The French banlieue: Renovating the suburbs

The French banlieues were constructed from the mid-1950s in response to rapid economic growth and subsequent migration to the cities, both from rural areas as well as from outside France, during the post-war period. Low-cost public sector housing was constructed on the edge of cities, characterized by high-rise towers, few community facilities, and often poor connectivity to the rest of the city. However, by the mid-1970s, these peripheral housing estates had become synonymous with marginalization and socioeconomic exclusion, with low-income households, often of ethnic minority background, feeling isolated from mainstream society. A number of urban renewal programs have attempted to tackle these issues, most recently the Program National de Rénovation Urbaine (PNRU), which aims to address stigmatization of the banlieue through housing diversification, area improvements, and a policy of “social mixing.” However, evidence suggests that this policy has only been partially successful, due to the emphasis on demolition of the social housing stock, with an erosion of affordable housing for the least well-off, as well as limited evidence of the benefits of introducing middle-income housing to disadvantaged neighborhoods in terms of social mixing and integration. Critics suggest that urban renewal programs in the banlieue should integrate actions to promote social cohesion through community-led initiatives, to create more socially sustainable neighborhoods for the future

Arts-based methods [abstract]

Researchers are increasingly using arts-based methods in geography to explore new pathways in the creation of knowledge through creative practice. This can be in any phase of the research, from initial data collection and analysis, to interpretation and representation. Creative practice in geography can stretch across different disciplines, from the literary arts of poetry and creative prose, to performance-based music and drama, to dance and the visual arts. The researcher can either work as ‘researcher-artist’ mobilizing these methods in their own work, or collaborate with research participants through participatory arts-based methods. Both approaches present geographers with new pathways to create knowledge within the qualitative research paradigm, expanding their capacity to explore varied understandings and experiences of place and space. These methods reflect a growing interest in geographical scholarship towards the affective and embodied aspects of everyday practice, offering a more fluid approach to understanding the emotional qualities of quotidian experience. They also open up opportunities to engage different publics, and to broaden research audiences beyond academia. Although these methods are gaining recognition, further work is needed to strengthen their position within the discipline, particularly addressing the cross-disciplinary creative skills that geographers need to develop further to give legitimacy to their creative practice in a research setting

“The Idea and Practice of Translation” : An Annotated Transcription of Edward Seidensticker’s Talk at Doshisha University

研究ノー

Co-Creation and the City: Arts-Based Methods and Participatory Approaches in Urban Planning (Editorial)

This editorial for the thematic issue on "Co-Creation and the City: Arts-Based Methods and Participatory Approaches in Urban Planning" draws together the key themes of the ten articles in the issue. Firstly, the concept of Co-Creation is defined as a collective creative process involving artists, academics, and communities. Co-creation results in tangible or intangible outputs in the form of artwork or artefacts, and knowledge generated by multiple partners that, in a planning context, can feed into shared understandings of more socially just cities. The ten articles are summarized, and the emerging conclusions are drawn out, under three broad themes. The first set of conclusions deals with power imbalances and the risks of instrumentalization within co-creative processes. Contributors dismiss romanticizing assumptions that expect artistic practices to inevitably disrupt power hierarchies and strengthen democracy. The second set of outcomes relates to how arts-based strategies and methods can help address the translation of issues between urban planning and art. Finally, the third group of conclusions focuses on practices of listening within co-creation processes, raising the issue of voices that are less audible, rather than unheard or not listened to. In their concluding remarks, the authors recommend further research to be undertaken in this emerging field to explore the constraints and possibilities for urban planners to listen to arts-based expressions, in order to integrate a broader range of understandings and knowledge into plans for the city of the future

Vancouver: Critical reflections on the development experience of a peripheral global city

Highlights • Vancouver is acclaimed for its progressive approach to planning, particularly through the ‘Vancouver model’. • Its lifestyle metrics exceed many other cities’, particularly related to green space, cultural diversity & commitments to public transit. • However, economic underdevelopment associated with marginality within circuits of globalization undermine its position. • The housing crisis threatens the city's social sustainability, and socio-economic inequalities are increasingly evident

Innovation and New Path Creation: The Role of Niche Environments in the Development of the Wind Power Industry in Germany and the UK

This paper seeks to explore the issues of innovation and new path creation in the UK and Germany, illustrated through the case of the modern wind power industry. Taking an evolutionary perspective drawing on path dependence theory, the paper examines the role of niche environments in the creation of new economic pathways. The research finds that new economic pathways are more likely to develop in places where niche conditions provide receptive environments for innovations to flourish. The policy implications of the research include the importance of supporting niche environments that encourage growth in new sectors and the need for financial support to bring innovations to market, to encourage the development of new economic pathways

Co-Creation as an agonistic practice in the favela of Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro

This paper explores the potential of ‘Co-Creation’ to develop new understandings of neighbourhood disadvantage in collaboration with civil society partners. It argues that there is a growing need for collaborative knowledge production with communities carrying vernacular knowledges previously invalidated by dominant epistemologies. The first part of the paper undertakes a reconceptualization of ‘co-creation’, a term usually associated with citizen involvement in neoliberal contexts, redeveloping it as a ‘critical artistic practice’ (Chantal Mouffe, 2013) in which new ways of imagining the city can be articulated. The second part of the paper examines the practice of Co-Creation as a participatory methodology involving artists, researchers and stakeholders in developing ‘agonistic spaces’ by scrutinizing a five-day workshop conducted in the Rio de Janeiro favela of Santa Marta to explore multiple understandings and meanings of this neighbourhood. Through an analysis of creative workshop activities such as photovoice and mapping exercises, the authors explore the potential of the Co-Creation approach to construct new subjectivities that can help subvert existing configurations of power. The conclusion formulates some recommendations about future strategies to maximise Co-Creation’s potential to engage communities in collaborative knowledge production about their neighbourhoods and bring about positive change.

"Social mix" as "sustainability fix"?: Exploring social sustainability in the French suburbs

The French suburbs, or banlieues, have long been associated with marginalization and peripheralization, characterized by unemployment, a high proportion of ethnic minority populations and low education attainment levels. Since 2000, the ‘crisis’ of the banlieue has been addressed through a policy of ‘social mixing’ which aims to promote mixed communities in certain neighbourhoods, to ‘dilute’ the ‘problematic elements’ of the suburbs. This ‘social sustainability fix’ however has had mixed results. Questions can be raised over whether a policy based on increasing a neighbourhood’s social mix is an appropriate sustainability fix for the suburbs, and whether it has actually resulted in the outcomes that were intended. Rather than encouraging social integration, it is argued here that the policy of social mixing reinforces segregation, and has done little to tackle inequalities and social exclusion. We suggest that there are alternative solutions to the challenges of fostering social sustainability in the suburbs, which could be implemented in partnership with citizens and neighbourhood-based groups (associations) that would be more effective in addressing social sustainability solutions in the future

Scott Wellman

贈る言

翻訳の文学的側面

Reevaluating Translation as a Driving Force of Scholarship (翻訳の再評価：学問を深める原動力), 国際日本文化研究センター, 2016年2月27日-28