I.R.Baboons semi-bikkeltijd deel 61.

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Op donderdag 25 mei 2006 02:43 schreef Lamon het volgende:

[..]

Welnee, je heb eerst multi Vlaai (erg lekker idd), daarna Videoland (wat een dure kutzaak is), en daarna komt de zaak waar ik sta.
Niets bijzonders aan, ik snap echt die privacy hype op FOK! niet.
Wat gaan ze doen dan? Het hele forum bestaat zo'n beetje uit extreem timide watjes.

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(dit topic uitgezonderd uiteraard, voordat ik I.R. op mijn dak krijg )

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Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 01:08 schreef Mike het volgende:
Hoe laat is het morgen? Kan het niet gewoon nog ff van tevoren?

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Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 01:27 schreef svann het volgende:
Jawel, best boeiend.
Dat moet je dan allemaal in een uurtje neer zien te pennen?

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Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 01:52 schreef svann het volgende:
Haha! Dat dacht ik ook al, Mike!

Leven de Ieren nog in een veel gemoedelijker tempo, of had je gewoon een licht programma?

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B) USERS OF THE CITY
Besides the diversity of types of urban space, distinct among other things by the way they are used, one must also take on board the fact that different categories of people use the urban space in different ways.

1) Children
Local children have traditionally used the street as a playground. However, children are removed from many streets when traffic dominates this space. Cities are also characterised by a general insecurity and children are no longer let out on the street without supervision.
“Reclaiming the street” from traffic, controlling and considerably reducing the traffic in residential areas has been attempted in many cities. One such attempt has been analysed by Brenda Eubank-Ahrens (1987), and relates to an experiment in the German city of Hannover which is referred to as Woonerven (it involves the close regulation of car traffic and the redesign of neighbourhood streets). It concluded that :
• The most dramatic effect of this scheme was on the use of the street as a playground by local children, which was considerably enhanced.
• The frequency of contacts between younger and older people was increased.
• The scheme had less impact on adults. It did not increase the frequency of social interaction between local residents, which remained a fairly frequent occurrence (mainly in the form of chance encounters).
• Surprisingly, a high number of adults, mainly men, spent time in the street engaged in car maintenance.

2) Adolescents
A certain amount of interest exists in the way adolescents use urban space. Together with a few other groups (such as immigrants), youths appear as one of the most important users of the public space. “Hanging about” best described the teenagers’s use of public space.
• They create their own territory in public space and favour places where they can gather without being disturbed.
• They seek autonomy, that is to say the possibility to interact without adult supervision or control.
• There is no purpose or goal for what they do. They select places where they can do nothing (pronounced ‘do nothing’ culture), but where the unexpected may also happen.
• They sometimes come out of their retreats, and move to more central “downtown areas.” In that context, they tend to behave in a more confrontational and ‘on stage’ manner.

Youth has also been associated with the gang phenomenon, particularly in American cities. The identity of such gangs is rooted in a particular neighbourhood and a great deal of their activity is concerned with marking and protecting their “territory”, their space of reference.

3) The gendered organisation of space
Although public space is defined by its general access, it is also structured in a way which upholds particular norms and behaviour and hardly tolerates others. For instance, public space does not appear entirely neutral from a gender point of view.
With the emergence and development of the industrial society, a range of productive activities was increasingly removed from domestic space. Furthermore, women were relegated within the private, domestic sphere. Masculinity was aligned with public space and femininity with private space. Urban space was at that time organised in a very gendered way, and public space was seen as a male domain: that of productive activity, civic endeavour and also sociability. Respectable women would not be seen walking the streets of the city on their own.
However, some parts of the city were soon open to women. For instance, shopping was considered to form part of “feminine” duties and consumer spaces became “feminine”. Bondi and Domosh (1998(give the example of a couple visiting New York in 1879. While the husband attended to various tasks, the wife went shopping, visited museums and parks, attended lectures and musical events. Furthermore, she was accompanied by a woman friend for all these outings, and they were expected to be home by early evening.
Public space has been made more accessible to women, and few areas of the city would nowadays be considered as “out-of bounds” for them. There remains nevertheless an issue of safety, and the latter continues to structure the urban space. The presence of women in such public space is subordinated, for it is made to be conditional on a range of circumstances. This subordinate status of women in public spaces is further emphasised by the fact that they may be subjected to unwelcome attention: ‘girl-watching’, wolf-whistling and sexual remarks.

