Transportation infrastructure tremendously affects the quality of life for urban residents, influences public and mental health, and shapes social relations. Historically, the topic is rich with social and political controversy and the resultant transit systems in the United States cause problems for minority residents and issues for the public. Environmental justice frameworks provide a means to identify and address harms that affect marginalized groups, but environmental justice has limits that cannot account for the mainstream population. To account for (...) this condition, I employ a complex moral assessment measure that provides a way to talk about harms that affect the public. (shrink)

Many analytical studies purporting to aid decision-making are produced and yet their contribution to actual decision-making is questioned. This article focuses on how institutional structures influence the way analytical information is actually used. A variation of information criterion for quality of decision-making is developed and used to analyze what types of structures incite actors to both generate and store a variety of ideas and arguments. An international comparison on transport infrastructure planning is used to demonstrate the relevant institutional mechanisms (...) and how different structures lead to different processes of information exchange and to differing product outcomes. (shrink)

Many analytical studies purporting to aid decision-making are produced and yet their contribution to actual decision-making is questioned. This article focuses on how institutional structures influence the way analytical information is actually used. A variation of information criterion for quality of decision-making is developed and used to analyze what types of structures incite actors to both generate and store a variety of ideas and arguments. An international comparison on transport infrastructure planning is used to demonstrate the relevant institutional mechanisms (...) and how different structures lead to different processes of information exchange and to differing product outcomes. (shrink)

Infrastructure-making in interwar India was a dynamic, multilayered process involving roads and vehicles in urban and rural sites. One of their strongest playgrounds was Bombay Presidency and the Central Provinces in central and western India. Focusing on this region in the interwar period, this paper analyzes the varied relationship between peasant households and town-centred modernizing agents in the making of road transport infrastructures. The central argument of this paper is about the persistence of bullock carts over motor cars in (...) the region. This persistence was grounded in the specific regional environment, the effects of the 1930s economic depression, and the priorities of social classes. Pinpointing these connections, the paper highlights that “modernization” of infrastructure was not a simple, linear process of progressivist change, nor did it mean the survival of apparently “old” technologies in the modern era. Instead, the paper pays attention to conflicting social complexities, implications, and meanings of the connection between infrastructure and modernity that modernization assumptions often overlook. Here, the paper shows how technological change occurred as a result of real, material class interests pulling infrastructural technology in different directions. This was where and why arguments of road-motor lobbyists and cart advocates eventually clashed, and Gandhian social workers resisted motor transport in defense of peasant interests. (shrink)

Urban infrastructures serve as the backbone of modern economies, mediating global exchanges and responding to urban demands. Yet, our comprehension of these complex structures, particularly within diverse socio-political terrain, remains fragmented. In bridging this knowledge gap, this study delves into “boundary objects”—entities enabling diverse stakeholders to collaborate without a comprehensive consensus. Central to our investigation is the hypothesis that oceanic infrastructural developments are instrumental in molding the interface of urban, industrial, and energy sectors within marine contexts. Our lens is directed (...) at the Gulf of Mexico, which is distinguished by its industrial depth and expansive marine grid. We highlight the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway’s (GIWW) paramount role in regional movement and the ecological facets of practices such as dredging, which is vital for transport and coastal conservation. A striking revelation of our study is the transformation of offshore structures in the Gulf into vibrant marine habitats. Emphasizing the intertwined nature of marine infrastructures, we denote oceans as pivotal platforms for impending urban expansion, especially as land resources wane. Our research aspires to validate the role played by oceans as a nexus in the urban–industrial–energy fusion. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Transportation System Transportation System Benefits, Harms and Hazards Conclusions and Further Questions References and Further Reading.

Over the last few years, smart cities have been a focus of scholarly attention. Most of these critical studies concentrated on the multinational corporations’ discourses and their implications on urban policies. Besides these factors, however, the data-driven city develops within a complex web of entanglements whereby data-driven technologies modulate the urban infrastructure in a multitude of ways contingent upon the social, political, material and technical aspects. As such, this article attends to the infrastructural implications of a smart city product, (...) Citymapper, which is a transport app built on open data available as part of London’s smart city planning. In order to establish the relationship between data and infrastructure, I use Gilbert Simondon’s notions of ‘transduction’, ‘individuation’ and ‘technicity’ to explore this relationship in a processual and relational way. In constructing this relationship as co-generative, whereby infrastructure and data transindividuate, I subsequently posit the term data/infrastructure. Against this theoretical background, I study the ways in which Citymapper individuates and thereby gains infrastructural power through technicity of data by studying the ways in which the users’ contribute to data generation that feed back into the app. Specifically, by following the transformation of the app from initially mediating the bus timetable to transducing users into environmental sensing nodes through which the app collects behavioural data, I foreground the epistemological, infrastructural and social consequences of Citymapper’s infrastructural power for the data-driven city. (shrink)

This paper discusses the practice of cost-benefit analyses of transportation infrastructure investment projects from the meta-theoretical perspective of critical realism. Such analyses are based on a number of untenable ontological assumptions about social value, human nature and the natural environment. In addition, main input data are based on transport modelling analyses based on a misleading `local ontology' among the model makers. The ontological misconceptions translate into erroneous epistemological assumptions about the possibility of precise predictions and the validity of (...) willingness-to-pay investigations. Accepting the ontological and epistemological assumptions of cost-benefit analysis involves an implicit acceptance of the ethical and political values favoured by these assumptions. Cost-benefit analyses of transportation investment projects tend to neglect long-term environmental consequences and needs among population groups with a low ability to pay. Instead of cost-benefit analyses, impact analyses evaluating the likely effects of project alternatives against a wide range of societal goals is recommended, with quantification and economic valorisation only for impact categories where this can be done in an ontologically and epistemologically defensible way. (shrink)

This paper discusses the practice of cost-benefit analyses of transportation infrastructure investment projects from the meta-theoretical perspective of critical realism. Such analyses are based on a number of untenable ontological assumptions about social value, human nature and the natural environment. In addition, main input data are based on transport modelling analyses based on a misleading `local ontology' among the model makers. The ontological misconceptions translate into erroneous epistemological assumptions about the possibility of precise predictions and the validity of (...) willingness-to-pay investigations. Accepting the ontological and epistemological assumptions of cost-benefit analysis involves an implicit acceptance of the ethical and political values favoured by these assumptions. Cost-benefit analyses of transportation investment projects tend to neglect long-term environmental consequences and needs among population groups with a low ability to pay. Instead of cost-benefit analyses, impact analyses evaluating the likely effects of project alternatives against a wide range of societal goals is recommended, with quantification and economic valorisation only for impact categories where this can be done in an ontologically and epistemologically defensible way. (shrink)

