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The notion of infrastructural politics has been increasingly used in urban studies as it helps to explore urbanisation processes, the urban condition and urban life. Given its relevance, this article maps out and critically reviews the main analytical strands that inform its meanings, namely, conventional and popular infrastructural politics. These strands reveal the current tendency to demarcate infrastructural politics as two separate, antagonistic domains that associate the notion with particular hegemonic and subaltern actors, practices and processes. The article problematises this tendency and proposes a broader understanding of infrastructural politics as an ordinary and contentious political arena where diverse actors develop politico-infrastructural repertoires that co-exist in multifaceted, conflictive ways rather than as separate domains. Drawing on political ethnographic understandings of politics, infrastructural politics is conceived as a point of convergence where conventional and popular infrastructural politics meet and mesh. This suggests the possibility of cross-fertilising conversations between infrastructure studies and political ethnography that can refine our understanding of infrastructural politics, first, by promoting a more nuanced examination of the overlaps and interdependencies between hegemonic and subaltern politico-infrastructural actors and practices, and second, by addressing the critical role of infrastructures in enabling and materialising such overlaps and interdependencies.

AbstractIn the urbanisation stage of bilateral urban–rural interaction, China is adopting various policies to achieve rural revitalisation and provide diverse destinations to which farmers can migrate. Most previous studies have focused on urban destinations; thus, new countryside locations are not as well understood in this context. This study focused on first migration practices to examine new countryside destinations for farmers in China. This study established a conceptual framework to explain the diverse migration destination options based on three aspects: human capital, economic characteristics, and social characteristics. Based on survey data from farming households in a traditional agriculture area in Xinxiang, a multiple logit model was used to examine why new countryside destinations were adaptive first migration destinations. The results indicated that farmers were influenced by land capital and low initial household incomes. Specifically, many farmers were attracted to new countryside locations close to their original villages because of the need for cultivated land and farming, thus providing a logical first move in the rural–urban migration process. Poorer households were willing to first improve their living conditions in this way. This suggests that new countryside construction can help achieve rural revitalisation.

The article seeks to explicate urban warfare, its intricacies and devastating impact on civilian populations and infrastructure. Historically, many doctrinal manuals were produced emphasising that urban areas should not be added to war zones. However, as the centres of gravity, the cities have always been targets of fighting. Therefore, it is a prevalent thinking that future fights will take place in megacities and dense urban areas. The dynamics of urban warfare are relatively dissimilar from traditional warfare due to the complexity and density of critical infrastructures in urban settings. To unpack the complexity, this article raises following questions; a. Why do some states still prefer to wage urban warfare? b. How has technological sophistication altered the battles in urban areas? The data used for this article is secondary and collected from articles, official and unofficial websites, books and news. The article found that modern technologies and rapid urbanisation have altered the nature of warfare toward urban areas and technological sophistication has fundamentally changed the nature of warfare at strategic, operational and tactical levels. To prove the argument, an instance of the Russian-Ukraine war has been used which presents a clear picture of the conduct of urban warfare and the complexities attached to it.

AbstractCity governments are at the forefront of public problem‐solving. As they deliver services to residents and work to tackle complex social challenges, they often coordinate and communicate with each other. Against the backdrop of globalisation and urbanisation, which have been documented and analysed widely, the phenomenon of inter‐city collaboration (ICC) has remained understudied. In this article, we examine existing and emergent patterns of how and why cities collaborate. We conducted a desk review of ICCs in 64 US cities. We interviewed city leaders in US and international cities (N = 13) and leaders of ICCs (N = 20). We also surveyed leaders from 47 US cities. Through our analysis, we put forth an analytical framework of ICCs, describing the forms they take and the value they deliver. We identify various forms of value ICCs produce for cities and examine under what conditions they are likely to be effective. While not all collaborations are successful, ICCs have the potential to generate substantial benefits through mutual learning, economies of scale and the power of collective action. Intentional design and management of ICCs can make them effective platforms of 'horizontal governance' and solving collective action problems.

Abstract
Contemporary globalisation and urbanisation continue to play a significant role in how the youths (re)create and (re)define urban spaces in Africa. Major cities across the continent are becoming active sites for social and cultural transformation. With the economic slowdown and increased rate of unemployment, youths are seeking ways to adapt to these realities while at the same time staying true to their urban identity. The present study uses participatory observation to examine two of the emerging youth practices in Nairobi, which are, the baze and gengetone music, to underscore how the youths in Nairobi Eastlands engage these practices both as sites for bolstering their urban identity and as alternative spaces for earning a livelihood. The study reveals that both the baze and gengetone music are available platforms which city youths use to construct their urban identities while dealing with local social challenges such as alcoholism, drug abuse and negative ethnicity, as well as harsh economic realities such as unemployment and a high cost of living. Further examination shows that discourse spaces created by these practices afford them a chance to participate in matters of national interest where they can contest and challenge social orders that are oppressive.

