“It’s a great place for kids!”: the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim as a suburban safe space

The status of Jerusalem is almost universally regarded as the single most divisive issue in Israeli-Palestinian relations; and Israel’s settlement policy – and its territorial and demographic implications – is widely considered as the most significant “fact on the ground” established by Israel since 1967. We address these issues by observing how Israel’s settlement policy in the area of metropolitan Jerusalem transformed the material, symbolic and political landscape of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Through the case study of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, this paper focuses on settlers’ place attachment, personal geographies, and the relation between the latter and the production of space. We maintain that the “suburban experience” embodied in the lives of the residents illustrates the action of powerful drivers of the overall process of normalization of Jewish presence in the West Bank; in turn, this rendered the settlement policy relatively uncontroversial for large sectors of Israeli public opinion. Also, we maintain that settlements such as Ma’ale Adumim are also the product of the quest for a suburban “safe space” – i. e. an enclosed space designed to avoid contacts with “unpleasant otherness” that residents of the suburbs all over the world often associate to life in the inner city.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The metropolitanization of Israel's settlement policy: The colonization of the West Bank as a strategy of spatial restructuring

Israel's West Bank settlements are a central point of contention in the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Overall, however, their rapid proliferation has been generally understood through the lens of an ideologically centered approach that highlights, specifically, the centrality of the national religious settlers' movement. Against this background, the article focuses on the overlooked reality of large, state-sponsored suburban settlements – and in particular on the role of the Israeli Ministry of Housing in their establishment between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. Building on contributions in the field of political economy and political geography, we conceive the actions of the Ministry in the occupied West Bank as a result of a broader strategy of spatial restructuring. By considering both economic and political imperatives underlying this strategy, our analysis offers a more comprehensive assessment of the factors behind Israel's settlement policy. Drawing on a broad range of empirical sources, from archival material to in-depth interviews with Israeli planners, we argue that the proliferation of settlements has been largely the outcome of a process of metropolitanization – i.e. of the dynamics of urban development of Israel's main metropolitan centers and the adoption of a new, post-Keynesian policy paradigm based on market-oriented economic development. This process has constituted a major factor for the settlements' growth and, ultimately, in the emergence and naturalization of a new territorial configuration in the area of Israel/Palestine.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Governing the bairro clandestino of Cova da Moura (1974–2015): Decentred and collaborative governance in an informal neighbourhood in Lisbon’s metropolitan area

Cova da Moura was established in the municipality of Amadora in the mid-1970s as a bairro clandestino (‘informal’ or ‘illegal neighbourhood’). Since then, it has grown into a community of thousands of residents; having escaped the large rehousing operations of the 1990s, Cova da Moura is today one of the few surviving bairros clandestinos in the metropolitan area of Lisbon, as well as a ‘distressed urban area’. In the four decades of its life, Cova da Moura has passed through different eras of policymaking, and has been the object of a variety of public interventions. The article provides a critical assessment of the Iniciativa Bairros Críticos (Critical Neighbourhoods Initiative, 2005–2013), as an example of a policy initiative embodying a normative vision of collaborative governance. The case of the Iniciativa Bairros Críticos in Cova da Moura provides some lessons on how collaborative governance design can address key challenges that ‘distressed urban areas’ pose to public intervention – but at the same time shows us the unavoidable pitfalls of the process, as well as the limits of their reach vis-à-vis broad, structural issues.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Housing Policy in the Political Agenda: The Trajectory of Portugal

Housing policy, a field located at the junction between welfare and spatial planning, is a key component of urban agendas. This chapter refers to the trajectory of housing policy in Portugal exploring how, and to what extent, housing has constituted a growing matter of political attention, in a country that—formally—has no urban agenda, but where significant interventions in the housing sector have occurred in recent times. We explore how housing policy has changed over the last four decades by adopting a multi-scalar perspective on the governance of the housing sector, in order to show how many different actors (central and local governments, policy experts, activists, etc.) and contingent events (such as the post-2008 economic crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic, whose full impact on housing policy is already evident but still difficult to grasp) have influenced these dynamics. This chapter proposes a genealogy of the emergence of the idea of “housing policy” as a matter of political attention in its own right and its status as a component in the country’s urban agenda. A key focus of the analysis will be the relationship that has developed between Portugal and the EU—from the country’s adhesion to the European Economic Community (1986) to the programme Next Generation EU (2020).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Single prazosin infusion in prelimbic cortex Fosters extinction of amphetamine-induced conditioned place preference

