Building Utopias on Sand: The production of space in Almere and the future of suburbia

Cities and suburbs are on the brink of a new era. Decades-long suburbanisation of the affluent and the socially mobile has almost ceased as we knew it. In its place there is now city gentrification and suburban diversification, upsetting linear understandings of mobilities on the metropolitan level. In his dissertation Yannis Tzaninis addresses the puzzle of contemporary production of (sub)urban space by investigating the former suburban new town Almere, a space and place caught in a vortex of global change. Through the analysis of municipal statistics, and by conducting a survey and interviews with current and former residents of Almere, he analyses people’s mobilities, experiences and aspirations. He finds that placemaking processes are fluid and adapt to wider social changes, while households are pushed and pulled depending on material resources, aspirations and city branding. In conclusion he uncovers the character and future of suburbia, advancing our understanding of urban growth, placemaking and mobility

Building sand castles in Dutch suburbia: from new-frontier pioneering to diversifying aspirations

This paper addresses the suburbanization process diachronically, comparing the aspirations of old and new movers to the suburban new town of Almere in the Netherlands. First, a survey of 295 inhabitants was conducted, regarding their motives in moving to the town from its beginning in 1976. Subsequently, in-depth interviews were completed with twelve 'pioneers' who moved to Almere up to 1984 and twelve who have moved there since 2000. The paper analyses place-making processes in suburban spaces, the aspirations when moving and the lived experiences in suburban vis-à-vis urban environments. Ideas about pioneering, communitarianism and utopias have shifted towards pragmatic and individualistic aspirations based on employment opportunities and better housing space-to-price rates, reflecting the shift from the Western prosperity of the 1960s-1970s to the current precariousness of neoliberal, inter-city competition

Beyond the urban–suburban dichotomy:Shifting mobilities and the transformation of suburbia

Suburbanisation has been a prevalent process of post-war, capitalist urban growth, leading to the majority of citizens in many advanced capitalist economies currently living in the suburbs. We are also witnessing, however, the reverse movement of the increasing return to the inner-city. This contradiction raises questions regarding contemporary urban growth and the socio-spatial production of the suburbs. This paper draws on the case of new town Almere in the metropolitan region of Amsterdam to cast light upon the changing suburban–urban relationship, by investigating the mobility to and from Almere for two decades through socio-economic, demographic data between 1990 and 2013. We demonstrate that Almere has developed from a typically suburban family community to a receiver of both international unmarried newcomers and families; its population has also become relatively poorer, yet the levels of upwards income mobility have remained stable. These trends emphasise alternative types of mobilities emerging in concert to the more typical suburban migration. The town’s transformation challenges the urban–suburban dichotomy, pointing to alternative explanations of contemporary urban growth and metropolitan integration

Moving Urban Political Ecology beyond the “Urbanization of Nature”

Urban political ecology (UPE) focuses on unsettling traditional understandings of ‘cities’ as ontological entities separate from ‘nature’ and on how the production of settlements is metabolically linked with flows of capital and more-than-human ecological processes. The contribution of this paper is to recalibrate UPE to new urban forms and processes of extended urbanization. This exploration goes against the reduction of what goes on outside of cities to processes that emanate unidirectionally from cities. Acknowledging UPE’s rich intellectual history and aiming to enrich rather than split the field, this paper identifies four emerging discourses that go beyond UPE’s original formulati

Marginality and stigmatization: identifying with the neighbourhood in Rotterdam

The reformation of capitalist economies due to deindustrialization has given rise to joblessness and fragmentation, reshaping traditional working class suburbs into reservoirs of poverty and social deprivation. Such elements of marginality give birth to a discourse about problematic areas, parallel societies and even ghettoes developing within wealthy western countries. This stigmatization and hierarchization of neighbourhoods impacts on people's perception of these areas. However, the way the residents deal with this stigmatization is dependent on the characteristics of the neighborhoods. Areas with a lot of social activity on the street level allow their residents to become attached and care about their neighbourhood. Consequently, what promotes attachment with the local environment is the facilitation of socializing with people, namely having a large social network (friends and family) in close distance