City indicators : now to Nanjing

This paper provides the key elements to develop an integrated approach for measuring and monitoring city performance globally. The paper reviews the role of cities and why indicators are important. Then it discusses past approaches to city indicators and the systems developed to date, including the World Bank's initiatives. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of past experiences, it discusses the characteristics of optimal indicators. The paper concludes with a proposed plan to develop standardized indicators that emphasize the importance of indicators that are measurable, replicable, potentially predictive, and most important, consistent and comparable over time and across cities. As an innovative characteristic, the paper includes subjective measures in city indicators, such as well-being, happy citizens, and trust.Cultural Policy,City Development Strategies,Cultural Heritage&Preservation,ICT Policy and Strategies,Housing&Human Habitats

Places of everyday cosmopolitanisms: East-European construction workers in London

This paper illustrates how cosmopolitanisms among East-European construction workers in London are shaped by the localised spatial contexts in which encounters with difference take place. Their cosmopolitan attitudes and behaviours arise from both survival strategies and from a taste for cultural goods, thus challenging the elite/working-class divide in current cosmopolitanism literature. Through semi-structured interviews and participant photographs of 24 East-European construction workers who have arrived in London since the European Union expansion in May 2004, this paper illustrates how these ‘new’ European citizens, develop varying degrees and multitudes of cosmopolitanisms in everyday places such as building sites and shared houses. These cosmopolitanisms are shaped by their transnational histories, nationalistic sentiments, and access to social and cultural capital in specific localised contexts. Thus subjective perceptions of gendered, ethnic, and racial notions of ‘others’ that are carried across national boundaries are reinforced or challenged as their encounters with ‘others’ produce perceptions of marginalisation or empowerment in these places. This paper finally suggests that cosmopolitanism should be understood not simply through class but rather through access to power and capital in everyday localised contexts

City sustainability: the influence of walkability on built environments

A vital issue in community is providing an easy access to the transport network for different range of community members such as; very young, old, children and disable people. The functions that walking and walkable area can be support includes community involvement, health, meeting and gathering and recreation which has positive effects on sustainability and vice versa. Walkability is the basis of sustainable city. The same as bicycling, walking can be known as ‘green’ type of transportation which except crowding reduction and also has low level of environmental influence, energy conserving without any air and noise pollution. It can be more than a purely useful type of travel to shopping, school and work. Also have both social and recreational importance. This research aims at supporting urban design knowledge and practice and contributing to the broader field of “walkability” by refining the methods and measures used to analyse the relationship between walking behaviour and physical environment and its impacts on city sustainability. In order to integrate knowledge from theories and research on walkability from different fields and of different perspectives, it is crucial to first build a broader view and a more comprehensive understanding of how the built environment influences walking. What has been done during the earlier part of this project, and will be shown in this research, is to provide a better understanding of the complexity of the relationship between the built environment and walking and also the complexity that lies in both of these entities, the urban form and walking activity

Profiling the victims: public awareness of pollution-related harm in China

This article aims to identify factors which influence public awareness of health or economic harm from pollution in China. Based on an analysis of the China General Social Survey (CGSS) carried out nationwide by Renmin University and HKUST in 2006, it focuses on awareness of pollution-related harm or self-identification as a pollution victim. The analysis tests three groups of hypotheses about how self-identified victims differ from others: first, in terms of the environmental conditions they experience, such as the actual level of pollution and types of neighbourhoods they inhabit; second, in terms of resources including material and information resources, time, social capital and political experience; and third, in terms of political attitudes. The conclusion discusses implications for the politics of public participation in environmental governance in China

Stakeholder engagement in sustainable housing refurbishment in the UK

The UK government is committed to effectively implement a viable sustainable agenda in the social housing sector. To this end housing associations and local authorities are being encouraged to improve the environmental performance of their new and existing homes. Whilst much attention has been focused on new housing (e.g. the Code for Sustainable Homes) little effort has been focussed on improving the 3.9 (approx) million homes maintained and managed by the public sector (in England), which, given the low rate of new build and demolition (<1% in England), will represent approximately 70% of the public housing stock in 2050. Thus, if UK is to achieve sustainable public housing the major effort will have to focus on the existing stock. However, interpreting the sustainability agenda for an existing housing portfolio is not a straight foreword activity. In addition to finding a ‘technical’ solution, landlords also haveto address the socio-economic issues that balance quality of expectations of tenants with the economic realities of funding social housing refurbishment. This paper will report the findings of a qualitative study (participatory approach) that examined the processes by which a large public landlord sought to develop a long-term sustainable housing strategy. Through a series of individual meetings and group workshops the research team identified: committed leadership; attitudes towards technology; social awareness; and collective understanding of the sustainability agenda as key issues that the organisation needed to address in developing a robust and defendable refurbishment strategy. The paper concludes that the challenges faced by the landlord in improving the sustainability of their existing stock are not primarily technical, but socio-economic. Further, while the economic challenges: initial capital cost; lack of funding; and pay-back periods can be overcome, if the political will exists, by fiscal measures; the social challenges: health & wellbeing; poverty; security; space needs; behaviour change; education; and trust; are much more complex in nature and will require a coordinated approach from all the stakeholders involved in the wider community if they are to be effectively addressed. The key challenge to public housing landlords is to develop mechanisms that can identify and interpret the complex nature of the social sustainability agenda in a way that reflects local aspirations (although the authors believe the factors will exist in all social housing communities, their relative importance is likely to vary between communities) whilst addressing Government agendas

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

Producing space, producing China : a critical intervention

The concepts of the production and representation of space and place are receiving an increasing amount of attention in both the humanities and the social sciences. This paper will use the theoretical knowledge that has and continues to be produced on the subject to come to a better understanding of the spatial origins that constitute the place that is Chinese nation state. The analysis of spatial practises should shed light on the question what China is and wherefrom it receives the legitimacy for its social-spatial integrity. It will be argued that the arrival of modernity and its universal measurement of time and space were essential components in the gradual transformation from ethnocentric place to a territorially defined nation state. The political production and organisation of space employed for the formation of the nation state is argued to be the consequence of the same (globalising) logic that is now said to question and undermine its territorial integrity. Modernity and globalisation are in this paper, in other words, considered to be similar, if not identical, spatial-temporal concepts that both help to create and destruct places. This is arguably best visible in the constant production and reproduction of the most sophisticated of spatial organisations: our cities. I will argue that despite the changing face of cities, of which the disputed contemporary "globalisation" is but one of many, the spatial reality that is the modern nation state remains the same. This is not to return to an orthodox realist interpretation but to understand the very "stuff" that space and place are made of

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations