Julia Prakofjewa, Luigi Conte, David Ludwig
et al.
Abstract Background Hybrid knowledge systems are central to community negotiations of environmental, social, and epistemic pressures. In multilingual borderland areas, interactions between local ecological knowledge (LEK), formal, and popular knowledge systems remain underexplored, despite their importance for the persistence and transformation of medicinal plant use today. Methods We conducted 67 semi-structured interviews and participant observation in 21 rural settlements of the Vilnius region (Lithuania), an area bordering Belarus, focusing on the two largest local groups, Lithuanians (LT) and Poles (PL). Detailed Use Reports (n = 1446) on medicinal plant use were coded by the origin of knowledge, classified as local, formal, or popular, and the degree of hybridisation was quantified using the Shannon–Wiener diversity index and hybridisation metrics. Sociodemographic variables (age, gender, education, and multilingualism) were tested for associations with hybridisation using Spearman’s ρ and Student’s t-tests. Results A total of 139 medicinal taxa were recorded, of which 68 (49%) were shared between the two groups. Overall, recorded medicinal plant knowledge remained primarily grounded in LEK, sustained through intergenerational transmission. Compared with PL, LT interviewees drew on a broader mix of knowledge-origin domains (H′ = 0.97 vs 0.52) and combined them more often (HD = 0.195 vs 0.059). In total, 39 taxa showed hybrid use, predominantly in the LT group. Hybridisation was negatively associated with age but positively correlated with the number of listed plants and their reported uses, while multilingualism showed a near-significant positive trend. Conclusions The study suggests that medicinal plant knowledge has evolved here through hybridisation, a process whose consequences are context-dependent, offering opportunities for revitalisation but also a risk of displacement. Dialogic exchanges across families, communities, languages, and media expand people’s plant repertoire and strengthen community adaptive capacity. Yet when these exchanges lead to excessive standardisation, they risk eroding the diversity of local traditions. Ethnobotanical research must therefore go beyond documenting popular and formal knowledge sources to interrogate how linguistic and sociopolitical contexts condition the emergence of hybrid knowledge systems, privileging certain forms while rendering others transformed or marginalised.
Der Beitrag untersucht anhand eines prozessorientierten Verständnisses von Segregation die Entwicklungspfade junger migrantisierter Bewohner aus Berlin-Kreuzberg. Dieser Ansatz ermöglicht es, soziale und räumliche Dimensionen getrennt voneinander zu analysieren. Dabei liegt der Fokus auf Aspekten segregierter sozialer Nutzungen der Stadt und Erfahrungen mit urbanen Institutionen – aus der Perspektive der Heranwachsenden. Die longitudinale empirische Analyse basiert auf qualitativen Daten aus zwei zusammenhängenden Forschungsprojekten (2017/2018 und 2023/2024) mit Erst- und Folgeinterviews in einem Zeitraum von fünf bis sechs Jahren. Anhand von Vignetten stellt der Beitrag die teilweise kontrastreichen Entwicklungspfade ausgewählter junger Männer sowie deren Überschneidungen dar. Diese verweisen trotz tendenziell gesteigerter räumlicher Alltagsradien auf Muster einer dauerhaften sozialen Segregation.
Cities. Urban geography, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
Changing climate patterns represent a major challenge for Hungarian municipalities, particularly with regard to the increasing severity and frequency of heatwaves. As a result of the COVID-19 lockdowns, thousands of people moved to communities around Lake Balaton; therefore, cities and villages should place more emphasis on their long-term sustainability and climate resilience. This article addresses the literature gap in assessing the heatwave resilience of Hungarian settlements, focusing on the municipalities of the Lake Balaton Resort Area. Our main objective was to uncover spatial and temporal patterns in the 180 settlements involved in the analysis by using an indicator-based comparative method. The set of indicators included nine sensitivity and six adaptive capacity measures referring to the base years 2015 and 2022. Our results show heterogeneous spatial patterns across the analysed categories; however, several regional clusters can be identified: 1) in general, settlements from the northern part of the study area had above-average adaptive capacity, while the southern and south-western municipalities had significantly lower values, 2) only one micro-regional cluster can be defined in terms of sensitivity values in the northern part of the study area; 3) below average resilience values were found in the south-western and southern areas; 4) finally, neither sensitivity nor adaptive capacity nor overall resilience scores had changed significantly over time at the regional level. The applied methodology can easily be adopted in other Hungarian or even Central and Eastern European cities; consequently, new results can contribute to a better understanding of inter- and intra-regional patterns of heatwave resilience at the local level.