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Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 02:24 schreef Lamon het volgende:
Mag ik hieruit afleiden dat het onderwijs in Ierland te wensen over laat, of is dat te kort door de bocht?

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Robert Ezra Park(1864-1944) and Ernest W. Burgess(1886-1966)

Park and Burgess (1925) developed a theory of urban ecology which proposed that cities are environments like those found in nature, governed by many of the same forces of Darwinian evolution, i.e. competition, that affects natural ecosystems. When a city is formed and grows, people and their activities cluster in a particular area, i.e. the process of "concentration". Gradually, this central area becomes highly populated, so there is a scattering of people and their activities away from the central city to establish the suburbs, i.e. "dispersion". They suggested that, over time, the competition for land and other scarce urban resources leads to the division of the urban space into distinctive ecological niches, "natural areas" or zones in which people share similar social characteristics because they are subject to the same ecological pressures. As a zone becomes more prosperous and "desirable", property values and rents rise, and people and businesses migrate into that zone, usually moving outward from the city centre in a process Park and Burgess called "succession" (a term borrowed from plant ecology) and new residents take their place. At both a micro and macro level, society was thought to operate as a superorganism, where change is a natural aspect of the process of growth and neither chaotic nor disorderly. Thus, an organised area is invaded by new elements. This gives rise to local competition and there will either be succession or an accommodation which results in a reorganisation. But, during the early stages of competition, there will always be some level of disorganisation because there will be disruption to, or a breakdown in, the normative structure of the community which may or may not lead to deviant behaviour. Thus, although a city was a physical organisation, it also had also social and moral structures that could be disorganised.

Their model, known as Concentric Zone Theory and first published in The City (1925) predicted that, once fully grown, cities would take the form of five concentric rings with areas of social and physical deterioration concentrated near the city centre and more prosperous areas located near the city's edge. This theory seeks to explain the existence of social problems such as unemployment and crime in specific Chicago districts, making extensive use of synchronic mapping to reveal the spatial distribution of social problems and to permit comparison between areas. In the post-war period, the cartographic approach was criticised as simplistic in that it neglected the social and cultural dimensions of urban life, the political and economic impact of industrialisation on urban geography, and the issues of class, race, gender, and ethnicity.

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Robert Park and Ernest Burgess: Urban Ecology Studies, 1925
By Nina Brown

Back to Classics
Background


During the 1920s, Robert E. Park (1864-1944) and Ernest W. Burgess (1886-1966) developed a distinctive program of urban research in the sociology department at the University of Chicago. In numerous research projects focused on the city of Chicago, Park and Burgess elaborated a theory of urban ecology which proposed that cities were environments like those found in nature, governed by many of the same forces of Darwinian evolution that affected natural ecosystems. The most important of these forces was competition. Park and Burgess suggested that the struggle for scarce urban resources, especially land, led to competition between groups and ultimately to the division of the urban space into distinctive ecological niches or "natural areas" in which people shared similar social characteristics because they were subject to the same ecological pressures. Competition for land and resources ultimately led to the spatial differentiation of urban space into zones, with more desirable areas commanding higher rents. As they became more prosperous, people and businesses moved outward from the city center in a process Park and Burgess called succession, a term borrowed from plant ecology. Their model, known as concentric zone theory and first published in The City (1925), predicted that cities would take the form of five concentric rings with areas of social and physical deterioration concentrated near the city center and more prosperous areas located near the city's edge.
Innovation


Concentric zone theory was one of the earliest models developed to explain the spatial organization of urban areas. As sociologists, Park and Burgess, along with their students, used concentric zone theory extensively to explain the existence of social problems such as unemployment and crime in certain districts of Chicago. Their research program also involved the extensive use of mapping to reveal the spatial distribution of social problems and to permit comparison between areas. Burgess was particularly interested in maps and used them extensively, requiring that students in all of his seminars acquire proficiency in basic mapmaking techniques. Burgess and his students scoured the city of Chicago for data that could be used for maps, gleaning information from city agencies and making more extensive use of census data than any other social scientists of the time (Bulmer 1984).

