UPLanD - Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & environmental Design
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The Green Economy, Metropolitan City, Technological Design: the future of the three in Italy
Full text linkThe number of inhabitants living in urban areas – currently already equal to half the Earth’s population compared to a quarter one century ago – will experience a major increase over the next twenty-five years, reaching six billion people which will be equal to about two-thirds of the world’s population in just a quarter of a century’s time. The challenges that are threatening to squash today’s metropolis are the extremely radicalised ones that were, in essence, already present in 20th-century urbanisation: the challenges of being safe, equal and fair, of offering work, of providing open spaces, places for recreational activities, meeting people and entertainment, of granting economic opportunities and of ensuring compliance with the meta principle of accessibility, which now seems to represent, when present, the greatest wealth; physical and immaterial accessibility to all parts of the metropolis, to community comforts and services, to education and healthcare, to drinking water and clean air. Smart grid and smart cities are, at the present time, appearing on contemporary scenarios in an explosive and innovative manner, yet one that is too fast and technologically advanced to be absorbed and endorsed by the increasingly complex urban governance management processes. The energy-environment category of problematic observations undoubtedly represents the key issue of today’s metropolis, which will strongly come to the fore when looking at the observations in this article below concerning the specific characteristics of the 'Italian metropolis'
The safe city: the Acerra urban park “LO SPINIELLO”
Full text linkIn the town of Acerra it was created a green lung in the District Spiniello thanks to the project financed with the funds of the PIU Europa "The Safe City", whose objective was to adapt the pedestrian traffic, bicycle and vehicular Community rules, integrating it in public spaces equipped and green parks. The lines of action have been: 1. improvement in the safety and perception of road intersections and dangerous pedestrian crossings, through the modification of the structural and geometric characteristics of the roadways; 2. improvement of pedestrian and bicycle accessibility system, especially close to public places and the school complex, enhancing the quality of urban spaces and helping to increase the livability and safety of the territory; 3. discouraging private car use by improving the safety of pedestrian and bicycle mobility with particular reference to young people and the elderly often suffer in the use of roads; 4. improving the quality of urban public spaces by planting tall trees to reduce the urban heat island
Planning Support Systems: from universal solutions to local planning method. The case of planning practitioners in Andalusia.
Full text linkProcesses of urban transformation and technological advances are leading to drastic changes in urban environments and to novel local challenges for urban planners. Scientific research is exploring the potential of various technologies to support planning and Planning Support Systems (PSS) have been proposed as strategies to improve current planning practices. PSS are not without their critics, both from academia and practice, who dispute their usefulness and usability, and they have so far been scarcely implemented in practice, with limited success. Using a case study approach, we report on the findings of in-depth interviews with practitioners in Andalusia, Spain, focusing on the main planning challenges that respondents identify in their work and how technology can help address them. We identified three main challenges: developing an adaptable general plan, improving current public participation processes and encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue. Each planning challenge is understood to have different technological needs (if any at all), that indicates a strong relationship between reported planning challenges, the use of technologies and the planning context. This shows the need to reevaluate mainstream approaches to PSS, shifting from the development of generalized, transferable PSS to context-based approaches that focus on methodologies for collecting situated knowledge on local planning challenges, which could lead to specially-tailored PSS
Draw to restore and represent urban green space in Santa Cruz de Tenerife
Full text linkThe territory, morphology and urban order of Santa Cruz de Tenerife constitute a singular unity. The datum is to be found in the design of this island, which is closely related, even with its history, to the orographic system. Santa Cruz de Tenerife is shaped by two unique events. The first, geographically and territorially recognizable, is the Barranco de Santos; the second consists of the shape, only apparently irregular, that delineates the ample green space of Parque Municipal García Sanabria. Both of these systems have been the targets of a particular and demanding re-design, or restoration project, aimed at rehabilitating the site, executed with skill by the architects Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar and Leopoldo Tabares de Nava. The important element is the fact that these two events are the expression of the island's very life. Their rehabilitation has returned to the inhabitants both the green spaces and the possibility to use the infrastructures that determine them. Thus it strengthened a sort of reconciliation between the natural balance of the city and the use the inhabitants make of these restored green spaces. The success of the project was ensured by the architects’ understanding of the indivisible unity of the two systems, and of their having returned to the island’s inhabitants green spaces not only correlated with the city’s history, but above all destined to be experiences with a modality of usage and not of consumption
Recreating nature in cities: a research program for the river’s renaturation in the Greater Lyon
Full text linkFrom the 19th century, in Western Europe, urban sanitation was meant to create sewers as well as bury small rivers. With the impulse of environmental laws, engineering schemes that once aimed at shaping vegetation around the city is now trying to reintroduce it in the most natural way possible.In that context, river restoration appears to be a strategic tool for the development of cities. It is also about linking districts to each other with plant pathways, creating public spaces, all while dealing with the issue of heat islands. River restoration designates the re-establishment of a river's natural functions, which used to be highly anthropized.After a rhetorical review, the paper deals with the firsts results of Lyon’s river restoration research program. This research program is enacted by the Greater Lyon, the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) and an engineering agency Artelia. The paper especially treats the subject of Rize’s restoration. A former river which was entirely buried in the 19th century. This study contributes to the research on the “shallow” concept of a sustainable city through the consideration of the benefits and shortcomings of recreating a river in a dense urban area
