Journals, Uncategorized

Town Planning Review 90.2 Featured Article

The editors of Town Planning Review have selected ‘Can Self-Build Housing improve Social Sustainability within Low-Income Groups?’ by Helena Obremski and Claudia Carter as the Featured Article for TPR 90.2.

The paper will be free to access for a limited time here.

When asked to describe the paper and highlight its importance, the authors stated the following:

This paper came about because relatively little research exists on self-build housing projects in the UK and the percentage of new homes provided this way is one of the lowest in Europe, Northern America and Australia. At the same time, prominent topics of debate are how to provide more affordable housing, especially for low-income citizens and socially marginalised individuals, and how to create more sustainable communities and cohesion in urban neighbourhoods. We therefore decided to focus our paper on the current knowledge gap regarding low-income communities, assessing five self-build affordable-housing initiatives in England and Wales, to further investigate and clarify connections between factors influencing social sustainability.

Research on affordable self-build housing has so far mainly focused on environmental sustainability and improving the quality of settlements. A lack of clarity regarding the social sustainability aspects emerged during the assessment of existing international self-build literature. Three past Town Planning Review papers (Crawford et al., 2008; Dempsey, 2009; Hamiduddin, 2015) provided some steer and influenced our research focus and analysis around three core concepts: social capital, social cohesion and participation.

Our research identified ‘feedback loops’ between social cohesion, social capital and participation. In particular, participation was affected by factors such as the communal spaces, the interests of self-build residents and the presence of a management framework from the start of the projects and beyond. Our analysis of interviews with participants and project managers elicited the importance of (continued) engagement in activities within self-build communities and how an effective management framework and a sustained collective shared vision facilitate increased levels of participation and social cohesion, and maintain social capital. However, we also found that the intensive and sometimes prolonged organisational and construction phases of the projects can in some cases negatively affect social cohesion due to clashes in character and priorities, and erode social capital and social cohesion.

Therefore, we concluded that given ‘the right’ physical and social dimensions, self-build housing projects can provide more socially sustainable communities.

The authors also commented:

Helena: “The social dynamics of planning have always interested me, and although social sustainability has gained momentum in recent years, this concept remained somewhat vague. The research provided some unexpected findings and an insightful understanding into the way in which self-build development influences some social aspects of the communities we studied. I hope to see more self-build developments coming forward as I see this as a genuine way to provide more socially sustainable communities, given the right set of factors are in place.”

Claudia: “Having grown up in Germany and seen friends participate in self-build projects of various kinds I always have found it slightly puzzling why it is quite rare in the UK. There are so many different kinds of self-build projects and associated goals and the research for this paper, while very focused and bound in scope, opened my eyes to the range of factors and connections that play a part. With social isolation, continued austerity and a host of environmental and social challenges I believe we will see many more self-build projects and research in the future.”

Journals, News

Subscriptions Management Executive: Job Description and Further Details

 Contents:

  1. About LUP
  2. Job Description
  3. Person Specification
  4. To Apply

 

  1. About LUP

Liverpool University Press (LUP) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Liverpool, and was founded in 1899. The Press has recently expanded rapidly, and now publishes 33 scholarly journals, around 100 new books per annum and a number of digital products across the arts and humanities.  LUP currently employs eighteen full time and one part time staff.

The new role of Subscriptions Management Executive reflects our growing journals portfolio and expanding digital sales, and ambitious plan to take our journals subscriptions and fulfilment in house.  Reporting to the Press’s Head of Journals the role will involve subscriptions data processing and reporting, handling payments and customer service. The job is based in Liverpool on the University of Liverpool campus, with excellent benefits including 30 days holidays (plus bank holidays) and a superb pension scheme.

 

  1. Job Description

The Subscriptions Management Executive will undertake the following duties under guidance from the Head of Journals:

  • Maintain computer system with accurate and up to date records for all publications, including prices
  • Receive and process orders for publications from customers by telephone, post, FTP and email
  • Create and hold records for each customer to allow invoicing, including all invoicing and payment details
  • Process invoices for print and electronic products and subscriptions, manage renewals and reminders
  • Process payments
  • Provide reports
  • Handle claims and customer complaints
  • Provide labels to printer for despatch of print products and submit electronic data to online host to enable access

 

Customer services

Process routine orders

Receive subscription orders via FTP or other electronic means

Processing of telephone orders

Processing customer queries and claims

Credit control (matching cash to invoice, or obtaining missing information)

Payment queries

Handle cancellations and refunds

Liaise with Subscription Agents

Manage database recording address changes

Despatch catch-up copies for new orders, of missing/incomplete orders

 

Renewals and reminder management

Prepare and despatch the subscription renewal invoices and reminders to timetable

Distribute renewal details to Subscription Agents

Direct subscribers and individual subscribers

 

Invoicing

Invoice customers with list price and discount

Prepare and despatch invoices

Invoice in US Dollars, UK Pounds Sterling or Euro

 

Electronic Subscriptions

Add and maintain customer IP addresses and email addresses

 

Feeds to Content Host

Provide email feed/FTP files of specified customer data for past and current subscriptions to enable Content Host to administer IP controlled or username/password access to electronic content

 

Reporting

Provide sales, Marketing, Financial reports when necessary

Subscriptions (general), New Subscriptions, Non-renewed Subscriptions, Comparative Subscription Sales, Subscription Sales by Campaign Code.

