bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Head louse egg and nit remover—a modern “Quest for the Holy Grail”
Authors: Brunton Elizabeth R. , Whelan Ian P. , French Rebecca , Burgess Mark N. , Burgess Ian F.
Published: April 2019

Background

The eggs of head lice are fixed to the hair of their hosts by means of a persistent glue-like fixative that is not chemically bound to the substrate. Eggshells stuck to hairs after successfully treating the infestation are a cosmetic issue and a source of misunderstanding about whether the infestation is eliminated. Hitherto, no effective treatment to loosen louse eggs and nits has been found.

Methods

An extensive screening of surface active compounds, oils, esters, and other cosmetic lubricants used a slip-peel device to measure the forces required to release the grip of the fixative. Promisingly effective compounds were formulated into suitable carriers for further testing. The most effective combination formulation was tested, as a commercial product (Hedrin Stubborn Egg Loosening Lotion), in a usage study of 15 children with nits, in which one half of the head was combed only on damp hair and the other half combed after a 10 min treatment using the product.

Results

Laboratory tests of the forces required to remove nits found that pelagonic acid derivatives, particularly isononyl isononanoate, in the presence of a polymeric gelling agent and water, were most effective to reduce the initial grip of the fixative as well as reducing friction as the eggshell is drawn along the hair shaft and that the final product was significantly (p < 0.05) more effective than several other marketed materials. In the usage study significantly (p = 0.01046) more louse eggs and nits were removed after treatment with the gel.

Discussion

The product developed through this study is the first with a demonstrable efficacy for loosening the grip of the louse egg fixative from hair. Consequently, until now, and despite the availability of effective pediculicidal treatments, dealing with the eggshells persisting after an infestation has been an onerous task for most households. This type of product can enable families to deal more easily with persistent eggshells and improve self-esteem in affected children.
Evaluation of the Disintegration Properties of Khaya senegalensis Gum Using Paracetamol Tablets
Authors: Kuevi D. N. O. , Ayertey E. , Bartels D. A. , Owusu F. W. A.
Published: April 2019

Background: Disintegrants are essential in the formulation of solid dosage forms such as tablets because they aid in the release of the active drug for therapeutic action. Disintegrating agents such as starch are currently posing challenges such as tablet softening and slow disintegration. In the quest for alternatives that are cheaper, readily available and possessing same or better disintegrating property, Khaya senegalensis gum was considered. Currently, there is no available literature pertaining to its disintegrating property.

Objective: To investigate the disintegrating properties of Khaya senegalensis gum using paracetamol tablets.

Methods: K. senegalensis gum was obtained by making an incision on the stem bark of the mahogany tree. The dried purified K. senegalensis gum was employed in the formulation of granule I whiles Tragacanth gum was used in formulating granule II using the wet granulation technique. The flow properties of both granules were subsequently determined and compared. Paracetamol tablets were then produced with the formulated granules I and II. Friability, hardness, weight uniformity and disintegration testing were performed on the paracetamol tablets formulated with both granules.

Results: The results showed granule I had a better flowability with angle of repose 31.63°C, Hausner’s ratio 1.24 and Carr’s index 19.57 as compared to granule II with angle of repose 34.72°C, Hausner’s ratio 1.31 and Carr’s index 23.84. The study also revealed, paracetamol tablets formulated with granule I (K. senegalensis gum) passed the hardness test (6.57 Kg.f), disintegration time (2.44 min), weight uniformity test (2.2% standard deviation) and friability test (0.69%). Paracetamol tablets formulated with granule II (Tragacanth gum) also passed the hardness test (8.20 Kg.f), disintegration time (7.69 min), weight uniformity test (1.6% standard deviation) and friability test (0.86%).

Conclusion: Khaya senegalensis gum can therefore be explored as an alternative disintegrant in the formulation of paracetamol tablets for improved bioavailability.
Athens Charter (
CIAM
), 1933
Authors: Gold John R.
Published: April 2019

Historians of town planning routinely emphasize the importance of the Athens Charter, a document said to have emerged from the Fourth Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) held in 1933. Supposedly based on functional analyses of cities compiled by CIAM's national member groups, the Athens Charter was purported to be a consensual statement of how modern architects thought about the task of designing the future city. After discussing the origins of CIAM, this entry examines the history of documents that stemmed from CIAM IV and questions whether any of them represents an authentic statement of the organization's shared views about urbanism.
Bangalore
Authors: Ramachandra T. V. , Aithal Bharath H.
Published: April 2019

