Abstract: This article argues that to understand housing as domestic only is a misconception. People intensify the use of their homes in ways that create substantial economic opportunities, urban services, and a range of social protections for themselves and their communities. The research presented here introduces the concept of 'space-use intensity', in fluenced by time-use surveys, Jane Jacobs's ideas on mixed-use, and the continuum approach to the informal economy, as conceptualized by Elinor Ostrom. Further, it describes the 'house interview' methodology devised to document spaceuse intensity and presents findings from houses in informal se lements in Bogotá, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, and Dakar. The data reveal that houses are less than a third residential (29 per cent), almost half of the uses are economic (47 per cent), and they provide a fair share of urban or community services (24 per cent). This visual methodology demonstrates that local governments are overlooking 83.8 per cent of the activities taking place within homes. In sum, the evidence discussed here shows that homes contribute signi ficantly to the urban economy and public services, making space-use intensity analysis instrumental in the design of eff ective housing, urban, and social protection policies.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated widespread remote work options. Reflecting on research from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s on telework and home-based employment that culminated in a 2001 book, Wired to the World, Chained to the Home: Telework in Daily Life , the author reviews what has and has not changed in the experience of remote workers in their homes and communities as they navigate their work and domestic responsibilities. While there are many positive bene fits to remote work, there are still difficulties in balancing home and work life. Social policies are needed that allow more options to fulfil work and household responsibilities, and an integrated approach to the planning of homes, workplaces, and communities.

Abstract: Home-based enterprises, which have grown considerably, use homes as microindustries, and are commonly run by families with the help of one to three workers. One challenge that home-based enterprises face is related to spatial conflicts between work and living areas, which can affect the quality of living spaces. This study investigates the spatial characteristics of homes with home-based enterprises to understand how they are used for income-generating activities and how the spatial characteristics of these homes vary between different industry sectors. This investigation is conducted to find a reasonable concept of flexibility at home that allows for income-generating activities that minimize the spatial conflicts between activities, while maintaining sufficient living space quality. This study used a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative interviews with homeowners and quantitative surveys of twenty-nine homes used as workplaces in three cities in Indonesia. The samples represented some housing typologies used in various sectors of home-based industries. The results showed that the spatial characteristics of indeterminant spaces, such as slack, neutral, and joined spaces, as well as the disposition of kitchens with other spaces in the same zone, provided opportunities for juxtaposing the two activities during both day and night. The findings suggest that integrating indeterminant spaces in a housing design can offer more flexibility and adaptability to residential spaces for both dwelling and working, while mitigating the negative impacts of using homes as workplaces.

Abstract: In this article, we explore the role of bodies, housing, and mobility as infrastructures of care for low-income women living in peripheral neighbourhoods in Santiago, Chile. Drawing on feminist political economists and urbanists, we describe the way that bodies act as infrastructures, often compensating for inadequate built and social environments. Even as the caring of these women sustains life, livelihoods, and communities, they suff er slow infrastructural violence ampli fied by immobility, isolation, and insuffi cient support. This reinforces and occurs within a broader context of gendered inequality and gendered violence, in a city where socioeconomic segregation is very pronounced. While there are geographic particularities to this case, the lack of infrastructure for care persists in cities and communities across the Global North and South. We provide policy recommendations oriented toward transforming material and social urban infrastructures, simultaneously addressing gendered and intersectional power relations.

Abstract: Working at home is a ubiquitous practice across the globe with varying degrees of recognition and visibility subject to the context in which it is undertaken. In the Global South, even as home-based work is a dominant mode of informal urban employment, there is limited recognition and scholarship on the sites where it is undertaken and the inadequacies in which these sites are embedded. This essay seeks to provide a framework to think about the spatiality of the workhomes which are sites where users undertake activities related both to their work and the home. We argue that the particularities of cities in the Global South, which are marked by its spatial and economic informality, have specific implications on workhomes. The framework is provided by examining the spatial, material, tenurial, and infrastructural aspects across three scales – that of the individual workhome, at the settlement scale, and at the meso-level spatial aggregations in the city. Through this, we present implications for planning and policy making to improve conditions for workhomes and those who use their homes for work.

