Urban Sociology

Author(s): Alexandre Pólvora

The city. First, it is here understood as a relatively consensual form of human societal and territorial aglomeration in the period we live in. Secondly, it is taken as a place in which the macro and micro social structures continuously interpenetrate with each other, and are mediated by historical and techno-scientific grounds. For Paul Virilio the "city is the place of trajects and trajectivity", and on this we also assume that urban dimension of circulation denotes a certain omnipresence in 'lebenswelt' of contemporary city dwellers. Consequently, several major reflexions appear on to be taken about this subject: What is the genesis of human "transitation" in contemporary city? Should places of urban circulation be named "non-places"? Does the city take one outward or inward? What is the subject status in the midst of urban crowd, and how can identity construction and presentation be understood in circulation places? Which is the importance of urban landscape, and is there a "scapeland" as Lyotard defines it? How should we apply the concepts of reification and technological mediation to human experience of urban circulation? Is the "disconnected-body" of Sennet a reality to be aware of? Will "technological somatism" be a solution to urban circulation, and will uncertainty and daily risk always be present? A view on this matter should take different paths from those chosen by tradicionalist sociologies of/in the city. From a fenomenological basis to the contribuitions of authors like Simmel, Benjamin, Certau, Lefevbre, Maffesoli and Dèbord, should emerge a new sociological perspective on the city and its human "transitation".

Author(s): Antonina V. Noskova

According to the International Collaboration Center, the representatives of about 140 ethnic groups coexist in Moscow today. This heterogeneous ethnic structure results in many problems: cultural, social, economical, etc. There are a lot of reasons of the modern ethnic pluralism in Moscow region, and among them the influence of family's transformations is one of the most significant. The following three points are investigated in this study. The first one is a historical basis of the ethnosocial pluralism in the Moscow family structure. Secondly, there are modern demographic trends in Moscow family, which are typical for many world metropolises. Crisis of family institute is connected with that the native population is ageing and not reproductive. So, Moscow's native population consisted of 8538.2 thousand inhabitants by the beginning of 1999. It is less than in 1990 by 372.7 thousand ones. The positive migration flow from regions with a high birth rate and instable social situation compensates the reduction of the native population. It results in a transformation of a traditional ethnic structure of the city. Until 1980's the Tartars, Ukrainians and Jews were the biggest ethnic groups (except Russians) in Moscow ethnic structure. Last years the Azerbaijanis, Armenians and Georgians occupied these "first" places. The third point deals with adaptation of migrants' families to a strange

Author(s): Carmen Gaona Pisonero

The article attempts to find a response to the question on the representation of the divine in city. To this end, the testimony of contemporary artists and poets and critics and believers of different periods is presented, contrasting their opinions in an attempt to shed some light on the problem in our secularised society. This brief essay suggest different dimensions and levels for the analysis of urban creativity, from the most institutional and generic to pure creation, emotional and mysterious, free from strict rational sociocultural linkages.

Author(s): Emilio Cachorro Rodríguez

Young person, defined as this included in a period of life between 16 and 35 years, since leaves obligatory education until reaches certain degree of maturity, wishes to obtain the emancipation of the paternal authority, for which it requires to have his/her own money and his own space that allows him to set up his home. In order to arrive at this goal, he is a net claimant of house. But most of the times, the goal moves away when it seemed to be within reach of his hand. The first employ, that allowed him to think about economic independence, does not manage to give suitable cover to the exigencies of the housing market of whose accessibility undergoes the ups and downs of thousand external and internal variables of the housing activity. For something more than one decade, it has been representing a very significant segment of the housing demand, although barely attended by suppliers. For this reason, Public Administrations have been required to underline this fact and to contribute with solutions at which has reached the state of a true problem, with important social repercussions. This communication tries to show some actions carried out in the city of Murcia, that welcomes the Congress for this time, oriented to palliate the reference problem, as much from the point of view of the results, like of the information derived. The communication will offer general data, as well as those relative to requests, sections of age, levels of rent, civil state and other aspects of the target, who can be considered of some interest to face up theories to experienced facts.

Author(s): Francisco Entrena

In this paper are presented some of the results obtained from a comparative international European research about "Urban Pressure on Rural Areas: Mutations and Dynamics of Peri-urban Rural Processes", which is sponsored by the 5th Framework Program of the European Commission. After briefly explaining the methodological criteria that have been used for characterising the socio-economic changes and the related conflicts resulting from peri-urbanization processes, the authors focus on how these processes are manifested in the specific case of Monachil, a dynamic town from the urban area of Granada in the South of Spain. This case study is taken as a basis for researching the peri-urbanization outcomes according to the changes it entails in these three dimensions: employment, housing and provision of household services. Otherwise, the impact of peri-urbanisation in Monachil is also studied by analysing the transformations in the level of quality of life of its residents, in its environment and in its agriculture. A core objective of all this is to identify the main causes and consequences of the changes coming with peri-urbanization, as well as the actions undertook by the public policies in order to face these consequences.

Author(s): Gilles Verpraet

The paper examines the relations between local actors, social mobilizations and the redefinition of the social /urban institutions. Beside the institutional injunction of urban policy and governance criteria , our research take in account; the new forms of social mobilizations supporting citizenship issues (school, security ; antiracism) and the classic forms of mobilization suppporting urban issues ( housing, transportation and collective consumption, environmental issues. Our hypothezis focus on the tense gap between the weakness of public policy and the new system of governance who reduce the space of legitimation for the civic claims and the practices of active citizenship. These practices of active citizenship are explored, within French and Italian cases on 4 field works with two methodologies ; A/ New relations between the urban institutions and the social networks (Nantes, Venise) . Associative groups are dispatched between delegation and autonomy ; B/ Social mobilizations in the 1990's are focusing on large social issues (migration, school) and the redefinition of the social institutions. The results are dealing with the meaning of the practices of active citizenship in France and in Italy. We could notice the close combination between the urban practices and the civic claims. Theses social practices are framing new arrangements between the differents levels of citizenship (republican, territorial, active), between the territorial politics and this type of practices.

Author(s): Jeff Van Ouytsel

Many theorists have emphasized the importance of civic society and voluntary associations as vital to the quality of life in local communities. In this paper we will discuss the relationships between organizations on a local level. We carried out a research on the social life in two neighbourhoods in the city of Antwerp (Belgium), namely Kiel and Deurne-Noord. Both are so called old working class areas characterized by typical social problems such as high levels of unemployment, a strong concentration of immigrants and out-of-date housing. Nonetheless there are many voluntary associations and organizations operating in these neighbourhoods. In our research we interviewed the co-ordinators of respectively 110 (Kiel) and 103 (Deurne-Noord) organizations. We asked about their recent cooperation with other organizations in their neighbourhood. This cooperation was conceived broadly, ranging from organizing activities together to just knowing each other. We investigated also the overlapping leadership. By means of social network analysis we mapped their mutual cooperation. Although the amount of specific migrant associations was rather small, we investigated how they are functioning within the wider social life. The main conclusion appears that in neighbourhoods generally labelled as underprivileged there also exist significant social (sub)networks between different associations and organizations. The most important factor to cooperate with each other seems to be related with the so called 'old fashioned' social structures, such as socio-political groups and parishes. When we specifically looked at the migrant organizations, large differences between the two neighbourhoods appear.

Author(s): Jenni Blomgren

The purpose of the study is to investigate the development of labour market positions of those who were long-term unemployed in Finnish urban regions in the worst recession years 1993-1994. Another aim is to look at differences between urban regions and to investigate the effects of characteristics of individuals and characteristics of urban regions on exclusion from the labour market. Also, an explanation for the differences between urban regions is searched for. The data are register data of Finnish residents for years 1987-1998 linked to data on urban regions. The analysis covered men and women aged 30-54. The study was conducted as a multilevel logistic regression analysis with individuals as the first level and urban regions as the second level of analysis. Unemployment has been very persistent in Finnish urban regions: 20% of men and 14% of women aged 30-54 who were in labour force were long-term unemployed in 1993-1994, and in 1997-1998, despite the economic growth, about 50% of this group were still long-term unemployed. Individual level explanatory variables included in the analysis were age, mother tongue, education, socioeconomic status, previous labour market position and family status. All these variables were strong predictors of the risk of exclusion from the labour market. Individual level variables accounted for about 60% of the differences between urban regions among men, and about 30% among women. The study will proceed by adjusting for region level variables, focusing on how much these variables explain of the remaining variation between urban regions.