Bangalore is the cultural, logistical, and technological center for southern India. It has undergone major political, economic, and urban restructuring over the past three decades that has resulted in massive urban population growth including a large migrant population from rural areas. This entry discusses recent challenges to the city and strategies to mitigate their impact on humans and the environment. Decision‐makers in the city planning and management process have had to face many serious challenges such as the effects of climate change, enhanced greenhouse gas emissions, lack of appropriate infrastructure, traffic congestion, and lack of basic amenities (electricity, water, and sanitation) in many localities.
Barrio
Authors: Sassone Susana María
Published: April 2019

Abarriois a sociospatial formation, part of the internal division of a city. It is also an area of social identity. Studies on thebarriohave examined different perspectives such as attributes, types, and effects of neighborhood. Abarriois always accompanied by spatial, historical, functional, and sociocultural attributes, and the types of neighborhoods speak of stages in the lives of the residents, the social classes, and the residents' origins; in this sense, it is possible to distinguish traditional, popular, migrant, or private urbanization neighborhoods by the different ways in which they appear. The effects of neighborhoods are expressed in terms of opportunities and limitations, and here urban policies play an essential role.
Border Cities
Authors: Prokkola Eeva‐Kaisa
Published: April 2019

Border cities have traditionally been understood to have specific problems because of the proximity of a border and their often peripheral location within a country. They have come to be regarded as “laboratories” where the policy effects of economic integration and cross‐border cooperation can be evaluated. Alongside trade agreements, the question of border securitization has veered onto political agendas. Border cities function as gateways to migration flows and as testing grounds for new border security methods. In future, an important question will be how different border cities and communities face and take advantage of regional transition, migration, and securitization efforts.
Business Improvement District
Authors: Lee Wonhyung
Published: April 2019

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are self‐help organizations that collect resources to manage and improve commercial areas. As local governments have cut back on the delivery of services, local stakeholders such as property owners and business owners have initiated new roles in providing private services to their surroundings. The emergence of BIDs represents a shift in the main actors that contribute to district management and local revitalization. Given the dramatic rise and continuing growth of BIDs, it is critical to understand the implications of BIDs for downtown areas and other communities marginalized from urban governance and development.
Climate Change and Cities
Authors: Barton Jonathan R.
Published: April 2019

Climate change is defined in Article 1 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as “a change of climate attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.” Since the global scenarios for climate change during the current century indicate that, in most locations, warming will increase, precipitation will decrease and extreme events will be more likely, climate change must be considered one of the leading urban challenges. Processes of mitigation of and adaptation to these changes are now essential components of contemporary urban policy and planning, as efforts are made to reduce mortality, morbidity, and loss of assets, and consequently to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability. However, for many years international climate change analysis was weak at identifying the specific local generation of the greenhouse gases involved and the geographies of impacts. It is only over the past decade that the emphasis on the role of urban areas in climate change has strengthened considerably in the academic literature and in the policy realm. Most important, however, is that these concerns are now being translated into specific urban climate change plans.
Community Policing
Authors: Cossyleon Jennifer E.
Published: April 2019

Community policing is a philosophy and practice that treats police–community interaction and communication as a main basis for reductions in crime and fear of crime. Community policing efforts include the hiring and training of police officers to prevent crime and “solve” community problems instead of solely responding after crimes have occurred. Although spending on community policing has considerably decreased in the past decade, there are new calls to revisit this crime prevention strategy. Recent investigations of excessive use of force by police have urged police departments to reinvigorate their community policing strategies. If these strategies are to help reinstate trust and communication among communities and police officers, it is important for research to discover how to implement these practices without further marginalizing communities of color.
Concentrated Poverty
Authors: Herring Chris
Published: April 2019

Concentrated povertyrefers to a spatial density of socioeconomic deprivation. The concept and term are primarily utilized in US policy and scholarship to refer to areas of “extreme” or “high” poverty defined as areas with “40 percent of the tract population living below the federal poverty threshold.” Concentrated poverty has taken on multiple conceptual formations, being used as an analytic measure, a designation of territory, and a causal variable in explaining social, health, and economic outcomes. While initial scholarship on the topic focused on the causes of concentrated poverty, most contemporary urban research focuses on measuring and explaining its effects.
Consumption and Gender
Authors: Griffin Penny
Published: April 2019

Although the development of consumption in post‐Fordist, postindustrial societies is relatively new, there had until recently been little systematic examination of the historical foundations of the relationship between consumption and gender. Gender scholars have sought to remedy this absence, investigating the gendered social relations that prescribe where, how, and why consumption takes place and highlighting the gendered ways in which people acquire, possess, process, and respond to commodities.
Creative Class
Authors: Ibert Oliver
Published: April 2019