Eighteenth-century naval ships were impressive infrastructures, but subjected to extraordinary strain. To assist with their “voyage repairs,” the Royal Navy gradually established numerous overseas bases, displaying the power, reach, and ruthless logistical efficiency of the British state. This article, however, is concerned with what happened where no such bases (yet) existed, in parts of the world falling in between areas of direct British administration, control, or influence. The specific restrictions imposed by technology and infrastructures have been studied by historians interested (...) in naval strategy, but they can also help to reframe national narratives of power or observe the transnational interactions surrounding access to knowledge and resources. This paper discusses the material, cultural, and diplomatic constraints that could appear when vessels, and especially “discovery ships,” sailed in strange waters or sought technical assistance in allied ports. I argue that the “mortification” of some commanders at their vessels’ unfitness for service was an important – and often neglected – element on the palette of emotions undergone by voyagers, capturing their strong sense of ultimate material powerlessness. Such frustration even became embedded in imperial cartography, as shown by the case study of Matthew Flinders. This perspective highlights the limits of naval technology, complicating imperialistic “success stories” and better reintegrating the navy into the history of maritime travel and transportation, from which it is often singled out. (shrink)

The realization of dwindling fossil fuel supplies and their adverse environmental impacts has accelerated research and development activities in the domain of renewable energy sources and technologies. Global energy demand is expected to rise during the next few decades, and the majority of today's energy is based on fossil fuels. Alternative energy sources and technologies can play a vital role in lowering or eliminating our reliance on fossil fuels. However, such a transition will require a large investment and will not (...) be reversible. The benefits of hydrogen and other liquid fuels as transportation fuels are not marginal, but the real urgency in greenhouse gas reductions and fossil fuel replacement should not be translated into an energy infrastructure based on unsustainable sources in the long run. It is wise to examine each option thoroughly and objectively now and discard those with little potential so our focus and effort may be placed elsewhere. (shrink)

Se analiza la evolución del transporte urbano, a través de un siglo, en una de las ciudades que experimentan mayores transformaciones tecnológicas como consecuencia de su condición de puerto muy vinculado al comercio internacional. Tal posicionamiento facilita la incorporación de mayores adelantos tecnológicos los cuales son también parte de la infraestructura que la ciudad requiere para llevar a cabo su quehacer económico en su dimensión externa. Efectivamente, la incorporación de la energía eléctrica en el transporte urbano constituye una expresión de (...) un proceso de modernización impulsado por la incorporación de tal medio energético en la actividad urbana de Valparaíso. Al mismo tiempo se hace notar las diferencias geográficas y sociales que presentan la ciudad y su vinculación al acceso a los medios de transporte y por consiguiente al proceso de modernización. (shrink)

The increasing passengerization of transportation through shared ride services and driverless vehicles has the potential to vastly change the transportation system. Although values are sometimes considered in the design of information tools and through attitudes toward travel, the systematic approach of value sensitive design should be used in the design of transportation infrastructure to create a sustainable transportation future.

It is the aim of this article to put questions of maintenance and repair in the history of science and technology under scrutiny, with a special focus on technologies and methods of transportation. The history of transportation is a history of trying to avoid shipwrecks and plane crashes. It is also a history of broken masts, worm-eaten hulls, the flat tires of cars, and endless delays at airports. This introductory article assesses the technological, scientific, and cultural implications of (...) repairing and maintaining transportation networks. We argue that infrastructures for maintenance and repair played just as important a role in the history of transportation as the wharves and factories where ships, cars, trains, and airplanes were originally built. We also suggest that maintenance and repair are important sites of knowledge production, and a historical account of these practices provides a new, decentered narrative for the development of modern science and technology. (shrink)

Systems of urban transportation are largely shaped through planning practices. In transport economics, the benefits of infrastructure investments consist mainly of travel time savings calculated using monetary values of time. The economic interpretation of the value of travel time has significantly shaped our urban environment and transportation schemes. However, there is often an underlying assumption of transferability between time and money, which arguably does not sufficiently take into account the specific features of time. In this paper, we (...) analyze the various properties of time as an economic resource using findings in behavioral economics and psychology. Due to limitations in the standard model, it is proposed that an alternative model value should be investigated in which time rather than money is the primary carrier of and the basic features of such a model are outlined. An improved understanding the nature of time as a source of utility puts us in a better position to determine what aspects of time matter. Additionally, the analysis can be applied to further develop modeling where value of time plays a significant role; such as new models for the planning of urban transport. (shrink)

This study described and analysed the circumstances surrounding a fatal car accident involving personnel of a multinational corporation in a developing country. For some companies, road accidents are the leading cause of work-related fatalities in developing countries. This reality highlights the ethical dilemmas encountered in a global workplace. Questions as to how a company addresses safety concerns outside the standard work environment, the ethics of operating in a risky environment and the requirements for international consistency in compensation standards for loss (...) of life were addressed. The authors argued that multinational companies should localize health and safety practices to address the important asymmetries between different regions of the world regarding social, cultural and infrastructural issues. Furthermore, the authors analysed the leadership role that should be played by multinational companies to help and support national governments to reduce traffic fatalities in developing countries. From this perspective, the article represents a contribution for the body of knowledge dealing with the business–society relations. The authors used an action research approach to address these issues, both in response to the particular incident and to contribute to the body of research in this field. (shrink)

Following the implementation of temporary pop-up bike lanes in Berlin, traffic counts by the city administration show an increased number of cyclists. This present paper aims to understand reasons behind this observation. To this end, we focus on the role of mobility-related descriptive social norms as mediators of this effect. Results from one correlational and two experimental online studies are reported. The correlational study confirms the expected association of mobility-related descriptive social norms and self-reported mobility behavior. Moreover, it demonstrates that, (...) as expected, mobility-related descriptive social norms reliably reflect differences in cities’ objective transport structure and mediate the impact of these infrastructural differences on mobility behavior. Results from two online experiments provide additional causal evidence that participants use the visual cues provided by manipulated photos to form their perceived mobility-related descriptive social norms. Furthermore, the second online experiment provides evidence that the combination of infrastructural cues and observable mobility behavior has the strongest impact on perceived mobility-related descriptive social norms. (shrink)

Multi-level institutional designs with distributed power and authority arrangements among federal, state, regional, and local government agencies could lead to the emergence of differential patterns of socioeconomic and infrastructure development pathways in complex social–ecological systems. Both exogenous drivers and endogenous processes in social–ecological systems can lead to changes in the number of “basins of attraction,” changes in the positions of the basins within the state space, and changes in the positions of the thresholds between basins. In an effort to (...) advance the theory and practice of the governance of policy systems, this study addresses a narrower empirical question: how do intergovernmental institutional rules set by federal, state, and regional government agencies generate and sustain basins of attraction in funding infrastructure projects? A pattern-oriented, agent-based model (ABM) of an intergovernmental network has been developed to simulate real-world transportation policy implementation processes across the federal, the state of Vermont, regional, and local governments for prioritizing transportation projects. The ABM simulates baseline and alternative intergovernmental institutional rule structures and assesses their impacts on financial investment flows. The ABM was calibrated with data from multiple focus groups, individual interviews, and analysis of federal, state, and regional scale transportation projects and programs. The results from experimental simulations are presented to test system-wide effects of alternative multi-level institutional designs, in particular different power and authority arrangements between state and regional governments, on the emergence of roadway project prioritization patterns and funding allocations across regions and towns. (shrink)