Abstract: As suburban environments are increasingly brought into the purview of urban planning, there is an emerging narrative of the importance of 'incremental urbanism' (Pinnegar et al., 2015). For some (Dovey, 2014) this presents an opportunity for a gentler approach to catalyse change in neighbourhoods with established communities and fragmented ownership patterns. Such change is hoped to overcome the perceived shortcomings of car dependency and housing homogeneity that typifies established suburbs. The Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) has entered the policy lexicon as an incremental pathway – or blending – from pre-existing suburban environments, where the 'sub' dissipates to leave just 'urban'. This paper presents an analysis of ADUs in Sydney, Australia, where we identify a series of challenges created by the introduction of policies to encourage ADUs in established suburbs. This includes increasing tenure informality and precarity, poor suitability of neighbourhoods for diverse people and households, and increased dependence on shared amenity. We argue that in the absence of any major effort to improve services and infrastructure, there is little evidence that neighbourhoods experiencing a high take-up of ADUs are transitioning to becoming more 'urban'. The fetishization of density in urban policy and development is leading to more 'intensive suburban' blendscapes that encapsulate the worst elements of both suburban and urban morphologies.

Abstract: Across Mumbai, millions of people, with insufficient capital to purchase or rent property at market rates, occupy space in the most economical ways possible. In the process of optimizing the li le space they have they often mix and merge living and working functions. We refer to this typology as the 'tool-house'. While similar live–work conditions have been identi fied under various avatars all over the world, we look at its particularities in the context of Mumbai and show how its emergence is both context induced and context generating. Entire neighbourhoods, such as Dharavi in the heart of Mumbai are shaped by the presence of tiny tool-houses which, taken together, represent a fantastic productive network. We argue that tool-houses should be recognized as legitimate urban forms, not just in Mumbai but everywhere. In this paper, we show how tool-houses (and more generally live–work structures) have been essential building blocks of urban economies in various moments and times and, along with focusing on Dharavi in Mumbai, we also describe the speci fic case of postwar Tokyo.

Abstract: Remote work in cities is growing in popularity, fuelled by ongoing technological advances, the globalized knowledge economy, changing lifestyle preferences, the need to empower individuals, and – more recently – the eff ects of COVID-19. Social distancing measures introduced during the pandemic have inadvertently shown that a substantial proportion of work can be done from home or from third spaces such as co-working spaces. This paper off ers a critical appraisal of the implications of this trend for neighbourhood planning and workplace design. The appraisal is in three parts. First, to set the scene, we review recent scholarship on changing work practices in the post-pandemic city. Second, we offer a summative account based on empirical data from a survey conducted by the City of Gold Coast in Australia. This survey explored the spatial distribution of remote, nomadic, and home-based workers in cities in order to discover certain socio-economic, design and built environment features that relate to this distribution. This illustrates the impact that an uptake of home-based work has for urban planning and community design. Third, we look at some of the working from home implications for career progression and productivity, as well as physical and mental health. Based on perspectives from architectural science, environmental psychology and design, this part of the paper employs human-building interaction design scholarship to argue for the design of healthy work environments – both at home and in neighbourhoods – that increase productivity, reduce sick days, and yield be er health outcomes for the home-based workforce.

Abstract: The sustained increase in working from home in the wake of Covid has the potential to reshape the US urban landscape. This article describes the big picture of pre2020 remote work in the US and summarizes how that picture changed during the subsequent three years. It then introduces a mathematical model designed to calculate the possible long-run impacts of increased remote work on where and how Americans work and live. This model predicts that the increased prevalence of remote and hybrid work arrangements will induce workers with remote-capable jobs to find housing farther away from their job locations, increasing the length of the average commute while cutting the time actually spent commuting. Jobs that produce goods and services which must be consumed locally will follow the bulk of the population to suburbs and smaller cities, while jobs producing tradable output will increase both in low-cost and high-productivity locations, at the expense of the middle. In the long run, the reallocation of demand to lower density locations with fewer legal restrictions on housing development should reduce the real price of housing by at least 1 per cent, but these changes depend on adjustments to the housing stock, both through new construction and through re-purposing commercial real estate in city centres. The model predicts a partial reversal of the decades-long concentration of talent and income in the centres of the biggest cities. Data on changes 2019–2022 suggest that some of this reversal is already happening.