According to the American economist and urbanist Richard Florida, the “creative class” form a new elite. Creative class members show a strong entrepreneurial capability. They are able to create their own jobs, if necessary. In the age of the creative class people no longer follow jobs; jobs follow people. Cities increasingly compete to attract and retain the creative class. Creative class members value diversity, tolerance, and inspiration and thus show a strong affinity for culturally diverse and open‐minded urban environments. This has given rise to creative urban policies that seek to make the city more attractive for the purposes and preferences of the creative class.
Cultural Landscapes
Authors: Kilper Heiderose , Gailing Ludger
Published: April 2019

Cultural landscapes are regarded as an expression of landscape change, as individual regions, and as the result of the interaction of humans with their physical and material environment. For decades, the notion of the landscape shaped the discipline of geography. Insights within the field of social sciences on the social construction and on the processual character of (cultural) landscapes have led to new discourses here. More recent studies analyze cultural landscapes as regional action spaces for stakeholders who come from different institutional systems. The issue under consideration here is the effect these institutional systems have on the construction of cultural landscapes.
Cyber‐Urban Space
Authors: Lim Merlyna
Published: April 2019

Rejecting spatial dualism that separates the electronic and virtual realm of cyberspace from geographical space, the term
cyber‐urban spaces
recognizes the integration of the digital and material spaces and acknowledges our hybrid existence in this integrated realm. Cyber‐urban space reflects “where” contemporary urban people live much of the time, juggling multiple identities that transcend online and offline spheres.
Fear and the City
Authors: Micha Irini , Koutrolikou Penny
Published: April 2019

The city has become a principal reference in the debates about fear, while its depiction as a place where diversity is experienced and appreciated is increasingly under threat. Today a dominant discourse sees difference as overwhelming and dangerous, to be excluded or segregated where possible – indeed, something to be afraid of. The debates around fear and the city are mostly shaped around three axes: objects and causes of fear; discourses and politics of fear; geographies of fear and urban practices that deal with it.
Feminist Interventions: Southern Europe/Mediterranean
Authors: Baylina Mireia
Published: April 2019

In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, the feminist perspective in geography appeared in the early 1980s as a result of the rise of the feminist movement and contact between the researchers and the production of knowledge in Europe and the United States. Since then, the production has been concentrated in specific research groups and universities working mainly on the experiences of women's daily life and gendered spaces in cities from a critical perspective. The cultural turn in social sciences has contributed to the increased scientific production and to diversifying the topics of analysis. Conscious of their peripheral position in the production of knowledge, feminist geography researchers have created a space for feminism in their contexts, though not without much internal resistance. Internationalization has been essential to legitimate gender and geography studies in Southern European academia.
Garden Cities
Authors: Bigon Liora
Published: April 2019

Ebenezer Howard, in contrast to other early‐nineteenth‐century planners of ideal societies, proposed a garden city that did not remain just a theoretical vision. Howard's concept became a widely disseminated practical contribution to twentieth‐century urban planning and represents one of the most influential ideas in the profession. His ideas, in one version or another, spread quickly throughout Britain, giving rise to actual social and physical experiments. Howard's concepts also influenced other European countries and the United States. Although garden city historiography is highly Eurocentric, the extra‐European history of garden city developments is treated in this entry too, with a balance between the well‐researched histories of the Global Northwest and their less researched Global Southeastern counterparts.
Gautreaux
Authors: Polikoff Alexander
Published: April 2019

The civil rights movement left segregated living patterns untouched. In terms of public housing these patterns were challenged by the 1966 Gautreaux litigation, which asserted that it was unconstitutional to locate virtually all public housing in black neighborhoods in order to prevent African Americans from entering white neighborhoods via subsidized housing. Three remedial streams have emerged from favorable judicial rulings: (a) a small scattered site building program, which ended in 2000; (b) a mixed income development program, replacing failed high rise buildings, with communities that include but are not dominated by public housing, which was slowed down during the recession that began at the end of 2007 but is ongoing; (c) a housing mobility program that enabled some 7,000 Gautreaux families with housing vouchers to move from inner city Chicago to predominantly white, mostly suburban, communities.

Although academic studies have shown great benefits from housing mobility, national policy has resisted embracing it. It is likely that housing mobility will be the most significant aspect of the still ongoing Gautreaux litigation, several factors having recently led to a renewal of interest.
Gentrification
Authors: López‐Morales Ernesto
Published: April 2019

Gentrification is the transformation of a working‐class or vacant area in the inner or peripheral area of a city for upper income, residential, and/or commercial use. Ruth Glass coined the term in 1964 in Britain. Gentrification is a process involving the replacement of land users such that the new users hold higher socioeconomic status than the previous users, which also involves changes in the built environment through reinvestment in fixed capital. The term has become a major issue of academic debate: between scholars who argue that gentrification responds to a middle‐class agency on housing and urban redevelopment that promotes social mixing, and those who claim gentrification is in fact a “back to the city” movement of capital with important effects on the displacement of the lower socioeconomic strata. Gentrification currently occurs in many parts of the world, and the use of term has expanded its coverage.
Global City‐Region
Authors: Frey Klaus
Published: April 2019