Abstract Background The emergence and persistence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella Typhi (S. Typhi) infections is a significant global health problem. The carrier state of typhoid makes it prudent to conduct routine surveillance for both acute cases and carriers especially those caused by MDR S. Typhi. We report on the prevalence of MDR S. Typhi, resistance phenotypes and antimicrobial resistance genes detected in symptomatic and asymptomatic children living in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. Methods 215 archived presumed S. Typhi isolates from stool samples provided by children ≤ 16 years collected from 2013 to 2018 were revived in May, 2022 and confirmed using culture and antisera serotyping. The Kirby Bauer disc diffusion technique was used to test the S. Typhi against 14 antibiotics. The MDR S. Typhi (resistant to ampicillin, chloramphenicol and sulfamethoxazole trimethoprim) which in addition were also resistant to either a cephalosporin or a fluoroquinolone were analyzed for Beta lactams and quinolone resistance genes using polymerase chain reaction. Results A total of 215 isolates were confirmed to be positively S. Typhi; of these, 105 (49%) and 110 (51%) were from symptomatic and asymptomatic children respectively. On average, S. Typhi resistance from asymptomatic and symptomatic children against 1st line drugs was observed at; 77% &70%, ampicillin; 60% & 64%, sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim, and 45% & 54%, chloramphenicol respectively. Multi drug resistance was observed in 90 (42%) of the isolates, of these, 44 (49%) were isolated from symptomatic and 46 (51%) from asymptomatic children. Fifteen resistance phenotypes (p) were observed with, ampicillin/chloramphenicol/sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim/nalidixic acid (amp/chl/sxt/na) as the most common among the symptomatic 43/90 (48%) and asymptomatic 55/90 (61%) children. The bla TEM−D, AMR genes were detected in 37/44 (84%) S. Typhi isolates, out of this 18 (49%) were from symptomatic while 19 (51%) were from asymptomatic children respectively. Conclusion The carriage of MDR S. Typhi among the asymptomatic children is concerning as they can act as potential transmitters of the typhoid disease to unsuspecting children. These study findings highlight the need for continued surveillance of antimicrobial resistance and mass immunization of children living in these urban informal areas.
The steering of the residential development on the regional level is one of the major tasks of regional planning. Nevertheless, no nationwide information is yet available on the implementation of the planning instruments in regional plans. Moreover, for potential steering types, only one approach on the level of the German federal states exists. To reduce this information deficit, a plan content analysis is used to determine which positive planning instruments were implemented in the state development plans and regional plans valid in 2017. The data basis for negative planning instruments is the spatial development plan monitor of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (BBSR). With these data, a non-linear principal component analysis and a cluster analysis is carried out to identify specific steering types. As a result, six regional planning steering types of pre-use planning, quantitative control, settlement axes, positive planning location control, intra-municipal framework with extensive mono-functional open space protection and extensive location control through multifunctional open space protection can be identified. The different steering types are often spatially clustered, so that a significant influence of state planning requirements can be assumed.
Cities. Urban geography, Urbanization. City and country
The remarkable group of tools was detected among the hunter-gatherer-fishers’ archaeological materials of the East European Plain central part dated around 3500–2700 BC. The so-called “crooked items” were initially interpreted as ritual phallic depictions, but now after conducting a more detailed analysis of their morphology, technology, and use-wear, it became clear that we deal with pressure flakers used to process flint tools. The most astonishing fact is that the straight parallel to these tools exists, coming from the opposite side of the globe, namely, the Bering Strait region – Kamchatka, Chukotka, and Alaska, where the same tools are known quite well both in archaeological and ethnographical collections. In this study, we discuss the results of use-wear analysis of both handles and removable tips from the Central Russian settlements of Moscow, Ivanovo, and Yaroslavl regions dated the second half of the fourth to the beginning of the third millennium BC.