In 1923-1924 Burgess and his students completed the Social Science Research Base Map of Chicago, a map that combined all available information about the physical features, political boundaries, zoning, residential and commercial developments, and vacant areas in the city. This map was used subsequently as the base for dozens of thematic maps on the social characteristics of Chicago. Because the researchers were working within the Park and Burgess' urban ecology framework, they were most interested in identifying zones or natural areas. The typical map produced during this time was a dot or choropleth map showing the rate or incidence of certain social characteristics throughout the city, and researchers used these maps to identify gradients between areas that might indicate zone boundaries (Bulmer 1984) [see illustration].

In the post-war period, the ecological models articulated by Park and Burgess fell out of favor as critics suggested that the models were overly simplistic. In particular, Park and Burgess' search for "natural" or "organic" process was criticized as a superficial undertaking that neglected both the social and cultural dimensions of urban life and the political-economic impact of industrialization on urban geography. Overall, the synchronic urban ecology studies of the 1920s were largely oblivious to issues of class, race, gender, and ethnicity. However, the concentric rings model has become one of the best known formulations in urban sociology and is still applied creatively to studies of urban processes. In The Ecology of Fear (1992), Mike Davis used the concentric rings model to describe the troubled state of Los Angeles, a city he suggested had an inner core of "urban decay metastasizing in the heart of suburbia." Finally, one of the most important legacies of the urban ecology studies undertaken at the University of Chicago in the 1920s was the addition of mapmaking to the methodological toolkit of the developing disciplines of sociology, criminology, and public policy.

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Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 02:55 schreef Lamon het volgende:

[..]

Niet dat ik iets weet van onderwijstechniek of het Ierse onderwijsniveau, maar DAT maakt naar mijn idee nou juist niet zoveel uit.
Als je iets studeert, mag je er vanuit gaan dat je oprecht geinterresseerd bent.
In dat geval maakt het niet zoveel uit of je de antwoorden al hebt. Je zult dan toch de logica en informatie achter de antwoorden willen weten, en daarmee net zoveel kennis vergaren.
Of ben ik nu weer te naief?

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Op vrijdag 26 mei 2006 03:01 schreef Lamon het volgende:

[..]

Dus de rest van de stof boeit niet zo?

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Critique of ecology (Feb 2005)

Comparative urban ecology
Flanagan, 1999: A more recent development of the branch of urban sociology is the shift of focus away from the description of individual settlements and toward the relationships among cities, (F.D. Wilson). Urban ecologists are increasingly concerned with inter-urban linkages , within national systems of cities. Within a national urban system (or indeed an international system) cities are linked together in a hierarchical division of labour according to the financial, commercial, and political institutions they house. This division allows the largest metropolitan areas to exert powerful influences over areas lower on the chain. Patters of domination are subject to modification over time, because exiting arrangements are vulnerable to changes in transportation, communication, and the ability of major economic actors to change location within the urban system. [cf Prospect magazine, January 2005: Many of the professional-friendly “ideopolises” like Silicon Valley in California are in economic decline, losing both jobs and people. According ot a survey published by Inc. magazine in 2004, the top four big metrol aresas for business are Atalata, Georgia; Riverside-San Bernadina, California; Las Vegas, Nevada and San Antonio, Texas. ]
In more concrete terms, interurban ecology suggests that a city’s position in the hierarchy of power relations may be modified by the decision of a major corporation to relocate its hq or major manufacturing facility. In this broader sense, ecologists are interested in the dominance that some urban places exert over others (Dublin vis a vis all other cities in Ireland). The most influential cities tend to feature high concentrations of wholesale facilities, which are the locus of corporate decisions making and which control capital flows, credit, employment and the dissemination of information. This step by urban ecologists is as we shall see a step in the direction of political economy.