Between 1893 and 1908, at least six private consortia and the municipality of Baghdad were denied permission to operate steamships on the Tigris and Euphrates on the grounds that a navigation concession had already been granted to the Privy Purse. The Privy Purse justified its insistence on monopoly with reference to the emerging ideology of development, though its ideas about the role of steam technology in nafia stood in contrast to those of private investors and other Ottoman bureaucrats. Working from (...) the hazine-i hassa’s planning memos and contracts, I show that the private treasury envisioned a primarily agrarian future for Iraq, with steamships serving agricultural aims. As such, it focused on envisioning future steamships rather than managing its existing fleet, while still acquiring dominance over land and transport in the region. However, private companies and officials contested this vision, emphasizing the materiality of existing steamships, their roles in trade, and the potential for commercial competition as a means of resisting British imperial encroachment. After the Committee of Union and Progress came to power in 1908, the Privy Purse was disestablished and its properties reverted to the Finance Ministry, opening a brief window during which steamship companies were encouraged to proliferate. Quickly, however, new comprehensive schemes were proposed, though with railways replacing steamships as the corollary to Iraq’s imagined riches. Engaging questions about the futurity of both infrastructure and capital, as well as those posed by the technology-in-use paradigm, this article suggests that the hazine-i hassa is a rich starting point for analysis because the scalar and ontological tensions it embodied highlight how different kinds of futures interact in development planning to affect the present. (shrink)

Local food has become the rising star of the sustainable agriculture movement, in part because of the energy efficiencies thought to be gained when food travels shorter distances. In this essay I critique four key assumptions that underlie this connection between local foods and energy. I then describe two competing conclusions implied by the critique. On the one hand, local food systems may need a more extensive and integrated transportation infrastructure to achieve sustainability. On the other hand, the (...) production, transportation, and consumption of local foods are fundamentally as reliant on fossil fuels as are long distance foods. A more holistic approach to energy use in the food system is needed to determine which particular sociotechnical factors optimize energetic sustainability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response 4: The Summer of Our DiscontentCaroline EdwardsI write this response on the eve of another wave of industrial action in the UK in November 2022—the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) “UCU Rising” campaign, the latest in a series of regular disputes over pay and working conditions, the gender and ethnicities pay gap, and casualisation that has been ongoing since 2018. In 2022’s “summer of discontent,” we’ve seen our (...) rail, maritime and transport workers, airport staff, bus drivers, telecommunications workers, postal workers, nurses, refuse workers, and higher and further education staff engage in ongoing industrial disputes with intractable bosses. Even criminal barristers continue with an indefinite, uninterrupted strike after years of government cuts and chronic underinvestment. Everywhere you look, there is a palpable sense of a country on its knees. It’s nearly 100 years since the last General Strike of 1926 and in the UK it’s looking increasingly likely that we will have another General Strike on our hands soon. In “Two Cheers for Blueprints, or, Negative Reasons for Positive Utopianism” Antonis Balasopoulos contextualizes this within the longer economic durée of the shift from Fordist production to so-called flexible accumulation after 1972, writing in this issue that “the turn of capital to the faster and higher [End Page 554] profits involved in financialization rather than infrastructural and industrial investment, form much of the objective, structural ground for what can only be described as the rapid rise of a dystopian structure of feeling in western societies since the early 1970s.” Antonis’s brilliant summary reminds us of the monumental scale of the challenges facing utopian thought and praxis in our current moment. Make no mistake—the “crisis ordinariness” of everyday life under late capitalism that Lauren Berlant identified in Cruel Optimism (2011) has intensified in the years following the Global Financial Crisis (2007–8), the wave of Occupy protests in 2011, and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–). “For some time now,” as Antonis writes, the utopian goals of “happiness, fulfilment, [and] emancipation... have been out of the question altogether.”It’s hard not to agree with this assessment, given the current chaos of life in the UK. Adam Stock’s roundtable contribution “Funding Utopia: Utopian Studies and the Discourse of Academic Excellence” focuses on the academy’s complicity with the neoliberal financialization of what were previously protected as public goods (education, our health service, transport infrastructure, and so on) over the past three decades. As Adam notes, the rhetoric of “excellence” that has come to dominate all areas of university life—teaching, research, public engagement, and the quantifiable “impact” of university research beyond the academy—is really just another way of using competition to mask the market logic of scarcity. Swingeing cuts to publicly funded research have led to a scarcity of resources in scholarly knowledge production, which is legitimated through the discourse of “excellence” and “prestige.” Only a handful of elite research leaders are granted awards and the value of all research becomes judged by its proximity to this distribution (concentration) of wealth within a small number of institutions. Defending education as a public good has long given way to the desperate, existential struggle for survival at UK universities. Numerous institutions are on the brink of bankruptcy, which was the goal all along for the ideologically driven Office for Students (OfS). Market exit, as they euphemistically term it, proves market efficiency.At my own institution, Birkbeck, University of London, the challenge to utopian thinking is all too violently clear. Birkbeck has a special place in the UK higher education system—a university founded nearly 200 years ago in the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand (it was called the London Mechanics’ Institution back then) to offer education to working-class Londoners that [End Page 555] fitted around their busy working lives. As my colleague Joanna Bourke writes in Birkbeck: 200 Years of Radical Learning for Working People (2022), life expectancy in the poorest parts of London was just twenty-nine years; cholera, typhoid, and typhus were major killers; and illiteracy was widespread. At Birkbeck, we are the only university to teach evening classes and offer the requisite support... (shrink)

Entire libraries can be filled with volumes exploring the cultures, politics and geographies of the largely horizontal mobilities and transportation infrastructures that are intrinsic to urban modernity. And yet the recent ‘mobilities turn’ has almost completely neglected the cultural geographies and politics of vertical transportation within and between the buildings of vertically-structured cityscapes. Attempting to rectify this neglect, this article seeks, first, to bring elevator travel centrally into discussions about the cultural politics of urban space and, second, to (...) connect elevator urbanism to the even more neglected worlds of elevator-based descent in ultra-deep mining. The article addresses, in turn: the historical emergence of elevator urbanism; the cultural significance of the elevator as spectacle; the global ‘race’ in elevator speed; shifts towards the ‘splintering’ of elevator experiences; experiments with new mobility systems which blend elevators and automobiles; problems of vertical abandonment; and, finally, the neglected vertical politics of elevator-based ‘ultra-deep’ mining. (shrink)

This paper examines the spatial spillover effects of public transportation infrastructure on regional economy in Northeast China, the “rust belt” region in China. The dataset consists of socioeconomic data from 47 cities in the area during the period of year 2005 through 2015. Accessibility is used as an explanatory variable to reflect the influence of infrastructure on economic development. In order to avoid the endogenous, queen contiguity matrix is used to define the spatial weight matrix. In the (...) paper, the dynamic panel data model is also used to explore the effects of high-speed railways in the whole study area and attempted to confirm the spatial differences among Heilongjiang Province, Jilin Province, and Liaoning Province. The results show that the high-speed railways increase the cities’ connection in terms of accessibility, and a significant positive spillover effect exists after the construction of high-speed railways, indicating the extensive economic benefits of HSR construction, despite of the overall economic difficulty experienced by this region. (shrink)

