Lorena Melgaço
Biographic Data
| ID | 5918968 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lorena Melgaço |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lorena |
| FAMILY NAME | Melgaço |
| SIGNATURE | MELGAÇO L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1363-8014 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Mapping geosystem services potential for urban climate resilience: A case study from Malmö, Sweden
Urban climate resilience planning often overlooks the subsurface, despite its potential to mitigate flooding, heat stress, and drought. To demonstrate these potentials, we developed thematic Geosystem Service (GS) maps for Malmö, Sweden, to support the integration of the subsurface into climate adaptation strategies. This study identifies GS relevant to the local context, proposes indicators for mapping these services, suggest a methodology for d…
Rent Seeking and the City: The Case of Urban Screens
Digital technology has become an integral aspect of contemporary cities, especially with the rise of smart city initiatives. Over the past two decades, researchers and practitioners have studied the potential of large public screens, also known as urban screens, in transforming public spaces and shaping the urban experience. This article contributes to the debate by discussing urban screens in their entwinement with the production of capitalist s…
Eurovision and the City: “United by Music” Meets “Malmö against Genocide”
“United by Music” was the slogan of the 2024 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Malmö. However, the festive spirit of the event oddly contrasted with what was described as “the largest police operation in Sweden’s history” (Ivarsson, 2024). This operation was mobilized in response to the expected civil protests regarding Eurovision’s decision to welcome Israel’s participation, despite its ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. We examine the…
Precarious Settlement Upgrading and Racial Capitalism: Planning Authoritarianism and Its Crossroads for Democracy
A key critique of urban planning in postcolonial contexts is the persistence of Western/Eurocentric approaches that disregard the spatial production of Black and Indigenous populations as legitimate. In Brazil, despite shifts from authoritarian to democratic governments, racialised territories have consistently been subjected to state intervention. While policies have evolved—from deregulation and disinvestment to infrastructural investment—the u…
Decolonizing Urban Planning Research in Global South: A Call for Shifting the Gaze
Given that urban planning has served colonial and imperialist purposes, this commentary explores the existing challenges for early-career researchers conducting research designed in the Global North and carried out in/on the Global South. We offer a series of questions and provocations as an invitation to colleagues facing similar dilemmas to reflect on their own research from a decolonial methodological critique (theory, practice, and politics).…
Digital Peripheries: Internet and Socio-spatial Practices in the Rurban
Despite an unprecedented presence of digital technologies in the everyday, a clear urban/non-urban divide in accessing and effectively using the internet remains. This divide is identifiable not only in the Global South—perceived as peripheral—but also in the Global North—regarded as advanced and the motor of technological development. Such a phenomenon suggests the emergence and endurance of socio-technological peripheries, places where socio-sp…
Part III: From the Global to the Everyday and Back Again
Race and Space in the Postcolony: A Relational Study on Urban Planning Under Racial Capitalism in Brazil and South Africa
This article analyzes two planned cities—Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and Bloemfontein (South Africa)—to investigate connectivities across geographies and temporalities and reveal the role of urban planning in racial capitalism. Early works in urban sociology underscore the color line in producing differentiation in capitalist development. But color-blind analyses of capitalism have undermined the role of race in the urbanization process and formation…
Redefining the role of urban studies Early Career Academics in the post-Covid-19 university
We are an international collective of Early Career Academics (ECAs) who met throughout 2020 to explore the implications of COVID-19 on precarious academics. With this intervention, our aims are to voice commonly shared experiences and concerns and to reflect on the extent to which the pandemic offers opportunities to redefine Higher Education and research institutions, in a context of ongoing precarity and funding cuts. Specifically, we explore a…
Calling for responsible inclusive planning and healthy cities in Africa
Urban planning is at a turning point The COVID-19 pandemic calls for an alternative approach which focuses on creating healthier built environments This is especially true in Africa given rapid urbanization combined with skill shortages in planning and underinvestment Connecting health and planning is not new across Africa Forty-five per cent of African countries experience at least one epidemic annually, including cholera, measles and malaria Th…
Challenging peripherality through access to the internet? Socio-spatial practices of the connected rurban