Author(s): Jesús Leal

This paper try to shown the result of a comparative research on the provision of housing in southern Europe, where the relationships between the institutions shaping housing systems are rather different from the north. The aim of the paper is to show that there are indeed differences between the southern European countries and their northern neighbours which have not previously been highlighted in comparisons of European housing systems. The focus is on the four major countries within southern Europe: Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. These countries have managed to meet housing need in a period of deep social change, achieving this without developing strong public housing sectors and in the context of welfare states which are oriented mainly to cash benefits to adult male workers in the formal sector, and to elder's pensions. The explanation of this is in their capacity to meet housing need rests on the role of the extended family as the main social institution organising access to housing for its member households.

Author(s): Kostas Gounis

This paper attempts an assessment of the conditions underlying contemporary forms of social and spatial urban control. The ethnographic context is the politics of homelessness, and related mental health policy measures, which have been deployed in New York City during the past 20 years, in response to an enduring sense of social crisis and in line with an ever-increasing preoccupation with "public safety." The objective is to identify dominant urban trends and to propose a framework for interpreting them that transcends the specifics of the fieldwork situation in which these observations are based. I will argue that the norms that regulate the appropriation, control, and use of urban public spaces have been redefined in drastic ways, and that the militarization of space, especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, marks the culmination of a long-running project: On the one hand, the spaces where the poor and the homeless are ejected to are being defined by the types of disciplining and surveillance that we associate with total institutions, and a homology between the asylum and the re-fashioned urban margin has been established. On the other, to the extent that minority, non-white, urban poverty has been effectively clinicalized and/or criminalized, the contemporary polyglot city increasingly becomes a segregated city marked by the creation of "white public spaces" where intensified policing measures and new surveillance technologies are deployed in order to keep at a safe distance real or imagined threats.

Author(s): Luis Mena Martínez

Citizens act from the way they perceive the reality. That can be applied as well for cities: the way we understand our city, the way we face up to its different parts, zones or elements. Our study centres around the city of Salamanca (Spain) where we have captured the inhabitants discourse about the city using qualitative techniques, specifically discussion groups (not exactly focus groups). One of the outcomes was there was a consensus on what defines this city: 'cultural' and 'monumental'. Leaning on these attributes the city was divided in three big zones: historic inner city, peripheral suburbs (outskists) and "the area between both zones" (that we noun as semi-peripheral zone). This division creates social exclusion dynamics. Those who live in this semi-peripheral zone (the biggest part of the population) define themselves as they are not. They know they aren't the cultural and monumental inner city, but they want to be; and they don't want to be 'suburbs', so they underline on their discourse the differences which distinguish them, ignoring or discriminating against them. This is reflected on spaces uses and on the negative attribution to those who live on outskirts, which become invisible when city is described in order not to stain its image. We also come up to the way this reality is lived in the outskirts and in the inner city.

Author(s): María Jesús Rivera Escribano  

This paper analyses the process of increasing urban sprawl observed in the last decades. The analysis is focused not just in the spatial transformation implied but also in the ideological and cultural configuration that supports it. Sprawling city is no longer the simple reflection of territorial planning but it becomes an object of reflection for the inhabitants whose residential strategies convey a existential venture of importance; a venture frequently linked to an imagery characteristic of suburban utopias. Considering as a starting point the diverse residential strategies coming together in the process of residential sprawl that happened in the Metropolitan Area of Pamplona during the last twenty years, this paper explores the ways that a sprawling city is dwelled and the diverse meanings it has for its dwellers. There are three ways this transformation has been analysed. Firstly, the demographic change that occurs in these spatial interstices is considered. Secondly, the social representations held by the protagonists of residential sprawl in several in-depth interviews it is explored. Finally, the way that the new socio-spatial configuration is (re)created in advertising imagery is investigated throughout the analysis of adverts of residential promotions.