In discussing the global city‐region, three basic dimensions have to be distinguished: its specific physical urban structure and morphology; its characteristic as a functional economic space and its progressive role in an interconnected globalized economy; and finally, the challenge of integrative and democratic governance of public policies and development on the regional scale. The predominance of the urban‐economic perspective in the analysis of the global city‐region demands that future research be related to the social, environmental, and cultural aspects of urban regionalization as well as possibilities and implications for regional politics and democracy.
Gottmann,Jean
Authors: Ross Eric S.
Published: April 2019

Jean Gottmann (1915–1994) was a Russian‐born French geographer whose most important work was conducted in the United States. Twice in early life he found himself a refugee. He held academic positions simultaneously in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Gottmann published on a wide range of issues in political and economic geography. He is mostly remembered as an urban geographer, and especially as the father of the concept of the “megalopolis.”
G
uangzhou
Authors: Li Zhigang , Li Bin
Published: April 2019

Guangzhou is the third largest city and one of the five national central metropolises of post‐reform China. With over 2,000 years of history, Guangzhou has always been the political, economic, and cultural capital of south China. As the frontier of market reform, Guangzhou has seen remarkable growth in the last three decades, marked by both top‐down and bottom‐up urbanization. These urban developments of Guangzhou are accompanied by significant social changes, such as attracting millions of migrants from rural China. Due to such changes, the sustainable development of Guangzhou faces remarkable environmental, economic, and social challenges.
H
ong
K
ong
Authors: Yau Yung
Published: April 2019

Since its changeover from a British colony to a special administrative region of China in 1997, Hong Kong has experienced great changes in political, economic, and social terms. Heavy blows from the global economic downturns and a widespread local epidemic weakened the economic pillars. At the same time, the role of financial hub has been threatened by competitors like Singapore and Shanghai. The democratization of Hong Kong has resulted in a polarized society. Hong Kong also faces other challenges arising from an aging population, unaffordable house prices, urban sprawl, and wealth inequality.
HukouSystem
Authors: Buckingham Will
Published: April 2019

China'shukousystem regulates its population according to a number of spatial categories, most notably rural and urban status. It has produced and sustained a dual structure and society for more than five decades. Beyond its centrality to China's development, thehukousystem serves as an example of state interventions in space, the production of inequality, and the institutionalization of socioeconomic discrimination. Thehukousystem can be theorized along with other historical and modern forms of spatial segregation and rural–urban divisions.
H
yderabad
Authors: Ramachandraiah C.
Published: April 2019

From a historic city founded over 400 years ago, which was ruled by the Quli Qutb Shahi and Asaf Jahi dynasties, the city of Hyderabad in India has emerged over the years as an important megacity of about 8 million people. After it became the capital city of Andhra Pradesh in November 1956, public sector companies and scientific institutions were set up in the 1960s and 1970s. The city has witnessed phenomenal growth in the information technology and software sectors, leading to the creation of the Cyberabad area and attracting wide national and international attention. As the city has grown hugely in population and areal extent, a larger municipal government and a larger metropolitan planning area have been constituted. To cater for the growing demand for infrastructure to meet global standards, the existing infrastructure has been developed and built upon since the 1990s, including an international airport, an outer ring road, special economic zones, and private real estate gated communities. Despite attempts at spatial restructuring and globalizing ambitions, there are significant intracity inequalities between different parts of the city. Following the formation of Telangana state, Hyderabad became its capital city from 2 June 2014.
Imagined Cities (Cinema)
Authors: Lukinbeal Chris , Sharp Laura
Published: April 2019

What constitutes a cinematic city has been the subject of much debate. Cinema's origins lie with cities and specifically with the processes of rapid urbanization and industrialization in Western civilization during the early modern period. At this time, new devices, modes of transportation, and architectural innovations allowed individuals to walk through or past different orderings of space and time that created a new form of spatiovisuality. From the 1960s to the 1980s, research trends related to cinematic cities often contrasted cities with the countryside and emphasized the anti‐urban sentiment that pervaded films. More recently, research has focused on multicultural exchange, global cities, specific genres, utopian and dystopian cities, urban planning, postcolonialism, reflection on the right‐wing perception of cities, and suburbs.
J
awaharlal
N
ehru
N
ational
U
rban
R
enewal
M
ission (
JNNURM
)
Authors: Choudhary Bikramaditya K.
Published: April 2019

