Suchergebnisse

By connecting the literature on urban development processes in post-socialist
cities with debates from the area of place branding, this paper critically examines recent
narratives of city branding in Timișoara, Romania. The aim is to investigate one specific
case in the reproduction and adaptation of global urban development policies and to
examine its relevance for the context of post-socialist urban politics. Our findings indicate a
specific circularity between city branding and urban development, which is used to align the
city to the regional inter-urban economic competition and to promote it as a space of rapid
development. The outcome is a mélange of different narratives, based on disparate
histories and representations of the city, which are assembled in ad-hoc and often
contradictory branding discourses.

This paper proposes a critical discussion of the population displacement
processes involved in the Roşia Montană gold-mining project within the theoretical
framework of development-induced displacement (DID). We begin with an overview of the
geographical context of the rural community, focusing on the social and economic structure
of Roşia Montană. After assessing the relocation and resettlement processes, we examine
several problems related to the compensation mechanism set up by the mining company.
The aim of the research is to highlight the complexity of the consequences of developmentinduced displacement and the limits of the policies of relocation and resettlement in the area.

AbstractThis article analyses political and economic practices involved with the production of an industrial form of socio‐nature — the Port Industrial District — during the early decades of the twentieth century in Toronto, Canada. Informed by historical documents from that period, as well as using contemporary concepts from urban theory, we analyse the creation of a major land mass and southern extension of Toronto within a political ecology framework. We explicitly link the concept of socio‐nature with the dynamics suggested by theories of capital and spatial expansion, thereby bringing 'nature' into a more central position in understanding urban development processes. The Toronto Harbour Commissioners, the central organization in this land‐creation process, reflected, we argue, more the ideological preferences and economic interests of local elites than an efficient institutional design for solving a multi‐dimensional 'waterfront problem'. The harbour commission and its supporters envisioned and promoted the new industrial district, the pivotal section of its 1912 waterfront development plan, as a general strategy for intensifying industrialization and growth of the city. The massive infrastructure project is best understood as a spatio‐temporal fix to productively absorb capital through spatial expansion and temporal deferment. A new institutional arrangement consolidated political and economic relations through practices that made possible the production of a new form of socio‐nature and reshaped the eastern section of Toronto's central waterfront as an industrial landscape.RésuméCet article analyse les pratiques politiques et économiques impliquées dans la production d'une forme industrielle de socio‐nature, le quartier industriel portuaire de Toronto, dans les premières décennies du XXe siècle. À partir de documents historiques de cette époque et de concepts contemporains propres à la théorie urbaine, est analysée la création d'une zone terrestre considérable et d'une extension du Sud de Toronto dans un cadre d'écologie politique. Nous associons explicitement le concept de socio‐nature et les dynamiques suggérées par les théories de l'expansion du capital et de l'expansion spatiale, ce qui recentre la "nature" dans l'appréhension des processus d'aménagement urbain. À notre avis, les commissaires du Havre de Toronto, organisme central chargé de la création de ce terrain, ont davantage traduit les préférences idéologiques et les intérêts économiques des élites locales qu'un projet institutionnel efficient pour résoudre un "problème de front de mer" multi‐dimensionnel. La Commission du Havre et ses partisans ont imaginé et défendu le nouveau quartier industriel, composante‐clé du plan d'aménagement du front de mer de 1912, comme une stratégie d'ensemble visant à intensifier l'industrialisation et l'essor de la ville. Or, l'énorme projet d'infrastructure se comprend mieux en tant que solution spatio‐temporelle pour absorber des capitaux de manière productive par le biais d'une expansion spatiale et d'un report dans le temps. Un nouveau dispositif institutionnel a consolidé les relations politiques et économiques grâce à des pratiques qui ont permis la production d'un forme novatrice de socio‐nature et qui ont reprofilé en paysage industriel la partie Est du front de mer central de Toronto.

AbstractThis article examines the dynamics of Romanian seasonal migration and its effects on farming and rural areas. We connect labour migration to changes in modes of food production in Western and Eastern Europe. Based on the fieldwork in seven Romanian localities with 40 semi‐structured interviews, we interrogate how seasonal work is shaped by regimes of mobility and economic and social inequalities. Studying the case of Romania's large rural population raises critical questions regarding migration, development and change in rural areas. Answering such questions requires disentangling different categories of seasonal migrants and their return prospects. Looking at how agricultural labour is structured, we examine labour experiences and analyse how migrants' agency operates in precarious contexts. Observing the consequences of seasonal migration and return, we discovered diverging processes of agricultural diversification through entrepreneurialism and a radical change in peasant farming resulting in an increased concentration of farmland.