PurposeThe popularity and persistence of Blogshops raises ethical issues regarding the presentation of the female teenage owners' “self” to others and the relationship they maintain with buyers and other owners.Design/methodology/approachThis ongoing observational study of Singaporean Blogshops reveals a layered and interrelated typology of alternative e‐commerce activities that critiques many of the myths associated with e‐commerce particularly the extent and manner in which it can empower consumers.FindingsIt is argued that Blogshops represent a new formulation of e‐commerce practice that draws upon a (...) rich assemblage that includes readily available and popular digital technologies and an efficient urban public transport system.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is primarily emic in perspective and requires complementary ethnographic research among Blogshopowners and buyers – specifically female teenage Singaporeans.Originality/valueThe present study introduces the phenomenon of Blogshops to a wider academic and theoried audience through a critical interpretation of observed activities. In doing this the study offers insight into the complex intersection of public transport infrastructure, freely available Web‐based technologies and the significant influence that fashion exerts upon contemporary popular culture. (shrink)

Balancing, integrating, or otherwise sorting out private ownership, control, and property rights, on the one hand, with social, common, and shared goods or rights, on the other, is manifest in socio-ethical issues ranging from eminent domain to gay marriage and from endangered species protection to social security. In fact, when one surveys the contemporary socio-ethical landscape with this problem in mind, there appears hardly an issue that it does not touch; and it is frequently the central or underlying component. This (...) is perhaps not surprising for issues involving taxation or other government revenue generating mechanisms that pay for public services and programs—e.g. education, postal service, transportation infrastructure, and policing. But it extends well beyond resourcing governmental institutions and initiatives. It is present in different ways and to different degrees in issues as diverse as AIDS drug availability, fisheries management, euthanasia, affordable housing and home loan availability, gun control, permit issuance and zoning for high impact industry, global warming, health care accessibility, bottled water, and prostitution. (shrink)

One of the main purposes of Terwagne's law is to associate the regions to the economic planning. Three regions : Flanders, Wallonia and Brabant are instituted and endowed with organs, the SDR and the CBR.The CERB took part to the regionalisation of the Plans. But various factors made this regionalisation insufficient.The CERB still expressed views on the used water purification, transport infrastructure, territory planning and institutional matters. Moreover, the ERB greatly developed its research mission rather than claiming activity. Meanwhile, (...) the subsequent development of the ideas about regionalisation led to a delimitation of a central region not the same as that instituted by the economic decentralisation : the Brussels region restricted to nineteen communes.The activity of CERB makes it primarily a consultative organ of the future regional institutions. But as a preliminary, the geographical competence of the CERB and its composition must be modificated.To organize a real regionalisation, it is necessary to suppress technical impediments and it is also necessary that the consultation should be complete and real. (shrink)

This paper uses panel OLS, IV, and system GMM methods to empirically study the effects of manufacturing and producer service corporate co-agglomeration on green economy efficiency in China. Chinese panel data from 2000 to 2019 are collected to assess the GEE and co-agglomeration degrees. The regression results show that there is an “inverted U-shaped” relationship between co-agglomeration and GEE. However, regional heterogeneity is found in the effects of corporate co-agglomeration on GEE. The mediating analysis indicates that corporate co-agglomeration could increase (...) GEE through business entrepreneurship and innovation entrepreneurship. Variables such as transportation infrastructure, human capital, foreign direct investment, and environmental regulations are also found to have an elevating effect on GEE, whereas local fiscal expenditure on environmental protection has little effect. The findings in this paper indicate that entrepreneurship plays an important role in the process of co-agglomeration impacting GEE which differs in different regions and thus provide references for corporate and regional sustainable development. (shrink)

Jane Jacobs’s classic 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, famously indicted a vision of urban development based on large scale projects, low population densities, and automobile-centered transportation infrastructure by showing that small plans, mixed uses, architectural preservation, and district autonomy contributed better to urban vitality and thus the appeal of cities. Implicit in her thinking is something that could be called “the urban good,” and recognizable within her vision of the good is the principle (...) of subsidiarity—the idea that governance is best when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses—a principle found in Catholic papal encyclicals and related documents. Jacobs’s work illustrates and illuminates the principle of subsidiarity, not merely through her writings on cities, but also through her activism in New York City, which was influential in altering the direction of that city’s subsequent planning and development. (shrink)

Le transport aérien du courrier, en d'autres termes la poste aérienne, est moins une innovation technique qu'organisationnelle. Avec elle, il ne s'agit pas, seulement, de faire voler des avions, mais de les insérer dans un système complexe de collecte, de transport et de distribution de courrier à travers des territoires. L'exploit du vol en lui-même ne suffit pas, il doit aussi être régulier et sûr, et en somme s'articuler au mieux au reste de la chaîne postale pour satisfaire les usagers. (...) Seule une coopération, au sens strict une opération en commun du réseau par les acteurs concernés, le permet: les offices postaux d'une part et les compagnies aériennes d'autre part ont à travailler en étroite relation, et donc à communiquer. Dans les années 1920, la genèse de la poste aérienne se fait à travers la construction d'un espace de sens commun, mêlant institutions et signes. Une infrastructure de papier finit par porter les avions.Air transportation of mail, in other words airmail is less a technical innovation organizational. With it, it is not only to fly planes, but inserting them into a complex system of collection, transport and delivery of mail across territories. The feat of flying itself is not enough, it must also be smooth and safe, and in fact is the best articulate the rest of the mail stream to satisfy users. Only cooperation in the strict sense a joint operation of the network by stakeholders, allows: post offices on the one hand and the other airlines have to work closely, and thus communicate. In the 1920s, the genesis of airmail is done through the construction of a space of common sense, combining institutions and signs. Infrastructure eventually wear paper airplanes. (shrink)

In the article the essence of the public- private partnership is defined; on the basis of the experience of European countries priority areas for the implementation of PPP projects are identified. They are transport and utilities infrastructure. Generalized approach to evaluating the effectiveness of investment projects help to highlight two areas: economic and social efficiency. The indexes of social efficiency of PPP projects and efficiency indicators for projects of public and private partners and services consumer are defined. The main (...) stages of the analysis of public- private partnerships are defined. Key factors in choosing the best investment proposal are the minimization of utility rates, terms and government involvement in the financing of projects. Economic evaluation of PPP projects is based on an analysis of four major factors: profitability index, net present value, internal rate of return, discounted payback period. Assessing the economic efficiency of PPP projects take into account the index of riskiness of the project is proposed. This index is calculated by determining the list of major risks for the private partner, dividing them into groups by priority, assessing the probability of occurrence of each event using the method of expert estimates, the calculation point scoring system for the project. The resulting score is a general indicator of the riskiness of the project. This index allows to estimate the minimum possible economic benefit to which an investor can expect a high probability of a specified list of risks. (shrink)