An urban renewal mission in India, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) was launched across 63 cities with two objectives: to strengthen infrastructure and address urban poverty. The financial allocation remained in favor of strengthening infrastructure in the race to becoming a global city. Spatial and infrastructural renovation also meant that the poor and their housing were either relocated or lost their place in the process.
Johannesburg
Authors: Clarno Andy
Published: April 2019

Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and the economic hub of the Southern African region. Established as a mining camp in 1886 near the gold deposits of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg grew rapidly into a major urban center. After 1948, Johannesburg was central to efforts by the apartheid regime to engineer segregated urban spaces. The city was also key for struggles against apartheid, including the spread of labor‐ and community‐based struggles during the 1980s that led to the negotiated transition. The end of formal apartheid has transformed the landscape of apartheid, yet the city remains highly unequal and segregated due to rapid migration, deindustrialization, and privatized securitization.
Kolkata
Authors: Bose Pablo Shiladitya
Published: April 2019

Kolkata is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Once the center of the British Raj during the colonial era, it endured significant decline during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of political conflicts and economic changes in the subcontinent. In recent years it has enjoyed a resurgence and increased urban growth as a result of its involvement in global networks of labor, capital, and culture. Significant investments in new industries and construction have led to a transformed urban landscape, yet the city continues to grapple with issues of social and ecological justice as the growth of Kolkata has meant very different outcomes for the different populations who live within its boundaries.
Lefebvre, Henri
Authors: Novick Alicia , Favelukes Graciela
Published: April 2019

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) was a French intellectual and a prolific and polemical author. From 1966 to 1978, he developed urban research exploring the social production of space in the capitalist city. Some of his key writings, such asLe droit à la ville(1968),Du rural à l'urbain(1970),La révolution urbaine(1970),La pensée marxiste et la ville(1972),Espace et politique (Le droit à la ville, II)(1973), andLa production de l'espace(1974), reached a large audience of architects and city planners. With the translation of some of these works into English, he became a key reference in critical geography and the “spatial turn.” Furthermore, the polysemic notion of “the right to the city” became a reference point for the actions of social movements crossing the frontiers between the academic world and social organizations. His thinking and writing style provokes questions without defining categories, fostering a wide range of later appropriations of his production on urban space.
Liveable Cities/Urban Liveability
Authors: Chiu Rebecca L. H.
Published: April 2019

Urban liveability can simply be rephrased as quality of life in cities, but its concept is complex because of the heterogeneous nature of cities and the encompassing meaning of quality of life. Urban geographers focus on human behavior–environment relationships, and define urban liveability as the extent to which a city can satisfy the physical and psychological needs and demands of its residents. Geographers assess residents' satisfaction by using both objective and subjective indicators and information, and explain liveability by delving into contextual factors. The common objectives of urban planners and designers are to make cities vital, to enable them to impart a sense of place and time, to ensure that they fit well with human activities, to make them accessible, controllable, and able to attract continuing investment. With the advent of neoliberalism and globalization, global liveable ranking systems emerged in the 1990s. These relay the views and ratings of city‐dwellers, visitors, and other stakeholders, supplemented by secondary information. The liveability of high density cities or districts characterized by high rises has become a major contemporary concern following the pursuit of sustainable urban development. It is expected that two development strands, the global aging trend and the advancement in smart technology, will impact on the future directions of liveability research.
Local Welfare
Authors: Andreotti Alberta , Mingione Enzo
Published: April 2019

Local welfare systems have emerged particularly in European countries, as a consequence of demographic, economic, and institutional changes that started in the mid‐1970s. Local welfare is considered more effective in meeting the heterogeneity of the populations' needs, more participatory and sustainable, and more able to activate citizens and local agencies compared to standardized national welfare states' provisions. At the same time, local welfare is assumed to be less expensive while being more effective. These two aspects of local welfare can entail opposite political strategies, leading to controversial situations: cuts in expenses and privatization of welfare services opposing the diffusion of social investments, activation, and innovative welfare practices. One of the main risks in the rise of local welfare systems is an increase in social and territorial inequalities, particularly when an effective national regulatory framework is lacking.
M
artinotti,
G
uido
Authors: Haddock Serena Vicari
Published: April 2019

Guido Martinotti (1938–2012) was an Italian urban sociologist whose main areas of interest were the origin and evolution of the metropolitan form and the different new urban forms emerging under conditions of increased mobility and the rapid spread of new information and communication technologies. In addition, he was a public intellectual active in different domains such as the promotion of progressive policies aimed at improving the quality of life in urban areas and at upgrading the system of higher education.
Masculinities
Authors: Fidolini Vulca
Published: April 2019

