Book review: urban neighborhoods in a new era: revitalization politics in the postindustrial city edited by Clarence N. Stone and Robert P. Stoker

In the edited collection Urban Neighborhoods in a New Era: Revitalization Politics in the Postindustrial City, Clarence N. Stone and Robert P. Stoker investigate how North American cities have developed neighbourhood-level policies aimed at challenging urban deprivation through case studies of cities including Baltimore, Chicago and Los Angeles. Although the book does not fully tackle the root causes of structural inequality, it does offer clear proposals that predict a positive future for deprived urban communities, writes Do Young Oh

Book review: urban revolution now: Henri Lefebvre in social research and architecture

More than half of the world’s population now live in cities – but how has this transformation in how we live occurred? Urban Revolution Now: Henri Lefebvre in Social Research and Architecture uses the work of Lefebvre to critically understand the process of urbanisation and to offer practical answers to the problems facing urbanised society. Do Young Oh praises the book’s collection of case studies as being useful for showing how Lefebvrian ideas can be used for research and practice across the disciplines of the social sciences

The university and East Asian cities: the variegated origins of urban universities in colonial Seoul and Singapore

This essay explores and compares the development of colonial urban universities in Seoul and Singapore for the purpose of examining the multifaceted and scaled socio-political relationships in colonial cities. The colonial universities were a contested space where different interests crossed. The pattern of these intersections was different because Seoul and Singapore experienced different colonial powers – Japan and Britain, respectively. In this regard, this essay focuses on how different colonial experiences affected universities as well as urban environments in Seoul and Singapore. The findings show that the university campus development trends of colonial universities in Seoul and Singapore are important to understanding the urbanization processes of both cities. The varied colonial interests, global and local, shaped universities and their surrounding urban environments in different ways. Understanding these differences helps us understand the development trajectory of East Asian urbanization

Developmentalist cities? Interrogating urban developmentalism in East Asia

Developmentalist cities? Interrogating urban developmentalism in East Asia, editedby Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park, Leiden, Brill, 2018, 364 pp., $198 (hardback), ISBN: 978900438360

Locating the housing crisis in Kuwaiti state, land and society

Despite the oil wealth and hyper-welfare provision to its citizens, Kuwait has seen the rise of a ‘housing crisis’ discourse in recent years. This paper aims to provide an opportunity to understand the nature of Kuwait’s housing crisis and the reasons behind the state’s perceived inability to respond to it. Through the analysis of research findings from the field, we argue that the housing crisis in Kuwait is socially constructed, reflecting the multi- layered conditions of historic provision and consumption of housing in Kuwaiti society. The formulation of the housing crisis can be further disaggregated into (a) the crisis of the Kuwaiti welfare state, (b) the crisis of land development and (c) the society in crisis. Tackling the housing crisis, therefore, requires a holistic approach that involves multi-level stakeholder engagement, including a wide range of citizens. Our study on housing in Kuwait draws attention to the country’s contemporary state–society relations and the complexities of housing crises unfolding globally

From a colonial institution to a neoliberal real estate developer: comparative analysis of universities in the urban process in East Asia

This thesis investigates the question of how East Asian universities have engaged in urban processes as spatially grounded variegated social processes from the colonial era to recent decades by adopting a comparative urbanism approach. Historically, universities in the US and Europe have been influential urbanisation actors in their hosting cities, having occupied a substantial amount of land. The relationship between a university and its hosting city was often defined as ‘Town and Gown’; that implies an adversarial link, but this traditional relationship has changed. Universities in East Asia have also participated in urbanisation processes in diverse ways since their birth, but the dynamics behind this multi-faceted process has rarely been addressed. Using research data collected mainly from fieldwork in Singapore and South Korea, including 42 interviews and archival records, this thesis highlights the relationship between universities and cities in East Asia, focusing on three distinctive periods: the colonial, developmental, and postdevelopmental eras. In all these enquiries, land ownership by universities acts as a thread that weaves the diverse facets of the role of universities into different periods. The findings of this thesis can be summarised as follows: Firstly, colonialism has been influential in the university-urbanisation relationship. During the colonial era, the East Asian university emerged as a symbolic and political institution in the city. Various colonial and local actors surrounded the colonial universities to promote or fight against the ideology of imperialism, which demonstrates the diverse aspects of colonialism in cities of East Asia. Such legacies of colonialism are still found today. Secondly, the East Asian developmental state is a variegated concept. The university plays an important role in society, but the way in which the university engages with the developmental state has varied across geographies. The developmental state attempted to utilise universities to support rapid economic and urban development, but such efforts were not always successful. This finding challenges the conventional understanding that assumes a homogeneous conceptualisation of the East Asian developmental state. Lastly, the entrepreneurial character of East Asian universities has become increasingly evident while the presence of the state is still visible. Thus the role of East Asian universities in urban processes has also become more diverse and dynamic in the postdevelopmental state since the 1990s. While the entrepreneurial university has a long history in East Asia, the globalised and financialised interests are penetrating the university more actively through various urban development projects. This thesis concludes that there is an emerging need to recognise East Asian universities as land-based institutions playing an influential role in diverse and uneven urban processes. Investigating universities also provides an opportunity to identify linkages between their colonial legacies and contemporary urban processes in East Asia

Variable Priority Number Control of SPMS for Leisure Ship

Abstract: The power system of leisure ship has a character of stand-alone type, so it continuously checks the usable power. Especially, the leisure ship using renewable energy needs to adjust the power consumption of loads according to the usable power. Also, the important loads of leisure ship are different by operation mode. However, current power management system doesnot consider such character. This paper studied load management system of the SPMS(Smart Power Management System) and composed using the smart plug. The SPMS controls the loads depending on a user's pattern and character through variable priority number control. This control algorithm was verified through simulation of assumed user and situation using LabVIEW