Papers by Rianne van Melik
Becoming socio-cultural infrastructure: librarizing practices in public libraries
Becoming Socio-Cultural Infrastructure
Agenda Publishing eBooks, Jul 27, 2023
Marketplaces
Routledge eBooks, Jun 15, 2022
Co-Production of Public Space
Global Perspectives on the Absent Presence of Marginalised Children and Young People in the Public Realm
Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2022
Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2020
Despite the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many cities are still struggling to fa... more Despite the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, many cities are still struggling to facilitate inclusive playgrounds. This paper contributes to our understanding of the everyday landscapes of disabled childhood, by investigating the play-policy of Dutch municipalities via a mixed-methods approach. Our online survey reveals that 90 per cent have a play-policy, although the length and content of these documents vary extensively, and accessibility and inclusive play are often lacking. Additionally, we focus on the play-policy of two municipalities in the east of the Netherlands. Interviews with civil servants, play professionals and families with disabled children show that municipalities willingly respond to parents' requests for playground changes. Though resulting in tailor-made adjustments, this also configures disability as an individual problem. Parents and policy-makers also highlight different expectations regarding playground adjustments and investments. The paper therefore calls for open communication to avoid disabled children being involuntarily absent in public space.
New York: the city of ambition. Het verhaal achter de skyline
Routinised practices of community librarians: Daily struggles of Dutch public libraries to be(come) social infrastructures
Journal of Librarianship and Information Science
Next to their traditional role as places for information provision and knowledge transmission, pu... more Next to their traditional role as places for information provision and knowledge transmission, public libraries increasingly also function as important social infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. As such, they can help to address systemic challenges such as social fragmentation, loneliness, exclusion and precarity. However, the library not merely is a social infrastructure, but becomes one each operating day through continuous labour by a network of stakeholders. This paper specifically examines library staff and their routinised practices to provide, perform and maintain the library as social infrastructure. The empirical research was carried out in four public libraries in the Netherlands and focussed on staff members who were in a 1-year post-graduate programme to become a community librarian, and their close colleagues. It consisted of two phases: first librarians were shadowed at work, followed by a focus group interview on the multiple problems libraria...
Introduction: Policy Making in the Face of Uncertainty and Inequality
Bristol University Press eBooks, Jul 22, 2021
Preface to All Four Volumes of Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities
Bristol University Press eBooks, Jul 22, 2021
Conclusion: The Pandemic and Beyond
Bristol University Press eBooks, Jul 22, 2021
Introduction to the Forum: Bordering, Ordering and Othering
Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2021
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Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, Feb 1, 2009
Many squares in Dutch city centres have been redeveloped in recent years. Their design and manage... more Many squares in Dutch city centres have been redeveloped in recent years. Their design and management have often changed, resulting in places characterised by dimensions of 'fear' and 'fantasy' such as the rise of camera surveillance and sidewalk cafés. The private sector is increasingly involved in these redevelopment projects. This paper visualises to what extent privatesector involvement affects redeveloped public spaces. Six-dimensional diagrams are set up as an analytical tool that enables the comparison of public spaces on a number of criteria. Eight squares are examined in the city centres of Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Enschede and 's-Hertogenbosch. Four are solely redeveloped by the local government; the other four are the result of public-private partnership. The diagrams show that the private sector mainly participates in the redevelopment of retail squares, but its involvement does not result in more fear or fantasy in public space.
The Role of Public Space in Urban Renewal Strategies in Rotterdam and Dublin
Planning Practice and Research, Oct 1, 2011
ABSTRACT Urban entrepreneurialism has been well investigated, but few publications focus directly... more ABSTRACT Urban entrepreneurialism has been well investigated, but few publications focus directly upon the role of urban public space in renewal strategies associated with such. Although generally acknowledged as important, public space is often seen as supportive rather than a driving force of urban redevelopment. We compare two cases, Rotterdam and Dublin, in which, in contrast, public space was regarded as essential to urban renewal. We show how municipalities have been active in improving public space with a view to attracting private investment. Additionally, these cases underscore the importance of the local context in examining entrepreneurial planning agendas in different cities.
‘Soft’ privatization of public space: autonomization of outdoor retail markets in the Netherlands
European Planning Studies
Introduction: Policy Making in the Face of Uncertainty and Inequality
Volume 4: Policy and Planning
Volume 3: Public Space and Mobility
COVID-19 is an invisible threat that has hugely impacted cities and their inhabitants. Yet its im... more COVID-19 is an invisible threat that has hugely impacted cities and their inhabitants. Yet its impact is very visible, perhaps most so in urban public spaces and spaces of mobility. This international volume explores the transformations of public space and public transport in response to COVID-19 across the world, both those resulting from official governmental regulations and from everyday practices of urban citizens. The contributors discuss how the virus made urban inequalities sharper and clearer, and redefined public spaces in the “new normal”.
Moving marketplaces: Understanding public space from a relational mobility perspective
Cities
Re-producing public space: the changing everyday production of outdoor retail markets
Urban Geography
Being a Deliveroo Rider: Practices of Platform Labor in Nijmegen and Berlin
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
On-demand delivery platforms have become a common feature of urban economies across the globe. No... more On-demand delivery platforms have become a common feature of urban economies across the globe. Noted for their hyper-outsourced, “lean” business models and reliance on independent contractors, these companies evade traditional employer obligations while still controlling workers through complex algorithmic management techniques. Using food delivery platform Deliveroo as a case-study, this paper investigates the diverse array of practices that on-demand workers carry out in order to enact this new platform labor arrangement in different spatial contexts. One of us conducted an auto-ethnographic project, working as a Deliveroo Rider in Nijmegen and Berlin for a period of nine months. Additionally, we interviewed 13 fellow platform workers. The findings reveal the motley, contingent, and conditional ways in which on-demand labor comes together on the ground. The paper concludes with discussing the uneven distribution of these practices across locations and social groups, and the someti...
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Papers by Rianne van Melik