| Session | |
191 (II): Micro-marginality and fragmentation in urban areas (II)
| |
| Session Abstract | |
|
Geographic marginalization processes are often linked to areas with physical or human limitations, particularly territories on the periphery of socioeconomic development. As a result, remote and rural areas have frequently been the focus of studies on marginality. However, urban areas —even those well-positioned in an increasingly globalized and competitive world— also exhibit processes of marginality, or micro-marginality, which often coexist with internal borders and barriers in an increasingly fragmented urban environment. In the 21st century, cities face significant challenges, having experienced years of neoliberal policies and the repercussions of the great recession. The mobility of financial and investment capital, alongside tensions in the real estate market—often exacerbated by the rise of urban tourism and gentrification—contributes to the emergence of disconnected and fragmented urban spaces. These phenomena are key indicators of inequality and marginality within cities. In this context, the session aims to develop a conceptual framework for analyzing urban micro-marginality and its relationship with urban fragmentation. By reviewing the most suitable techniques and methods for various scales of analysis and applying them to different case studies, the session looks to explore the causes and effects of these urban dynamics. Additionally, contributions are expected to evaluate the implementation of public policies and the roles of different stakeholders in the current complex urban scenario. | |
| Presentations | |
Shared Spaces in the Everyday Life of a Medium-Sized City: Beyond Hägerstrand Universitat de Lleida, Spain One of Hägerstrand's main contributions to the study of daily activities was the development of a technique that allows for the three-dimensional representation of practices through space-time prisms (Hägerstrand, 1970). These prisms form the contexts in which individuals carry out their daily lives. The so-called Geographies of Everyday Life (GEL) constitute a widely explored field within the analysis of socio-spatial relations in urban spaces. Academically, this has been approached from four key perspectives: mobility, places, settings, and routines or patterns (Lindón, 2006). However, these analytical perspectives often overlook the meanings, motivations, and contexts underlying individual decisions regarding the potential range of available activities (Ellegård, 1999). In fact, Hägerstrand’s prisms have been criticized for their focus on observable events, neglecting the subjectivity of individuals, as well as their experiences and internal motivations, a limitation acknowledged by the author himself (Hägerstrand, 1978). The aim of this presentation is to analyse the daily lives of 16 individuals with diverse profiles selected from extreme neighbourhoods in a medium-sized Spanish city (Lleida), neighbourhoods previously identified based on radically opposed socioeconomic characteristics (Bellet et al., 2024). The analysis is carried out through the construction of space-time prisms that incorporate contextual elements transcending traditional geographical analysis. These prisms are constructed using weekly GPS tracking, complemented by interviews conducted with the same individuals. Thus, this study proposes moving beyond Hägerstrand’s original prism framework, exploring the possibility of integrating additional contexts that characterize everyday activities (Ellegård, 1999). Such contexts are essential to understand the processes of segregation and social exclusion that extend beyond the residential space (Bertrand & Chevalier, 1998). Through this methodological approach, the study seeks to illustrate, using space-time lines, a reflection on the shared urban spaces by the subject of study beyond their strict localization. In an increasingly fragmented urban reality, do shared urban spaces exist that facilitate interaction between socially differentiated groups? Could such spaces become repositories of shared contexts? Inner suburbanisation process – as a scene of micro-marginality in regional centres of Hungary HUN-REN RCERS, Hungary Our long term project concentrate on local housing markets in Hungarian regional centres. As a part of this project we focused on the changing urban (and suburban) space of our cities and their functional urban areas. To deepen our knowledge in this area, we used the detailed dataset of National Census (2011, 2022) in the case of Szeged, to see, how the suburbanisation process is going on. Comparing to other regional centres, in Szeged, the suburbanisation (as relative deconcentration of inhabitants, housing, urban activities, workplaces etc.) did not mean an emergence of small settlement inside the FUR of the city, but mostly a dynamic deconcentration process inside the administrative borders. In a wider historical context, we identified symbolic ‘borders’ in the urban area and hot spots of social marginalisation (segregated zones) before the transformation (at the end of socialistic period till the end of the 1980s). We made data-analysis and case-study research in the related areas, concentrating the changing movement of symbolic borders. The most important result were:
Urban fragmentation as an effect of marginalisation processes. The case of Upper Silesian Conurbation University of Economics in Katowice, Poland The processes of economic transformation are causing significant changes in the industrial structure - resulting in the decline and closure of numerous large workplaces. In the cities, hitherto developed based on industry, extensive zones of disused factories and devastated post-industrial buildings are emerging. In parallel, there are profound functional changes occurring in urban centres: a major increase in the significance of service functions is taking place, particularly in commerce, including large-scale retail. The previous trend of urban population growth is turning into stagnation and permanent depopulation - zones of decapitalised and deprived housing are emerging in the Upper Silesian conurbation. Internal migration (local and regional) shifts the population of Upper Silesian urban centres into the surrounding and more remote, but attractive rural areas. The balance of external migration, with the largest metropolises in Poland and abroad, is also negative. New housing is only being developed in selected parts of the most important urban centres, mostly in open areas previously used for agriculture, and more rarely on regenerated brownfield areas. New economic ventures associated with the established Special Industrial Zone are located entirely in the outer zones of the conurbation's cities, using previously uninvested areas (so-called greenfields). The revitalisation and development activities undertaken do not keep pace with the processes of decapitalisation of residential, service and industrial facilities. The process of local marginalisation of many parts of cities is progressing - as a result, symptoms of progressive fragmentation of the urban environment of the Upper Silesian conurbation are appearing. The aim of the paper is to show that socio-economic and cultural phenomena combined with the process of marginalisation in local systems (in cities, urban agglomerations) result (among other things) in the fragmentation of urban spaces and the growing development problems of such urban centres. Overcoming the negative changes in the urban space structure of the urban centres of the Upper Silesian conurbation requires long-term external intervention combined with intensive public sector development and the introduction of new growth impulses. Geographical marginalisation in urban areas University of Primorska, Slovenia In our presentation we intend to present some basic constitutive elements of geographical marginality concept and how it is similar and different from the concept of peripheral areas in the Center-Periphery model. As geographical marginnality is a result of marginalisation we intennd to describe some of the most important drivers of marginalisation wiith special focus on the marginalisation processes that are changing existing or new urban areas into areas marked with marginalised social groups and the kind of spatial transformation that the presence of predominantly marginalised population causes. | |