Abstract: Income-generating activities in residential zones known as Home-Based Enterprises (HBEs) are becoming more prevalent as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The informal sector, including HBEs, started expanding in cities of the Global South in the 1980s during the Structural Adjustment Programme and has engendered debates among practitioners and researchers. The International Labour Organization Home Work Convention, C177 of 1996, and the inclusion of home work in national accounting because of its contribution to Gross Domestic Product have emboldened researchers to argue for a supportive policy framework. Yet, this phenomenon is still opposed by contemporary planning practices in many Global South cities. The lockdown during the pandemic which aff ected every aspect of life across the world revealed the indispensability of home-based enterprises: 'work' that had to be kept functional was done from home. Will the implications of lockdown and post-pandemic home-based work lead to a paradigm shift in the Global South from the rigid colonial planning standards to eff ective and dynamic planning standards that are based on contemporary urban realities? The aim of this study is, therefore, to examine the implications of post-pandemic home-based enterprise for the built environment in Global South cities using Enugu, Nigeria as a case study. The mixed research design was adopted for the study, while data were collected through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. Stratified random sampling was employed to select three (one low, medium, and high density) from the existing thirty-three formal neighbourhoods in the study city – Enugu. Systematic sampling was adopted to select the sample size among the residents and the professionals were selected purposively. The result of the principal component analysis reveals that there are six major impacts of HBEs on the built environment in Enugu, namely: entrepreneurship skills; pressure on infrastructure; improved living standards; discrimination; in fluence on work–life balance; and limited growth potential. Major lessons from the study include:adaptation of innovative urban planning; enhancement of local economic development; gender and policy issues.This research is signi ficant as it will contribute to the literature on COVID-19 in the Global South and connect the post-COVID-19 recovery experience from a core Global South city to possible, effective actions that can mitigate future challenges in comparable cities and contexts.

Abstract: This paper challenges inherited twentieth-century assumptions of suburbia by teasing out existing interrelationships between the city centre and its peripheries. This is done through a content analysis of promotional material and spatial plans guiding the development of 'City Edge', a proposed 700-hectare regeneration scheme over an industrial development in the periphery of Dublin, Ireland. The analysis of new land-use ambitions for City Edge elucidates tensions around the 'highest and best use' of land, the role of non-local speculative approaches, and how the demand for housing in global cities, combined with an ideal of 'mixed-use' is reshaping suburban landscapes. In so doing, we draw upon the concepts of 'blandscape' and 'blendscape' to examine some contradictory forces at work in shaping contemporary suburban space.

Abstract: European peripheries and suburbs are generally seen by scholars and policy experts as part of a polycentric urban-regional network. This conceptually 'cityist' and methodologically 'urbano-centric' narrative often neglects the dynamics that may emanate from and within the periphery itself instead of cities alone. This paper engages with the history, possibilities, and transformative potential of European urban peripheries in their own right. It does this by employing the idea of 'post-suburbia'. On the one hand, the concept of 'post-suburbia' is relatively open and flexible, thus helpful in disclosing novel peripheral conditions and contexts. On the other hand, it captures the relevant places and dynamics of metropolitan integration and the consolidation of regional networks in metropolitan space. First, the paper demonstrates how post-World War II European suburbanization has culminated in diverse, uneven post-suburban landscapes in the urban regions of Milan and Amsterdam, and specifically in Pioltello and Almere respectively. Second, the paper shows the nuances of socio-spatial transformations that have emerged in these two suburban peripheries, as an outcome of suburbanization. This twofold reflection enables post-suburbia as a valuable perspective that can unpack the diversities and complexities of urban regions under constant transformation by accounting for processes of diversification resulting in suburban 'blendscapes'.

Abstract: This paper examines how the concept of 'place' could be integrated in the regeneration process for the industrial suburb of Salisbury in Queensland, Australia and how the three Bs can be used as a framework to study the evolution and the possible futures of the suburb. The paper draws on data collected from interviews with stakeholders as well as the outcomes of a Design Studio course as well as a panel organized for a University of Queensland event on placemaking in 2018 as a practical way of exploring potential scenarios for place-based regeneration of the suburb. The aim of the paper is both to understand the current transformation process of this suburb and to develop recommendations for a regeneration process integrating the concept of 'place' in the South East Queensland (SEQ) context where regeneration principles are not well integrated into local plans for the suburb of Salisbury. The paper highlights two conflicting views about the regeneration process and placemaking. The conclusion outlines recommendations to promote a regeneration process that could be adapted for both the Salisbury and the grey fields context for South East Queensland and would reconcile the two visions of what the regeneration of Salisbury should be.

Abstract: In India the contemporary city is largely defined by its kinetic condition, that is its movement and the place-making of its residents in the form of festivals, rituals, impromptu bazaars, and events. The kinetic city has largely replaced the static city (its physical architecture) as the primary and most dynamic aspect of urban India. In light of this, conservation students and professionals who work and study in India must look to the kinetic city for their cues when assessing significaixce and developing conservation plans or interventions. Architectural conservation programmes need to broaden their scope of concerns to reach beyond the material fabric to include the expertise of urban planning and the motivation and vision of local community groups. It will only be through the integration of these diverse actors that architectural conservation will bridge the objects of the past with the motion of the present and the direction of the future. If conservation of the built heritage in India is to be relevant (useful) it will need to embrace the kinetic city and accommodate the dance of its residents.

