Urban Studies was first published in 1964 to provide an international forum of social and economic contributions to the fields of urban and regional planning. Since then, the Journal has expanded to encompass the increasing range of disciplines and approaches that have been brought to bear on urban and regional problems. Contents include original articles, notes and comments, and a comprehensive book review section. Regular contributions are drawn from the fields of economics, planning, political science, statistics, geography, sociology, population studies and public administration.

Urban Studies was first published in 1964 to provide an international forum for social and economic contributions to the fields of urban and regional planning. Since then, the journal has expanded its scope to include a growing range of disciplines and approaches applied to urban and regional issues. The contents include original articles, notes and comments, and a comprehensive book review section. Regular contributions come from the fields of economics, planning, political science, statistics, geography, sociology, population studies, and public administration.

《Urban Studies》创刊于1964年，旨在为城市和区域规划领域提供一个国际性的社会和经济贡献论坛。自那时起，期刊的范围不断扩大，涵盖了越来越多的学科和方法，这些学科和方法被应用于城市和区域问题的研究。期刊内容包括原创文章、评论和意见，以及全面的书评部分。定期投稿的领域包括经济学、规划、政治学、统计学、地理学、社会学、人口研究和公共管理。

Urban Studies

Over the last decade two key changes affecting employability, labour market operation and policy delivery are austerity and the expansion of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT), especially web-based technologies. Increasingly, given pressures for cost savings and developments in ICT, employers’ recruitment and selection strategies are at least partly web-based, careers guidance and public employment services are moving towards ‘digital by default’ delivery and job seekers are expected to manage their job search activity and benefit claims electronically. So, what are the implications of austerity and technological change for employability? This article presents a critical review of the literature on ICT and its relation to, and implications for, employability in a context of austerity. A new framework for employability is presented and those aspects of employability where ICT plays a key role are highlighted. It is concluded that in the context of austerity and technological change more is demanded of individual job seekers/workers, as they are expected to take greater responsibility for their marketability in the labour market. This means that individuals’ attributes and skills are of enhanced importance in conceptualisations of employability. ICT skills have a key role to play in employability, but not at the expense of more conventional social skills which remain very important alongside digital literacy.

Anne E Green

Implications of technological change and austerity for employability in urban labour markets

技术变革与紧缩政策对城市劳动力市场就业能力的影响

The concept of 'employability' plays a crucial role in informing labour market policy in the UK, the EU and beyond. This paper analyses current and previous applications of the term and discusses its value as an exploratory concept and a framework for policy analysis. It then traces the development of the concept, discusses its role in current labour market and training strategies (with particular reference to the UK) and seeks to identify an approach to defining employability that can better inform labour market policy, by transcending explanations of employment and unemployment that focus solely on either supply-side or demand-side factors. Although the literature offers a range of definitions of 'employability', many policy-makers have recently used the term as shorthand for 'the individual's employability skills and attributes'. It is argued that this 'narrow' usage can lead to a 'hollowing out' of the concept of employability. The paper concludes by presenting a broad framework for analysing employability built around individual factors, personal circumstances and external factors, which acknowledges the importance of both supply- and demand-side factors.

Ronald W. McQuaid

Colin Lindsay

The Concept of Employability

就业能力概念

This commentary reflects on the influence of the post-political critique on urban studies. In this literature (e.g. Swyngedouw, 2014), the default position of contemporary democracies is post-politics – the truly political is only rare, random and radical. The ‘post-political trap’ refers to the intuitively convincing, yet ultimately confining account it provides of contemporary urban governance. We identify three shortcomings. First, the binary understanding of the real political/politics as police negates the in-betweenness and contingency of actually existing urban politics. By so doing, secondly, political agency is reduced to the heroic and anti-heroic. Thus, the plurality of political agency in the urban sphere and multi-faceted forms of power lose their political quality. Third, the perceived omnipotence of the post-political order actually diminishes the possibilities of the urban as a political space of resistance and emancipation. On these grounds we argue not for a rejection of the notion of the post-political per se but for a more differentiated approach, one more alert to the contingencies of the political and of depoliticisation in the urban realm.

