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Reclaiming spaces: family inclusive urban design
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Following the current trend of global urbanisation and the growing attraction of cities for families with children, urban environments are becoming principal contexts wherein new generation of children will thrive and grow. Though cities were traditionally designed for adults and cars and not children, Zukin (2010) observes an ongoing shift in her book ‘The Naked City’. She notes that through gentrification Western cities are experiencing a revaluation of streetscapes through commercial and cultural activities. Boterman and Karsten (2015) have titled this ongoing urban transition as ‘the march of city families worldwide’. Examples can be found world-over, in European cities like Paris, Berlin, the Scandinavian capitals and London (Authier & Lehman-Frisch, 2012; Butler, 2003; Karsten, 2013; Lilius, 2014). Not restricted to the west, examples can also be found in countries that are on the rise like India where 41.2 million children under the age of six live in urban spaces. An increase of children in cities comes with rising analytical and policy interest for families with children in urban environments through child friendly cities, and in children’s geographies.Published versio
Participatory planning: the role of NGOS in neighbourhood regeneration in Riga
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017In the last decades urban regeneration has become an important part of urban policy. Availability of financial opportunities were the engine of change in the approach to the revitalization of many urban sites. At the same time even if the number of projects concerning development of new infrastructure, both social and technical, increased, they didn’t always lead to the improvement of the quality of life. The participatory approach involves the wide range of stakeholders in the common process of planning. One of the ways of cooperation at the level of neighborhoods, is a work with active neighborhood residents, not only regularly informing them about the ongoing projects, but also to enable them to express their views and vision. Neighbourhood organizations are the mobilized section of a human group (the neighbourhood) which is underpinned by a local support network. The nature of these bonds of solidarity is a factor that determines the potential of local organizations for action and for their inclusion in any kind of democratic process. Riga, the capital of Latvia, has 58 neighborhoods, and more than ten of them have their own neighborhood associations and activist groups in social sites that are actively and constructively defend their neighborhood citizens. The paper examines the main fields of public activity and identifies the mainPublished versio
Geography of sustainability within urban food strategies
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The whirling population growth that is affecting global cities is causing an enormous challenge to conventional resource-intensive food production and supply and the urgent need to face food security and sustainability concerns. Cities can be the starting points of these strategies and they need to strike a balance between the localization of their food chains, reconnecting food with its place of provenience, and the globalization and market pushes. Urban Food Policies or Food Strategies can provide an interesting path for the development of this new agenda within the imperative principle of sustainability. But which are the main components of these policies? Most the food plans include actions related to three main dimensions that falls within the umbrella of what the food planners call “food sustainability” that are food security and equity, environmental sustainability itself and cultural identity and, at the designing phase, they differ slightly from each other according to the degree of approximation to one of these dimensions. An essential observation can be made about the relationship between these dimensions and geography. In statistical terms, the US and Canadian policies tend to devote a large research space to health issues and access to food; those northern European show a special attention to the environmental issues and the shortening of the chain; and finally the policies that, even in limited numbers, are being developed in the Mediterranean basin, are characterized by a strong territorial and cultural imprint and their major aim is to preserve local production and the contact between the productive land and the end consumer. This means that the relationships between food sustainability, public policies and the comparative study of the different cases are important in order to find solutions and ideas to future planning dispositions. Moving from these assumptions, my article, with primary and secondary data, would reflect on the current mapping of the Urban Food Policies, on the reasons why such priorities are located in those geographic areas and on the effectiveness of the practices they produce.Published versio
Understanding territorial differences and scale effects when evaluating housing conditions using census data: the case of Portugal
