1,720,964 research outputs found
Urbanizzazioni popolari e pratiche di pianificazione a Buenos Aires
No full textUrban informality in the Global South is widely understood as an unofficial/illegal
process exclusively driven by the urban poor, occurring beyond the State and solely
enacted by the popular sector’s agency. On the other hand, it is considered a diametrically
opposed alternative to conventional conceptions of planning, representing a
form of urbanization that is independent of formal frameworks and in violation of
planning rules and regulations. Yet, although a fact generally neglected by planning
theory, the local dwellers of what have been called “informal settlements” comply
with regulatory frameworks and the spatial outcomes of their settlement actions are
frequently from the beginning in accordance with planning norms. This phenomenon
is crucial for understanding how local dwellers’ rationality is often driven by
their expectations in terms of accessing basic services and obtaining securing tenure.
This thesis is aimed to theorize how and under what conditions various actors and
their practices interact with the regulatory frameworks within the planning system
to enable and sustain a mode of popular urbanisation in contemporary Buenos Aires.
Therefore, this research centres the analysis on two spatial configurations of
popular urbanisation in Buenos Aires – particularly Villa 20 and the toma de tierra
of Guernica - and two corresponding positions assumed by policy makers and urban
planners, starting from their relationships with local actors from a transversal
perspective of governmentality on different focal points of encounter and disagreement.
By adopting a relational and socio-material approach to the study of planning
practices, the research provides a transversal reading across different actors and their
rationalities at play observing their engagement with the regulatory frameworks.
Through an ethnography of planning practices, the thesis provides a novel methodology
for bringing into view the processes, practices, alliances, and agencies which
are often invisible to policy makers. The thesis illustrates that popular urbanisation
and planning need to be considered as urban assemblages that have numerous and
unexpected ways of interlinking. Firstly, it recognizes the presence of conflicting,
competing and conflating rationalities at play in popular urbanisation of Buenos
Aires. Secondly, the thesis offers a novel insight into the strategies and tactics employed
by planners in attempts to intervene in popular urbanization in Buenos Aires.
Thirdly it proposes practices-centred recommendations for institutional change and
social justice considering the technical as much as the political aspects of planning
and interrogating the agency of materiality in urban processes. For policy makers
and urban planners, a better understanding of the socio-technical configurations of
popular urbanization can guide their actions to rearrange them toward coproducing
urban governance.Urban informality in the Global South is widely understood as an unofficial/illegal
process exclusively driven by the urban poor, occurring beyond the State and solely
enacted by the popular sector’s agency. On the other hand, it is considered a diametrically
opposed alternative to conventional conceptions of planning, representing a
form of urbanization that is independent of formal frameworks and in violation of
planning rules and regulations. Yet, although a fact generally neglected by planning
theory, the local dwellers of what have been called “informal settlements” comply
with regulatory frameworks and the spatial outcomes of their settlement actions are
frequently from the beginning in accordance with planning norms. This phenomenon
is crucial for understanding how local dwellers’ rationality is often driven by
their expectations in terms of accessing basic services and obtaining securing tenure.
This thesis is aimed to theorize how and under what conditions various actors and
their practices interact with the regulatory frameworks within the planning system
to enable and sustain a mode of popular urbanisation in contemporary Buenos Aires.
Therefore, this research centres the analysis on two spatial configurations of
popular urbanisation in Buenos Aires – particularly Villa 20 and the toma de tierra
of Guernica - and two corresponding positions assumed by policy makers and urban
planners, starting from their relationships with local actors from a transversal
perspective of governmentality on different focal points of encounter and disagreement.
By adopting a relational and socio-material approach to the study of planning
practices, the research provides a transversal reading across different actors and their
rationalities at play observing their engagement with the regulatory frameworks.
Through an ethnography of planning practices, the thesis provides a novel methodology
for bringing into view the processes, practices, alliances, and agencies which
are often invisible to policy makers. The thesis illustrates that popular urbanisation
and planning need to be considered as urban assemblages that have numerous and
unexpected ways of interlinking. Firstly, it recognizes the presence of conflicting,
competing and conflating rationalities at play in popular urbanisation of Buenos
Aires. Secondly, the thesis offers a novel insight into the strategies and tactics employed
by planners in attempts to intervene in popular urbanization in Buenos Aires.
Thirdly it proposes practices-centred recommendations for institutional change and
social justice considering the technical as much as the political aspects of planning
and interrogating the agency of materiality in urban processes. For policy makers
and urban planners, a better understanding of the socio-technical configurations of
popular urbanization can guide their actions to rearrange them toward coproducing
urban governance
Migrants and precarious housing : working paper 4
No full textThis working paper focuses on precarious housing experienced by migrants in Europe, a social group among those most severely affected by precariousness, particularly (but not only) in accessing adequate housing. After introducing key terms and main categories into which migrants are classified, the paper delves into the main obstacles they face in accessing the public and private housing markets, and the precarious formal or informal housing options they are pushed into as a consequence
Migrants’ right to adequate housing: barriers, policies and practices
No full textThe Chapter delves into migrants' housing precariousness , focusing on the systemic barriers that hinder their access to adequate housinng. Besides problems connected to legal status, many migrants experience vulnerability due to economic, social, and policy-driven challenges. The chapter introduces key terms and classifications that impact migrants' access to both private and public housing markets, detailing specific obstacles like discrimination, limited legal rights, and inadequate support in the formal housing system. It then explores housing policies and practices, assessing whether they effectively ensure equitable access for migrants. By comparing social housing provisions and alternative solutions across different European countries, the chapter emphasizes the impact of welfare regimes on migrants' housing stability. Finally, it highlights the informal housing options migrants turn to and underscores the urgent need for inclusive policies to address housing inequalities in urban context
HexR controls glucose-responsive genes and central carbon metabolism in Neisseria meningitidis
Full text linkNeisseria meningitidis, an exclusively human pathogen and the leading cause of bacterial meningitis, must adapt to different host niches during human infection. N. meningitidis can utilize a restricted range of carbon sources, including lactate, glucose and pyruvate, whose concentration varies in host niches. Microarray analysis of N. meningitidis grown in chemically defined medium in the presence or absence of glucose allowed us to identify genes regulated by carbon source availability. Most of these genes are implicated in energy metabolism and transport as well as some implicated in virulence. In particular, genes involved in glucose catabolism were up-regulated whereas genes involved in the TCA cycle were down-regulated. Several genes encoding surface exposed proteins were up-regulated in the presence of glucose, including the MafA adhesins and the Neisseria surface protein A. Our microarray analysis led to the identification of a glucose-responsive hexR-like transcriptional regulator that controls genes of the central carbon metabolism of N. meningitidis in response to glucose. We characterized the HexR regulon and showed the hexR gene is accountable for a subset of the glucose-responsive regulation, and in vitro assays with the purified protein showed that HexR binds to the promoters of the central metabolic operons of the bacterium. Based on DNA sequence alignment of the target sites we propose a 17-bp pseudo-palindromic HexR consensus binding motif. Furthermore, N. meningitidis strains lacking hexR expression are deficient in establishing successful bacteremia in an infant rat model of infection, indicating the importance of this regulator for the survival of this pathogen in vivo
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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