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This research provides a new perspective on the long-standing debate of open-plan versus cellular offices. It analyzes the effects of workplace layouts on organizational outputs such as innovation, efficiency and privacy by considering the physical space of an organization alongside its organizational structure. This socio-spatial approach draws on correspondence theory originating from space syntax to understand the potential for unplanned encounters between diverse groups of people.

Three different organizations are studied, two open-plan and one cellular office. Floor and seating plans are analyzed to calculate the degree of correspondence between the spatial and conceptual closeness of people. Demands for each organization are derived from semi-structured interviews and publicly available information.

The three studied organizations present very different degrees of openness toward others in ways that challenge conventional views of cellular and open-plan offices. In each case, the degree of correspondence matches the demands placed on the organization, and hence, providing a relatively good fit between the organization and interior environment.

A larger sample of open-plan and cellular offices would be useful to consider in further research.

Managers can use the concept of correspondence to generate the appropriate degree of unplanned encounters between the right sets of people in order to achieve the best organization-environment fit.

The main innovation of this paper lies in its socio-spatial approach, considering physical space alongside managerial, organizational choices.

Traditional architecture and urban form is a harmonious and interrelated blend of social relations, cultural beliefs and religious principles forming coherent spatial organisation living in harmony despite diversity of religious beliefs, social class or cultural practices of different communities. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical background of social cohesion and solidarity in the everyday life of the Mahalla with reference to its religious background in Islam.

The study of Beit Hadawi and Beit Hammadi el-Hassan as distinct evidences of prominent families within the boundaries of Mahallat El Mahdia in Old Hilla offers an empirical investigation on how values of the past informed and, to some extent, governed the very organic organisation of interlocking residential units in Iraq.

It investigates the architecture of home and the spatial organisation of Mahalla’s social activities through highlighting the effect of previous factors in creating a responsive environment that sustained its operational mechanism and fluidity over centuries.

This paper examines how previous values, traditions and rituals are behind the organic tissue of traditional quarters and thus providing an effective criterion to be considered when discussing sustainable development or creating a responsive environment in societies with exceptional privacy.

This paper aims to examine people's strategies to regain control over the socio-spatial organisation of their villages and transform their agency-built houses in culturally meaningful places post-disaster. In the aftermath of a disaster, building processes are often taken over by external agencies whose approach towards reconstruction is governed by considerations such as safety, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and – in some cases – also by an explicit will to trigger social transformations. As a result, reconstruction often entails dramatic changes in settlement location and morphologies, housing designs, building materials and construction processes.

Based on an ongoing interdisciplinary empirical research project focusing on communities’ patterns of adaptation to post-disaster relocated settlements in India, the paper examines people’s strategies to regain control over the socio-spatial organisation of their villages and to transform their agency-built houses in culturally meaningful places.

The paper shows that people are not passive recipients of external agencies’ often culturally insensitive project and that they have the capacity to transform externally imposed notions of appropriate housing to meet their cultural- and livelihood-specific needs. Based on a micro-level case study of a village in Gujarat, it is argued that underestimating communities’ capacity to rebuild their own houses and villages and the failure to recognise the inherent functionality of local housing and building culture often entail not only missing the opportunity to enhance their resilience but also, in some cases, may lead to increasing their vulnerability.

This paper presents a rare example of longitudinal research, calling attention to the long-term impacts of post-disaster reconstruction. It is of particular interest to scholars and humanitarian agencies concerned about the social consequences of relocation and reconstruction after natural disasters.

The international literature on the impacts of globalization on large cities has insistently pointed to the increase in residential segregation. Three mechanisms have been identified as the causes of this phenomenon: globalization, which by disseminating neoliberal ideas throughout the world, generated changes in the regulatory models and paradigms that guide urban policy; institutional reforms toward market liberalization and the property and housing market were undertaken in various countries; real estate prices became the central mechanism for distributing the population throughout the city, reinforcing income inequality as the determinant of urban spatial organization. At the same time, privatization exacerbated the growing inequality of access to the services and infrastructure that ensure urban well-being, especially with regard to quality. The wealthier areas, where those with greater purchasing power concentrate, have at their disposal an abundant supply of goods and services, whereas the areas populated by the poor are supplied with inferior goods and services. Further, globalization caused structural changes originating in the transformation of the productive base of the cities, creating trends toward social polarization. The social structure of the great metropolises is no longer represented by a pyramid, and is expressed instead by an hourglass where the middle positions narrow while the extremities widen. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the distance between the average incomes of the higher and lower strata.

In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the current discourse of food system relocalization. From the perspective of theories of justice and theories of neoliberalism, food relocalization is wrapped up in a problematic, and largely unexamined, communitarian discourse on social justice. The example for California's localized governance of pesticide drift demonstrates that localization can effectively make social justice problems invisible. The authors also look at the EU context, where a different form of localization discourse emphasizes the local capture of rents in the value chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization. Examining Marsden et al.'s case study of one of these localization projects in the UK, the authors argue that this strategy does not necessarily lead to more equitable forms of rural development. In fact, US and EU discourses are basically two sides of the same coin. Specifically, in neoliberal biopolitical form, they both obscure politics, behind either the discourse of “value” in the EU or “values” in the US. Rather than rejecting localism, however, the authors conclude by arguing for a more “reflexive” localism that harnesses the power of this strategy while consciously struggling against inequality in local arenas.