The notion of masculinities is a relatively new concept in the field of gender studies. From the 1970s, and especially at the end of the 1980s, this concept appears in academic and nonacademic milieus, allowing interpretations of masculinity inspired only by the paradigm of the patriarchal domination to be overcome. Attention shifts to the variable forms of construction and expression of masculinity, in order to focus on relations not only between men and women but also among different masculinities. In this context, the introduction of the concept of hegemonic masculinity plays a central role. The notion of hegemony allows the problematization in a more dynamic way of social processes that define the dominant models of masculinity, providing at the same time the tools with which to observe how individuals confirm, renegotiate, accept, or resist the hierarchical impact of these models on our global contemporary scene.
Metropolitan Governance
Authors: Rebelo Emília Malcata
Published: April 2019

The concept of metropolitan governance embraces the whole set of institutions and actions that rule or determine conditions for metropolitan territorial policy. It extends beyond the city or municipal jurisdictional boundaries, bypassing preexisting agreements and institutions, and demanding bigger geographical units and access to financial and human resources to deal with broader metropolitan issues. It enhances metropolitan economic productivity and competitiveness, social cohesion, and fiscal feasibility; solves interterritorial coordination issues; and approaches regional problems. Although in the literature the concept of metropolitan governance is subject to many different interpretations, there is consensus that it conveys conditions, restrictions, or specificities concerning the management of common public functions. These generally include all kinds of networks and forms of institutional or voluntary cooperation, regulation strategies, governance plans, local governmental bodies, capacities, interactions between public and private stakeholders, and agreements among different governmental and organizational layers.
M
exico
C
ity
Authors: Garza Gustavo
Published: April 2019

The Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City, with 20.3 million inhabitants in 2015, generates 23.1 percent of the national gross domestic product. This entry describes its demographic and urban expansion from 1950 to 2015, when it was transformed into a megacity. It then analyzes its macroeconomic dynamics from 1960 to 2013 and the intrametropolitan pattern of manufacturing, trade, and services. Following this, it presents the characteristics of each area of infrastructure and calculates the amount of accumulated investment; this figure is related to the fixed capital of all its private companies, whose high coefficient validates the concept of the city as a production factor. Lastly, a summary is provided of the main problems Mexico City faces as a city in a medium development country.
Middletown
Authors: Holt William Grady
Published: April 2019

The Middletown Studies refer to a set of community studies conducted in Muncie, Indiana, by Robert and Helen Lynd in 1929, with a follow‐up in 1939. The studies focus on social changes in American society. Since the 1970s sociologists as well as filmmakers have returned to Muncie for further studies on American society in small cities.
Mobilities
Authors: Jirón Paola
Published: April 2019

Mobility can be seen as an object of study or as an approach to understand broader processes. One of the key features of mobility studies today is the way the new mobilities paradigm has affected the way social sciences and transport studies can be observed. This entry explains the new mobility paradigm and briefly discusses how it affects transport, daily mobility, migration, tourism, residential mobility, urban infrastructure, and policy mobility and mobile methods. It then presents the challenges faced by this specific area in urban studies.
Neighborhood Change
Authors: Janoschka Michael
Published: April 2019

Neighborhood change addresses the dynamics of the physical, social, and demographic composition of specific places and spaces with symbolic cohesion in the city. Understanding this transformation requires a theoretical framework that includes both the agency of individual and institutional actors and the structural power arising from urban capital accumulation. Hence, neighborhood change exemplifies the social and spatial injustices of contemporary capitalism and class struggle. Its analysis relates us to the reasons why people live, move, and concentrate in certain areas, while being systematically excluded from others.
Neighborhood Effects
Authors: Manley David
Published: April 2019

Neighborhood effects relate to the impact that the residential context may have on individual outcomes above and beyond an individual's own characteristics. There is a vast literature spanning health, social sciences, economics, and other domains where often negative neighbourhood contexts are related to specific outcomes. One of the biggest challenges in the literature relates to the demonstration of causal relationships between people and places. This chapter provides an overview of key aspects of the literature that need to be addressed to move the debate forward.
Nonplaces
Authors: Merriman Peter
Published: April 2019

The concept of nonplaces is most often associated with the work of the French anthropologist of supermodernity Marc Augé, although there are parallels with earlier writings on placelessness by Edward Relph and the nonplace urban realm by Melvin Webber. Nonplaces are characterized as modern spaces of mobility, consumption, and exchange with which people rarely identify, develop few attachments, or undertake face‐to‐face interactions, with archetypal examples including airports, shopping centers, and motorways. Augé's part‐autobiographical, quasi‐ethnographic, part‐fictional approach (termed “ethnofiction”) is outlined in this entry, as are critiques which have emerged over the past decade or so.
Occupancy Urbanism
Authors: Benjamin Solomon
Published: April 2019