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The EU development strategy for the next decade (Walsh, 2012) has as a strategic priority the identification of mechanisms for enriching quality of life and reducing social-spatial inequalities. For that, rather than focusing exclusively on economic growth, regions should enhance place resilience and reduce their vulnerability at various scales (Murphy and Scott, 2014). One fundamental scale is that of housing and related services. Indeed, for the past two decades a large array of factors have contributed to increase the housing problems and vulnerabilities of European countries, such as the decline of public investments, the restructuring of social services’ systems, the reduction of the consumption capacity, and also the internal disparities and domestic policy decisions that eventually led to the most recent economic crisis (Carballo-Cruz, 2011, Dellepiane Avellaneda and Hardiman, 2010, Eichengreen et al., 2014). In the countries of Southern Europe in particular (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), housing bubbles have burst (notably in Ireland and Spain, see Dellepiane Avellaneda and Hardiman, 2010, Whelan, 2014, Carballo-Cruz, 2011), youth unemployment, dissatisfaction and emigration have dramatically increased (Cairns et al., 2014), and severe austerity measures have been implemented (Murphy and Scott, 2014). These and other factors have led to decreases in levels of happiness, life satisfaction and quality of life (Anderson et al., 2012, Bell and Blanchflower, 2011), have affected employee job satisfaction, commitment, and self-regulation (Markovits et al., 2014), and have had increasing social risks, for vulnerable groups as immigrants, low waged workers or youths (Cairns et al., 2014) and in terms of poverty and social exclusion (Frazer and Marlier, 2011).Published versio
Multi-level climate governance in Germany – the opportunities and constraints in formal and informal instruments from a legal perspective
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Climate change is one of the most pressing societal challenges of our times. International climate governance is currently shifting from top-down and monocentric to bottom-up and polycentric governance structures with, inter alia, cities and local governments becoming increasingly visible and engaged actors. The research explores, from a legal perspective, multi-level and polycentric climate governance in Germany with a focus on formal and informal instruments of federal state (“Bundesland”) and local level (“Städte und Gemeinden”) climate action planning. The paper, first, briefly depicts recent developments in the international climate change regime to show the current shift from mono- to polycentric climate governance structures (2). It then looks at the German system of climate governance and explores the key formal and informal instruments at national and federal state level for steering multi-level climate mitigation efforts (3). At the heart of the research, three local case studies highlight the manifold ways in which German cities are currently interlinked into polycentric climate governance, depending on how they mandatorily or voluntarily interact with vertical or horizontal climate governance axes (4). Building on these case studies, the formal and informal instruments developed at the different levels of the climate governance regime, their interrelationship, potential benefits and constraints are critically discussed with a view to effective climate mitigation action (5). Finally, conclusions are drawn and recommendations developed (6).Published versio
Critique of everyday life and post-positivist planning
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Lefebvre´s books on the ’Production of Space’, The Right to the City and the Urban Revolution have been widely discussed in planning theory, and are constantly referred to in (scholarly-activist) planning practice, e.g. in the urban protests against massive gentrification and in recent solidary struggles against post-political regimes heralding austerity policies. However, Lefebvre´s (2014) century-long oeuvre on the ‘Critique of Everyday Life’ spanning from (1) his analysis and observations of rising fascism in the 1920s/1930s; (2)the post-WWII urban modernization and the ‘internal colonization’ of everyday life routines in France and Europe in the 1940s/1950s; and (3) the advent of paradigmatic shifts between production and consumption in the city in the 1960s/1970s towards the era of global urbanization; has received few attention in the realm of urban studies, and even less so in planning. This is remarkable, as this three-volume work conveys several insights on un- and resettlement of urban routines useful to understand present changes mediated through everyday life in contemporary cities. In a context of a felt unsettling of urban and national routines, particularly marked by the years2011 and 2016, this paper pays tribute to Lefebvre´s complex spatial understanding of the critique of everyday life as an analytical perspective to detect, identify and qualitatively understand changes on the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of society. Then, focus will be set on the time span since the early 1980s to highlight contributions from social, political and cultural theory that have engaged with a more contemporary (spatial)critique of everyday life. These shifts in theorizing the city are connected to the contemporary critique of the earlier generation of post-positivist planning accounts and pave the way to (loosely) start thinking about conceptualizing a more recent generation of planning theories much more interested in affective, agonistic, performative, insurgent, relational and counter planning approaches, and thus, in the nitty-gritty political, cultural and social nuances of an updated spatial critique of everyday life.Published versio