Achieving universal electricity access by 2030 is one of the energy-related development targets in Nigeria and the electricity access rate is estimated at 62%, with urban being 91% and rural 30%. In line with the set SDG7 target of achieving universal electricity access by 2030, this study examines the least-cost options for providing electricity access to thousands of unelectrified communities in Nigeria using the open source spatial electrification toolkit (OnSSET). The study focuses on the coverage area of one of the distribution companies, i.e. Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCo) which covers Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara States in the North-Western part of Nigeria. Spatial data covering different areas such as population, digital elevation, energy resource availability, coverage of the distribution lines, among otherswere obtained from different sources and used in the OnSSET model. The result shows that by 2030, mini-grid PV will be the least-cost technology option for 58.82% of the unelectrified communities, followed by grid-extension (20.87%), standalone PV (20.15%), and mini-grid hydro (0.17%). Further, by 2025, the total number of settlements to be electrified will be 18,182. The number of settlements electrified by 2030 will be 22,727 with an estimated population of 15.4 million. To the achieve universal electrification, a total investment of US$4.97 billion is required by 2025 with an additional US$2.88 billion by 2030. The study recommends that the state and local governments should play a key roles in providing enabling environment for community-led off-grid projects since most of the settlements require electrification projects that are less than 20 kW.
Background: Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 demands that countries globally provide clean water and sanitation to their citizens. The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic triggered various obstacles to the attainment of this goal, especially in developing states that struggle to render clean water and sanitation to their ever-growing populations.
Aim: The aim of the study is to analyse the effects of COVID-19 on the attainment of SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) in South African municipalities.
Setting: Several South African municipalities.
Methods: The article utilised expansive documentary sources on the SDGs, United Nations and World Health documents, journal articles and textbooks on water service provision in South African municipalities for analysis. Qualitative thematic analysis based on documents was employed to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the attainment of SDG 6 in South African municipalities.
Results: The study indicates that local municipalities struggled to provide clean water to informal settlements where water supply infrastructure is not even available. Results also revealed that some urban municipalities in Gauteng Province are grappling with the provision of clean water supply to their informal settlements, which poses a risk of an outbreak of COVID-19 and a delay in the attainment of SDG 6 in general.
Conclusion: The study concludes that the South African government needs to embrace a truly bottom-up approach as opposed to a trickle-down approach to water service provision. This is because local authorities have greater proximity and thus a better understanding of the social and economic challenges within their communities and can effectively implement strategies towards addressing these challenges of providing clean water to communities.
There are a variety of reasons to support the premise that public lighting is beneficial to urban communities. At the same time, a key challenge for the provision of public lighting in informal settlements is their constant physical transformation. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the application of virtual environments (VEs) in lighting planning and policy making. Despite the fact that VEs offer the opportunity to explore an environment by freely navigating through it, including environments that change over time, this feature is rarely taken into account in decision-making processes. A VE-based analysis tool for informal settlement lighting is presented using a case-study street in the informal settlement of Caracolí in Bogotá as its basis. The main data set for the VE scenarios was comprised of results from a household survey, spatial measurements, and participant observations as well as luminous intensity distribution curves. The household survey was used to collect time-related data on the incremental construction of Caracoli's informal dwellings, which was then projected into past, present, and future night-time scenarios. The lighting quality of these different scenarios was systematically evaluated via lighting calculation software, revealing a variety of shortcomings caused by the current lighting approach. Based on these findings, an alternative lighting approach was developed and re-examined using lighting calculations. Finally, custom game-engine technology and GPU computing were deployed, which allowed for real-time visualisation of the different lighting scenarios and their lighting quality. This setup therefore enables fast iterative feedback loops for current and future lighting policy scenarios and the resulting lighting design. In the first instance, a VE can illustrate well how current lighting policy results in a significant delay of lighting provision in the early stage of a settlement as well as highlight the mismatch between lighting technology and the built environment during the vertical densification phases. Second, the VE is able to showcase alternative lighting technologies and policy approaches as well as the resulting lighting effects, enabling a visual comparison of different policy scenarios over several decades. In conclusion it will be argued that the dynamic VE technology appears to be a promising decision-making tool for illustrating potential planning and design shortcomings to policy stakeholders in a manner understandable to the layman.