Ross Beveridge

Philippe Koch

The post-political trap? Reflections on politics, agency and the city

后政治陷阱？关于政治、能动性与城市的思考

This paper applies geographical information system (GIS) techniques and a piece-wise, non-linear model-spline functions—to analyse empirically the relationship between the jobs-housing ratio and urban commuting patterns in terms of vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and trip length. A dynamic buffering process in GIS is developed to measure the jobs-housing ratio within floating catchment areas of a 5-7 mile (8.05-11.27 km) radius as opposed to pre-defined and arbitrary jurisdictional boundaries. This study found a non-linear relationship between the jobs-housing ratio and VMT and trip length in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. Only when the jobs-housing ratio is less than 1.2 or larger than 2.8 do VMT vary noticeably as the jobs-housing ratio changes. Marginal changes in VMT are small when the jobs-housing ratio is between 1.2 and 2.8. Since most areas in the study region have a job-household ratio between 1.2 and 2.8, any changes in the jobs-housing ratio will have little impact on VMT. Consequently, hardly any land use policy changes could affect the jobs-housing ratio enough to produce a significant change in VMT per capita, and jobs-housing policy will have limited impact on VMT at the regional level.

Zhong-Ren Peng

The Jobs-Housing Balance and Urban Commuting

工作-居住平衡与城市通勤

This paper describes the development of an area-based index of locational access to community services, facilities and amenities. The index enables comparisons to be made across urban neighbourhoods and provides a starting-point from which to identify relationships between opportunity structures in the local environment and residents' health and well-being. The index is based on six domains: recreational amenities, public transport and communication, shopping and banking facilities, educational services, health services, and social and cultural services. The inclusion of specific resources was determined by their relevance to the daily lives of parents/caregivers of young children. However, the methodology has applicability to diverse population groups. Construction of the index, using geographical information systems, and its potential use for locality-based policy and planning are discussed.

Karen Witten

Daniel Exeter

Adrian Field

The Quality of Urban Environments: Mapping Variation in Access to Community Resources

城市环境质量：社区资源获取差异的地图绘制

While the question of how the Smart City (SC) concept is mobilised at global and local levels is well researched, few studies have focused on the national level. In this article, we seek to better understand the role of the national level regarding the embedding and creation of SCs. More specifically, we explore the German Smart Cities Dialogue Platform, established by the German government in 2016 as a place where ways of thinking about and acting on the SC are produced and stabilised. Drawing on key concepts of governmentality, we analyse dominant narratives of the SC in Germany, focusing on how the national SC discourse shapes the governance of urban sustainability. We show that the national level in Germany plays a decisive role in embedding and creating the SC, as it mediates between globally prevailing ideas of the SC and local realities. By linking the SC to nationally prevailing values, norms and political cultures such as sustainability, the common good, civil rights and digital sovereignty, a corrective to globally dominant techno-euphoric narratives of the SC is created. At the same time, the (re)definition at the national level promotes an ecological modernisation approach to sustainable urban development to the exclusion of alternative visions of urban sustainability pathways.

Leonie Büttner

Nele Kress

(Re)defining the smart city at national level? Coexisting narratives of urban sustainability governance in Germany

（重新）定义国家层面的智慧城市？德国城市可持续发展治理的共存叙事

This study empirically examines the adequacy of sidewalk widths in Auckland’s Central Business District in light of increasing active mobility and sustainable urban planning trends. Recognising the need to retrofit street spaces to prioritise pedestrians, we aim to determine whether current sidewalk dimensions meet the diverse requirements of users. We analysed average sidewalk widths and developed four mobility metrics – inflow and outflow travel distance, and density of visitors and locals – using a large-scale mobile location dataset comprising 113 million data points from 1.4 million users. These metrics, reflecting urban vibrancy and sidewalk use, were correlated with sidewalk widths to assess their adequacy. Furthermore, we applied cluster analysis to these mobility metrics, along with the diversity of Points of Interest, to categorise sidewalk segments, uncovering intricate usage patterns. Our findings indicate that sidewalks typically range from 2 to 5 m, catering to varied urban needs. Notably, we observed no direct correlation between sidewalk width and mobility patterns, but significant differences in inflow and outflow travel distances were evident, especially between key urban hubs and quiet residential neighbourhoods. Moreover, we identified seven distinct sidewalk categories, each reflecting unique qualities, suggesting that uniform widths do not define sidewalk utility or character. This highlights the need to rethink current capacity-focused sidewalk design, advocating for a nuanced approach that addresses the intricate demands of urban spaces. Our methodology offers flexibility and can be tailored to suit different urban contexts, providing a versatile tool for urban analysis and planning.

