Editorial [Português], v. 6, n. 2

Abstract

Licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons Editorial Besides the papers presented as part of our traditional open section, this issue of urbe brings a special section called Urban transitions, guest-edited by Maria Dubravka Piñeda (Naval Postgraduate School, U.S.) and Alexandre Babak Hedjazi (Université de Genève, Switzerland). The idea behind this special section followed the 7 th Conference on Green Cities, held in Geneva, in April 2013. Cities concentrate population, technological and scienti ic innovations, and economic power; but also extreme social inequalities, energy consumption, and atmospheric pollution. Authors were invited to submit articles discussing an urban world in transition, focusing mainly on sustainability, risks, and governance. The ive selected articles address different aspects of contemporary cities, and the texts range from a more theoretical approach to case studies-all of them, though, based on the idea that the concept of transition is fundamental to think the urban world. With this special section, we intend to reinforce the role of urbe to present a critical perspective in urban studies. Other three articles are published in this issue. In the paper "The centrality and the employment multiplier: a study on the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba-PR, Brazil" Udo Strassburg, Jandir Ferrera de Lima and Nilton Marques de Oliveira discuss the different levels of regional centrality based on the number of jobs in each city of the metropolitan region, and conclude that, concentrating more than 70% of the jobs, Curitiba has still a huge in luence over neighboring cities. Geisa Bugs and Antônio Tarcísio da Luz Reis propose an "Assessment of popular participation in the development of social housing plans in Rio Grande do Sul". The authors analyze the ef icacy of the proposed methods of participation, the interest of people to participate in this process, and the potential of the Internet in the participatory process. They based their analysis in interviews with private consultants, municipal technicians, and the population, and conclude that participation is still in a basic level-on the one hand, due to the dif iculty in communicate technical aspects of the planning process, and on the other hand due to the lack of interest of the population in taking part in this process. Finally, in the article "The measurement of internal potential development of a cluster: a proposal for a practical application", Marcos Junior Marini and Christian Luiz da Silva come up with a methodology to measure the potential for developing a local productive system, having as a case study the textile cluster in the Southwest of Parana, Brazil. In this issue, urbe reassures two of its purposes: on one hand, to publish articles focusing some local and regional aspects of an urbanized Brazil, and on the other hand, to explore contemporary world wide urban themes. We would like to express our gratitude to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientí ico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for supporting this publication. We wish you all a...