Reorienting Urban Development? Structural Obstruction to New Urban Forms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract There is a growing sense that the North American low‐density and automobile‐dependent urban form is unsustainable from the perspectives of quality of life, economics and the environment. Yet for all the calls for a transformation of development patterns, trends inherited from the post‐second world war period die hard. This article employs structuration theory to generate a conceptual framework that identifies factors of structural stability and transformation. It then uses this framework to account for difficulties in achieving a transition to higher density and less automobile‐dependent forms of development. The evidence originates from Toronto and points to an uncertain transition in urban development. The article closes with a consideration of society‐wide implications of the difficulties in redirecting structural tendencies when an environmental crisis looms on the horizon. Résumé Selon une opinion grandissante, la formule de la ville nord‐américaine à faible densité et dépendante de l'automobile ne peut durer, que l'on considère la qualité de la vie, l'économie ou l'environnement. Malgré tous les appels à un changement de schémas d'aménagement, les tendances héritées de l'après‐deuxième guerre mondiale ont la vie dure. S'appuyant sur la théorie de la structuration, l'article définit un cadre conceptuel qui identifie les facteurs de stabilité et de transformation structurelle. Il applique ensuite ce cadre pour rendre compte des problèmes que pose une transition vers des formes d'aménagement moins denses et moins dépendantes de l'automobile. Les éléments factuels, tirés du cas de Toronto, indiquent une phase de transition incertaine dans l'aménagement urbain. La conclusion s'intéresse aux implications, à l'échelle de la société, des difficultés à réorienter les tendances structurelles alors qu'une crise environnementale menace.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".