The return of the spatial
Edward Soja identifies a recent re-assertion of space in critical urban theory. He argues that the stimulus of urban agglomeration ( the “buzz” of cities) is a force in and of itself that helps to shape human behaviour and societal development and change. He sees the current focus on the buzz/energy of cities as linked back to the concerns of the Chicago school.
Cities have always been the centres of innovation, something that is bound up with the density and heterogeneity of city life. It becomes a very stimulating aren a for human ideas and innovation, but this is a process that has not been sufficiently investigated. Simmel and later the Chicago school attempted to spatialise social theory, that is, to bring the variable of space into the heart of urban analysis. But urban ecology theory largely fell out of use and was overtaken since the 1960s by theories of the city which focus on how structural variables like class, gender and ethnicity impact on the city. The fact that the urban shapes social development is largely absent from the Western social, economic and social thought. According to Soja, the spatial affects the social and at the same time the social affects the spatial, they are mutually constitutive and interdependent factors.

Critique of urbanism (Gans continued- the outer city and suburbs)
The second effect which Wirth ascribed to numbers, density and diversity was the segregation of homogeneous people into distinct neighbourhoods, on the basis of place and nature of work, income racial and ethnic characteristics, social status, custom, habit, taste, preference and prejudice.” This description fits the residential districts of the outer city. Because most neighbourhood studies deal primarily with the exotic (or indeed most disadvantaged) areas of the city, very little is known about the more typical residential neighbourhoods of the outer city. But Gans argues that the way of life here (as in the inner city) somewhat diverges from Wirth’s prescriptive urbanism. The common element which best describes the way of life in these neighbourhoods is quasi-primary. Gans uses this term to characterise relationships between neighbours. Whatever the intensity or frequency of these relationships, the interaction is more intimate than a secondary contact, but more guarded than a primary one. Gans’ own research on a new low density suburban community in New York serving lower middle class and upper working class people, suggested that people left the social isolation of transient city living for quasi-primary life of a neighbourhood of single family homes. Indeed, single family homes on quiet streets facilitate the supervision of children; this is one reason why middle class owmen who want to keep an eye on their children move to the suburbs. Once again, we cannot discount the significance of human choices in determining patterns of settlement.

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Poleconofcity2003 Political Economy Perspective on the city (Lecture 3) updated Feb 2005

Introduction
(Flanagan, 1999 pp. 234-238) The basic premise of classical and functionalist ecology is that the economic competition for urban space produces a spatial order that is efficient in a natural and universal sense. It is possible, however, to begin with the opposite set of assumptions and to come to a very different conclusion regarding the question of who benefits from patterns of growth and change, which are shaped by the marketplace and the ability of those with greatest wealth and resources to have their will prevail. If we start from the premise that conflict between groups with unequal resources represents the underlying reality of the social order, not harmony and common interest, then we arrive at an altogether different perspective on the social organisation of the city. Political economy is the study of how political decision making and social policy articulates with the economic interests of particular social classes, intervenes in competition with the effect of advantaging or dis-advantaging the differing and often opposed goals of particular groups of actors. We can ask these questions specifically in relation to urban populations and processes: Whose neighbourhoods are torn down to build new roadways through the city? Whose interests are served by the decision to spend money on roads rather than good public transport? Whose interests are served by Ireland offering the lowest level of corporation tax in Europe? Where are asylum seekers most likely to be housed in the city of Dublin? (Irish Times article on D4 opposition Oct 1, 2003) Whose interests are served when agricultural land can be rezoned so that it can be sold at development rather than agricultural value? Such decisions affect the ability of people to compete for benefits and opportunities; they help some and they hinder others. These are policy or political decisions that affect the ability of different groups to be more or less successful in the competition for their share of society’s scarce goods.