This paper investigates imbricated relationship between the socio-spatial organisation of marginalised rurban communities and the late appropriation of the internet in both Brazil and the UK. It focuses on the underlying forces that shape rurban communities’ everyday lives in the context of digital peripheralisation, understanding that, though embodied and imprinted in space, these are correlated to phenomena pertaining to different social levels…
Challenges, opportunities and legacies: Experiencing the internationalising of UK planning curricula across space and time
Drawing on interviews with selected UK planning academics and survey results from current planning practitioners, this article provides valuable and timely perspectives on how internationalisation is experienced by those within and beyond the immediate institutional context. Although internationally focused planning education helps planners tackle the manifold urban challenges in the global South, the article goes on to argue that relational appr…
Planning, temporary urbanism and citizen-led alternative-substitute place-making in the Global South
This paper argues that planning in the Global South needs to be embedded within a more complex and systemic framework based on understanding cities' functions and transformations, at both local and regional levels, whilst advocating for and incorporating informal and temporary dynamics. This is to differentiate between two competing processes: formal planning and citizen-led place-making, here considered as a form of reactive alternative-substitu…
The Museum of Today. Towards Bridging the Socio-cultural Gap in Brazil
Planning, temporary urbanism and citizen-led alternative-substitute place-making in the Global South
This paper argues that planning in the Global South needs to be embedded within a more complex and systemic framework based on understanding cities' functions and transformations, at both local and regional levels, whilst advocating for and incorporating informal and temporary dynamics. This is to differentiate between two competing processes: formal planning and citizen-led place-making, here considered as a form of reactive alternative-substitu…
Race and Space in the Postcolony: A Relational Study on Urban Planning Under Racial Capitalism in Brazil and South Africa
This article analyzes two planned cities—Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and Bloemfontein (South Africa)—to investigate connectivities across geographies and temporalities and reveal the role of urban planning in racial capitalism. Early works in urban sociology underscore the color line in producing differentiation in capitalist development. But color-blind analyses of capitalism have undermined the role of race in the urbanization process and formation…
Redefining the role of urban studies Early Career Academics in the post-Covid-19 university
We are an international collective of Early Career Academics (ECAs) who met throughout 2020 to explore the implications of COVID-19 on precarious academics. With this intervention, our aims are to voice commonly shared experiences and concerns and to reflect on the extent to which the pandemic offers opportunities to redefine Higher Education and research institutions, in a context of ongoing precarity and funding cuts. Specifically, we explore a…
Decolonizing Urban Planning Research in Global South: A Call for Shifting the Gaze
Given that urban planning has served colonial and imperialist purposes, this commentary explores the existing challenges for early-career researchers conducting research designed in the Global North and carried out in/on the Global South. We offer a series of questions and provocations as an invitation to colleagues facing similar dilemmas to reflect on their own research from a decolonial methodological critique (theory, practice, and politics).…
The Museum of Today. Towards Bridging the Socio-cultural Gap in Brazil
Planning, temporary urbanism and citizen-led alternative-substitute place-making in the Global South
This paper argues that planning in the Global South needs to be embedded within a more complex and systemic framework based on understanding cities' functions and transformations, at both local and regional levels, whilst advocating for and incorporating informal and temporary dynamics. This is to differentiate between two competing processes: formal planning and citizen-led place-making, here considered as a form of reactive alternative-substitu…
Challenges, opportunities and legacies: Experiencing the internationalising of UK planning curricula across space and time
Drawing on interviews with selected UK planning academics and survey results from current planning practitioners, this article provides valuable and timely perspectives on how internationalisation is experienced by those within and beyond the immediate institutional context. Although internationally focused planning education helps planners tackle the manifold urban challenges in the global South, the article goes on to argue that relational appr…
Calling for responsible inclusive planning and healthy cities in Africa
Urban planning is at a turning point The COVID-19 pandemic calls for an alternative approach which focuses on creating healthier built environments This is especially true in Africa given rapid urbanization combined with skill shortages in planning and underinvestment Connecting health and planning is not new across Africa Forty-five per cent of African countries experience at least one epidemic annually, including cholera, measles and malaria Th…