“Occupancy urbanism” is a way to understand the dynamic of cities' territorial and spatial conflicts as these shape economic and social relations. Land tenure is of central importance, as well as its institutional embedding. The conceptual premise draws on scholarship from legal pluralism that embeds law in society, contested ideas of property, and locates the urban within an idea of a heterogeneous state. This forms a critique of the excessive reliance on terms such as “slums,” master planning, informal sector, mafia, and speculation. The entry includes an account of changing contexts since the concept was first introduced and a critique of its interpretation in recent scholarship.
Peri‐Urbanization
Authors: Colleoni Matteo
Published: April 2019

Peri‐urbanization refers to a phase of the urbanization process characterized by the growth of built‐up areas between urban settlement areas and their rural hinterland. The peri‐urban area is considered a space without identity that combines some of the characteristics of the city with others of the countryside. Nevertheless, some recurring features characterize peri‐urban areas and some approaches to the conceptualization of the topic can be identified. This entry provides an overview of these approaches by examining the peri‐urban as the periphery of the city, as a socioeconomic system, and as the interaction of rural–urban flows at the metropolitan level.
Pirenne, Henri
Authors: Haddock Serena Vicari
Published: April 2019

Henri Pirenne (1862–1935) was a Belgian historian whose considerable reputation rests on a series of major works on European history, on his comparative method and his attention to the contribution of sociology and psychology to the understanding of historical events. Of particular relevance are his studies on the origin and early formation of medieval cities within a substantial feudal order. He argued that the degree to which towns enjoyed autonomy from external authority is the key factor in their evolution and that this freedom was acquired thanks to “new men,” that is, merchants, responsible for the rebirth of trade and manufacturing.
Redlining
Authors: Squires Gregory D. , Woodruff Frank
Published: April 2019

Redlining is a policy or practice of denying credit or providing credit on more onerous terms to people in particular neighborhoods for reasons unrelated to creditworthiness such as their race or ethnicity. Lenders – and even the federal government – have long engaged in redlining. With passage of the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights laws the more explicit forms of redlining ameliorated. But predatory lending practices constituted a form of reverse redlining, punishing the same communities that had previously been denied credit. Those predatory practices have faded but traditional redlining appears to be making a comeback and remains a highly contested issue.
Rouse, James
Authors: Bloom Nicholas Dagen
Published: April 2019

James Rouse (1914–1996) was a leading American real estate developer and urban visionary of the mid‐twentieth century who believed deeply that the private sector, with targeted public subsidies, could both solve America's deepening urban crisis and tame suburban sprawl. His vision for a new era of private–public partnerships influenced urban policy in areas such as urban renewal, the regional shopping center, new towns, festival marketplaces, and contemporary affordable housing.
Simulation and Simulacra
Authors: Langman Lauren
Published: April 2019

For a number of social theorists, the contemporary “postmodern” era is constantly bombarded by and defined by an endless barrage of mass‐mediated simulations, contrived, mass‐produced representations of a “reality” when an original may have never existed. Billboards, movies, and television, along with cell phones, tablets, and computers also provide never‐ending streams of simulations, dreams, and images. These simulations are largely a product of advertisers, marketers, political consultants, and even journalists, who create and disseminate the spectacles and simulations of “hyperreality.” Indeed, we have now reached a moment that many political commentators have called a “posttruth” era in which “truthiness” has displaced “objective reality” and “fake news” is unquestioned.
Social Enterprise
Authors: Pinch Steven , Sunley Peter
Published: April 2019

Social enterprises (SEs) are commercial ventures run for the benefit of various stakeholders (rather than shareholders) that attempt to leverage resources (ideally through trading, but also through grants, loans, and donations in kind) to achieve social, environmental, or community‐based ends. As SEs have grown in significance throughout the world, so they have attracted a growing body of academic research. Recent work has revealed much about the distinctive characteristics and tensions of SE. SEs are strongly shaped by their institutional and social contexts and face a complex set of obstacles and challenges.
Sociospatial Dialectic
Authors: Sheppard Eric
Published: April 2019

The sociospatial dialectic conceptualizes the complex interrelationship between social and spatial structures, whereby the spatialities produced by societal processes themselves have causal influence over those processes. Developed initially as a foundational concept for geographical political economy, underwriting a distinctive approach to that of mainstream urban and regional economics, it has framed the emergence of sociospatial theory in both the interdisciplinary social sciences and the humanities.
Spatial Planning Systems
Authors: González Pérez Jesús M.
Published: April 2019