The ethics of autonomous cars and automated driving have been a subject of discussion in research for a number of years :28–58, 2016). As levels of automation progress, with partially automated driving already becoming standard in new cars from a number of manufacturers, the question of ethical and legal standards becomes virulent. For exam-ple, while automated and autonomous cars, being equipped with appropriate detection sensors, processors, and intelligent mapping material, have a chance of being much safer than human-driven cars in (...) many regards, situations will arise in which accidents cannot be completely avoided. Such situations will have to be dealt with when programming the software of these vehicles. In several instances, internationally, regulations have been passed, based on legal considerations of road safety, mostly. However, to date, there have been few, if any, cases of a broader ethics code for autonomous or automated driving preceding actual regulation and being based on a broadly composed ethics committee of independent experts. In July 2016, the German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt, appointed a national ethics committee for automated and connected driving, which began its work in September 2016. In June 2017, this committee presented a code of ethics which was published in German and in English. It consists of 20 ethical guidelines. Having been a member of this committee, I will present the main ethical topics of these guidelines and the discussions that lay behind them. (shrink)

Since 2016, drones have been deployed in various development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, where trials, tests, and studies have been rolled out in countries, including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The use cases of drones vary, ranging from imagery collection to transportation of vaccines, lab samples, blood products, and other medical supplies. A wide range of stakeholders is involved, including governments, international organizations, educational institutions, as well as industry. Based on a field (...) study conducted in 2019, this article investigates how drones are used for medical supply delivery in Malawi-a country where the community is underserved for healthcare and related infrastructure underdeveloped, while airspace is largely open and regulations generally relaxed. The objective of presenting this case study is to contribute to the evidence regarding the rapid deployment of medical cargo drones across the African continent, and to spark critical reflections over the utility, suitability, and impacts of incorporating drones in the existing health supply chain systems in resource-poor settings. The discussion revolves around two aspects: 1) the emergent “African Drone Rise”-is it ok “as it is Africa”? and 2) the normative role of technology in the aid sector-is it “a solution looking for a problem”? In conclusion, a call for more structured guidance for the systematic examination and evaluation of the medical cargo drone case is raised. (shrink)

In 2005, The International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) developed four new ethical principles of organic agriculture to guide its future development: the principles of health, ecology, care, and fairness. The key distinctive concept of animal welfare in organic agriculture combines naturalness and human care, and can be linked meaningfully with these principles. In practice, a number of challenges are connected with making organic livestock systems work. These challenges are particularly dominant in immature agro-ecological systems, for example those that (...) are characterized by industrialization and monoculture. Some of the current challenges are partly created by shortages of land and manure, which encourage zero-grazing and other confined systems. Other challenges are created in part by the conditions for farming and the way in which global food distribution systems are organized, e.g., how live animals are transported, how feed is traded and transported all over the globe, and the development of infrastructure and large herds. We find that the overall organic principles should be included when formulating guidelines for practical organic animal farming. This article explores how the special organic conceptions of animal welfare are related to the overall principles of organic agriculture. The aim is to identify potential routes for future development of organic livestock systems in different contexts and with reference to the specific understanding of animal welfare in organic agriculture. We include two contrasting cases represented by organic livestock systems in northwestern Europe and farming systems in tropical low-income countries; we use these cases to explore the widely different challenges of organic livestock systems in different parts of the world. (shrink)

This article describes the historical emergence of vital systems security, analyzing it as a significant mutation in biopolitical modernity. The story begins in the early 20th century, when planners and policy-makers recognized the increasing dependence of collective life on interlinked systems such as transportation, electricity, and water. Over the following decades, new security mechanisms were invented to mitigate the vulnerability of these vital systems. While these techniques were initially developed as part of Cold War preparedness for nuclear war, they (...) eventually migrated to domains beyond national security to address a range of anticipated emergencies, such as large-scale natural disasters, pandemic disease outbreaks, and disruptions of critical infrastructure. In these various contexts, vital systems security operates as a form of reflexive biopolitics, managing risks that have arisen as the result of modernization processes. This analysis sheds new light on current discussions of the government of emergency and ‘states of exception’. Vital systems security does not require recourse to extraordinary executive powers. Rather, as an anticipatory technology for mitigating vulnerabilities and closing gaps in preparedness, it provides a ready-to-hand toolkit for administering emergencies as a normal part of constitutional government. (shrink)

Although it is central to the social sciences, the notion of the collective has been elaborated primarily in fields of study which are concerned with deviant behavior, and then only in the sense of »collective behavior.« In order to consider the emergence of collectivity, the present paper suggests a re-reading of this sociology (especially of Herbert Blumer). By means of a reading of Walt Whitman, who was important as a lyrical and journalistic source of inspiration to early American sociology, a (...) concept of material and medial infrastructures (particularly transport media such as the ferry) is obtained, which is also significant for the current theoretical interweaving of collectivity and infrastructure. German Der Begriff des Kollektivs ist, obgleich im Zentrum der Sozialwissenschaften, meist nur im Rahmen einer für abweichendes Verhalten zuständigen Spezialsoziologie als »kollektives Verhalten« konzipiert worden. Der Aufsatz schlägt eine Re-Lektüre dieser Soziologie (insbesondere von Herbert Blumer) vor, um das Zustandekommen von Kollektivität zu denken. Mit Hilfe einer Lektüre von Walt Whitman, der als lyrische und journalistische Inspirationsquelle für die frühe amerikanische Soziologie wichtig war, wird ein Konzept der materialen und medialen Infrastrukturen (insbesondere von Transportmedien wie der Fähre) gewonnen, das gerade auch für die heutige Verschränkung von Kollektivität und Infrastruktur aussagekräftig ist. (shrink)

La notion de transition énergétique est aujourd’hui l’une des figures de proue du concept plus général de développement durable. Elle est marquée par la double temporalité de l’urgence de sa mise en œuvre et du temps long dont elle se réclame. La mise en politique de cette transition génère des conflits – notamment autour des grands projets d’infrastructures – que cet article analyse en cherchant à croiser les temporalités et les échelles d’action des différents acteurs impliqués. Il met en évidence (...) un certain nombre de tensions qui existent entre urgence climatique et durabilité dans la mise en politique de la transition énergétique, mais aussi la complexité des temporalités dont se réclament les acteurs, qui s’emboîtent, se contredisent parfois et peuvent être source de conflit. Le propos s’articule en trois temps, organisés autour des échelles européennes, nationales et locales de la transition énergétique. Trois terrains viennent étayer les analyses proposées : une enquête auprès du réseau européen des gestionnaires de réseaux d’électricité chargé du plan d’investissement dans les réseaux de transports d’électricité, l’étude des conflits liés à l’implantation des énergies marines renouvelables en France et un cas d’étude grec sur les conflits liés à des projets de parcs éoliens en Crête. (shrink)