 

Marketing Lists

Updating and maintenance of marketing list

 

  1. Person specification

The successful candidate will have:

  • Customer support experience or experience as a client service representative
  • Familiarity with CRM systems and practices
  • Have experience of data inputting to a high standard of accuracy
  • Excellent communication and presentation skills
  • Ability to multi-task, prioritize, and manage time effectively
  • Attention to detail
  • Strong phone contact handling skills and active listening

 

  1. To apply

Please email a CV and covering letter detailing how you are suited to the role, together with the names of two referees (who will be contacted only in the event of a successful application), to Clare Hooper, Head of Journals, clare.hooper@liv.ac.uk.

Closing date for applications: 28th February

Interview date: 7th March

 

Liverpool University Press is an open and inclusive workplace.  We welcome and respect all backgrounds, genders, ethnicities, sexualities, ages and lifestyle choices.

 

Journals

International Development Planning Review 41.1 Featured Article

The editors of International Development Planning Review have selected ‘Contesting socialist state visions for modern mobilities: informal motorbike taxi drivers’ struggles and strategies on Hanoi’s streets, Vietnam’ by Sarah Turner and  Ngô Thúy Hạnh as the Featured Article for IDPR 41.1.

The paper will be free to access for a limited time here.

When asked to describe the paper, and highlight its importance, Sarah Turner stated the following:

This paper came about because I had been working with street vendors in Hanoi, the capital city of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, for over a decade, and I was becoming increasingly concerned that restrictive and punitive measures being applied to these vendors by municipal officials, might be hampering the livelihoods of other informal economy workers who utilize the city’s streets as their workplace. Hanoi’s municipal authorities, with strong backing from the central government, are conceiving an urban space replete with security, orderliness, and modernity. This is resulting in rapid changes to the city’s urban form and access to infrastructure and amenities, while informal economy workers are being sidelined from official narratives of the city’s future.

And then came the city’s proposal to ban motorbikes by 2030. I immediately wondered how xe ôm drivers – informal motorbike taxi drivers – were going to cope. Moreover, I had witnessed the rapid rise in numbers of blue (UberMoto) and green (GrabBike) jacketed app-based drivers weaving through the city’s streets. My regular ‘traditional’ xe ôm driver, Hoà, often shook his head at these younger drivers’ inability to know where to go without their trusty GPS, and made rather disparaging comments about their lack of knowledge of the fastest routes…

Hence this project was born, with the aim of investigating the mobile livelihoods and everyday politics of xe ôm drivers in Hanoi. It would not have been possible without the help of Ngô Thúy Hạnh, my Hanoi-based research assistant and good friend, who goes out of her way to support my research endeavors, and those of my students, even when it means working long hours to complete our interviews alongside her regular job. Hạnh has a natural ability to put people at ease and gaining interviewees’ trust to learn about their livelihoods and concerns beyond the ‘public transcript’. Hạnh also actively introduces new questions and elements into our research endeavors. For example, she recently noticed that traditional xe ôm drivers are now buying green GrabBike jackets and helmets to mimic the new competitors. Moreover, now that GrabBike has bought out Uber and has little competition to keep prices in check, traditional xe ôm are gaining back customers. These customers are disgruntled at the price hikes GrabBike now places on evenings and weekends. As the ban inches closer, and the competition changes in nature, our research and rides continue…

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Journals

Viewpoint: Thoughts on internationalism and planning

Town Planning Review 89.4 features ‘Viewpoint: Thoughts on internationalism and planning’ by Ben Davy. In Town Planning Review 90.1, the first issue of 2019, Klaus Kunzmann contributed his paper ‘Viewpoint: Why not Italian? Differences matter! A comment on Ben Davy’s Viewpoint in TPR on ‘Thoughts on internationalism and planning’. Below, Ben Davy describes his paper and shares his thoughts on the subject.

Ben Davy’s paper in 89.4 will be free to read for a limited time here.

When I joined the team of Town Planning Review’s co-editors in November 2017, I had just come back from a UN Climate Change Conference where I had experienced an awkward, even embarrassing situation that made me think hard about the importance of internationalism (if you want to know more about this situation, please check my Viewpoint here). Despite my reflection, I have not been able to present a clear view on internationalism and planning. At least, Professor Klaus R. Kunzmann, my esteemed colleague from the University of Dortmund, thinks that my thoughts on internationalism and planning are »opaque«. He also assumes that differences do not matter to me, and that Mozart’s Zauberflöte best be performed in Italian. Since I prefer to listen to Emanuel Schikaneder’s original libretto (in German), I better hold my tongue on the Magic Flute.