Challenging peripherality through access to the internet? Socio-spatial practices of the connected rurban
This paper investigates imbricated relationship between the socio-spatial organisation of marginalised rurban communities and the late appropriation of the internet in both Brazil and the UK. It focuses on the underlying forces that shape rurban communities’ everyday lives in the context of digital peripheralisation, understanding that, though embodied and imprinted in space, these are correlated to phenomena pertaining to different social levels…
Digital Peripheries: Internet and Socio-spatial Practices in the Rurban
Despite an unprecedented presence of digital technologies in the everyday, a clear urban/non-urban divide in accessing and effectively using the internet remains. This divide is identifiable not only in the Global South—perceived as peripheral—but also in the Global North—regarded as advanced and the motor of technological development. Such a phenomenon suggests the emergence and endurance of socio-technological peripheries, places where socio-sp…
Part III: From the Global to the Everyday and Back Again
Race and Space in the Postcolony: A Relational Study on Urban Planning Under Racial Capitalism in Brazil and South Africa
This article analyzes two planned cities—Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and Bloemfontein (South Africa)—to investigate connectivities across geographies and temporalities and reveal the role of urban planning in racial capitalism. Early works in urban sociology underscore the color line in producing differentiation in capitalist development. But color-blind analyses of capitalism have undermined the role of race in the urbanization process and formation…
Redefining the role of urban studies Early Career Academics in the post-Covid-19 university
We are an international collective of Early Career Academics (ECAs) who met throughout 2020 to explore the implications of COVID-19 on precarious academics. With this intervention, our aims are to voice commonly shared experiences and concerns and to reflect on the extent to which the pandemic offers opportunities to redefine Higher Education and research institutions, in a context of ongoing precarity and funding cuts. Specifically, we explore a…
Eurovision and the City: “United by Music” Meets “Malmö against Genocide”
“United by Music” was the slogan of the 2024 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest, held in Malmö. However, the festive spirit of the event oddly contrasted with what was described as “the largest police operation in Sweden’s history” (Ivarsson, 2024). This operation was mobilized in response to the expected civil protests regarding Eurovision’s decision to welcome Israel’s participation, despite its ongoing genocidal war on Gaza. We examine the…
Precarious Settlement Upgrading and Racial Capitalism: Planning Authoritarianism and Its Crossroads for Democracy
A key critique of urban planning in postcolonial contexts is the persistence of Western/Eurocentric approaches that disregard the spatial production of Black and Indigenous populations as legitimate. In Brazil, despite shifts from authoritarian to democratic governments, racialised territories have consistently been subjected to state intervention. While policies have evolved—from deregulation and disinvestment to infrastructural investment—the u…
Decolonizing Urban Planning Research in Global South: A Call for Shifting the Gaze
Given that urban planning has served colonial and imperialist purposes, this commentary explores the existing challenges for early-career researchers conducting research designed in the Global North and carried out in/on the Global South. We offer a series of questions and provocations as an invitation to colleagues facing similar dilemmas to reflect on their own research from a decolonial methodological critique (theory, practice, and politics).…
Mapping geosystem services potential for urban climate resilience: A case study from Malmö, Sweden
Urban climate resilience planning often overlooks the subsurface, despite its potential to mitigate flooding, heat stress, and drought. To demonstrate these potentials, we developed thematic Geosystem Service (GS) maps for Malmö, Sweden, to support the integration of the subsurface into climate adaptation strategies. This study identifies GS relevant to the local context, proposes indicators for mapping these services, suggest a methodology for d…
Rent Seeking and the City: The Case of Urban Screens
Digital technology has become an integral aspect of contemporary cities, especially with the rise of smart city initiatives. Over the past two decades, researchers and practitioners have studied the potential of large public screens, also known as urban screens, in transforming public spaces and shaping the urban experience. This article contributes to the debate by discussing urban screens in their entwinement with the production of capitalist s…
Sociology (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (6 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (5 works) · Urban planning (4 works) · Economic geography (3 works) · Economic growth (3 works) · Economics (3 works)