Two continents. Three countries. Mountains, archipelago, a little red dot & more to come. BERIT SOLI-HOLT (Editor): When I think of introductory material, I think of that Derrida documentary when he is asked about what he would like to know about other philosophers. He simply states: their love life. APRIL VANNINI (Editor): And as far as introductions go, I think Derrida brought forth a fruitful discussion on philosophy and thinking with this statement. First, he allows philosophy to open up the (...) personal and second, the ability to conjure the notion of thinking in relation. After all, love lives are spawned from relations, and such are philosophical encounters—the co-emergence of thought and affect. This brings us to discuss the concept of the special issue of continent. called drift . From the Statement of Intent : The discussion that has become drift , a special issue of continent. began in the glow of a bonfire beside a lake near the Thousand Islands of Ontario when co-founders April and Berit came across a conception of a journal that would decline to follow traditional models of invitation and editorship, instead following a generated discourse through relational means. Shedding preemptive articulation of expected outcome and cohesion, we hope to light a fuse of chain interactions with each contributor active in authorial, editorial, and curatorial roles. drift seeks to allow the framing mechanism to choose itself, to find where something can flow or emerge in relation to a series of participants. By setting out a thread of thought to work its own way through writers and artists of various locations, drift operates through links, breaks, pauses, new directions, unintended consequences, twists, holes, bridges. We are attempting to give the scene for an emergence and what can become conceivable when given the opportunity to create chains of thought—linking, welding, fusing, looping, stitching. We hope to explore what is attainable when scholarly/artistic relationships transverse on their own terms instead of articulated by an institutional environment. JEREMY FERNANDO (Guest Editor): I think he was actually more interested in their sex lives. Though at the same time completely refusing to discuss, disclose, his own: I found it rather touching that he blushes whenever speaking of his life with Marguerite. So perhaps in this sense it is very apt to speak of it in terms of love; and the secret that is in each love: that even though it is a relationality between, there are parts of it that remain hidden, not just from everyone else, but even those in that relation itself. What the editors intend to ^do^ to impart this conceptualization is to provide a framework through the choice of a theme and by minimal standardization of form and content guidelines. As initial instigator, each editor will send their contribution to the issue to a fellow colleague, thinker, artist, friend with the invitation to send (via post) the accruing materials to another possible contributor. In this, we hope to engage with many individuals on ideas surrounding a specific theme determined but not limited by the editors of the drift . The end result will take the form of whatever is at hand (as materials can only stay with each contributor for two weeks) and whomever is at hand (the availability of interested and capable parties) through a course of five months. We are curious. What are the ways in which thought can emerge between individuals and places? What occurs when our fundamental mode of inquiry is between each other? How are ethical, social, spacious, political, aesthetic practices created between a chain of contributors. BSH: To introduce what to look forward to in June with the publication of drift isn't quite possible yet. It is in the stages of preparation, barely started, but already begun. I have been thinking about drift as an insect that goes through life cycles, chrysalises, pupas, larva. Each moment of the production and publication of this issue of continent. is its own life. A bug under a pin is not as interesting as one in flight or crawling up your leg. JF: Though the one crawling up your leg is also more likely to bite you. There is always already a danger in letting be, thinking …. Then again, there is also a potential rupture in attempting to seize, pin down, capture. BSH: I think a word we haven't thought about enough yet is capture. I think we are perhaps trying to capture something, or to allow for the moments of this capture along the way, the resulting material being the ripples left in the sand when the water waves away. AV: This question comes to mind when speaking about captures, waves, ripples: How can we activate a ripple? What I find interesting about a wave is the difference in frequencies, movements, forms, style that are activated in between intervals. What is interesting about a wave is that it is activated in relation to what came before. What remains in the sand is a ripple that forms in relation between multiple intervals of stylistic waves. As Deleuze and Parnet have taught us, "We were only two, but what was important for us was less our working together than this strange fact of working between the two of us. We stopped being 'author'. And these 'between-the-twos' referred back to other people, who were different on one side from the other. The desert expanded, but in so doing became more populous." 1 Drift is activation for thinking-with and possibly much more—who knows? There is the intent to subvert the relational qualities between people in journal publishing, but also important to the editors is the subversion of materials. The editors do not shy away from use of contemporary technology and, in fact, have relied and will continue to rely on the wonders of internet connectivity to midwife the drift. The connective infrastructure chosen to relay the developing issue is simply one of bodies, of postal workers and the varying postal systems. Some may find it to be merely be a call of an already dying form, but the editors believe that the conversation exchanged from hand to hand is of explicit difference in quality of engagement due to the complexity of peripheral information transported by physical matter. Different hospitalities and responsibilities are at play in keeping hold of one-of-a-kind materials for a time and entrusting various postal systems to bear the message forward. To have work physically transported through space and time through this kind of infrastructure that is reliant on individuals to literally carry a message is crucial in incorporating traces of bodily presence. AV: Thought is contingent and emergent process that folds, twists, pulls, shifts in multiple directions and we are interested in these multiple directions. JF: And even as thought is contingent on, hinged around, its place, time, venue—on its continents, as it were (we still tend to speak of gestures of thinking as Continental, British, American, European, Asian, etc.)—we might also attempt to respond to the landscape within each thought: its folds, unfoldings, rolls, manoeuvres, geography. BSH: How different is this than Morelli's screw that Julio Cortazar or Horacio Oliveira recounts in Hopscotch? The fable recalls a man who regarded a screw everyday on his stoop. When he perishes, the screw disappears, perhaps into a fellow neighbor's pocket for secret contemplation. Whoever is writing the passage remarks that "Morelli thought that the screw must have been something else, a god or something like that. Too easy a solution. Perhaps the error was in accepting the fact that the object was a screw simply because it was shaped like a screw." JF: Perhaps even more intriguing is the notion that we do not quite know who is inscribing these remarks on Morelli. That even as someone says that it is a screw, perhaps because it is shaped like a screw, the one who names it “screw”—the one whom we are in a relation with in relation to the screw—remains veiled from us. But even as this is so, the notion of the object as “screw” is marked, etched, onto us. BSH: A periodical, marking a period of time, but where? An issue, a magazine, a storehouse of information. To show the remainders of thinkers connecting and surfing. With all this stated, we, as editors of the drift are aware of the active fault, quaking potential, and ethical catastrophe of such a proposed project — the inheritance or the gifting of a project without consent. We are certain that there may be possible oversight on the process of such a project. If such is the case, we hope that oversight and misdirection will not leave this project dormant but rather open up promising new directions, questions, and potential considerations. We are very excited about the accidental propositions that can occur in between. In sum, we'll see what happens. JF: Perhaps, all we can know of the screw is that we are screwed ... NOTE Gilles Deleuze & Claire Parnet. Dialogues II . Revised edition. (New York: Columbia University Press). 2007: 17. (shrink)

