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11 - Crafting alternative urban fashion infrastructure in a digital and pandemic age?
- Edited by Alison L. Bain, York University, Toronto, Julie A. Podmore, Concordia University, Montréal and John Abbott College, Québec
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- Book:
- The Cultural Infrastructure of Cities
- Published by:
- Agenda Publishing
- Published online:
- 23 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 07 August 2023, pp 171-182
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- Chapter
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Recent years have witnessed a “perfect storm” in the fashion industry. The rise of ultra-fast, online-only fashion (Camargo et al. 2020), the growing influence of platforms such as Amazon (Stewart 2022) and the ongoing pandemic (Brydges et al. 2021) have caused havoc for many fashion retailers. These developments have major implications for high streets and shopping malls in the world's fashion cities (i.e., centres with a concentration of leading fashion districts, designers and media, such as New York City, London, Milan and Shanghai). Recent media attention has focused on a number of major brands shuttering stores and filing for bankruptcy protection (Chitrakorn 2020). All of these challenges raise questions about the future of the fashion industry and its urban cultural infrastructure.
This chapter focuses on one segment of the industry – small independent fashion retailers – examining their responses to the crisis. It explores the ways that these retailers forge alternative urban infrastructure and affective atmospheres, interweaving in-store sensory experiences with digital and social media technologies. Through a hybrid use of old factories and warehouses, independent fashion retailers engage different spaces and materials. They cultivate closer relationships between producers, consumers and designers, advancing a “politics of reconnection” (Hartwick 1998) that seeks to address the social and environmental costs of fashion. As the crisis in the fashion industry intensifies, these small urban retailers maintain diverse linkages with their surrounding neighbourhoods, and, during the pandemic, became key sites of economic and social resilience in the face of global supply chain disruptions. In the process, they foster alternative realms of fashion, illustrating how urban infrastructure is at once cultural and political, as well as material (Alam & Houston 2020).
Utilizing a mixed methods approach, this chapter draws upon international trade reports, newspaper articles, websites and other social media, as well as open-ended interviews with alternative fashion retailers in Canadian and Australian cities. Organized into three main sections, it begins by providing an overview of global fashion infrastructure associated with major fashion centres. The second section discusses the crisis confronting the industry today and the third section examines how small, independent fashion retailers are responding to this crisis, utilizing physical, digital and cultural infrastructure to craft alternative urban fashion spaces.
P085: What do community paramedics assess? An environmental scan and content analysis of patient assessment in community paramedicine
- M. Leyenaar, B. McLeod, S. Penhearow, R. Strum, M. Brydges, A. Brousseau, E. Mercier, F. Besserer, G. Agarwal, W. Tavares, A. Costa
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- Journal:
- Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine / Volume 21 / Issue S1 / May 2019
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 02 May 2019, p. S94
- Print publication:
- May 2019
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- Article
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Introduction: Patient assessment is a fundamental feature of non-emergency community paramedicine (CP) home visit programs. In the absence of a recognized standard for CP assessment, current assessment practices in CP programs are unknown. Without knowing what community paramedics are assessing, it is difficult to ascertain what should be included in patient care plans, whether interventions are beneficial, or whether paramedics are meeting program objectives. Our objective was to summarize the content of assessment instruments used in CP programs in order to describe the state of current practice. Methods: We performed an environmental scan of all CP programs in Ontario, Canada, and employed content analysis to describe current assessment practices in CP home visit programs. The International Classification on Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) was used to categorize and compare assessments. Each item within each assessment form was classified according to the ICF taxonomy. Findings were compared at the domain and sub-domain of the ICF. Results: Of 54 paramedic services in Ontario, 43 responded to our request for information. Of 24 services with CP home visit programs, 18 provided their intake assessment forms for content analysis. Assessment forms contained between 13 and 252 assessment items (median 116.5, IQR 134.5). Overall, most assessments included some content from each of the domains outlined in the ICF, including: Impairments of Body Functions, Impairments of Body Structures, Activity Limitation and Participation, and Environmental Factors. At the sub-domain level, only assessment of Impairments of the Functions of the Cardiovascular, Haematological, Immunological and Respiratory systems appeared in all assessments. Few CP home visit program assessments covered most ICF sub-domain categories and many items classified to specific categories were included in only a few assessments. Conclusion: CP home visit programs complete multi-domain assessments as part of patient intake. The content of CP assessments varied across Ontario, which suggests that care planning and resources may not be consistent. Current work on practice guidelines and paramedic training can build from descriptions of assessment practices to improve quality of care and patient safety. By identifying what community paramedics assess, evaluation of the quality of CP home visit programs and their ability to meet program objectives can be improved and benchmarks in patient care can be established.