations/implications
The empirical element focuses only on two events, one in Glasgow, Scotland (UK), and the other in South Dunedin (New Zealand). Data generated were wholly qualitative and do not provide quantitative evidence of “change” to material circumstances in either case study community.
Practical implications
Helps organisers think about how they need to better understand their communities if they are to attract diverse participation, including how they programme public and semi-public spaces.
Social implications
Place-based community events have significant value to neighbourhoods, and they need to be resourced effectively if they are to sustain the benefits they produce. These events provide an opportunity for diverse communities to encounter each other and celebrate what they share rather than what divides them.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to examine how place-based community events help resist narratives of territorial stigmatisation, which produce negative representations about people and their environments. The paper draws on ethnographic insights generated over time rather than a one-off snapshot which undermines some events research.
Details
Keywords
To understand how narratives used by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem shape transitional entrepreneurs' social reality…
Abstract
Purpose
To understand how narratives used by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem shape transitional entrepreneurs' social reality. We offer theoretical and practical insights to elicit critical support, formulate policies and programs and guide ongoing empirical examination of transitional entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
We adopt a multi-case study approach, looking at two ESOs in Detroit: one focused on promoting high-growth entrepreneurship and securing financial capital for technology entrepreneurs, the other focused on promoting everyday entrepreneurship (especially among underserved communities) and amassing a more diverse array of resources. We conduct a thematic analysis of organizational texts and interview data with ESO leaders.
Findings
ESO narratives shape Detroit's transitional entrepreneurs by constructing entrepreneurs' social identity, orienting them to the ecosystem and envisioning a collective future in which transitional entrepreneurs are key.
Originality/value
This study offers insight into the definition of transitional entrepreneurs by extending existing conceptions by highlighting the role of institutional actors, like ESOs, and the narratives they adopt in shaping opportunities and challenges for transitional entrepreneurs. Moreover, we push the boundaries of transitional entrepreneurship, including technology start-up entrepreneurs in the definition and call attention to the role of transitional entrepreneurs in post-industrial cities by showcasing their role in community and urban development.
Details
Keywords
Syden Mishi and Robert Mwanyepedza
The world over is becoming urbanized, and people are migrating to cities in large numbers in search of opportunities. The increased urbanization has posed challenges such as…
Abstract
The world over is becoming urbanized, and people are migrating to cities in large numbers in search of opportunities. The increased urbanization has posed challenges such as congestion, rising crime, and growing urban poverty. The governments respond by providing amenities such as schools, hospitals, and housing to meet to increase in demand for these facilities. However, there is a need for the provision of facilities that meets the expectations of the people, particularly on the proximity of amenities and bundles of utility-bearing housing characteristics. In an attempt to address the challenge mentioned, the study estimated the hedonic characteristics influencing the willingness to accept and willingness to pay for housing facilities in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Using a multiple linear regression model and artificial neural network, the study found out that properties with a bathroom, garage and large floor size have a higher value compared to properties without these facilities.When making decisions to acquire a property, buyers consider the availability of discounts and the prevailing property price. Overall, willingness to pay and accept decisions are mainly determined by location and the price at which homogeneous neighborhood properties were sold. Therefore, the study recommends that urban town planners and other housing authorities prioritize the construction of properties with larger floor areas, parking bays, and bathrooms using a cost-effective mechanism that makes the properties affordable to residents.
Details
Keywords
Travis Fried, Anne Victoria Goodchild, Ivan Sanchez-Diaz and Michael Browne
Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies. The study also analyzes the sensitivity of various operational decisions to mitigate bias in the analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The model adapts empirical methodologies from activity-based modeling, transport equity evaluation, and residential freight trip generation (RFTG) to estimate person- and household-level delivery demand and cargo van traffic exposure in 41 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).
Findings
Evaluating 12 measurements across varying population segments and spatial units, the study finds robust evidence for racial and socio-economic inequities in last-mile delivery for low-income and, especially, populations of color (POC). By the most conservative measurement, POC are exposed to roughly 35% more cargo van traffic than white populations on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages. The study explores the model’s utility by evaluating a simple scenario that finds marginal equity gains for urban freight management strategies that prioritize line-haul efficiency improvements over those improving intra-neighborhood circulations.
Originality/value
Presents a first effort in building a modeling framework for more equitable decision-making in last-mile delivery operations and broader city planning.
Details
Keywords
Climate change is occurring around us and impacting on our daily lives, meaning that we have to deal with our cities in a different way. There is also increasing awareness of the…
Abstract
Climate change is occurring around us and impacting on our daily lives, meaning that we have to deal with our cities in a different way. There is also increasing awareness of the need for daily contact with green spaces and the natural environment in order to live a happy, productive and meaningful life.