Origins of polecon theory
Beginning in the 1960s a growing number of critical theorists turned their attention to cities and to the signs of social unrest that were most evident there. [Walton: the urban crisis was composed, in different configurations cross-nationally of racial segregation and conflict, poverty, urban riots, political mobilisation of communities around employment and education, and efforst to replace urban renewal with affordable housing] In 1968 a series of student and worker riots occurred in Paris, which were interpreted officially as urban uprisings. In Britain declining employment in major industrial cities and housing shortages led to questions about the economic processes that determined the allocation and utilization of urban space. A series of urban riots in the United States during that decade, the economic decline of centre cities , and the loss of urban industrial jobs also captured the attention of critical urban analysts [Walton: the urban crisis energised social scientists who quickly discovered that the paradigms of ecological social organisation failed to engage contemporary problems. The old theory was designed for an era of migrant adaptation, urban growth and differentiation, social mobility and community. The crisis called for an explanation of growing inequality and social unrest]. The questions that were raised were consistent with those raised by Marx a century earlier, and categories of analysis that focused on capital accumulation and class conflict came to the fore of emerging theories about cities and conflict. Although Marx himself did not focus on cities in his examination of capitalism (other than to refer to cities as the place that helped to foment class consciousness) the mode of critical inquiry developed during the 1970s by urban theorists was strongly influenced by his ideas. This new Marxist perspective was particularly critical of traditional urban ecology, At the core of the classical traditions was a distraction, according to the Marxist view, a fetishism of space, meaning that the classical schemes mistakenly say in urban space an independent or determining factor for urban form and urban way of life. According to the Marxist perspective, the ultimate causal factors in any society are its economic arrangements. What Park, Burgess, Wirth, and others in the ecological school and the urban tradition should have focused on was how a particular set of urban structures and effects were produced by capitalism. The key to understanding the city, lay in focusing on economic conditions and factors rather than some mysterious property of size, density or ecology.
The new mode of analysis was popularised in the English speaking world first by the publication of Manuel Castells book, the Urban Question. For Castells, the argument that the urban environment produces a particular culture is that those conditions described as a consequence of the urban environment, are in fact, produced by capitalist industrialisation. The fragmentation of roles, the predominance of secondary relationships, and accentuated individualisation are not produced by urban life but by the industrial system under capitalism. [Walton: a few years later, David Harvey published a book, Social Justice and the City, which confirmed that a new paradigm was underway in urban sociology. Harvey developed an analysis of the city which was structured around the underlying driving force of capital accumulation- more later. In the United States, a new generation of sociologists were developing explanations of the urban form that gave greater emphasis to the structure of political power than to the mode of production. Nevertheless, analysts on each side of the Atlantic were demonstrating an ew commitment to viewing the city critically, and shared a common analytical approach which became known as, a political-economy perspective. This “new urban sociology” is characterised by Walton in the following terms:
1. Urbanism requires theoretical and historical explanation rather than being taken for granted or treated as a phenomena of aggregation.
2. The approach is concerned with the interplay of relations of production, consumption, exchange and the strucure of power manifest in the state
3. Concrete urban processes (community organisations, class and ethnic politics, etc) must me understood in terms of their structural bases or how they are conditioned by their connection to economic exigiencies, political arrangements, and the socio-cultural milieu. [e.g. re-zoning in North Dublin the 1970s]
4. Approach is concerned with social change which itself grows out of conflicts among classes and status groups.
5. Perspective is theoretically driven, and is critically aware of its own premises and presuppositions.]

According to Walton, political economy has been the most unifying and vigorous paradigm in urban sociology in the late C20. In particular, the work of David Harvey has allowed for the development of a rigorous Marxist analysis of how urbanization proceeds under capitalism, how capitalist urbanization shapes consciousness, and so also shapes the terms of political conflict.


The critique of the city as the product of capitalist forces can be broken into two areas of emphasis: those concerned with capital accumulation and those concerned with class conflict.

Capital accumulation David Harvey argues that the urban process entails “the creation of a material physical infrastructure for production, circulation exchange and consumption” (The Urbanization of Capital, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1985). The built environment is produced by the accumulation and organisation of capital. The urban environment was built, and is continuously destroyed and rebuilt, for the sake of creating a more efficient arena for circulation. This process of “creative destruction” is continually accelerating. (Examples for Dublin- Docklands into IFSC and Spencer Dock, Temple Bar from a bus depot into an arena of consumption, current attempt to re-vamp O’Connell Street—trees that witnessed the rising become manicured French hedges). Investment in the built environment (in for example homes and offices) provides a solution (often with the backing of state subsidies and guarantees) to capitalisms over accumulation problem. Support for private home ownership (in the US and of course here) provides a mechanism of social stabilisation.