Abstract
It is often surmised that the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867) was obsessed with the notion of rigorous border control. During the first half a century of its existence, it had expelled from the country all Westerners but the Dutch, prohibited the Japanese from ever setting foot on foreign soil and banned the return of those abroad. Though, were the borders as impenetrable as they seemed to be? Historians agree nowadays that the bakufu maintained relations with the outside world and, even if international trade was restricted to certain nations and ports, it prospered still. The archipelago as well was far from lifeless. It was undergoing an intense urbanisation, centred mainly on the cities of Edo and Ōsaka. Before long, hosts of transport craft became a crucial part of the booming Japanese economy. However, shipwrecks were extremely common, and several hundred castaways ended up in Europe, in the United States or in their colonies in Asia, a fate that they viewed as worse than death, since they were theoretically forbidden from coming back. Many shipwrecked sailors chose to remain abroad, but some did return to their home country. This paper examines how they tried to cross a border that was reputed to be impossible to cross.

Historians have typically presented the early 1970s underground paper Suburban Press, a major stylistic influence on the emergence of punk, as a British application of Situationist ideas and aesthetics. However, in this narrative, the role of Mao Zedong and Maoism in the underground
press, and punk, gets reduced to their mimetic capacity to shock. This paper will reconsider Suburban Press within the context of Croydon's underground scene, to rescue an alternative narrative in which Mao and Maoism occupy a sincere and not only satirical position. It argues that
the 'suburban' in the title of Suburban Press had three distinct meanings: the middle-class left-wing politics of the young radicals' parents; working-class areas like New Addington, analogous to the French banlieue ; and the complex process of (sub)urbanisation typified by
Croydon's changing town centre. This paper thereby hints at a new history of the 'spatial turn' in which the influence of Maoism upon its key theorists – e. g., Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, and Doreen Massey – is recognised. It concludes by suggesting some implications for
recent references to spatiality in leftwing politics in Britain, outlining a 'spatial Maoism' to add to the 'two lines of global Maoism' recently described by Colleen Lye.

AbstractThis paper examines the long‐ and short‐run impacts of the railway zones associated with the China Eastern and South Manchuria Railways in Manchuria, which were administered by Russia and Japan, respectively, from the early 1900s to the 1920s. Despite the fact that 'railway imperialism' impaired China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and constituted a humiliating quasi‐colonial episode in Chinese history, railway zones nevertheless had a noticeable impact on Manchuria's local economies. Through a reconstruction of the historical dataset and cliometrics, we show that, among the railway zones in northeastern China, only those attached to the South Manchuria Railway exerted a significant and positive impact. Specifically, its railway zone had higher urbanisation and literacy rates and a higher percentage of professionals in its industrial and commercial sectors in the 1930s, and these effects persist to the present day as an unintended outcome. Apart from the agglomeration of direct manufacturing investment in these railway zones, an additional channel through which the impact took effect was the provision of public goods, such as schools and hospitals, which served as necessary conditions for long‐term development. This study sheds light on understanding the persistence of colonial history as a root of development.

AbstractThe study covered an urban river valley, strongly transformed due to the transport infrastructure development. The paper evaluates changes in spatial management of the valley section passing through the city centre that occurred during the past two centuries (long-term and short-term phenomena) as well as their effect on selected environmental components. The basic spatial analyses were carried out with the use of specialized software, cartographic materials and photographic and descriptive documentation of the studied area (archival data). The most unfavourable changes in the potential of the valley environment occurred over the past few decades. They are manifested in a considerable deterioration of landscape values as well as the quantity and quality of water resources. Relationship was identified between water quality and intensity of motor vehicle traffic near the river. Despite the progressing urbanisation of the valley, revitalisation procedures can be still carried out and attractive space in the city centre can be created. In order to demonstrate the reasonableness of the presented concept, the paper suggests that urban succession should be incorporated as a term covering time trends and accumulated transformations. It can be helpful in analysing and determining the directions of development in disputable situations.

The contribution of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) to mitigating/reducing fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions was researched through a panel of 29 European countries from 2010 to 2019, using the econometric technique of method of moments quantile regression (MM-QR). This research is innovative by connecting the increasing use of electric vehicles with PM2.5 emissions and using the MM-QR to explore this relationship. Two models were estimated to analyse their contribution to reducing PM2.5 in European countries. The nonlinearity of the models were confirmed. The statistical significance of the variables is strong for the upper quantiles (75th and 90th), resulting from the effectiveness of European policies to improve the environment. Electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs), economic growth, and urbanisation reduce the PM2.5 problem, but energy intensity and fossil fuel consumption aggravate it. This research sheds light on how policymakers and governments can design proposals to encourage electric vehicle use in European countries. To achieve the long-term climate neutral strategy by 2050, it is imperative to implement effective policies to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and promote the adoption of electric vehicles using renewable energy sources.

The relationship between industrialisation and urban development is subject to assumptions based on experiences in the global North, with little research on how it plays out in countries undergoing urbanisation and industrialisation today. In the context of recent excitement about China's role in stimulating an 'industrial revolution' in Africa, we examine how Chinese zones in Ethiopia and Uganda are influencing the urban–industrial nexus. We argue that Chinese zones are key sites of urban–industrial encounter, but these dynamics are not primarily driven by the government officials that dominate the 'policy mobilities' literature, nor by the State-Owned Enterprises usually associated with Chinese activity overseas. Rather, they are emerging through the activities of inexperienced private Chinese actors who do not even operate in the worlds of urban policy. Faced with government histories and capacities that vastly differ from China's, directly replicating the Chinese experience is virtually impossible; yet the tentative and improvisational relationships between Chinese firms, African government authorities and other local actors are gradually moulding new urbanisms into shape. The piecemeal bargaining and negotiation that unfolds through these relationships bridges some of the gaps between industrialisation and planning, but this cannot compensate for the governance of the urban–industrial nexus at higher scales.

We live in an increasingly urban, increasingly unequal world. This is nowhere more evident than in cities of the global South, where many residents face deep injustices in their ability to access vital services, participate in decision-making or to have their rights recognised as citizens. In this regard, the rallying cry of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to 'leave no one behind' offers significant potential to guide urbanisation processes towards more equitable outcomes, particularly for the urban poor. Yet the SDGs have also faced a series of criticisms which have highlighted the gaps and silences in moving towards a transformative agenda. This article explores the potentials of adopting a relational lens to read the SDGs, as a mechanism to navigate these internal contradictions and critiques and build pathways to urban equality. In particular, it offers three questions if we want to place urban equality at the heart of the agenda: who owns the city; who produces knowledge about the city; and who is visible in the city? Drawing from the practices of organised groups of the urban poor, this article outlines the key lessons for orienting this agenda towards the relational and transformative aims of urban equality.

Abstract
The aim of the paper is to open the issue of multiple shrinkage trajectories in a context of extended urbanisation (Keil 2018) by delineating the different trajectories of Romanian cities. We employed principal component analysis to allow for a multi-criterial classification of Romanian cities based on k-means cluster analysis. Beyond the dominant representation of shrinkage as a process that is mainly correlated with population loss and economic decline, this paper calls for bridging together distinct dimensions which have been either under-studied, such as the aspect of human development, or studied separately across the existing literature, such as governance of shrinkage and economic growth. Therefore, the typology developed here accounts for understanding the process of shrinkage as a complex process, having multiple causes, which determine peculiar trajectories. The outcome confirms the existence of distinct and highly localised shrinkage identities (Martinez-Fernandez, Audirac, et al. 2012). We show that regrowth is not strictly related to the urban core, but it has more to do with a process of complexification of the landscape and social relations existing at the periphery of the city. Shrinking core cities coexists with growing peri-urban areas.

AbstractThe aim of this study was to analyse the association between season of birth, temperature and neonatal mortality according to socioeconomic status in northern Sweden from 1880 to 1950. The source material for this study comprised digitised parish records combined with local weather data. The association between temperature, seasonality, socioeconomic status and neonatal mortality was modelled using survival analysis. We can summarise our findings according to three time periods. During the first period (1880–1899), temperature and seasonality had the greatest association with high neonatal mortality, and the socioeconomic differences in vulnerability were small. The second period (1900–1929) was associated with a decline in seasonal and temperature-related vulnerabilities among all socioeconomic groups. For the last period (1930–1950), a new regime evolved with rapidly declining neonatal mortality rates involving class-specific temperature vulnerabilities, and there was a particular effect of high temperature among workers. We conclude that the effect of season of birth on neonatal mortality was declining for all socioeconomic groups (1880–1950), whereas weather vulnerability was pronounced either when the socioeconomic disparities in neonatal mortality were large (1880–1899) or during transformations from high to low neonatal rates in the course of industrialisation and urbanisation.

The artworks1001st Island — The Most Sustainable Island in Archipelago(2015–16) by Tita Salina andDewa Murka(2016) by Teja Astawa are compared as a means to provide insight into ways artists have been interrogating recent urban discourse in Indonesian contemporary art. This article engages with the critical vocabulary proposed by urban historian Abidin Kusno, which analyses green discourse in the changing Indonesian urban landscapes of the post-Suharto era, and explores how these two artworks reflect Kusno's analysis. Salina's multi-media installation and Astawa's painting address two land reclamation projects in areas that have faced rapid urbanisation: Jakarta and Bali. The artworks evoke questions about tradition, spirituality, environmental sustainability and socioeconomic inequality. The artworks are formally and contextually analysed before being compared and evaluated in relation to Indonesian urban history and discourse. Both artists reflect Kusno's critical analysis of green discourse in Indonesia. Salina's work shares parallels with the tools applied by the government in Jakarta, as her artistic practice similarly requires communities to participate in its creation. Meanwhile, Astawa's work mostly reflects the narrative of green discourse. This conclusion invites further investigation into the Java-centrism of urban discourse and the varying ways in which green discourse may be taking place across the Indonesian archipelago.