Author(s): Marisa Gabriela López Schmidt   

Esta comunicación se inscribe en la tesis doctoral que estoy llevando a cabo titulada: "Construyendo ciudad y habitando entre redes sociales: planificación urbana y estrategias residenciales en Eirís (A Coruña)". Dentro del Plan General de Ordenación Municipal de la ciudad de A Coruña, cabecera del área metropolitana del mismo nombre, una de las principales área de actuación se organiza en Eirís, un barrio situado en la periferia de la ciudad y en el que se yuxtaponen viviendas unifamiliares diseminadas de origen rural, y recientes urbanizaciones de adosados o de bloques de vivienda. Las distintas administraciones públicas, diversas empresas dedicadas a la construcción y a la promoción inmobiliaria, y otras empresas que poseen suelo industrial obsoleto o servidumbres de paso (los oleoductos de Repsol) negocian activamente el futuro de este espacio. Destacan dos actuaciones: el Plan Parcial del Parque de Eirís (gestionado por el ayuntamiento y empresas constructoras), y el Parque Ofimático (gestionado por Xestur, un organismo dependiente de la Xunta de Galicia y la Diputación provincial). En el primer caso, un área recreativa/de ocio convivirá con nuevos bloques de viviendas; en el segundo caso, la finalidad inicial de alojar industria de alta tecnología casi se ha abandonado ya, a favor también de la construcción de viviendas. Por su parte los vecinos, individualmente o agrupados en asociaciones, se encuentran divididos entre aquellos que se ven afectados por las expropiaciones (y en algunos casos deben marchar) y los que prevén beneficiarse de unos equipamientos de los que hasta ahora carecen.

Author(s): Matjaž Uršic

The paper attempts to highlight the process of urban transformation by stressing the importance of infrastructure networks within the metropolitan region. In the last decade infrastructure networks, mainly based on various transport and telecommunication systems, helped to change the relationship between the city and its surroundings. The influence of cities is expanding well beyond their original borders and cover presumably rural areas. In fact, it's noticed that the relationship between urban and rural areas is dialectical. Some authors described this mutual relationship as a reconstruction of "semicountryside" (Debord, 1992), where the areas can be neither functionally nor morphologically described as a rural or urban area. This eclectic mix between village and city is also described as a "metapolis" (Ascher, 1995), which adequately describes the new spatial form. The main question, which arises from urban-rural fusion, is concerned with recognizing negative and positive elements of this process. The extension of intermediary zone, which diminishes the urban-rural distinction, represents a sort of compromise between the attractiveness of urban (in the context of employment, urban services) and rural areas (good natural conditions) and is connected with the processes of suburbanization and dispersion of settlements. This issues will be presented on the case of Slovenia and especially capital Ljubljana, where the new processes of suburbanization are in deep connection with the construction of new infrastructure systems (roads, highways) and movement of some presumably urban functional characteristics (cinemas, shopping areas) towards the outskirts of the city.

Author(s): Niamh Humphries

Despite the obvious spatial dimensions to the refugee / asylum-seeking experience, in terms of the social and spatial uprooting from home and homeland, the flight across political, social and spatial boundaries, and the search for a sense of place involved in resettlement and integration, the spatial aspects have been neglected by research to date. It would appear that integration (in particular) is thought to occur in a spatial vacuum, with little mention of the importance of housing, residence or place to the process. This paper will begin to examine the importance of 'space', 'place' and 'a sense of belonging' to the integration process, developing a framework based on the synthesis of the sociology of residence and geographies of exclusion. Overall, I hope that an emphasis on the spatial will assist in the development of a greater understanding of how refugee/asylum-seeking households seek to rebuild and reconfigure a space for themselves in the urban landscape and a place for themselves in Irish society as a whole.

Author(s): Pedro de Andrade Calil Jabur and Marcelo Staciarini Puttini

This paper has as study object the city of Brasilia and their architectural and social conceptions. The capital of Brazil, inaugurated in 1960, it was mainly resulted of the modernist conceptions of the architecture elaborated in Congrés International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). These beginnings besides establishing town planning parameters for the city looked for establish the social relationships of the among their inhabitants and between the individuals and the spaces of the city. Starting from these conceptions, this rehearsal search to do a comparative study between the initial project of the city and their conceptions and the significant modifications happened in this space in little more than 40 years of inauguration of the city.