This reflective essay tells the narrative of how urbanisation has been disconnecting humans from nature. Non-sustainable, non-resilient patterns of urbanisation, along with the neglect of inner-city areas, have resulted in fragmentation and urban decline, led to a loss of biodiversity, and caused the deterioration of ecosystems and their services. Urban regeneration projects allow us to “repair” and restore some of this damage whilst enhancing urban resilience. Connecting existing and enhanced ecosystems, and re-establishing ecosystems both within cities and at the peri-urban fringe is vital for strengthening ecosystem resilience and building adaptive capacity for coping with the effects of climate change.
Cities worldwide need to look for suitable solutions to increase the resilience of their urban spaces in the face of climate change. This essay explores how this can be achieved through the integration of nature-based solutions, the re-greening of neighbourhoods and by correctly attributing value to natural capital. Transforming existing cities and neighbourhoods in this way will enable ecosystems to contribute their services towards healthier and more liveable cities.
Details
Keywords
Francesc González-Reverté and Anna Soliguer Guix
Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Focusing on critical discourse analysis, this paper aims to propose a framework for analysing the way activist anti-tourism groups construct their social action of protest. The authors argue that activist groups use different narrative strategies to construct and legitimise their discourse of protest to convey social meanings for social action practices. This study represents an attempt to explain how anti-tourism activist groups have the agency to build different paradigms of protest rooted in particular views of tourism.
Design/methodology/approach
As a result of the lack of research in this area, this study used a comparative case study methodology drawn on four case studies in the field of anti-tourism protest. Case study is deemed adequate to explore a complex social phenomenon, how activist groups differ from each other, in a specific socio-economic context. A critical discourse analysis method is used to study primary (interviews) and secondary sources (reports, websites and online campaigns documents) of information, which express the activist group motivations and objectives to protest against tourism.
Findings
This study’s findings provide evidence in how discourse differs among the protest groups. Three narrative paradigms of protest are identified, which guide their agency: scepticism, based on a global and ecological approach; non-interventionist transformation, rooted in local community issues; and direct transformation, based on a sectoral problem-solving approach. These differences are interpreted as the consequences of the emergence and the development of different paths of protest according to specific social contexts and power relations in which anti-tourism groups are embedded.
Originality/value
This paper provides a contemporary approach to anti-tourism activism within the context of social movements. This case study may be of interest to practitioners and international destination managers interested in gaining a better understanding of anti-tourism protest strategies, new anti-tourism narratives following COVID-19 and the opportunities and challenges for opening a dialogue with those involved in activism and social urban movements as part of sustainable tourism governance. Our results can also help activists to rethink how they integrate differences and particular strategic positions to avoid hindering collective action. This knowledge is especially useful for managers and authorities seeking to develop more accurate collaborative governance practices with local activists, and especially those interested in fostering participative action without marginalising the diverse range of local community perspectives.
Details
Keywords
Denis Fernandes Alves, Raul da Mota Silveira Neto, André Luis Squarize Chagas and Tatiane Almeida De Menezes
This study addresses the COVID-19 infection and its relationship with the city’s constructive intensity, commuting time to work and labor market dynamics during the lockdown…
Abstract
Purpose
This study addresses the COVID-19 infection and its relationship with the city’s constructive intensity, commuting time to work and labor market dynamics during the lockdown period.
Design/methodology/approach
Microdata from formal workers in Recife was used to adjust a probability model for disease contraction.
Findings
The authors' results indicate that greater distance to employment increases the probability of infection. The same applies to constructive intensity, suggesting that residences in denser areas, such as apartments in buildings, condominiums and informal settlements, elevate the chances of contracting the disease. It is also observed that formal workers with completed higher education have lower infection risks, while healthcare professionals on the frontlines of combating the disease face higher risks than others. The lockdown effectively reduced contagion by limiting people’s mobility during the specified period.
Research limitations/implications
The research shows important causal relationships, making it possible to think about public policies for the health of individuals both when commuting to work and in living conditions, aiming to control contagion by COVID-19.
Practical implications
The lockdown effectively reduced contagion by limiting people’s mobility during the specified period.
Social implications
It is also observed that formal workers with completed higher education have lower infection risks, while healthcare professionals on the frontlines of combating the disease face higher risks than others.
Originality/value
The authors identified positive and significant relationships between these urban characteristics and increased contagion, controlling for neighborhood, individual characteristics, comorbidities, occupations and economic activities.
Details