(Byrne, p. 47: the built environment matters for the system because is it is the basis of a crucial circuit of accumulation in a capitalist system. However, even more relevant is the role that the actual physical restructuring of urban space plays in deindustrialised particular places. This process of restructuring is intimately linked at all levels with what Castells calls the informational global economy. It is connected at the abstract level of world system because of the determinant influence finance capital now exercises over all economic activities. At the meso level, global companies operate through information nets which now might be considered to constitute the real structure of the enterprise. At the local level, processes of urban governance restructure the form of cities to facilitate the processes (IFSC, Dublin Docklands, etc)

(Byrne: p.,55) While the built environment can soak up surplus capital, it is always subject to crises. First the built environment being relatively permanent can become obsolescent and an obstacle to future development. But it can also be made and remade (cf. Berlin—visuals if possible)
Second, is that the built environment is subject to speculation. When money is poured into the built environment it can lead to enormous valuations being attached to elements of that environment which bear no relationship to the potential income sterams which the assets might generate. The bursting of a land speculation boom can provoke a general crisis in capitalist accumulation because of the impact on the asset value of financial institutions. Land speculation is not an abstract process which “just happens” in the global capitalist system and somehow materialises out of thin air in particular places. It requires action by people, and in particular planners and developers working through city governments in order to shape and change our urban futures.

Class conflict
(Flanagan) The division between those who receive their income from property and those who receive their income in the form of wages is fundamental and unalterable. As a class, owners must try to organise society, and more particularly, urban space, to enhance profit maximization. Workers are primarily interested in an organisation of space that enhances their interests as consumers. Capital and labour come into conflict over the manner in which the urban space is used. For example this conflict may manifest in battles over rent control, traffic safety, health issues, land use and other kinds of class struggles. Every urban erea and the condition of any society’s cities can only be understood with reference to their particular histories. The crisis of the older industrial cities is simply a result of the fact that when confronted with cheaper labour reserves, industrialists will usually vote with their feet. Tabb and Sawers in their book, Marxism and the metropolis, point out that:
General Motors, General Electric and all the other generals whose corporate hq “Impressively rise above our large cities were once small companies with a few employees. But because they are able to plough the surplus back into the firm, they could steadily hire more workers and grow larger….when workers demand higher wages and better working conditions, the corporate power can refuse, relying on its size, financial and political strength….when a company moves from a city to a place where it can find labour that will work for less, it takes the productive capacity built by its workers away from they- creating unemployment, eroding the tax base, leading ultimately to the urban crisis.”

The capital accumulation approach and the class conflict approach emphasis the structural determinants of the urban form that lie within the capitalist system. But it is important to acknowledge that wherever there are structures, they is also agency and the possibility of resistance. David Byrne, (Chp. 3 2001) argues that when looking at the dynamic development of any aspect of the social world, including the city, we need to consider four types of questions:
1. What is the nature of the place considered both as geographical location and as social system?
2. How did this place become what it is? What are the underlying causes of the current spatial form of the city?
3. Why did this place become what it is? In other words, what are the reasons why the city has emerged as it has—why do people—either individually or collectively act in particular ways- what are the reasons/motivations underlying their behaviour?
4. Who benefits? Changes are almost never neutral in tersm fo their consequences. Everybody may become better off in absolute terms (as we have during the five-six years that the Celtic Tiger was at its height), However, if the poor become relatively better off (or if the rich become relatively better off) then someone is gaining and someone is losing.