Author(s): Rainer Randolph

Our work is concerned specially with the recent transformations of big cities in Brazil, which are not only restricted to inner-urban changes; but reach out to deep modification of existing inter-urban relationships over longer distances. This might be seen as the substitution of traditional urban system and hierarchy by a new non-hierarchical network of cities. Adversely, it is our hypothesis that those changes indicate a profound transformation of cities, and not only their role in the system of cities. We are watching, nowadays, to the "implosion - explosion" of former industrial and business cities, to new forms of concentration-dispersion as first indications of a new territorial organization that may be a more complex articulation: like "network cities" as a foundation of an universal "urban society". This do not mean that "cities" will disappear; but they will no longer play a protagonistic role. In our paper we will focus one of the phenomena mentioned above, which is rather nuclear for the whole problem: the process of counter-urbanization which is occurring too in the state of Rio de Janeiro with respect to its capital, the city of Rio de Janeiro. The term counter-urbanization will be discussed with respect of the relevant concepts, which will show us the rise of a possible "urban society", for one hand. On the other, at the basis of statistical datas, we will able to show empirically to which measure this process can be understood as a concrete sign of a new "network society".

Author(s): Svetlana Stephenson

In this paper, based on ethnographic research conducted in Moscow over the 1990s, I discuss how homeless people construct their relations with the larger society by using specific locations in urban space. I look at the hubs of social relations in the city, which homeless people can join and from which they attempt to spin their webs of contacts, use their available social capital, and try to build new capital out of utilitarian interest, obligation and commitment. Their transactions with the marginally situated poor and members of the criminal society as well as practices around the trade of sex are studied to see what facilitates, and what prevents sustainable interactions. The paper ends with reflections upon the dialectic relationship between social exclusion and social capital in case of marginal urban groups.

Author(s): Tahire Erman

This paper investigates the dynamics in the formation of a squatter neighborhood on the city's periphery in a 'Southern' society. It aims to identify the political and social forces in this process. The neighborhood where the first houses were built in the mid-1970s was chosen for its experience as a 'liberated area' of the leftists in the late 1970s, and for its Alevi majority today, namely, the religiously liberal and politically progressive people who are the minority in the larger Turkish society. It points to how residents positioned themselves politically by giving support to outside leftist groups who were willing to contribute to building roads and digging channels for sewage, and the like, while also trying to get along with established authorities to get their support. In the studies of squatter formation, the general tendency has been to describe the process in a quite simplified way, devoid of the complex interaction of political and social factors that shape it. By unrevealing the dynamics in this process and contextualizing it in the specific conditions of the time, this paper attempts to bring a fresh understanding of urbanization in a Southern context. The data were collected in a field research conducted between July 2000 and February 2003 during which the oral history of the neighborhood was compiled and information about the present social, political and economic conditions were obtained through in-depth interviews with 110 residents. Furthermore, participant observation was carried out during the visits to the neighborhood.

Author(s): Tahire Erman   

In this paper I present the life histories of people who migrated from their villages to Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, and who reside in a squatter neighborhood on the city's periphery. I initiated an ethnographic research in July 2000, which was coupled with in-depth interviews, and up to now 102 people were interviewed and their life histories were compiled. The paper draws upon the experiences of 102 residents regarding their life strategies, but focuses on ten cases drawn from the respondent group due to their representative qualities in terms of gender, generation, religious sect (Alevi-Sunni), age, time of migration and time spent in the neighborhood. It discusses similarities and differences between the experiences of these people in the city and the life strategies they adopted, and attempts to explain them. It particularly asks whether migrants from a particular place of origin, religious sect or political view concentrate in a particular city space, and what that means in terms of migrants' concrete experiences and their life strategies. Thus, space is the major interest in this narration of the lives of migrants in the city. I attempt to narrate migrants' temporal movements through the city space as part of their life strategies.

Author(s): Trude Nergård

In this paper I present the results of an evaluation of a trial scheme (lasting from 1998 to 2003) involving free day care centre provision for all four- and five-year-olds in a district of the capital known as "Old Oslo". "Old Oslo" has the highest amount of non-western immigrants in Oslo. The aim was to get more children with an immigrant background to atend day care centre, and thereby lay a basis for better integration and language training - primarily for the children, but also for the mothers. The day care centre was open four hours a day. According to the plan of The Ministry of Children and Family Affairs (who funded it), the project also aimed to encourage the mothers to enrol in a program for Norwegian language tuition for women with an immigrant background. Two-thirds of the non-Norwegian mothers in the sample did not speak Norwegian. Families with four year old children enjoy two years of free day care centre provision. What happened to the mothers during this period of time? Did they enrol in Norwegian language training? How many participated in the working force? A sample of 14 families were interviewed at three different points of time.