URBLOG

Surveillance city

These cities within cities are eating up Britain's streets

Anna Minton on how urban regeneration has seen entire districts pass into the hands of private companies – and their security guards.

This monitoring and surveillance of innocent activities, which does not necessarily require anti-terror laws, is taking place all around Britain as a result of the growing private ownership and private control of cities. Liverpool One, which spans 34 streets in the heart of Liverpool, is effectively owned by the Duke of Westminster's property company, Grosvenor, which leased the entire site, including streets and public places, from the council for 250 years. Cabot Circus in Bristol, Highcross in Leicester and what promises to be the biggest of all, Stratford City in London, are all owned and run by property companies.

Poverty, unemployment and repossessions on the rise years before the recession began

Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2009

A report released today (3 December) by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that levels of poverty, unemployment and repossessions in the UK started rising as early as 2004, long before the recession began. These findings mean that in order to reduce the number of people living in poverty by any serious margin, the UK needs to recover not just from the recession, but from deep-seated problems that were re-emerging before the downturn.

poverty is now back at the same level as 2000; having risen every year since 2004/05;

two million children are in low-income, working households - the highest figure since records began;

unemployment bottomed in 2005 and now nearly 1 in 8 people of working age want but lack a job; the highest since 1997;

repossessions are six times the level of 2004 and are now back at the level they were in 1994.

DIY Streets

How locals transformed rat runs into public spaces

Getting cars cars to slow down instead of racing through backstreet rat runs benefits everyone from cyclists to residents. Clapton Terrace is one of 11 "DIY Streets", a nationwide project launched by sustainable transport charity Sustrans as a cheap solution to local traffic problems.

 "Residents take ownership, so it becomes a public space not just for car traffic but for play and doing everything related to civic life. It gives residents the opportunity to design streets how they want and take ownership. That is part of the philosophy."

COPENHAGEN: Maputo and Rotterdam

Rising sea levels: A tale of two cities

When people talk about the impact of rising sea levels, they often think of small island states that risk being submerged if global warming continues unchecked. By 2050 the number of people living in delta cities is set to increase by as much as 70%, experts suggest, vastly increasing the number of those at risk.

Cleanliness next to...affluence

Street cleanliness in deprived and better-off neighbourhoods

An exploration of why affluent neighbourhoods tend to have higher levels of street cleanliness than deprived neighbourhoods and what local authorities can do to narrow this gap.

Across the country, more affluent neighbourhoods tend to show a level of cleanliness above the standard expected in national performance monitoring, while less affluent neighbourhoods perform much worse. Some local authorities are achieving high average scores but failing to maintain more deprived neighbourhoods to the desired standard. Indeed, there is evidence of a trade-off for local authorities between achieving higher average grades and achieving equal outcomes across neighbourhoods.

Newcastle - top green city

Newcastle-upon-Tyne takes top spot as Britain's greenest city

A city once wreathed in smoke and deafened by shipyard steel-hammers, has transformed itself into the greenest in Britain, according to the country's most comprehensive sustainability audit, published by Forum for the Future.

Tyneside's triumph drew on improvements in air quality, biodiversity in public parks and open spaces and the best salmon run on a English river. The audit shows the city performing well on waste collection, extending green space, life expectancy and the local strategy for tackling climate change.

Making the invisible visible

Raporteur on US housing crisis

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing. 

The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

Investigator meets homeless victims of American dream

From New York to LA: America's deepening housing crisis: gallery

two shopping centres from the inside

City Network and the School of Sociology at Kingston University guest lecture 

'Architecture and affect: two shopping centres from the inside' 

Professor Gillian Rose (The Open University).

The event will take place on Tuesday, 24th of November 2009, 5.30pm in

the C-Scaipe Debating Chamber of Kingston University (Penrhyn road campus).

Migration in European Cities

Free online access for a limited period to a special issue of European Urban and Regional Studies.   (available until 31^st December 2009).

Special Issue: Migration    Volume 16, Issue 3, July 2009

Diane Perrons  Migration: Cities, Regions and Uneven Development

 Enzo Mingione  Family, Welfare and Districts: The Local Impact of New Migrants in Italy

Jane Wills, Jon May, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, and Cathy McIlwaine  London's Migrant Division of Labour

Alison Stenning and Stuart Dawley  Poles To Newcastle: Grounding New Migrant Flows in Peripheral Regions

Allan M. Williams  International Migration, Uneven Regional Development and Polarization

Let's do theology

Continuum are publishing a greatly revised second edition of the classic pratical theology text Let's do theology. Written by Laurie Green the book comes from out of a working life dedicated to urban ministry and making theology an activity accessible to everyone.  The first edition proved a key resource for those engaged in grassroots urban theological practice.  FLYER 

"I am very pleased because, as a Latin American liberation theologian, I find myself fully agreeing with Bishop Laurie Green's book. It is a book of authentic liberation theology set within the English-speaking context, utilising the same methodology both in theory and practice, in that it takes instances of human experience, analyses them, reflects theologically and proposes practical ideas for transformation. It is a book that invites you to do theology, without disparaging the great tradition. Additionally it provides a good summary of conventional theology and an excellent bibliography. I enthusiastically recommend this significant little book."

Leonardo Boff, Liberation Theologian, Brazil