Nils Müller-Scheeßel, Johannes Müller, Ivan Cheben
et al.
This paper shows that local differences in house orientation in settlements from the Early Neolithic in Central Europe reflect a regular chronological trajectory based on Bayesian calibration of 14C-series. This can be used to extrapolate the dating of large-scale settlement plans derived from, among other methods, geophysical surveys. In the southwest Slovakian settlement of Vráble, we observed a progressive counter-clockwise rotation in house orientation from roughly 32° to 4° over a 300 year period. A survey of published and dated village plans from other LBK regions confirms that this counter-clockwise rotation per settlement is a wider Central European trend. We explain this observation as an unintentional, unconscious but systematic leftward deviation in the house builders' cardinal orientation, which has been termed "pseudoneglect" in studies of human perception. This means that whenever houses were intended to be oriented towards a specific direction and be parallel to each other, there was an error in perception causing slight counter-clockwise rotation. This observation is used as a basis to reconstruct dynamics of Early Neolithic settlement in the Slovakian Žitava valley, showing a rapid colonization, followed by increased agglomeration into large villages consisting of strongly autonomous farmsteads.
Coal mining enterprises (there are more than 130 in the Kemerovo region), are powerful sources of pollutant emissions (P) into the atmosphere. They account for almost a third of the total mass of the cumulative annual emissions in the region. A significant number of coal mining enterprises are located in the vicinity of the boundaries of residential settlements of Kuzbass. At the same time, emissions of coal mining enterprises are mainly carried out from unorganized sources of air pollution (SAI), which do not have treatment facilities. All this leads to pollution of the surface air layer by the coal mining industry. Currently, the category of the enterprise is determined only by its economic activity associated with the production of a product. In particular, all coal-mining enterprises, including the extraction and enrichment of coal, anthracite and brown coal, are classified as category 1 enterprises, i.e. enterprises with significant negative environmental impact (NEI) and related to the areas of application of the best available technologies (BAT). However, this approach to the definition of the category does not take into account the individual characteristics of the enterprise and the level of ecological compatibility of its production.
Research concerning studentification is growing in importance. The supply of private student accommodation forms part of the wider urban process of studentification which documents changes in the social, economic and cultural fabric of cities. Although scholarly interest concerning the supply of private student accommodation has enjoyed sustained interest in the global North, only limited work is available surrounding the supply and demand for private student accommodation in global South urban centres. In South Africa there has been growing recognition of the impact of the studentification that has accompanied the massification of tertiary education in the post-apartheid period. Using interviews with key stakeholders, suppliers of student accommodation, as well as focus groups with students, this paper explores the supply of houses in multiple occupation and students’ perspectives on such properties in Johannesburg, South Africa. One distinctive influence upon the studentification process in South Africa is the impact of the national government funding system which was restructured in order to support the tertiary education of students from previously disadvantaged communities.
This data article contains the urban features of three informal settlements in Jakarta: A. Kampung Bandan; B. Kampung Luar Batang; And C. Kampung Muara Baru. The data describes the urban features of physical structures, infrastructures, and public services. These data include maps showing locations of these settlements, photography of urban status, and examples of urban fabric. The data are obtained from the statistical records and field surveys of three settlements cases. Keywords: Informal settlements, Physical, Features, Urban, Kampung, Jakarta, Indonesia
Computer applications to medicine. Medical informatics, Science (General)
Der Text von Dolores Hayden ist einer der Klassiker zur Thematik feministischer Städteplanung aus der letzten Phase der Zweiten Frauenbewegung und damit ein historisches Dokument aus einer Zeit, in der die Zukunft der Städteplanung noch im Kontext von allgemeiner gesellschaftlicher Befreiung gedacht werden konnte. Haydens Methode verknüpft dafür utopische Motive mit konkreten pragmatischen Beispielen, die in diesem Kommentar aktualisierend betrachtet und auf das Dragonerareal in Berlin übertragen wird.