Manila is one of the world’s most fragmented, privatized and un-public of cities. Why is this so? This paper contemplates the seemingly immutable privacy of the city of Manila, and the paradoxical character of its publicity. Manila is our prime exemplar of the 21st-century mega-city whose apparent disorder discloses a coherent order which we here call ‘neo-patrimonial urbanism’. Manila is a city where poor and rich alike have their own government, infrastructure, and armies, the shopping malls are the simulacra (...) of public congregations once found in cathedrals and plazas, and where household order is matched by streetside chaos, and personal cleanliness wars with public dirt. We nominate the key characteristics of this uncanny approximation of chaotic and discordant order – a polyphonous and polyrhythmic social order but one lacking harmony – and offer a historical sociology, a genealogy that traces an emblematic pattern across the colonizing periods of its emergent urban forms into the contemporary impositions of gated zones and territories. The enduring legacy of patrimonial power to Manila is to be found in the households and on the streets that undermine and devalue public forms of social power in favour of the patriarch and his householders (now relabelled as ‘shareholders’ in ‘public companies’) at the cost of harmonious, peaceable and just public order. Such a state of affairs is not only destructive of the historic built environment of the city, especially its public parks and plazas and heritage districts, its streets, footpaths, public transport and utilities, but is directly injurious of its citizens. To address the question of Manila’s private order and public chaos is to reopen the quest for the good city as the just polis. It is also to take us beyond arguments of indigenous versus colonial forms of urbanism that are mired in nationalist and modernization ideologies respectively, and it is to reject the reductive logics of globalization arguments that Asian mega-cities are but variations of American logics of urbanism. (shrink)

Introduction. The article is devoted to identifying features of spatial placement of health clinics in megacities and assessing the degree of compliance/ deviation with standards of pedestrian accessibility. Methods. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is scientific ideas in the field of regional economics, spatial and normative analysis. Scientific novelty of the research consists in as- sessing availability and saturation of territories by health clinics, in the context of features of their spatial placement, taking into account the estab- (...) lished regulatory requirements. Results. The place of the megacities of Ural Federal District among the megacities of Russia has been determined according to the conditions affecting availability of health clinics for the population. When carrying out a cartographic analysis of spatial placement of health clinics in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, district features of the cities studied were established, which made it possible to identify the existing problem areas characterized by an im- balance in the level of infrastructure facilities acces- sibility in relation to the regulatory requirements. The authors show the uneven coverage of clinic service areas, which reduces pedestrian and transport accessibility for citizens when receiving medical services. The features and differences of territorial localization of clinics in the actively built- up areas of Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk are revealed. Conclusions. The results obtained can be applied in the framework of determining priorities for implementing spatial transformations of studied territories and the authorities’ decision-making in order to increase medical services availability. (shrink)

_The word Development is devious and captivating, however, the development path is perplexed. In most cases, the governments try to attain economic, military, technological, and infrastructural development, whereas, the power centers evade investing and working on issues of Human Development. The governments of countries like Pakistan strive to shuffle the attentiveness of the world by spending a huge amount on building the roads, on bridges, and transportation and in maximization of arms and ammunition. Human development in Pakistan has always (...) been neglected due to various reasons. A huge population of almost a 22million having as low as 154 th position in the human development index. The patriarchal system has created the social and cultural environment that is supporting persistence male domination, remains the major obstacle in the intellectual, social, and economic growth of women. This paper addresses the conceptual and methodological aspects of human development and women’s empowerment in Pakistan, it explains the challenges and trends concerning women’s empowerment throughout Pakistan’s history, specifically in key areas such as individual, education, and health, economic and political participation, and especially Women’s limited and controlled mobility._. (shrink)

Local and global dependencies and interactions between individuals, groups and institutions are becoming increasingly opaque and risky. This is due to increased importance of highly complex abstract systems created and supported in order to maintain of transport, communications, finance, energy, media, security infrastructure, as well as social and cultural institutions. These systems require the knowledge and skills of experts. Professionals that not only satisfy identified needs, but also create new thereby contribute the development of cultural narcissism phenomenon. The aim (...) of the book is to discuss relations of experts and mass narcissism, on the background of shaping the knowledge societies and knowledge-based economies, and moreover their transformations towards the societies and economies based on creativity and wisdom. Undertaken analysis is contribute to sociology of expertise and intervention by indicating four selected contemporary issues: dilemmas of the knowledge society development; selection between trust substitutes and its reconstruction methods; transformations of social stratification; and the choice of pathways to socio-economic development. (shrink)

Based on metatheoretical considerations, this article discusses what kinds of traffic forecasts are possible and what kinds are impossible to make with any reasonable degree of accuracy. It will be argued on ontological and epistemological grounds that it is inherently impossible to make exact predictions about the magnitude of the ‘general’ traffic growth 20–30 years ahead, since many of the influencing factors depend on inherently unpredictable geopolitical trajectories as well as contested political decision-making. Due to the context-dependency of each particular (...) planning situation, it is also hardly possible to make exact, quantitative predictions about the impact of implementing a specific infrastructure project, compared to ‘doing nothing’. Instead of relying on traffic model simulations as the general forecasting and assessment tool in transport planning, we propose to separate the so-called strategic, tactical and operational levels of traffic forecasting into three distinct methodological approaches reflecting the different degrees of openness/closure of the systems at hand: scenario analyses at the strategic level; theory-informed, mainly qualitative analyses supplemented with simple calculations at the tactical level; while more traditional micro-simulations should be applied only at a detailed operational level. (shrink)