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Lecture 4: Place matters/polecon approach continued (February 2005)
The biggest change affecting cities in the last thirty years of the C20 is the transformation from industrial to post-industrialism. These can be explained by focusing on three sets of factors: the logic of capitalism, the power of trans-national capital and place centred agency.
• Improvements in technology and production management led to massive increase in manufacturing productivity
• As people become better off in absolute terms they can spend more of their income on services as opposed to basics such as food and shelter, and manufactured goods
• New patterns of urban land use with formerly industrial locations being transformed into places in which services are delivered, whether that services is the consumption of luxury foods and goods, or investment in future income flow through attendance at a higher education institution.
• These processes do not occur in a vacuum but are framed by macro economic policies as elaborated by national governments (e.g. if a government can favour service based economy over a manufacturing economy as in Britain in the 1980s
• Trans-national capitalist interests use space as a way of maximising profits by producing in the cheapest zones available to them.
• TNCs have developed a procedure of internal spatial differentiation of their own functions so that these are separated and located in different places around the globe.
• Agency at the regional or urban level in which places are are developed through corporatist mechanisms as spaces of innovation and growth (NSS) This involves placing “economic development at the centre of local governance with a consequent privileging of business interest in the processes of government. Central to the whole strategic vision is the notion of enhancing the competitiveness of one space against others within the global system.
• In large cities (Dublin, London, Baltimore, Hamburg, Lisbon) redevelopment of the port and industrial land has occurred through investment in new office complexes, and private dwellings generally in the form of apartments.
• In provincial urban district areas, development is generally a mix of office parks, housing and retail malls with associated leisure facilities.
• Much of the employment generated in new post-industrial spaces is in servicing the consumer markets—hotels, pubs, restaurants, retail, etc.

Byrne, p. 64. The global system (of capital accumulation) becomes real in particular places through the actions of particular people. That is very important because it means that there is a potential for things to be done differently and for cities to be made in a way which is not wholly subordinate to the overweening logic of capitalism. De-industrialisation is mostly visible through its consequences, particularly in terms of social polarisation which we will examine in the coming weeks.

[Walton: Apart from the insights provided by a focus on the historical trajectory of capitalism and its impact on the formation and development of cities, political economy approaches have made a number of other rich contributions to urban sociology:
• Comparative studies- political economy approach has promoted an international perspective by encouraging cross national research and by attracting scholars from a variety of countries, including specialists on Third World urbanisation. For example, Sassen’s work on the Global city has provided a comparative framework for assessing the way in which the process of globalisation works in and through cities to produce a hierarchy of cities and social polarisation within the cities themselves between the elite well paid professionals in law, trade and fiancé and the poorly paid service workers who cook, clean and baby sit for them. (cf Nick Cohen piece about cleaners, Observer 2003).
• Socio-economic processes the discovery of the informal economy-a variety of paid and cost-saving economic activities that operate outside of state regulation through households, social networks and clandestine businesses. This approach has problematised the discrepancy between official and actual levels and rates of employment and economic activity, and has shed new light on the post-Fordist city where traditional manufacturing jobs have been replaced by more flexible, less secure, service sector ones. (eg. Undocumented Irish in New York City)
• Ethnicity and community- political economy locates these local processes within the larger economy, labour force, and political environment. In other words, polecon attempts to trace the structural influences on ethnic identity formation and community action. (cf. Fatima Mansions regeneration)
• Social and political movements- demonstrating that the success or failure of urban social movements are crucially conditioned by the political environment created by the state.
• Spatial relations- a major accomplishment of urban polecon has been the integration of social and spatial processes in urban analysis. Through polecon space can be seen as an integral component of social structure and action. Space enters the analysis with the recognition that “place” has value that affects social action and socio-economic outcomes. This is made very clear in a recent study which exemplifies this approach by Swanstrom et al.

Case study Swanstrom et al. 2002 focus on economic inequality and public policy in the United States. Identify rising inequalities in the United States in the last decades of the C20. Between 1980 and 1998, the share of income going to the lowest fifth of family earners declined from 4.3 to 3.6%, while the percent going to the top fifth increased from 43.7 to 49.2%. Five factors are identified as giving rise to this growing disparity:
• The shift from manufacturing to services, which replaces relatively well paying manufacturing jobs with poorer paid service sector jobs (McJobs)
• Technological changes that increase the demand for (and wages of ) highly skilled and educated workers at the expense of unskilled and less educ. Workers
• Globalization of the economy , which forces indigenous workers to compete with workers around the world forcing down wages
• Immigration which drives down wages among less skilled workers
• Decline of unionisation which reduces the bargaining power of workers to raise wages.