Cities. Urban geography, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
Over the years, coronary heart disease remains one of the most urgent problems of medicine in the Republic of North Ossetia - Alania. This is associated with high mortality, difficult diagnosis and prevention of this disease. The study involved 859 women residing in the territory of the republic: 475 - urban settlements and 384 - rural-type settlement between the ages of 20-74 years. The study examined the major controllable risk factors coronary heart disease (hypertension, lack of exercise, emotional stress, smoking, alcohol consumption), their prevalence in some areas of the country. The objectives of this research was to identify and depending on the prevalence of the studied risk factors of age and type of settlement. The results show that the frequency of the studied risk factors is higher among women living in urban areas, whereas the percentage of such risk factors as smoking and alcohol consumption currently remains low throughout the region. The most common among the women surveyed hypertension and psycho-emotional voltage, the percentage increases with age.
Die Monographie ist das Ergebnis einer tiefen Auseinandersetzung mit der Erinnerung an den Staatsterror in Buenos Aires und Mexiko-Stadt. Der Fokus liegt auf städtischen Räumen, in denen unterschiedliche Erinnerungspraktiken und -diskurse aufeinandertreffen und sich verschränken. Anhand vieler Beispiele zeigt das Buch wie Praktiken der Erinnerung an die Gewalt ‚Risse im Raum‘ öffnen, durch die die soziale Bedingtheit und die politische Konflikthaftigkeit des Raumes offenbar werden. Auf einer theoretischen Ebene macht die Autorin für ein deutschsprachiges Publikum die lateinamerikanische Debatte über Erinnerung, Erinnerungspolitik und städtischen Raum zugänglich.
Cities. Urban geography, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology
La Arquitecctura Moderna en Latinoamérica: antología de autores, obras y textxos.
Esteban Maluenda, Ana (Ed.). Barcelona: Editorial Reverté, 2016, 368 páginas.
Kolonialismus ist in den Städten Europas auf vielfältige Weise für die Produktion von Raum auch heute noch von hoher Relevanz. Eine dekoloniale Perspektive bietet daher einen theoretischen Zugriff, mit dem die Zusammenhänge der Produktion von Stadt und Rassismus – als ein wesentliches Erbe des Kolonialismus – verdeutlicht werden können. Davon ausgehend, dass sich Rassismus neben anderen Regimen der Subjektivierung und Unterwerfung (Geschlecht, Sexualität, ableism) in die koloniale Matrix gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse eingeschrieben hat, plädiert dieser Artikel für eine sorgfältige Revision der epistemischen Prämissen der Stadtforschung und fordert die Perspektiven kolonialer Subjekte (Grosfoguel 2003) ein, was in diesem Aufsatz unter dem Begriff der ‚urbanen Dekolonisierung‘ thematisiert wird (vgl. zu Perspektiven der Dekolonisierung in der europäischen Soziologie Gutierrèz Rodriguez et al. 2012). Zum einen wird der konzeptuelle Rahmen der europäischen Stadt untersucht, um diesen dahingehend zu überprüfen, inwieweit er eine eurozentristische Geschichtsschreibung und orientalistische Zuschreibungen enthält. Zum anderen ziehe ich das Konzept der ‚Contact Zone‘ von Marie Louise Pratt heran, um die vorab ausgeführten Implikationen der europäischen Stadt in ihrer Relevanz für die Herstellung kolonialer Verhältnisse im städtischen Kontext zu untersuchen. Als empirische Beispiele dienen der Protest von Flüchtlingen im öffentlichen Raum und der Fall des Humboldt-Forums in Berlin.
Cities. Urban geography, Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology