The Contemporary Urban Condition

Abstract

In attempting to expand the vocabulary of urban description and understanding, and to offer a new composite conceptual framework for a more integrated urban planning and policy, this essay addresses the informal, contested, and anchored dimensions of the urban in turn; second, it seeks to increasingly link the three within the new global context; and finally, it attempts to draw these strands together in a proposed reconceptualization of the contemporary city within a world where the global is urbanizing and the urban is globalizing.

Becoming Editors

“…Poverty in particular is analyzed as it intersects with race and ethnicity. As Gaffikin and Perry (2012) note, these issues often push toward mobilization, conflict, and political challenges at a spatial level in what they refer to as "contested cities. "…”

The production of informal space: A critical atlas of housing informalities in Italy between public institutions and political strategies

“…Starting from the assumption that informality is a general condition of the contemporary urban process (Roy, 2005;Gaffikin and Perry, 2013), this investigation of land subdivision provides the opportunity to deconstruct he en anglemen (McFarlane, 2012) be een formali and informali in a pecific ca e. A gre pacing approach is adopted (Yiftachel, 2009, p. 243), hich b pa e he fal e moderni dicho om be een legal and criminal , oppre ed and bordina ed , fi ed and emporar . 24…”

A Comparison of IHEs and Non-IHEs as Anchor Institutions and Lead Agents of Promise Neighborhoods Projects

“…As such, the lead agents of Promise Neighborhoods function as anchor institutions. Anchor institutions refer to place-based non-profit organizations that are linked to their surrounding communities via their mission, financial capital, and relationships with major stakeholders through educational research and activities (Dubb et al, 2013; Gaffikin & Perry, 2012). The term emerged from the late 1960s in response to corporations and industries that retreated from urban areas resulting in broad-based unemployment, poor schooling, “decaying neighborhoods, and generational poverty” (Taylor & Luter, 2013, p. 2) for the residents who remained.…”