The Zoning in and the Zoning out of the Elderly: Emerging Community and Communication Patterns

Increasingly, senior only residences are zoning seniors out of mainstream residential areas and into segregated living and mature communities. Senior gated communities are variations on a theme of gated communities in which lifestyle is packaged and sold. Active adult retirement communities exclude the young and offer active lifestyle living, with diverse levels of senior living choices. Such an approach contrasts with policies designed to encourage aging in place. It is also distinct from Golden Age Zoning districts designed to allow affordable housing for senior citizens in a public/private partnership. Some towns have zoned public parks to establish areas for children distinct from the elderly. Simultaneously, more and more older adults are embracing the modern media environment. According to the Pew Research Center, baby boomers and seniors are the fastest growing group of social networking website users to connect with family, friends from the past, and seeking information and support with medical issues. This paper explores the person/place relationship and issues associated with design for the social needs of an aging in a media filled world

Urban comix: Subcultures, infrastructures and “the right to the city” in Delhi

This article argues that comics production in India should be configured as a collaborative artistic endeavour that visualizes Delhi’s segregationist infrastructure, claiming a right to the city through the representation and facilitation of more socially inclusive urban spaces. Through a discussion of the work of three of the Pao Collective’s founding members – Orijit Sen, Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh – it argues that the group, as for other comics collectives in cities across the world, should be understood as a networked urban social movement. Their graphic narratives and comics art counter the proliferating segregation and uneven development of neo-liberal Delhi by depicting and diagnosing urban violence. Meanwhile, their collaborative production processes and socialized consumption practices, and the radical comix traditions on which these movements draw (and which are sometimes occluded by the label “Indian Graphic Novel”) create socially networked and politically active spaces that resist the divisions marking Delhi’s contemporary urban fabric

‘Good relations’ among neighbours and workmates? The everyday encounters of Accession 8 migrants and established communities in urban England

Drawing on data generated in a recently completed qualitative study in a northern, English city, this paper explores the everyday social encounters of Accession 8 (A8) migrants who entered the UK following the expansion of the European Union in 2004. A number of options from permanent residence in another Member State on the one hand, to more fleeting circulatory and multiple short-term moves on the other, now exist for these new European citizens. The relatively short-term and temporary residence of some A8 migrants calls into question the focus of much UK government policy, which emphasises the need for migrants to integrate into diverse yet cohesive communities. Against this backdrop, the aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it considers the somewhat different character of A8 migration (encompassing a spectrum from permanency to temporariness) and what this means for routine experiences of mixing between new migrants and established host communities. Second, the paper explores such interactions in terms of ‘everyday encounters’ in both neighbourhood and work spaces and asks whether such spatio-temporal practices and experiences enhance or inhibit the building of ‘good relations’ in a multicultural city

The Law of Conservation of Activities in Domestic Space

Until the early twentieth century, for hundreds of years, the housing prototype in Seoul has been a courtyard house where a central open space is surrounded by building blocks and fence. Through the twentieth century, as new modern types of houses emerged, the housing culture began to change and consequently this prototype began to make transformations. This evolutionary process necessarily accompanied the functional change of room activities; some rooms acquired more activities and some lost them; and some has lost all the activities and became extinct. This paper attempts to analyse the housing evolution in Seoul by measuring the ″space-activity interactions″. Through the analysis, it is found that, at the collective level, the basic home activities are preserved through the formal change of the house. Without leaving the domestic field, they are decomposed into separate elements, re-distributed into other spaces, and then re-combined to characterise a new type of space. This is the internal spatial mechanism by which the old house is gradually transformed into a new house

More Color More Pride: Addressing Structural Barriers to Interracial LGBTQ Loving

Through an examination of State-supported racial structures, this Essay illustrates that even after the legalization of interracial and same-sex marriages, the State’s control over housing, education, and employment prospects impedes the formation of interracial LGBTQ relationships. This Essay suggests that reducing residential segregation can be a first step in dismantling structural barriers to interracial LGBTQ loving, as truly integrated housing would increase cross-racial contact, lead to better educational and employment outcomes, and give LGBTQ people of color a chance to improve their social capital. This, together with altering how issues of race are framed within the LGBTQ community, will help dispel negative racial stereotypes and facilitate the formation of interracial LGBTQ relationships

Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life

Part of the Volume on Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook serve as "networked publics." As with unmediated publics like parks and malls, youth use networked publics to gather, socialize with their peers, and make sense of and help build the culture around them. This article examines American youth engagement in networked publics and considers how properties unique to such mediated environments (e.g., persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences) affect the ways in which youth interact with one another. Ethnographic data is used to analyze how youth recognize these structural properties and find innovative ways of making these systems serve their purposes. Issues like privacy and impression management are explored through the practices of teens and youth participation in social network sites is situated in a historical discussion of youth's freedom and mobility in the United States

Cosmopolis, integrating migrant communities into local environments in Helsinki

Nowadays the high flow of population migrations from developing to developed countries is converging on most of the segregated areas in the urban environments. The grouping of these population groups that have gathered in specific locations are becoming physically and mentally segregated communities. Immigrant groups clustering in specific zones or neighbourhoods of cities make native residents to avoid or move out for various reasons causing mental barriers and bad reputation areas within urban contexts. In sub urban areas, this mental barriers are complemented by physical barriers, giving rise to mentally and physically segregated areas in developed metropolis. Finland presents a great potential to develop multicultural urban environments, due to the existing social mixing policy. On the other hand, the vast inhabitant migration from rural areas in the 60’s (Vaattovaara et al. 2010) resulted in urgent need of housing buildings, developing high rise neighbourhoods in sub urban areas based on the modern model of a car-based city. This model is evidently problematic nowadays due to the various physical barriers, isolating this areas from urban life, therefore producing spatial segregation. The main aim of the thesis is to study spatial segregation of neighbourhoods with high percentage of immigrant groups in Helsinki. Jakomäki, a suburb located on the northern borders of Helsinki, is chosen as a case study to develop a strategic proposal for better integration. There is a potential to integrate the suburb in parallel to the development of the capital city latest master plan; the developing of Malmi airport and the Boulevardization. The aim of this thesis is to integrate the physical space and the migrant communities in the local environment, in order to reach a cosmopolis. By taking in consideration urban goals established by UN Habitat Europe and the City of Helsinki, the project aims to impact at the urban, the district and the neighbourhood level; for triggering the development of the north part of Helsinki while benefiting local inhabitant communities and encourage mental and spatial integration

The performance of space – exploring social and spatial phenomena of interaction patterns in an organisation.

It is often proposed that the design of the physical workplace influences social interaction and therefore organisational behaviour in one way or the other. Yet there is little accordance among scholars on how exactly the relationship between the social space and the social structure of an organisation is constituted. In order to explore this relationship, we combine an interpretive, phenomenological approach with a correlational, syntactic approach. Using the example of a workplace environment studied on multiple layers as well as in detail we propose that physical space influences the formation of social structure and organisational behaviour in manifold, but analytically tractable ways. The application of qualitative and quantitative methods in tandem proves fruitful for understanding the complex phenomena that characterise the emergence of organisational culture