From sustainable urbanism to climate urbanism

an article by Joshua Long (Southwestern University, USA) and Jennifer L Rice (University of Georgia, USA) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 5 (April 2019)

Abstract

As the negative impacts of climate change become increasingly apparent, many city leaders and policymakers have begun to regard climate action as both a fiscal challenge and strategic economic opportunity. However, addressing the increasingly evident threats of climate change in the neoliberal, post-financial-crisis city raises several questions about its equitable implementation.

This paper suggests that the prioritisation of a specific mode of climate resilient urban development represents a departure from the previous decades’ movement toward sustainable urbanism.

We refer to this new development paradigm as ‘climate urbanism’, a policy orientation that

1. promotes cities as the most viable and appropriate sites of climate action and
2. prioritises efforts to protect the physical and digital infrastructures of urban economies from the hazards associated with climate change.

We argue that the potential social justice impacts of climate urbanism have not been fully interrogated. Certainly, cities are appropriate sites for addressing climate change, but in the current neoliberal context, the transition from policy rhetoric to climate action presents a potentially problematic landscape of inequality and injustice.

With that in mind, this paper offers a critical lens to evaluate the merits of climate urbanism and to interrogate its potential outcomes.

Destination dumping ground: The convergence of ‘unwanted’ populations in disadvantaged city areas

an article by Lynda Cheshire (The University of Queensland, Australia) and Gina Zappia (University of Tasmania, Australia) published in Urban Studies Volume 53 Number 10 (2016)

Abstract

Academic and lay discourses around disadvantaged urban areas often draw on the language of ‘dumping grounds’ to encapsulate the poverty, marginalisation and social problems often found there. Yet the concept of a dumping ground remains insufficiently theorised.

This paper addresses this issue by identifying five constituent features of the dumping ground:

• the perception of people as waste whose fate is to be discarded;
• the need to accommodate this human ‘waste’ and the logic by which places are selected for this purpose;
• the mechanisms through which this spatial sorting occurs as problem populations are moved to their ‘rightful’ place;
• the relations of power which enforce or encourage this mobility; and finally,
• the reactions of incumbent residents in neighbourhoods that are compelled to host unwanted social groups.

In the second part of this paper, these themes are illustrated via a case study of the Australian city of Logan where residents complain that their city has been treated as a dumping ground in order to explain its poor reputation.

Full text (PDF)

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Building on models of information behaviour: linking information seeking and communication

an article by Andrew Robson and Lyn Robinson (City University London, UK) published in Journal of Documentation Volume 69 Issue 2 (2013)

Abstract

Purpose
This paper aims to gain insights from existing models of information behaviour, building on them to develop a new model which, unlike most others, encompasses both information seeking and communication. By identifying key factors affecting the successful communication and use of information, it is hoped that the model will be of practical value both to information providers and to users.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a literature search and analysis of well-established models of information seeking and of communication, from which a new conceptual model is constructed.

Findings
Existing models have elements in common, though most models in library and information science focus on information seeking and the information user, while those from the field of communications focus on the communicator and the communication process. A new model is proposed that includes key elements of existing models and takes into account not just the information seeker but also the communicator or information provider.

Originality/value
The model developed in this paper is the first to combine elements from both information seeking and communication models. Being built on previous research, it can be used to investigate the practical value of the model itself and the elements that it has in common with other models.

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