Assessing the publicness of ‘planned’ public open spaces progressively: The AU model of publicness
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Over the last three decades, public open space literature has been critical of the increasing involvement of private sector in contemporary practices of public open space planning and development. Critiques on private actors’ involvement in public open space development are largely based on the notion of a ‘highly public’ public domain, argued to have existed in the public open spaces such as parks and squares in pre-WW II cities of Western Europe due to strong state presence in their development. However, as counter-critiques argue, the involvement of private actors in contemporary practices of public open space development is inevitable and could also be beneficial, particularly in emerging Asian economies whose cities are majorly built by private initiatives. And, as such counter-critiques argue, a reconceptualization of publicness as a phenomenon independent of sole state participation, and policies for public open space development based on novel combinations of state, civil society, and private sector participation are strongly warranted. Along these lines, this paper presents a model and method for assessing publicness of ‘planned’ public open spaces empirically – termed as AU model. The proposed AU model is progressive, as a public open space is assessed in various stages of its development beginning from its planning - as part of an urban space - to its design, development, and management. Here, publicness is conceptualized based on two attributes – access and use, considered to be its core ideals and that the freedom of which makes a space public, and thereby the name AU. To assess the attributes of access and use, AU model is broadly conceived to constitute of two sub-models: quantitative publicness and qualitative publicness. While sub-model of quantitative publicness is conceptualized to measure the degree to which ‘planned’ public open spaces are developed into publicly accessible spaces, sub-model of qualitative publicness is conceptualized to measure the degree to which publicly accessible spaces - based on three dimensions viz., physical configuration, control, and civility - encourage use by the larger public of the city. Besides, sub-model of qualitative publicness is explicated furthermore into an operational model in which the above-mentioned three dimensions are measured and graphically represented through 14 indicators. Compared to existing pragmatic publicness assessment models, the proposed AU model is significant in providing a progressive, systematic, and comprehensive assessment of public open spaces and related policies. Primarily, it can be used to comparatively assess publicness of public open spaces that emerged under different planning policies, forms of provision, and management regimes. The paper is in five parts. The first part discusses the contemporary practices of public open space development and the associated debates on private sector participation. The second part discusses and then conceptualizes the nature of ‘planned’ public open spaces and their process of development. Third part conceptualizes publicness and explains the proposed AU model of publicness. Fourth part shows an application of the model to the case of parks in the city of Chennai, India. The final part discusses the model’s applications in urban design research and practice and future research directions.Published versio
Analysis of the air flow performance in Warsaw in years 2002-2016
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Nowadays, more than s half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2045 this number is expected to surpass six billion, reaching 66 percent by 2050 (United Nations, 2014). People decide to choose cities as their living place for various reasons, such as developed labour market or wide range of services. Unfortunately, highly urbanised areas, despite their understandable economic and living- standard advantages, suffer from serious environmental and development problems caused by erroneous planning decisions.
City climate is clearly related to general climatic conditions occurring in a selected geographic region, however, it is also dependent on factors such as land use, building geometry or street canyon design. Luke Howard in his renowned work “Climate of London” 200 years ago proved that urban climate differs from the rural one and noticed the urban heat island (UHI) occurrence. Indeed, the city of Warsaw, an object of this study, is distinguished by a lower access of solar power, higher air temperature and shorter period of frost incidence as well as lower relative humidity, bigger cloud cover, higher rates of rainfall and lower wind speed (Stopa-Boryczka, Kopacz-Lembowicz, Wawer, 2001).