Exposure to drug-associated cues to induce extinction is a useful strategy to contrast cue-induced drug seeking. Norepinephrine (NE) transmission in medial prefrontal cortex has a role in the acquisition and extinction of conditioned place preference induced by amphetamine. We have reported recently that NE in prelimbic cortex delays extinction of amphetamine-induced conditioned place preference (CPP). A potential involvement of α1-adrenergic receptors in the extinction of appetitive conditioned response has been also suggested, although their role in prelimbic cortex has not been yet fully investigated. Here, we investigated the effects of the α1-adrenergic receptor antagonist prazosin infusion in the prelimbic cortex of C57BL/6J mice on expression and extinction of amphetamine-induced CPP. Acute prelimbic prazosin did not affect expression of amphetamine-induced CPP on the day of infusion, while in subsequent days it produced a clear-cut advance of extinction of preference for the compartment previously paired with amphetamine (Conditioned stimulus, CS). Moreover, prazosin-treated mice that had extinguished CS preference showed increased mRNA expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and post-synaptic density 95 (PSD-95) in the nucleus accumbens shell or core, respectively, thus suggesting that prelimbic α1-adrenergic receptor blockade triggers neural adaptations in subcortical areas that could contribute to the extinction of cue-induced drug-seeking behavior. These results show that the pharmacological blockade of α1-adrenergic receptors in prelimbic cortex by a single infusion is able to induce extinction of amphetamine-induced CPP long before control (vehicle) animals, an effect depending on contingent exposure to retrieval, since if infused far from or after reactivation it did not affect preference. Moreover, they suggest strongly that the behavioral effects depend on post-treatment neuroplasticity changes in corticolimbic network, triggered by a possible “priming” effect of prazosin, and point to a potential therapeutic power of the antagonist for maladaptive memories

Biothiols, taurine, and lipid-soluble antioxidants in the edible pulp of Sicilian cactus pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) fruits and changes of bioactive juice components upon industrial processing

Biothiols, taurine, and flavonols, as well as tocopherols and carotenoids have been assessed in the edible pulp of Sicilian red (Sanguigna), yellow (Surfarina), and white (Muscaredda) cultivars of cactus pear. The yellow cultivar has the highest level of reduced glutathione (GSH, 8.1 ( 0.78 mg/100 g pulp), whereas the white cultivar showed the highest amount of cysteine (1.21 ( 0.12 mg/100 g pulp). Taurine accounted for 11.7 ( 1.0 mg/100 g in the yellow pulp, while lower levels were measured in the others. With the exception of kaempferol in the yellow cultivar (2.7 ( 0.2 íg/100 g pulp), the edible pulp of cactus pear was not a source of flavonols. Very low amounts of lipid-soluble antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin E and carotenoids were measured in all cultivars. As a consequence of industrial processing, a total loss of GSH and â-carotene and a net decrease of vitamin C and cysteine were revealed in the fruit juice, whereas betalains, taurine, and vitamin E appeared to be less susceptible to degradation

A governança das políticas de habitação: (co)produção do conhecimento e capacitação institucional

Este ensaio debruça-se sobre a governança das políticas públicas de habitação em Portugal, tendo como objeto de reflexão a chamada Nova Geração de Políticas de Habitação (NGPH) e levando em consideração a trajetória recente das políticas públicas de habitação em Portugal. Tem como objetivo caracterizar os pontos críticos inerentes àquela iniciativa do governo, contribuindo para a reflexão sobre as potencialidades e limitações das ambições da NGPH. Termo polissémico, a palavra “governança” inclui formas de governação que englobam diferentes atores do Estado e ainda atores não-públicos. Neste ensaio, interessa-nos tratar o tema em relação a dois aspetos fundamentais do desenho, implementação e avaliação das políticas públicas: (i) a realização e consolidação de parcerias entre diferentes atores públicos; (ii) e o papel do conhecimento na sustentação empírica e concetual das políticas públicas. São também oferecidas algumas considerações finais sobre um dos principais “testes” do sucesso da NGPH – a concretização das Estratégias Locais de Habitação (ELH).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Housing Activism and Urban Space during the Covid19 Pandemic. Research Notes on the Bairro of Arroios, Lisbon

This paper presents some research notes from an on-going project on housing activism in Lisbon in the last decade, describing its ascendant trajectory (2012-2019) and the impact that the Covid epidemic had on the local activist community (2020-2022). In particular, the paper focuses on two of the main protagonists of local housing activism, the association Habita and the collective Stop Despejos, and on the relation that they have developed in time with an ecosystem (of sites, groups, projects) that have developed in the last ten years in the neighbourhood of Arroios, which have found a characteristic spatial infrastructure in the coletividades (a Portuguese expression that identifies spaces managed by no-profit associations or collectives). The paper examines this relation against the background of two bodies of literature, namely contributions that have examined (i) the nexus between collective action and space and (ii) the different forms of political agency represented by the conceptual pole of "contentious" and "everyday politics". This research is based on extensive data collection (through ethnographic notes, documental analysis, and in-depth interviews, 2020-2022) and on the authors' status of insiders in the process observed