Spatial planning is an administrative technique and a broader policy developed at different scales, which goes beyond land‐use regulation by including economic, social, and environmental development policies. It comprises a complex system of different levels of plans that adhere to the principle of hierarchy of norms. In the main, planning is binding and is seen as a public service. It has reached its highest level of development in Europe.
Street Gangs
Authors: Jones Gareth A.
Published: April 2019

Gangs feature prominently in popular culture, in novels, songs, and more recently film and video games. The serious study of gangs, however, only took off in the 1920s following interest from the Chicago School of sociology. In their analysis, gangs were a sign of social disorganization as a result of rapid urbanization. These early studies located gangs in particular spaces, notably the street corner and “slum” neighborhood, but also linked them with social and political institutions. More recent studies have emphasized the gang as a complex social phenomenon and have noted the evolution of individual gangs, occasionally including a transnational dimension and links with terrorist and criminal organizations. Contemporary research is attentive to the economics of gangs, gender, and social identity, and to the uses and effects of violence. Finally, the paper considers some of the policy approaches to gangs, especially in the Global South.
Theme Parks
Authors: Krase Jerome
Published: April 2019

When most people hear the phrase “theme park” they envision a place where large numbers of people choose to gather to indulge themselves by following their own desires and interests. For them, a theme park is a happy place that maximizes individual freedom. English‐language dictionaries define “theme parks” rather simply as amusement parks that are organized around a single or central idea. The structures and settings as well as the rides and other attractions offered to the public represent those unifying concepts. At a more abstract level the spatial and social designs of theme parks define, and control, important relations between people and the spaces they occupy. Many social critics and urbanists negatively view the global influence of theme park principles on modern social life. These principles, such as intense surveillance and the “taming” of public spaces, seem to have had considerable impact on city planning, urban development, and related tourism strategies.
Urban Aspirations
Authors: Bunnell Tim
Published: April 2019

Urban aspirations denote both wished‐for forms of urban space and sociality, and wished‐for future selves that people seek to realize through urban life. Studies of urban aspirations examine how human imagination and action relate to wider systems of evaluation as to what constitutes better (urban) futures, and sociospatial environments of opportunity and constraint.
Urban Design
Authors: Larice Michael
Published: April 2019

Urban design is the conscious process of shaping places for human settlement. It is a collaborative undertaking by the various built environment professions, including architecture, planning, landscape, engineering, real estate development, and urban governance. Increasingly it is impacted by citizen interests to improve the liveability of the city. As a field of practice, rather than a discrete profession, its historical development is debated between academics and followed different development paths in Europe and the USA. Urban design outcomes can be distinguished by several categories: design procedure, product type, and design paradigm. Principles that influence urban design include: formal, functional, sociocultural, and environmental.
Urban Mobile Policy
Authors: Bok Rachel
Published: April 2019

This entry provides an account of the increasingly prominent urban policy mobilities framework from a geographical perspective. It details the interdisciplinary theoretical antecedents of this approach, which are situated in work on cities and globalization and policy transfer. It also outlines the main conceptual dimensions and empirical avenues of urban policy mobilities research, before concluding with some suggestions for further research.
Urban Mosaic
Authors: Collins Francis L.
Published: April 2019

The urban mosaic is a term and analytical category that addresses the differentiation of urban populations and environments through social status, ethnicity, and lifestyle. As an account of urban life it can be traced to the patterning of preindustrial and colonial cities but has been used most extensively in human ecology approaches to understanding migration and urbanization in the twentieth century. While an emphasis on the urban mosaic still highlights differentiation, its relatively static conception of urban life means it is limited as a terminology for understanding contemporary cities characterized by contingent and dynamic interactions between people and places.
Urban Renewal
Authors: Zumelzu Antonio
Published: April 2019

This entry examines urban renewal as a relevant and complex process in urbanism, encompassing different aspects of intervention in deprived neighborhoods. Urban renewal is defined by various perspectives, followed by an overview of urban renewal regarding its emergence, changes, and evolution, within the three historical generations proposed by Naomi Carmon. The entry also considers the relation between urban renewal and sustainability through four essential perspectives: physical, social, economic, and environmental. It finishes with a brief discussion of future research challenges in sustainable urban renewal studies.
Urban Sustainability
Authors: Dooling Sarah
Published: April 2019

Urban sustainability emerged as a political and social movement following the 1987 publication of the Brundtland Report. This entry presents a brief history about the origins of urban sustainability in Western thought. Urban sustainability is broadly defined as an approach that reconciles development practices that exploited people and polluted environments with the need for protecting the environment and alleviating poverty. The entry discusses urban sustainability indicators and plans within the North American context. The last section presents three major contradictions that emerge when developing and implementing urban sustainability initiatives within current economic systems and governance structures.