Abstract: The analysis of suburbanization patterns and processes necessarily implies looking beyond towns and cities. Suburbanization is a blendscape because it occurs within the transition zone between urban and rural areas surrounding urban centres. Therefore, a tension emerges between the growth expectations of small- and medium-sized municipalities and the supra-local authorities (e.g. metropolitan, provincial or regional public bodies) that provide essential (mostly financial) support to those municipalities. Supra-local authorities hence perform the governance role of institutional blendscapes because they can mediate between those growth expectations and more efficient, area-wide land management. By using the Barcelona Province as a case study, this paper examines three inter-related issues in suburbanization processes: (i) the question of land transformation; (ii) the relation between municipal size and suburban pa erns; and (iii) the role of supra-local authorities in the management of suburban areas in the city outskirts. Findings show that, overall, while municipalities up to 9,999 inhabitants have a housing stock that is predominantly suburban in character (i.e. 76.5 per cent single-family dwellings), it is small-/mid-sized municipalities between 10,000 and 49,999 inhabitants that have the highest proportion (31.2 per cent) of suburban residential areas within the Barcelona province. These small- and mid-sized, often rural, municipalities tend to rely on financial and technical support from the supra-local authority of the Barcelona Diputación – a key governance actor in suburbanization processes. As an institutional blendscape, on the one hand, the Barcelona Diputación can steer a more efficient land allocation and management through environmental protection and assistance in developing (supra-)local spatial plans. On the other hand, by distributing essential financial help to provide basic public services in small- and mid-size suburban municipalities, it also partially mitigates the planning, construction, and maintenance of suburbanity in (very) small- and medium-size municipalities 'far from the city' and rural areas.

Abstract: This paper examines the role of planning in addressing concerns about safety for women. The paper recognizes that safety has once again become a ma er of public interest in the UK. We examine the ways in which safety has been included within the UK Women and Planning Movement in the past, and the ways it is being articulated today. We argue that a narrow focus on safety is problematic and fails to engage with the breadth of the Women and Planning Movement. We use Sen's (1992) Capability Model to propose ways in which a focus on safety be improved through a more holistic engagement with the Women and Planning Movement's insights. We conclude that doing so will address many of the wicked (Ri el and Weber, 1973) issues planners seek to respond to.

Abstract: This paper makes a call for a more nuanced reading of the dynamic kaleidoscope of (sub)urban landscapes that characterize contemporary metropolitan regions. Within this metropolitan context, there is a need to move beyond perceiving the 'suburbs' as distinct and separate from, and, subservient to the 'city'. If anything, the suburbs are in a deep symbiotic relationship with the 'city' – (sub)urban entanglements. Such entanglement means that the suburbs and the city simultaneously exhibit suburban and urban elements. Hence, the terms (sub)urban, (Sub)urban, (sub)Urban, and (SUB)URBAN are used as a framework to denote the varying degrees of intermingling and scale of suburbanity and urbanity that characterize (sub)urban areas. Although suburbia has long been framed as a fundamental facet of the 'American dream' and the 'great Australian dream' the suburbs have been the object of much criticism, and derided for their conformity, domesticity and uniformity. In short, the suburbs have been stereotyped as a blandscape. However, as metropolitan regions have grown in physical and demographic terms, an array of (sub)urbanisms have emerged, and continue to do so, thereby creating a (sub)urban blendscape in terms of housing morphologies, densities, land uses, socio-cultural diversity, and governance at the metropolitan, sub-regional, local government, and suburb level. Simultaneously, an array of (sub)urban brutalscapes have also emerged as metropolitan regions have expanded. Suburbanization, extended urbanization, gentrification and (sub)urban regeneration are all contributing processes to the (re)production of brutalscapes that manifest at a range of scales and assume a variety of forms – e.g. infrastructural, sociocultural, housing, and environmental. Despite the criticisms of and problems with suburbia the idea(l) of the suburban dream prevails as metropolitanism expands. This points to the metropolitan region constituting a brutopianscape.