Water Sensitive Urban Design: A Sustainable Design Approach To Reform Open Spaces in Low-Income Residential Rehabilitation Projects in Egypt
Full text linkUrban communities and cities often evolved alongside the rivers or coasts of the sea, the water element was always important and influential in shaping the visual and urban character. Neglecting such natural resource in urban development has a bad impact on city's economic, ecological and visual values and subsequently, on the rights of next generations. Moreover, programs of urban transformation and development in low-level residential projects suffer from random policies and blurred strategies which ignore natural and social opportunities. This requires new approaches which in turn comes out of an integrated strategy based on a multi-dimensional approach to solve the problem. Among them is Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD). which is a methodology that depends on respecting an important environmental natural resource "Water" and is oriented to use water more effectively and integrating water cycle with built environment.The research will examine practically the efficiency of WSUD in reforming governmental rehabilitation housing projects, alongside with the urban rehabilitation standards. An urban residential area in Port Said coastal city will be selected for implementing this study. A proposed framework –from WSUD with urban rehabilitation standards– will be extracted to improve the quality of this area with its built context in order to alter water from being a potential nuisance into a valuable resource. Through Developing Design guidelines for WSUD implementation potentials, the study will reach developing actions on the urban and built level, to help assessing the validity of the proposed design guidelines in the light of WSUD contributions with rehabilitation process
Socio-Technical Aspects of Water Sensitive Urban Design: micro-scale innovative tools for adaptation
Full text linkThe multidisciplinary approach of the Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) is articulated on the synergy between the technical aspect of the urban water management, planning and environmental design to pursue strategic actions for climate change adaptation aiming to enhance the resilience of the complex urban system. The holistic methodology for the integration of the water management within the built environment provides effective outcomes for risk reduction through the development of multiscale solutions in which the goals of environmental regeneration are combined with the social sphere and its interaction with technology innovation issues. The socio-technical aspects of the WSUD at macro, meso and micro level are outlined to identify key points for the transition towards the water sensitivity of the urban system where retrofit interventions of the built environment are coupled with the strengthening of social capital. On a micro-scale the implementation of WSUD measures are tested in the case study of East Naples where the inclusion of bottom-up processes has been effective for the acceptance of adaptation measures at local level. Participatory tools have been developed to achieve the community engagement as an essential goal for WSUD options dealing with changes in the use of water resource and everyday practice of sustainability
Expansion of the Prophet Mosque as a Catalyst for Sustainable Urban Development in Al-Madinah Almunawarah in Saudi Arabia
Full text linkCities and towns have recently undergone significant transformation, from small forms with identifiable centers and the roles of bearing history and culture into sprawling, amorphous urban areas that have lost their cultural and social identities and functions. The city is defined less by its physical boundaries given the development of suburbia and vast areas with detached buildings. Al-Madinah Almunawarah has undergone major urban transformation due to the expansion of the Prophet's Mosque. It needs an urgent development plan to achieve a sustainable smart green city approach. It is expected that many houses will be razed and replaced with entities with different functions through expansion. This will change the city’s urban form, including its network of architectural shapes and spaces. Hence, it is imperative that these changes reflect the character of the holy city and can add positively to the local way of living.This paper’s main goal is to develop an integrated coinage for the open space network in Al-Madinah Almunawarah and link it to the future expansion of the Prophet's Mosque. Moreover, the research aim to develop a comprehensive framework for the smart green city approach to be applied and examined on other cities
The algal diversity in the Phlegrean Fields (Campania, Italy) archeological districts: an overview
Full text linkThe coexistence of several ecological conditions (hot springs, streams, mud, rock walls), characterized by different pH, temperature values, water potential and mineralogical makes the Phlegrean Fields as an ideal area for the analysis of the microalgal assemblages and their relationships with the different microhabitats occurring in the sites. Here we report an overview of the algal diversity within the archaeological and geothermal areas of Phlegrean Fields and the adaptability for most of them to acidic and thermal conditions in the volcanic soils
The logic of limits applied to the transformation of contemporary landscape: The Velopark of Loulé
Full text linkAs a result of the commission of a Landscape Architecture project for the surrounding area of the Municipal Stadium of Loulé, Portugal, this extraordinary opportunity arose to carry out a speculative investigation into the “logic of limits" in the transformation of the contemporary landscape. The motivations of the client - the Municipality of Loulé - which triggered this public competition, must be underlined for the singularity of an order that, in the National and European context, presupposed the idea of “designing for openness" between a Municipal Stadium and the city‘s public space. The cultural context in which this competition was launched also shows a clear paradigm shift in the design of the city, since it shows a clear concern with healthier life models, where the will to "abandon the automobile" repositions the role of motorization as an agent of urbanization in the second half of the XX century, in view of the growing role of the "multimodal citizen" of the 21st century. However, the scale of human action and the speed of the world of technology in which we live today, unleash unparalleled challenges in the transformation of the landscape, in the form of problems - here referred to as in visu-shift - that go beyond the regional and local dynamics of our cities