So, what’s my view on internationalism and why it is important to planners? As I am writing this blog entry, the international community – or, at least, those parts of the international community that are still committed to internationalism – celebrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a textbook example of internationalism. The Universal Declaration was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, and 70 years later, global human rights have failed many tests in the real world which is still filled with injustice, violence, humiliation, and terror. Global human rights, however, have also sharpened our perception of territorial sovereignty (as limited) and the rights of every woman, man, or child against national governments (as augmented). Both achievements are today called into question by the Universal Declaration of Human Hate constantly streamed on Twitter, Facebook, and other anti-social media. In my Viewpoint, I am emphasizing the need to learn about and understand others because learning and understanding are entrenched elements of internationalism. I am happy that Professor Kunzmann and I seem to agree on this point because he announces that »[t]o this end Ben Davy is absolutely right.«

In my Viewpoint, I take the role of internationalism as an instrument of building world peace even a bit further—by taking it back several centuries. Internationalism is a child of neither the internet nor YouTube. Roman law was codified in the 6th century A.D. with a clear conception of ius gentium, the law of all peoples. Although legal internationalism always also has been an instrument of hegemony, international law can be considered, as Martti Koskenniemi thinks, the »gentle civilizer of nations«. On a much smaller scale, but very dear to me, planning can play a similar role which is not opaque, but much needed. Planning can be the »gentle civilizer« of land users worldwide. Although land use planning is always sub-national, planners benefit from an international exchange with other planners. In fact, many associations and networks already exist and trade knowledge and ideas between planners, who are curious about what goes on in other countries and other planning systems. Among these associations are the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS; www.africanplanningschools.org.za), the Asian Planning School Association (APSA; http://apsaweb.org/), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP; www.acsp.org), the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP; www.aesop-planning.eu) and other members of the Global Planning Education Association Network (GPEAN). Not in all, but in many discussions within these networks, English is the working language of choice. Italian or German are not. Appreciating this fact is not evidence of ignoring differences, it merely acknowledges that most congress hosts cannot afford to hire translators.

 

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Journals

Town Planning Review 90.1 Featured Article

The editors of Town Planning Review have selected “Why not Italian? Differences matter! A comment on Ben Davy’s Viewpoint in TPR on ‘Thoughts on internationalism and planning’” by Klaus R. Kunzmann as the Featured Article for 90.1.

The paper will be free to access for a limited time here.

When asked to describe the paper, and highlight its importance the author stated the following:

In his very personal essay Ben Davy, the acting president of AESOP, the Association of European Planning Schools, argues that open physical, mental and cultural borders should certainly be on the agenda of the planning community. His viewpoints on internationalisation and planning, however, remain opaque. What is internationalism in planning? Writing in English, or Globish respectively in “Audacity English” as Ben Davy calls it, certainly is not, though it may help to communicate with planners in other countries when travelling around to see other places and learn from other experiences. He is absolutely right, when he writes “internationalisation never must be an excuse for cultural appropriation, intellectual colonialism”.

In times of globalisation internationalism is a virtue of enlightened citizens (including planners) who are open and curious to learn from other cultures, from people who believe in other gods, and who have still memories of their lands of origin they had left permanently or temporally for whatever reason. Most internationally minded planners outside the Anglo-American world of planning are more international than those within the Anglo-American world, who, as a rule, pick-up developments outside only, once they are written in English.

Though one should not forget that planners, who are doing the hard work of practical planning work in their home countries, who are daily communicating with citizens, developers, politicians and powerful local stakeholders of urban development, do it in their local language. And these are 99% of the planning community. They can be internationally minded, but their assignment is to address local challenges to find solutions for local problems to ultimately to contribute to improving quality of life in the place, for which they are responsible.

In times of globalization the gap between theory and practice in planning is widening. Language that bridges academia, divides planning theory from planning practice. Planners who are bridge-builders between theory and practice are a scarce species. and those who are addressing both international and local planning communities in two languages are even more so.

While internationally recognized planning theory tends to distance itself from local practice, local practitioners are being cocooned in legislative and administrative rationales, often dominated by local party politics. Here a more international view on planning can certainly help. Young academic planners, locked in the treadmill of career promotion may not bother, whether their thoughts on planning are read by local and regional planning professionals. Their ambition is rather to earn international credits to further advance their academic careers.

Planners have to be educated to cope with the obvious gap between international theory and local practice. Basing planning education on theoretical global curricula, as it has been frequently suggested by prominent writers may make sense for post-post-doc degrees , though this is valid only for a small minority of planners. When preparing the other 99 percent planners in a country or region, it may raise the individual awareness but not really qualify for doing the job, neither in India, Italy or Afghanistan.

More bridge-builders are needed to bridge the gap between global and local as well as the gap between theory and practice in planning.. Regrettably the number of such bridge-builders is too small. English will certainly remain the only way of easy communication in business and financial worlds, and in the world of sciences, as Latin has been more than 500 years ago. In the not too distant future daily improving digital translation, however, may become a threat to English as a lingua franca. Internationalism in planning is learning from difference.

Francois Julien, the French philosopher, has reminded us that the future world is a world of in-between languages, of translations not of Globish, the globalized English.

 

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