Abstract: The urban space of Rio de Janeiro's peripheral neighbourhoods, transformed by its residents, is analysed as a reference for thinking about alternatives to housing and the city that have been planned previously. The approach to these built environments and their residents' ways of life aims to recognize, record, and disseminate their forms of production of space, that do not correspond to hegemonic models, but are the result of a daily construction process. The live–work unit has a prominent role in the production of its urban environments that, unlike the planned residential areas and contrary to legislation, is mixed with houses for strictly residential use. Responding to economic, cultural, and social demands, the transformations operated in the houses – understood as 'tactics' (De Certeau, 1984) – promote the dilution of the border between private and public space and create transition spaces, with the quality of 'in-between space' (Her berger, 1996). Allowing and encouraging the mixed use of housing and work is analysed for its potential to qualify the urban space, propitiating income generation and reduction of displacements, issues that are even more pressing after the COVID-19 pandemic. A synthesis of the research fi ndings is presented, de fining spatial categories and constructive elements that constitute a repertoire for the project and for discussing changes in legislation that could help in the increase of live–work units.

Abstract: How do women live in violent urban neighbourhoods? Recent studies have shown that women have a capacity for action in urban neighbourhoods characterized by violence due to the presence and activities of criminal groups (Hume, 2009; Tickner et al., 2020; Wilding, 2010). This article contributes to this ongoing discussion by examining women community leaders' work in low-income, gang-controlled urban neighbourhoods in Medellín, Colombia. The article shows that women community leaders' work is based on care practices, understood as activities to improve the quality of life and live 'the best way possible' (Tronto 1993, p. 101) in the neighbourhood. Women community leaders' care practices, I argue, in fluence the access and/or use of the built environment in violent urban neighbourhoods. Their practices transform socio-spatial relations and establish an alternative way of navigating the built environment of their neighbourhoods.

Abstract: When analysing how cities and public facilities – especially public bathrooms – are designed, gendered perspectives are often neglected. This paper investigates the eff ects of the inaccessibility of public bathrooms on women's lives in London. Informed by a feminist lens, the research shows that many public bathrooms are inaccessible and unsafe, making it women's priority to avoid bathrooms throughout the day. This has effects on women's health and their understanding of bodily sensations. This inaccessibility leads women to plan ahead, limiting their ability to be spontaneous within public spaces, and using 'just in case' visits to bathroom facilities before leaving a place to minimize the risk of having to look for one later in the day. (In-)accessibility of public bathrooms is a long-lasting issue which has been translated into the creation of a cross-generational, non-formal bathroom education between women of diff erent generations. Overall, tensions and difficulties arising from women's (in-)accessibility to decent bathroom facilities means that their basic human rights are often denied, and their everyday life signi ficantly aff ected. As a response to such intersectional inequalities, women develop adaptative strategies, fostering their resilience as they reclaim their urban and public life.

Abstract: This paper examines gender role reversal within Syrian refugee households through waiting modalities and rhythmic practices amongst Syrian female refugees living in informal tented se lements (ITSs) along the Lebanese–Syrian borderscape. The dominant traditional male role that was observed during the pre-Syrian war appears to rescind due to a new socio-economic status that female refugees gained in their waiting to return home. The ethnographic study revealed that female refugees performed new labour tasks and assumed new roles both inside and outside the ITSs whether working with host community members or assisting multisectoral agencies. In being productive, they transformed their passive waiting into an active waiting through cultural habits and daily practices. Their shrouded skills became unlocked. Gender empowerment is therefore constantly negotiated and renegotiated due to temporary coping mechanisms and forms of resiliency. This paper uses a multi-fold framework and deconstructs empowerment from a cultural and contextual perspective. The investigation of self-determination, sense of agency, and independence is performed through a Lefebvrian 'rhythmanalysis' lens (2013) present in the women's daily and seasonal activities.

Abstract: Drawing on data from two distinct ethnographic research projects, in this article I examine the equation of home, house, and security, as implied in the stay-at-home COVID-19 pandemic mandate. My investigation involving domestic workers in Bogotá revealed that the house is not necessarily a safe space and can sometimes even become a trap. Women's everyday lives are constrained by local labour dynamics, gender paradigms, socio-economic diff erentiation, and urban segregation, while their ontological security hinges on the proximity of close social relations. Meanwhile, research in social housing compounds demonstrates that the built environment can contribute positively to low-income residents' wellbeing. These socio-spatial contexts apparently fostered latent communal bonds that were activated during the pandemic crisis. Supported by feminist critique, which underscores the inseparable connection between the domestic and labour sphere, anthropological research that examines the diverse meanings of house and home urban research, elucidating the role of the built environment in our experience of ontological security, I argue that the home is not an independent cell, containing people within brick-and-mortar con fines. Instead, it emerges as a fluid, interlinked, and expansive realm, de fined by processes beyond the physical edi fice. To build more humane cities that off er ontological security and contribute to the wellbeing of all residents, a paradigm shift is imperative: one that situates this expanded concept of 'home' at the centre of conceiving living environments that not only accommodate, but also nurture interpersonal bonds.