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Scholars in the social sciences are increasingly turning to research questions that explore everyday lived experiences, using participatory visual methodologies to promote critical reflections on urban challenges. In contrast with traditional research approaches, participatory visual methods engage directly with community participants, foregrounding their daily realities, and working towards collaborative knowledge production of participants' situated experiences, potentially leading to transformative thinking and action. This participatory turn in research intersects with growing interests in community participation in collaborative planning and effective ways of engaging "unheard voices" in a planning context, particularly in marginalized neighbourhoods, using arts-based methods. This article critically examines the potential of participatory visual methodologies, exploring how the method of photovoice can reveal otherwise obscured perspectives from the viewpoint of communities in marginalised neighbourhoods. Based on a case study in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, the research considers whether and how creative participatory approaches can contribute to giving voice to communities and, if so, how these methods can impact a city's planning for urban futures. The research shows that, potentially, photovoice can provide a means of communicating community perspectives, reimagining place within the framework of participatory planning processes to those who make decisions on the neighbourhood's future. However, the research also demonstrates that there are limitations to the approach, bringing into sharp focus the ethical dimensions and challenges of participatory visual methodologies as a tool for engaging with communities, in an urban planning context.

The French suburbs, or banlieues, have long been associated with marginalization and peripheralization, characterized by unemployment, a high proportion of ethnic minority populations and low education attainment levels. Since 2000, the 'crisis' of the banlieue has been addressed through a policy of 'social mixing' which aims to promote mixed communities in certain neighbourhoods, to dilute the 'problematic elements' of the suburbs. This 'social sustainability fix' however has had mixed results. Questions can be raised over whether a policy based on increasing a neighbourhood's social mix is an appropriate sustainability fix for the suburbs, and whether it has actually resulted in the outcomes that were intended. Rather than encouraging social integration, it is argued here that the policy of social mixing reinforces segregation and has done little to tackle inequalities and social exclusion. We suggest that there are alternative solutions to the challenges of fostering social sustainability in the suburbs, which could be implemented in partnership with citizens and neighbourhoodbased groups (associations) that would be more effective in addressing social sustainability solutions in the future.

This innovative book provides a critical analysis of diverse experiences of Co-creation in neighbourhood settings across the Global North and Global South. A unique collection of international researchers, artists and activists explore how creative, arts-based methods of community engagement can help tackle marginalisation and stigmatisation, whilst empowering communities to effect positive change towards more socially just cities. Focusing on community collaboration, arts practice, and knowledge sharing, this book proposes various methods of Co-Creation for community engagement and assesses the effectiveness of different practices in highlighting, challenging, and reversing issues that most affect urban cohesion in contemporary cities.

This editorial for the thematic issue on "Co-Creation and the City: Arts-Based Methods and Participatory Approaches in Urban Planning" draws together the key themes of the ten articles in the issue. Firstly, the concept of Co-Creation is defined as a collective creative process involving artists, academics, and communities. Co-creation results in tangible or intangible outputs in the form of artwork or artefacts, and knowledge generated by multiple partners that, in a planning context, can feed into shared understandings of more socially just cities. The ten articles are summarized, and the emerging conclusions are drawn out, under three broad themes. The first set of conclusions deals with power imbalances and the risks of instrumentalization within co-creative processes. Contributors dismiss romanticizing assumptions that expect artistic practices to inevitably disrupt power hierarchies and strengthen democracy. The second set of outcomes relates to how arts-based strategies and methods can help address the translation of issues between urban planning and art. Finally, the third group of conclusions focuses on practices of listening within co-creation processes, raising the issue of voices that are less audible, rather than unheard or not listened to. In their concluding remarks, the authors recommend further research to be undertaken in this emerging field to explore the constraints and possibilities for urban planners to listen to arts-based expressions, in order to integrate a broader range of understandings and knowledge into plans for the city of the future.

"True stories of three little-known Japanese of the Edo period who lived lives of sublime selflessness and purity, blurring the boundary between self and others. Merchant Kokudaya Jūzaburō comes up with a brilliant scheme to rescue his dying town from poverty. He and others go deep into debt, risking all to raise money for the cash-strapped daimyo and receive annual interest in return. Prodigious scholar and former Zen monk Nakane Tōri refuses a government post and elects to live in abject poverty, weaving sandals. Though perhaps the age's greatest poet, he throws his works into the fire and ends his days teaching in a country village. Ōtagaki Rengetsu, a noted beauty in Kyoto, loses two husbands and five children. She becomes a Buddhist nun and devotes her life to poetry and pottery. With her savings she feeds the hungry and builds a bridge across Kamo River"--Publisher's website

This chapter aims to provide a critical exploration of whether or not there is a common understanding of urban policy within the EU Member States, and if so, what role the European Union (EU) has played in its development over the past 30 years. To address this question, the chapter examines the role of Europeanization in the field of national urban policies, some 20 years after the original formulation of the Europeanization concept. We aim to understand how and to what extent the 30 years of discussion and operationalization of urban policies at the EU level have impacted on the development of national urban policies in different Member States. We examine the EU Urban Agenda as a new and flexible model to address urban challenges within a framework of Integrated Sustainable Urban Development (ISUD) and look more directly at the current and contemporary phase of urban policies promoted by the EU, trying to highlight whether and to what extent the mechanism and tools, as well as the vocabulary and meanings produced under the 2014–2020 EU cohesion framework, are innovating the field and also contributing to reshaping the debate on the role and nature of national urban policies.

Executive summary. This research report seeks to provide a systematic review of current literature (both academic and grey) on socio-economic impact assessment methodology and mitigation/enhancement methods. It includes academic, industry and government literature relating to OWF published over the 10 years to 2019. The review first considers impact assessment methodology, and then its application to Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs), for both economic and social impacts. There is then a specific examination of socio-economic impacts of OWFs, with particular reference to Scotland. The executive summary here briefly sets out the nature of socio-economic impacts and their assessment, and associated challenges and opportunities in relation to OWF development, especially in Scotland. Nature of socio-economic impacts and their assessment: Socio-economic impacts can be summarised as the "people effects" of development actions. They cover a wide range of social and economic impacts and the boundaries are fuzzy between social and economic impacts. Economic impacts can range from the macro-impacts on a nation's GNP to the impact on construction workers' wage levels in a town adjacent to a project. Social impacts may include impacts on local demographics, livelihoods, housing, local services, and wellbeing and community cohesion. Socio-economic impact assessment seeks to identify the impacts of development actions on people, and who benefits and who loses; it can help to build the needs and voices of diverse groups in a community into project planning and decision-making. The consideration of the social and economic impacts of major developments has been the poor relation of impact assessment until the current century. However, it is now a much more important element in the assessment of the impacts of major projects. Evolving international guidance, standards and legislation on SIA stress the importance of maximizing opportunities for local content (i.e. jobs for local people and local procurement), and the necessity for a ...

Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, this best-selling book by one of Japan's most ambitious contemporary fiction writers lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in an age of English dominance. Born in Tokyo but also raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge, yet also appreciates the different ways of seeing offered by the work of multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity. Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human socie