Abstract:There is a lack of theoretical and empirical studies regarding social sustainability. The literature reveals that the "social" was integrated late into debates on sustainable development. This paper aims to fill this gap and proposes a new conceptual framework of social sustainability. We suggest that risk is a constitutive concept of sustainability and that the contemporary conditions of risk resulting primarily from climate change and its ensuing uncertainties pose serious social, spatial, structural, and physical threats to contemporary human societies and their living spaces. Within the framework of sustainability, we propose that social sustainability strives to confront risk while addressing social concerns. Although we agree that without socially oriented practices, efforts to achieve sustainability will be undermined, as too many gaps exist in practice and theory. Thus, we propose a comprehensive Conceptual Framework of Social Sustainability, which is composed of four interrelated concepts of socially oriented practices, where each concept has a distinctive function in the framework and incorporates major social aspects. The concept of Equity encompasses three dimensions: recognition, which "revalues unjustly devalued identities", redistribution, which suggests that the remedy for injustice is some form of economic restructuring, and parity of participation, which promotes substantive public involvement in the production of space. These efforts may, in turn, reduce alienation and enhance civility and a sense of community and place attachment. The concept of Safety is the ontological foundation of sustainability in general and social sustainability in particular. The concept refers to the right to not only be safe but adopt all measures of adaptation and security to prevent future casualties and physical harm. The concept of Eco-prosumption refers to modes of producing and gaining values in socially and environmentally responsible ways. The concept of Urban Forms represents the physical dimensions of socially desired urban and community physical forms. Eventually, a desired physical form should promote a sense of community, safety, health, and place attachment, among other environmental objectives.

This paper analyzes an urban space that functions, it is argued, as the commons in the neoliberal city. The space of community gardens in New York City is "unpacked" according to three Lefebvrian moments of space: the material space, representations of space, and the lived space. Engaging alternative conceptualizations of social relations in the urban space, it complicates and explicates the notion of the commons and its actually existing manifestations.

Abstracti jur_1065 106..120This article examines two different models of space management, devised by NGOs to confront the marketization of public space in New York City through privatizing the land of community gardens. The Trust for Public Land promotes a model that emphasizes community ownership, while the New York Restoration Project promotes a model that emphasizes the preservation of land. The article compares the two models of NGO management of community gardens particularly through the lens of community participation, sense of ownership and control over space, and argues that both models transform the meaning of public space in ways that undermine its opportunity to develop as an autonomous community space.I would like to express my gratitude to Tovi Fenster and Eran Fisher for their comments on previous drafts, and to the community gardeners of New York City who inspired and guided my work. I also wish to thank the IJURR referees for their valuable and enriching comments.

This article argues that high-rise residential projects—a dominant form of contemporary cities—are playing a pivotal role in generating new urban experience for city dwellers. Drawing on an affect-based research approach, we empirically examine high-rise residential projects built from 1998 to 2016 in two medium-size cities in central Israel. We address three moments of new affective experience of residents: (1) the view and the practice of viewing; (2) bodies and sound; and (3) bodies becoming a body. The article contributes a conceptual shift to urban planning for studying present-day urban experience. Accordingly, it derives insights to better understand contemporary socio-spatial relations in cities.

The literature on environmental walkability to date has mainly focused on walking and related health outcomes. While previous studies suggest associations between walking and spatial knowledge, the associations between environmental walkability and spatial knowledge is yet to be explored. The current study addresses this lacuna in research by exploring children’s mental representations of their home-school (h–s) route, vis-à-vis objectively measured environmental attributes along the actual routes. Ninety-two children aged 10–12 years old (5th and 6th graders) drew sketch maps depicting their h–s route and drew the actual route on a neighborhood map, in addition to completing a brief survey. h–s routes went through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis, yielding an en-route walkability index and its components. Children in traditional neighborhoods outperformed in the route’s orientation and structure, but not in the richness of the drawn maps. The orientation and structure of the drawn routes was related to objectively measured walkability, density, street connectivity and commercial land-uses along h–s routes. These associations remained significant among children who walked to school, but not among those who were driven to school. These findings highlight the importance of urban form and school travel mode in acquiring navigation skills and getting to know one’s neighborhood.