Rapid changes of temperature, wind and humidity also affect comfort and health of the people as well as energy consumption and air quality (Elliason, 1999). Thus it is important to enable achieving conditions of thermal comfort especially in a hot and humid climate, through increasing wind velocity (Kato & Hiyama, 2012). Ensuring proper airflow in urban areas should be one of the key environmental issues tackled by governments and city mayors. However, T. R. Oke points out that it implies a critical choice between four goals: to maximize shelter for pedestrians by not exposing them to strong winds, to maximize dispersion of pollutants and minimize their impact on inhabitants and vegetation, to maximize urban warmth and to take full advantage of solar energy. We have to take into consideration that large amount of harmful compounds detected in the air of urban areas where human activity is intensified is not only a result of increased emission but also an effect of the strong surface drag in rough structures and limited effectiveness of dispersion of pollutants (Suder & Szymanowski, 2014).
Therefore this study was set to analyse changes in morphology and terrain roughness in Warsaw in years 2002-2016 and related changes in city’s aerodynamic properties, including ventilation corridors.Published versio
Coordination of territorial cohesion by European territorial cooperation and trans-European transport networks – the case of cross-border transport
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Territorial cohesion aims at fostering a more balanced and harmonious development of the European regions, making use of individual regional strengths for an overall EU benefit and linking them effectively to ensure a higher territorial integration of the Member States among others. Furthermore, cooperation across administrative borders is to be promoted actively (Commission of the European Communities 2008). The two policies European Territorial Cooperation (ETC) and Trans-European Transport Networks (TENT) are intended to contribute to several aspects of territorial cohesion: the ETC Policy focuses on the support of European border regions, contributing to a European integrated territorial development and promoting the exchange of experiences across borders (European Union 2006). Therewith, the effects of the administrative borders shall be minimized and territorial cohesion shall be increased (European Commission 2005). The TEN-T Policy shall efficiently link the national transport networks of the Member States and make them interoperable in order to contribute to a borderless European territory. Additionally, remote regions are to be integrated to the residual territory (European Union 2012), bottlenecks in the European transport system are to be removed and missing-links to be constructed (European Parliament and Council of the European Union 2013d). Thus the two policies can be seen as promoters of territorial cohesion. The aim of this paper is to analyse the contribution of the two above named policies to an important element of territorial cohesion: cross-border transport connections including infrastructures and services. The findings are based on field research in the cross-border region Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux+. After a description of the objectives of the TEN-T and ETC policies and their related funds in a first step, the influence of the policies is analysed. This is done by comparing the original EU objectives with the involved Member States’ national transport policies, the regional and sub-regional policies and the crossborder policy documents. Additionally, the implementation of these objectives in the form of projects in the cross-border regional transport reality is evaluated. Finally the contribution of the two policies to territorial cohesion is evaluated.Published versio
Green infrastructure as emerging opportunities for inclusiveness. complexity and dynamics in Munich northern region
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Munich is a growing city and is one of the most competitive metropolitan areas in Germany, characterised by a dense concentration of functions developed through complex and dynamic ecological, social and economic networks acting at city, region and global levels. The increase of landscape consumption due to settlement and traffic is accordingly above average and accounted for 6% between 2004 and 2010. The population of the City of Munich, currently about 1.5 Mio., is expected to grow by approximately 230,000 inhabitants until 2030. With around 7% the expected population growth between 2010 and 2030 is nowhere else as high in Germany; the actual number of population for the whole region is around 5,5 Mio. Within the city, the population density is one of the highest in Germany, with 47 residents per hectare. 39% of the residents are foreigners or Germans with a migration background. Population growth and urban development are increasing putting pressure on the urban green spaces. On the other hand, those trends reclaim the development of connected green blue infrastructure for recreation and other social benefits. Moreover, on-going social and environmental changes, such as the diversity of cultures and lifestyles, and the growing requirements for a healthy and resilient city already influence the space development of Munich at various levels, posing several intertwined challenges to the different stakeholders.Published versio