Authors' Blog: The Homegrown Downtown: Redevelopment in Asheville, NC

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Elizabeth Strom
http://spa.usf.edu/faculty/estrom/

Robert J. Kerstein
https://www.ut.edu/RobertKerstein/

You visit Asheville, NC, perhaps, for the lovely fall foliage along the Blue Ridge Parkway, or because you’ve read about North Carolina’s top tourist attraction, the Biltmore Estate.  But you quickly find that this city of 85,000 also has a growing arts district and a dynamic downtown whose galleries, restaurants and microbreweries have earned praise as a “best beer city”, “great food destination,” and even “coolest city”.  U.S. cities in all regions and of all sizes have been seeking ways to turn moribund downtowns into economically vibrant and culturally rich destinations; do Asheville’s political and economic leaders have the “secret sauce”? 

Author's Blog: Urban Governance and the American Political Development Approach

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Jack Lucas

http://poli.ucalgary.ca/profiles/jack-lucas

Urban political authority is complicated. To explain who governs our cities, we first need to acknowledge that our answers will vary across time: a city that looks like a beacon of pluralism today may have been governed by a closed elite only a few decades ago. We also need to acknowledge that political authority varies across cities: take a snapshot of North American urban governance at any point in history and you will find a range of political institutions, embodying widely varying authority structures, in different cities across the continent. Even within our cities, political authority varies across policy domains; authority structures in education, for instance, might look very different from those in policing or public works.

Authors' Blog: What Happened in Sandtown-Winchester? Understanding the Impacts of a Comprehensive Community Initiative

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Peter Rosenblatt
http://www.luc.edu/sociology/faculty/peterrosenblattphd.shtml

Stefanie A. Deluca
http://soc.jhu.edu/directory/stefanie-a-deluca/

The death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 sparked unrest in Baltimore and drew international attention to issues of race, police brutality and urban poverty. Efforts to understand what happened have led some to look at Sandtown-Winchester, the poor and segregated neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived.  Two decades ago, Sandtown was the site of one of the largest community development efforts in U.S. history. Our article examines the long-term impacts of the Sandtown-Winchester Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), which marshalled more than $130 million in public and private funding, and worked with residents to improve housing, employment, and educational opportunities in the neighborhood.

Authors' Blog: Urban social problems and marginalized populations in post-socialist transition societies: Perceptions of the city centre of Prague, the Czech Republic

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Jana Temelová
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/jana-temelova

Jana Jíchová
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/jana-jichova

Lucie Pospíšilová
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/lucie-pospisilova

Nina Dvořáková
http://urrlab.cz/en/profile/nina-dvorakova

Urban social problems and marginalized populations in post-socialist transition societies: Perceptions of the city centre of Prague, the Czechia

The study of social problems and marginalization in urban space has a long tradition in Western scholarly research. However there have been far fewer studies of these issues in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Moreover most authors use only statistical data to examine them. Thus we have decided to offer a perspective on the perception of social problems and marginalization in post-socialist urban societies. Using Prague city centre as a case study, we showed how social problems are perceived, interpreted, localized and dealt with by key actors in the city’s social development.

Author's Blog: The migration-development nexus in local immigration policy: Baltimore City and beyond

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. When this article is available in OnlineFirst, a link will be included.

*****

Felipe A. Filomeno

http://globalstudies.umbc.edu/core-faculty/#felipe

Challenging the plenary power of national governments over immigration, local governments have increasingly engaged in the control of immigration and in the integration of immigrants in host communities. Because most immigrants live in urban areas, local immigration policies are an important piece of the governance of international migration. They can affect international migration flows, the implementation of national immigration policies, and immigrants’ access to employment, housing and public services. In “The migration-development nexus in local immigration policy: Baltimore City and the Hispanic diaspora”, I offer a theory of local immigration policy that emphasizes the developmental efforts of local governments and immigrant communities.

Author's Blog: Ignorance Is Bliss: Information Sources and Attitudes about School Choices in New Orleans

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available in OnlineFirst.

*****

J. Celeste Lay
www.jcelestelay.com.

In the last 20 years, school choice options have proliferated in many cities and states. No city exemplifies this move to school choice more than New Orleans. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, school reformers dismantled the low-performing school district and replaced it primarily with autonomous charter schools. As of 2014, over 90% of its public school students were in a charter school – the highest proportion for a major city in the nation. In New Orleans, there are no default neighborhood schools, meaning that parents must apply for admission and select a school for their children.