Background Previous analyses of democracy and population health have focused on broad measures, such as life expectancy at birth and child and infant mortality, and have shown some contradictory results. We used a panel of data spanning 170 countries to assess the association between democracy and cause-specific mortality and explore the pathways connecting democratic rule to health gains. -/- Methods We extracted cause-specific mortality and HIV-free life expectancy estimates from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (...) and information on regime type from the Varieties of Democracy project. These data cover 170 countries and 46 years. From the Financing Global Health database, we extracted gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, also covering 46 years, and Development Assistance for Health estimates starting from 1990 and domestic health spending estimates starting from 1995. We used a diverse set of empirical methods—synthetic control, within-country variance decomposition, structural equation models, and fixed-effects regression—which together provide a robust analysis of the association between democratisation and population health. -/- Findings HIV-free life expectancy at age 15 years improved significantly during the study period (1970–2015) in countries after they transitioned to democracy, on average by 3% after 10 years. Democratic experience explains 22·27% of the variance in mortality within a country from cardiovascular diseases, 16·53% for tuberculosis, and 17·78% for transport injuries, and a smaller percentage for other diseases included in the study. For cardiovascular diseases, transport injuries, cancers, cirrhosis, and other non-communicable diseases, democratic experience explains more of the variation in mortality than GDP. Over the past 20 years, the average country's increase in democratic experience had direct and indirect effects on reducing mortality from cardiovascular disease (−9·64%, 95% CI −6·38 to −12·90), other non-communicable diseases (−9·14%, −4·26 to −14·02), and tuberculosis (−8·93%, −2·08 to −15·77). Increases in a country's democratic experience were not correlated with GDP per capita between 1995 and 2015 (ρ=–0·1036; p=0·1826), but were correlated with declines in mortality from cardiovascular disease (ρ=–0·3873; p<0·0001) and increases in government health spending (ρ=0·4002; p<0·0001). Removal of free and fair elections from the democratic experience variable resulted in loss of association with age-standardised mortality from non-communicable diseases and injuries. -/- Interpretation When enforced by free and fair elections, democracies are more likely than autocracies to lead to health gains for causes of mortality (eg, cardiovascular diseases and transport injuries) that have not been heavily targeted by foreign aid and require health-care delivery infrastructure. International health agencies and donors might increasingly need to consider the implications of regime type in their efforts to maximise health gains, particularly in the context of ageing populations and the growing burden of non-communicable diseases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place by Setha LowCarlos J. L. BalsasSpatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Placeby setha low London: Routledge, 2017Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place adds clarity to our understanding of the value of ethnographic scholarship in the study of socio-economic, cultural, and developmental transformations. The book is a thorough review of two established conceptual frames of analysis—the social production (...) of space and the social construction of space—coupled with an in-depth discussion of four newer ways to make sense of the world around us: embodied space, language and discourse, emotion and affect, and translocal space. As the world is transformed by a myriad of forces and events occurring simultaneously, its complexity intensifies insurmountably and we require clear and robust concepts, theories, methods, and tools to not only interpret it, but above all to attempt to change it in ways that are more beneficial to our collective co-existence while enabling the flourishing of those most at risk.Readers of Spatializing Culture will find plentiful theoretical constructs, lineages, diverse viewpoints, examples, and overall opportunities for reflecting on how the (built) environment, spaces, and places have been changing mostly due to our behavior. Inspired by Foucault’s take on genealogy, in chapter 2, Setha Low traces the history of space and place according to distinct interpretative schools of thought ranging from philosophical and mathematical, French social theory, geographical, architectural, environmental psychology, to anthropological, and even archeological. Five Venn diagrams are utilized to illustrate the main conceptual relationships between space and place. Most of the book’s in-depth case studies were researched by the author with only a small number investigated and written up by fellow scholars, which Low utilizes in the book with gratitude. The interrelated thematic and distinct geographical scope of the cases is one of the book’s hallmarks. The illustrative case studies come from such faraway places as Latin America (San José, Costa Rica), Asia (Taipei, Taiwan), North America (New York City; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and San [End Page 151] Antonio, Texas), Southern Europe (Smederevska Palanka, Serbia), and the Middle East (Beirut, Lebanon; Cairo, Egypt; and Tel Aviv, Israel).Spatializing Culture was first mentioned to me years ago by a former colleague at the University at Albany, SUNY. His ongoing work in Latin America, coupled with his ethnographic training and prior work in a region of the world also extensively examined by Low in other scholarly works, was likely the reason for bringing it up in a conversation about the latest developments in the field and potential research opportunities. I acquired the book when I was teaching Global Urbanism and Culture and International Urban Planning. I was pleasantly surprised with the book’s thorough conceptual lineage, historic characterizations, attention to detail, comprehensive ethnographic investigations, and implications for transforming reality as well as institutional processes. Spatializing Culture is a welcome addition to urban planning textbooks, which tend to be relatively less critical, are often covered with normative constructs and statistics, and are more institutional in their characterization of problems and recommendations for further action.For the most part, the ethnographic method is qualitative, participa-tory, detailed, and quite comprehensive in characterizing key variables as the researcher found them on the ground. This differs slightly from urban planning’s preoccupation with public policy, policy analysis, rules and regulations, institutionalized procedures, the public good, and overall positivist and rationalist concerns with documenting reality and helping to lead transformative planning processes, whether in the realm of land use, transportation, housing, economic development, infrastructure, or the environment. Although International Urban Planning was to be taught in a rather orthodox manner with recourse to understanding planning cultures, best practices, lessons learned, and implications for similar situations, the Global Urbanism and Culture course was slightly more aligned with the discussions put forward by Low. These included attention to postmodern ideals, the use of creativity in community planning, distinctions between popular and highbrow culture, and the building of iconic structures in contexts of urban regeneration and mega-event planning. As such, my students were somewhat already exposed to issues of embodied spaces and to ideas of... (shrink)

Global airspace, global cinemaspace -- Aerial perceptions: the visuality of the airplane -- Airborne cinema: the emergence of inflight entertainment -- Executive flight: attention, gender and the seatback screen -- Networked transport: neoliberalism and digital entertainments -- Disastrous speed: thrill rides, screens and fear of flying -- Live in air: aerial circuits of television -- Conclusion: cinema as infrastructure.

Purpose. The article suggested for consideration is aimed at clarifying the shift in human perception from the spatial turn announced by Michel Foucault, to a performative turn. The performative turn has an anthropological footing. It is based on the all-round investigation of the body’s principal role for cultural existence, as a result of a reverse reaction to artificial conceptual gap between space and body, which basically means ignoring the embodiment theme. An example of such theoretical deformation was Edmund Husserl’s “anthropology (...) phobia” revealed and thoroughly analysed by Hans Blumenberg in his critical works. Originality of the approach applied in this research, first and foremost, demonstrates not an abstract phenomenological conception as a theoretical construct, but a phenomenological activity itself, as well as practical work expressing antepredicative experience and solving the problems arising in this complicated process. Applying the Blumenberg’s analysis also allows to peep in the sideline notes of Edmund Husserl himself, which, for their part, acquire special meaning in relation to such a practical turn. Conclusions show the following state of affairs demonstrated by the anthropological and performative shift towards the body theme: 1) absolutisation of space without mentioning its relation to body experience is unreasonable and groundless, like in Husserl’s “anthropology phobia ”; 2) since the ground itself is a metaphorical anthropology basis, anthropology can reveal the structural conditions of perception due to thematic fronting of embodiment; 3) this gives anthropology some compensational features, to avoid false culture and nature dualism; 4) so, the space and body relationship is expressed by the Vehikel-phenomenon of the body itself, by placing, arranging and depicting, and thus replacing something missing and unavailable for direct contemplation, by revealing the spatial infrastructure for object perception, creating the presence conditions and metaphorically marking the contemplation boundary; 5) the depicting arrangement is at the same time a bodily performance, a play, staging and performing, which gives an aesthetic, poetic and emphatic impact on the use of philosophy language, in our case, on the way a phenomenology philosopher works with the language. (shrink)

Based on metatheoretical considerations, this article discusses what kinds of traffic forecasts are possible and what kinds are impossible to make with any reasonable degree of accuracy. It will be argued on ontological and epistemological grounds that it is inherently impossible to make exact predictions about the magnitude of the ‘general’ traffic growth 20-30 years ahead, since many of the influencing factors depend on inherently unpredictable geopolitical trajectories as well as contested political decision-making. Due to the context-dependency of each particular (...) planning situation, it is also hardly possible to make exact, quantitative predictions about the impact of implementing a specific infrastructure project, compared to ‘doing nothing’. Instead of relying on traffic model simulations as the general forecasting and assessment tool in transport planning, we propose to separate the so-called strategic, tactical and operational levels of traffic forecasting into three distinct methodological approaches reflecting the different degrees of openness/closure of the systems at hand: scenario analyses at the strategic level; theory-informed, mainly qualitative analyses supplemented with simple calculations at the tactical level; while more traditional micro-simulations should be applied only at a detailed operational level. (shrink)