These explanations however ignore the role of space and place in widening inequality.
According to Swanstrom et al. the sorting of economic classes across space in American metropolitan areas both promotes rising economic inequality and amplifies its effects in ways that do not show up in the income statistics. They argue that neighbourhood and community context have important impacts on life chances over and above individual characteristics and family background. Access to decent jobs, health care, and good quality food, one’s exposure to environmental hazards, and one’s opportunities to participate in voluntary groups, or even vote is partly determined by the kind of place where one lives. These places do not simply reflect income and taste but actively shape our ability to earn income in the first place. Place matters.
• Living in a concentrated poverty neighbourhood undermines workforce participation in two ways: by accentuating the physical distance between place of residence and jobs (spatial mismatch) and by limiting access to networks that link people into job opportunities. Place of residence also affects economic success by shaping the ability of individuals to acquire various kinds of skills through locally funded public schools.
• Public services in American metropolitan areas vary greatly due to the variation in fiscal capacity across wealthy and poor municipalities.
Metropolitican areas are highly politically fragmented
Local govt must raise most of the revenue for public services from local sources
Local govts have considerable autonomy over land and zoning.
The interaction of these three areas produces a competition among local jurisdictions to attract high value resal esate investment and shed “expensive” residents, i.e. those whose income and property values are below average. Every other major democracy in Europe and Canada provides more central govt. financing for local public services and exercises more control over land use than does the U.S. Equalising the quality of all public services, particularly education,. Across different types of metropolitan jurisdicitions would have profound implications.
• Retail services are inferior and more expensive for those who live in areas of concentrated poverty in central cities and inner ring suburbs compared to other parts of the metropolitan area, where cars provide people with choice in modern (and competitive) retail outlets. Different types of stores serve poor neighbourhoods than serve well-to-do suburbs. High volume outlets working on economic of scale can keep prices down. Such outlets are not attracted to poor neighbourhoods because population densities and rates of car ownership in low income areas do not generate the required volume of customers.
• The rich will always distance themselves from the poor in societies with private housing markets. Neighbourhood residence is frequently seen as a reflection of one’s economic success. From this point of view, segregation can be seen as the natural outcome of one person’s ability to “make it” and another ‘s failure to do so.
• In actual fact, the over whelming weight of govt. policies at federal, statea nd local level favours economic segregation. (e.g. interstate highway system, home mortgage deductions, local govt. org, and local govt. zoning decisions).
• The problems associated with growing concentrations of poor people, especially crime and poor schools, drive households to move further and further out into the suburbs producing suburban sprawl.
• Economic segregation undermines equal opportunity
• Economic segregation damages democracy (As Putnam notes each additional ten minutes in daily commuting time cuts involvement in community affairs by ten minutes. As neighbourhoods become more homogenous, politics becomes more boring and predictable and drives down levels of civic engagement
• In a metropolitian area characterised by economic segregation and sprawl, a rising tide does not life all boats. Places are becoming economically isolated from the mainstream; they are becoming politically cut off as well.

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Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 02:12 schreef Lamon het volgende:

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Dronken mensen kunnen ZO leuk zijn.
Vooral als je een beetje dronken bent.

Ik vind vooral meisje 2 hilarisch.

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Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 02:17 schreef ElizabethR het volgende:

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Ze had toch zeker wel een blote buik en ook nog een veel te kort rokje aan? De trend van dames tussen de 17 en 29 is namelijk om zo bloot mogelijik het uitgaansleven in te duiken. Of ze daar al dan niet het figuur voor hebben doet er niet toe. Je ziet dus dames rondlopen met een werkelijke hangbuizwijnenbuik onder hun te krappe topje. En dan vinden ze dat zelf nog mooi ook.

Als je hier in Galway de kroeg induikt op een vrij-, za-, of zondagavond zie je ook de vrijgezellenavondje voorbij komen. Allemaal te dikke dames in te korte pin-up pakjes, en mét bunny-ears. Een wonder dat er nog zoveel huwelijken plaatsvinden!

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Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 02:21 schreef ElizabethR het volgende:


Kom je het weekend toch deze kant op! Laat ik je Galway en Connemara zien.

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Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 02:28 schreef broer het volgende:
Dronken meisjes zijn toch niet leuk?

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Op zaterdag 27 mei 2006 02:30 schreef broer het volgende:
Wanneer zie je je Deense weer, I.R.?