This study began with the following question: how hospitality concepts have contributed to the quality of cities and to the qualification of urban tourist destinations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical evolution of the concepts of hospitality and their implications in the contemporary concept of the hospitality of the built space.

In this study an analytical empirical approach was used, focusing on the concepts and paradigms that support the studies of the hospitality of built space. The method was based on the representation of hospitality as spatial reading indexes according to the categories of analysis: identity, accessibility, and readability, as stated by Grinover (2007), Raymond (1997) and Lynch (1997). The empirical study, in the Brazilian context, took as its object of analysis the urban hospitality of the three cities that were capitals of Brazil throughout its history: Salvador da Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.

The results of the research confirm the pertinence of the categories of analysis proposed for the understanding of hospitality of the built space and proposes other categories of analysis related to accessibility in its interfaces with identity and readability.

This study can contribute with new understandings in the field of the hospitality of the built space as support to public managers and trade tourist managers that can give quality to the urban space for tourists, and for the citizens as well. Because, in the Brazilian context, the formulation of public policies for public transport services, mobility, accessibility and recreation areas are linked to public managers; in the same way that private initiatives and incentives for leisure, entertainment, and tourism are linked to the managers of the tourist trade.

New possibilities of the understanding of urban hospitality in tourist destinations by the categories of analysis listed – identity, readability and accessibility. Accessibility was the spatial condition that most needed attention as urban hospitality in the Brazilian tourist destinations studied. Otherwise, a contribution was made to the area of study in urban hospitality, given the scarcity of scientific literature on the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to test and present the level of introversion/extroversion of the urban housing in Istanbul in three periods – traditional, modern and contemporary. It intends to examine changes in the boundaries between housing and urban environment in the city by evaluating housing interfaces and their components.

By adopting literature review, observation and comparison methods, the hypothesis that houses in Istanbul are becoming introvert in contemporary period is stated and tested. The qualifications of housing interfaces and their components are examined in the context of three different periods of housing – traditional, modern and contemporary. Common components of interfaces in all periods are identified and different housing types from all periods are compared accordingly.

The results of the comparison made within the study shows that contemporary housing units are much more introvert than previous periods in Istanbul, while housing units of modern period have the most potentiality to be extrovert. It is seen that the analysis method comparing interfacial components and its results are compatible with the hypothesis of the study.

Considering recent and great number of urban problems in Istanbul, the subject of introversion–extroversion in contemporary urban housing gains importance, which lacks in the literature and needs studying. Introversion of housing units affects both domestic life and their urban environment. Developing contemporary housing projects with a human ecological perspective would cure both interior and exterior of urban boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the potentialities offered by a historical approach by addressing its scientific and societal issues as well as its opportunities at the scale of different continents and cultural areas. The authors then show the major role played by traditional societies and indigenous peoples in preserving and transmitting a culture of risk which today is threatened by an unprecedented memory break resulting from the process of globalization. Finally, the authors present two concrete examples of projects aiming to use historical lessons learned to reduce the vulnerability of local communities.

Historical documentation provides a series of very varied archives, voluminous and geographically scattered. Several types of series will be studied. Besides the written archives, the authors shall also realize an inventory of all the elements of the cultural heritage and the memory evoking the risks and the vulnerabilities.

This study shows how forgetting past disasters has contributed to increasing the vulnerability of the modern societies and building a “society of risk.” Paradoxically, industrialization and the era of the engineer opposed “pre-modern” societies to so-called “modern” societies. In this way, ancestral knowledge and strategies have often been despised in favor of hard defense works whose limits are now being measured after the recent disasters. On the other hand, the paper promotes a different model combining both engineering and local historical/cultural knowledge in order to design a more sustainable and applicable strategy.

The authors show the major role played by traditional societies and indigenous peoples in preserving and transmitting a culture of risk which today is threatened by an unprecedented memory break resulting from the process of globalization.

Ethnic entrepreneurs’ networks are analysed on the basis of three complementary dimensions: intensity and complexity of networks; power relations; and entrepreneurs’ horizons of awareness. The analysis is based on two theoretical propositions. First, firms located in the periphery are weakly embedded in national markets due to their external depended relations. Second, local firms use the tendency to embed themselves in their home regions as a strategy to improve their position in external power relations. The inquiry of Arab industry in Israel suggests that the form and degree of embeddedness of any given firm is affected by the existence of both separate economic milieus: Arab and Jewish. The findings lead us to suggest two concepts. First, over‐embeddedness, which characterises Arab firms that are highly embedded in the local milieu, operate under the influence of kinship structures and a petrified supportive tissue that downgrades networks into cohesive coalitions opposing structural changes. Second, under‐embeddedness, which characterises firms that manage to develop and maintain wide inter‐ethnic dependent sets of networks, but due to lack of power fail to transform them into more rewarding exchanges.