I-Ting Chuang

Qingqing Chen

Urban street dynamics: Assessing the relationship of sidewalk width and pedestrian activity in Auckland, New Zealand, based on mobile phone data

城市街道动态：基于手机数据评估新西兰奥克兰人行道宽度与行人活动的关系

This research focuses on identifying the nuanced land use dynamics of urban industrial zones. Industrial lands in major Western cities have undergone significant change in the face of increasingly competitive property markets. At the same time, many countries seek to reshore manufacturing and support local industrial activity amid changes in production technologies, global supply chain shocks and geopolitical insecurity. Yet policymakers often fail to seriously consider the contemporary character of industrial zones and research has yet to analyse this in a systematic way. In response, we employ k-means cluster analysis to develop a typology of industrial zones in Melbourne, Australia. The typology captures a range of industrial zone clusters, which vary by industry mix, specialisation and spatial pattern. While some clusters represent traditional industrial areas, others are highly diverse in terms of firm and employment mix encompassing service sector activity and specialised manufacturing industries. These variations underscore the limitations of traditional zoning frameworks focused predominately on use separation and point towards the need for more responsive and context-specific urban economic development and industrial land use policies.

Carl Grodach

Nícolas Guerra-Tão

Zoning a productive city? A typology of clustering, diversity and specialisation in Melbourne’s urban industrial areas

《规划一个生产型城市？墨尔本城市工业区集聚、多样化和专业化类型学研究》

Chance interaction among diverse strangers is a much-celebrated feature of urbanity. The rise in privately owned and managed public spaces, tending to displace people, activities and exchanges that may threaten business interests, has thus raised broad concerns. However, how such ‘new’, high-profile public spaces of the neoliberal or entrepreneurial city differ from ‘traditional’, everyday ones in terms of spontaneous encounters, is not well covered in the ever-growing public space research. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo, Norway, this article explores the occurrence of peaceful chance interactions among strangers in ‘new’ public space. In the two examined urban squares, representing ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ public space, strangers interact on a regularised versus an episodic basis, reflecting major differences in ‘contact-supporting circumstances’. A close reading of the pertinent scholarly literature indicates that these findings have a broader significance. The article’s key contribution is the detailed documentation and conceptualisation of basic circumstances that distinguish a ‘new’ from an ordinary, everyday public space with regards to chance interactions. Herein, the study points to an important shift in urban governance and planning since the 1980s. A market-led notion of attractiveness in the physical and social environment takes centre stage in prestigious urban developments, at the expense of the disordered exchanges of everyday life.

Sverre Bjerkeset

Hello, stranger? How attraction trumps interaction in ‘new’ public space

你好，陌生人？吸引力如何在新公共空间中胜过互动

Contemporary suburban landscapes have developed at scale, in variety, at speed and with ethnic concentrations or superdiversity. These complexities call for the reworking of urban theory and method. In this paper we contribute on both fronts. We develop an interpretative framework that emphasises the mediation of the production and consumption of new suburbs. Methodologically, we analyse on-site billboards as ‘technologies of enchantment’ that provide insight into the symbolic mediation of the production and consumption of new suburbs. We visually inspected 114 billboards and 38 active residential developments in the City of Wyndham – a rapidly growing suburban municipality in Australia. Our research sheds empirical light on how increasingly standardised production and consumption by an increasingly varied profile of residents are reconciled in the symbolic (re)enchantment of suburbanism as a way of life. Our findings indicate the value of future research into: ways of life in systemically produced suburbs; the agency needed to fashion community in extensive mass produced suburbs; and new forms of consumer society-related alienation in suburbia.

Abbreviation	Urban. Stud.
Journal Impact	4.27
Quartiles(Global)	URBAN STUDIES(Q1)

ISSN	0042-0980, 1360-063X
h-index	174
Top Journals	Yes

Publication Information	Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 1964，Proportion of original research papers: 100.00%，Self Citation Rate:11.90%， Gold OA Rate: 41.43%

Urban Studies

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