In this system, the information needs are high so that parents can understand the range of options and how to effectively express their preferences in a new and ever-changing choice process. This paper examines not only which sources of information parents are most reliant on, but also whether those who rely on more objective sources are more satisfied with their choices and more likely to enroll their children in higher performing schools than those who rely on sources with inherent biases

Author's Blog: State dominance in urban redevelopment: beyond gentrification in urban China

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available, for free, in OnlineFirst.
*****

Dr. Fulong Wu
http://iris.ucl.ac.uk/research/personal?upi=FWUXX57

     Gaojiabang was a dilapidated but bustling ‘urban village’ in Shanghai. It was a residual rural village converted into an urban neighbourhood, but the development was incomplete because the land acquisition was not entirely ‘nationalised’ by state industrial projects. After the closure of state-owned enterprises, the place became an enclave for rural migrants because there are large supermarkets nearby for them to conveniently go to work. Now, Gaojiabang is being redeveloped into an innovation office park, characterised by super blocks and high-rise office buildings. Is this gentrification? The original definition mainly refers to a London-originated residential change from the working class to middle class living. Later, the phenomenon has been studied extensively in New York and other places in the world. Neil Smith’s (2002) seminal research on gentrification profoundly extended its connotation from merely a change of residential use to ‘a global urban strategy’, suggesting that ‘sporadic and quaint gentrification’ under the liberal urban policy has been replaced by revanchist urbanism, which purposely promotes land use changes. Subsequently, ‘global gentrifications’ have been studied in the world, particularly by Loretta Lees and her colleagues.

Authors' Blog: The Relationship Between Climate Change Policy and Socioeconomic Changes in the U.S. Great Plains

This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available in OnlineFirst.

*******

Andy Hultquist
http://business.und.edu/political-science-public-administration

Robert Wood
http://business.und.edu/political-science-public-administration

Rebecca Romsdahl
http://essp.und.edu

 One of the most fascinating puzzles associated with climate change policies in the United States over the past two decades has been the emergence of states and cities as policy leaders.  In developing policy approaches to many previous environmental concerns such as clean air and water, species protection, and the clean-up of hazardous waste, the federal government took the lead by establishing regulatory standards and guidelines that shaped subsequent city and state responses.  Sub-national governments could certainly adopt their own policies that went beyond these standards, but this tended to be atypical in practice.

Not surprisingly, initial models for addressing global climate change also favored a national top-down model.  In this case, the approach was based on two previous successes: the permit-based system developed to address acid rain and the international treaty structure that was used to address ozone depletion.  In contrast to these earlier examples however, the issue of global climate change has become highly politicized in the United States, and this fact has substantially limited the pursuit of the sort of Congressionally led, top-down approach that was used for previous issues. 

May 2015 UAR Article Featured in LSE Cities Blog: Macro-Level Determinants of Local Government Interaction: How Metropolitan Regions in the United States Compare

A recent article in UAR by Rebecca Hendrick and Yu Shi has featured in a LSE Cities blog post.

The UAR article can be found here, while the LSE Cities blog post is here.

Want More from UAR?

For Urban Affairs Review email alerts from our publisher, SAGE, please use this link to subscribe. Options include email notifications for the release of new issues (Table of Contents), OnlineFirst (publish ahead of print articles), Announcements, Search, and CiteTrack (citation and correction) alerts.

Most-Cited Articles: September 2015

Rankings based on citations to online articles from HighWire-hosted articles.

1. Articles:

   • Susan S. Fainstein

   New Directions in Planning TheoryUrban Affairs Review March 2000 35: 451-478,doi:10.1177/107808740003500401
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
2. Articles:

   • Catherine E. Ross and
    
   • John Mirowsky

   Disorder and Decay: The Concept and Measurement of Perceived Neighborhood DisorderUrban Affairs Review January 1999 34: 412-432,doi:10.1177/107808749903400304
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
3. Articles:

   • Jason Hackworth

   Postrecession Gentrification in New York CityUrban Affairs Review July 2002 37: 815-843,doi:10.1177/107874037006003
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
4. Articles:

   • Sako Musterd and
    
   • Roger Andersson

   Housing Mix, Social Mix, and Social OpportunitiesUrban Affairs Review July 2005 40: 761-790,doi:10.1177/1078087405276006
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
5. Articles:

   • Jon Pierre

   Models of Urban Governance: The Institutional Dimension of Urban PoliticsUrban Affairs Review January 1999 34: 372-396,doi:10.1177/10780879922183988
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
6. Articles:

   • Karen Mossberger and
    
   • Gerry Stoker

   The Evolution of Urban Regime Theory: The Challenge of ConceptualizationUrban Affairs Review July 2001 36: 810-835,doi:10.1177/10780870122185109
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
7. Articles:

   • Robert J. Chaskin

   Building Community Capacity: A Definitional Framework and Case Studies from a Comprehensive Community InitiativeUrban Affairs Review January 2001 36: 291-323,doi:10.1177/10780870122184876
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
8. Articles:

   • Peter Marcuse

   The Enclave, the Citadel, and the Ghetto: What has Changed in the Post-Fordist U.S. CityUrban Affairs Review November 1997 33: 228-264,doi:10.1177/107808749703300206
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
9. Articles:

   • Allen J. Scott

   Cultural-Products Industries and Urban Economic Development:Prospects for Growth and Market Contestation in Global ContextUrban Affairs Review March 2004 39: 461-490,doi:10.1177/1078087403261256
   • Abstract
    
   • Full Text (PDF)
    
   • References
10. Articles:

    • Peter Eisinger

    The Politics of Bread and Circuses: Building the City for the Visitor ClassUrban Affairs Review January 2000 35: 316-333,doi:10.1177/107808740003500302
    • Abstract
     
    • Full Text (PDF)
     
    • References