Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: For the first time in history, the majority of the world population now lives in cities. Global urbanization will continue at high speed; the world’s urban population is expected to increase by more than 3 billion people between 2007 and 2050. While urban

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: This paper lays out an argument that, to the extent that the urban politics subfield has moved from the center to the periphery of political science, it is because the subfield has neglected to develop a contemporary, theoretically grounded version of cultural explanation to go along with its attention to institutions and political economy. The paper then introduces such a cultural theory – one that crosscuts the usual class and race divisions in urban inquiry. The paper shows how taking this form of explanation seriously could bring the study of local electoral politics closer to themes that are energizing the American politics field more broadly. It also shows that more serious attention to cultural explanation promises to enrich our efforts to understand urban development politics and policymaking and conflicts involving the politicization of routine city services by radicalized activists as well as conflicts over more purely morality issues. The paper concludes with an acknowledgment of a remaining challenge – conceptualizing how race and ethnicity relate to the new conceptualization of unconventional versus traditional sub-culture in the U.S.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, we examine the issue of agricultural production among Russian urban households. We specifically test if such production is largely a leisure activity, as argued by Clarke (1999), or whether it contributes significantly to the survival of these households. We additionally examine which factors encourage or discourage agricultural production among these households. Using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, we find that agricultural production is a strategy that has been adopted disproportionately by middle-income groups with material and skill assets rather than households in the lowest income groups or those headed by single adults. Agricultural production among urban households in Russia, in other words, is reinforcing, rather than reducing, social inequalities.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Vital social life once offered by an urban environment, one replete with busy streets, markets, parks, promenades, and squares, was long a defining characteristic of town and city culture. In 1964, Melvin N. Webber described the transformation of community from propinquitous to non-propinquitous, from a place to a non-place orientation. More recently, in “Tenacious Cities” Webber said, “metropolis is a massive communications switchboard . . . It exists because interdependent persons and groups have to be accessible to each other and because the cost of overcoming space has not yet reached zero” (Webber, 1996). As we approach the point at which such connection is zero, the impact on the urban/ suburban /landscape is being examined through lenses of the communication discipline. This paper explores the transformation of the urban landscape and resilient city as a communication network.