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Unsustainable growth of urban transport: questioning mainstream sustainability solutions for Turkish cities
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The automobile, supported by bus, has become the transportation mode which formed the urban physical structure after the beginning of the years of Second World War. By this technology, it was possible for the city to develop in any direction. Initially, urban development occurred between train lines, and then the cities started to develop fifty kilometers away from the central core for the average half-hour journey (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). When the effects of car dependence are considered in urban areas in terms of sustainability concerns for the future of environment, society and economy, it is obvious that an automobile based urban pattern cannot be sustained. As opposed to car dependency, mainstream solutions are put forth as public transport, walking and cycling. In addition, decreasing policies for car use such as congestion charging, traffic calming, disincentive tax measures for car entrances to city centers and awareness raising campaigns and policies have been seen as supplementary solutions to sustain the future of urban transport. The positive feed backs of those mainstream sustainability solutions have been observed in positive manner over years in especially U.S and Europe –in cycling friendly cities such as Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Antwerp-. However, cities in Turkey has still been experiencing the hazardous outcomes of car dependency and unsustainable urban transport. Whether the policies has been taken consciously or unconsciously concerning making urban transport more sustainable, there have also been several sustainable solutions in particularly public transport in Turkish cities. These are new urban rail investments, pedestrianization projects, cycling lanes and bike-sharing systems. Therefore, the main question is that “Have sustainability precautions worked so far in cities in Turkey or not?”Published versio
Commercialization on street safety in revitalized downtown area
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Urban safety is one of the most important issues among sustainable development challenges. Over the past decade, the world has witnessed growing threats to the safety and security of cities and towns. These threatens, in terms of traffic accidents, traffic jam, environmental pollution, crime incidents, etc, have all brought severe challenges to place-making and management on urban space. Streets, the public space where people commute, walk, go shopping, stay, and live, has played a key role in making our cities safe and secure for generation to come. Topics of street security cover a series of urban safety issues, such as transportation safety, defense and security, psychological security, and so on, which are worthy of attention by city planners and urban designers. Streets are important elements in downtown revitalization. Among the globe, infilled development of commercial and retail functions in old downtown cities has being contested as an effective revitalization approach to promote the vitality of neighborhood with various functions, but also as a growing threaten to local safety as well as an overburden to streets according to increasing tourist and traffic flows. There are abundant researches on gentrification trends as well as discussions on urban revitalization approaches. As the basic demand of local residents and immigrants, the security issues, however, are in lack of discussion. Although there is common sense that the entering of immigrants, commerce, and tourists have increased unsafety risks to local neighborhoods, very few scholars have investigated this topic and make scientific verification.Published versio
Reconciling goals of social and physical sustainability: an examination of spatial dimension of social integration in Trondheim, Norway
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The paper presents preliminary findings from the first phase of a research project that is aimed at investigating the policy for decentralised local centers (commercial and transport hubs) in the city of Trondheim and an expressed goal of creating inclusive spaces at sub city level, while achieving a reduction in transport related greenhouse gas emissions. We use the case of social integration of refugees in the city of Trondheim to examine the potential of the planned local centers in achieving the expressed goal of creating a sustainable and inclusive city. We situate ourselves in the debate on social integration in the spatial domain viz. social mix versus segregation (Cole and Goodchild, 2001, Fincher et al, 2014 etc.) and the value of creating spaces of encounters (Fincher et al. 2014, Gressgård and Jensen 2015) to study the patterns of interaction among refugee groups in the city and their use of space in the local neighborhoods/ centers for such interactions. We relate these preliminary findings to the plans and policies of the Trondheim Municipality - both spatial and social welfare policies, to contribute to the debates on the role of spatial planning to promote social integration in increasingly diverse medium size cities in Europe. Municipal policy on integration of refugees in Trondheim is limited to the formal and structural aspects of society, while leaving the relational, interactional and cultural aspects to unplanned arenas and selfinitiative by the refugees. There have been some efforts to represent the cultural diversity of the city through food and cultural festivals, with limited outcomes. As is illustrated by our preliminary investigations, most informants experience a sense of alienation and isolation, and interactions are limited to people of similar cultural backgrounds and other refugees, mainly in central locations. One of the main findings discussed in the paper is that refugees experience a sense of isolation in the neighborhoods they are housed in by the Municipality, raising questions to the efficacy of the policies of social mixing followed in Trondheim. We also find that spaces of social encounters in the local area have only limited potential to facilitate long lasting contact between the refugees and the host population, unless more targeted efforts for social network building is undertaken. The window of opportunity of the first five years of the ‘Introduction program’ of the Municipality are critical owing to the close contact refugees have to State authorities. Disregarding the importance of the living environment and social links and bonds in the local community, is a shortcoming in the integration efforts of the Municipality, one which can be easily addressed. In conclusion, the paper raises questions for scholarship on the spatial dimensions of social integration, some of which will be investigated further in the current project.Published versio
Analysing retail location and urban dynamics in Lisboa
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017What drives people into a city? Some cities seem able to attract workers and residents, sometimes tourists, eventually all of these. Some are commuter towns. And some are, to some extent, in between those. Christaller (1933) considered the city to be the centre of a market area, and Lösch (1954) further elaborated on that theory. Location theories date back to von Thünen (1826), but close to the 21st century, Krugman (1991) posed a relevant question: why is it that in such a large, fertile country like the U.S.A. “the bulk of the population resides in a few clusters of metropolitan areas?”. The question was later emphasized, with Clarke (2003) and Jayne (2006) assuming postmodern cities as places of consumption. Jacobs (1961) had long hinted at why people live in cities: “Not only do public characters spread the news and learn the news at retail, so to speak. They connect with each other and thus spread word wholesale, in effect.”. The city was presented as more than just a market centre – it was an organic system, whose complexity couldn’t be modelled at the time. But modelling complex systems has evolved significantly, with the focus, in some cases, having shifted from “how to” to “how well”, as more data becomes available and models become more sophisticated. “What scientists really need to know is exactly how well (or how poorly) their models perform over a broad range of conditions and criteria” (Costanza, 1989). Even though results still can’t provide absolute certainties, they can prove to be relevant for research. Therefore, this paper aims at contributing to research on modelling a complex system, by identifying factors that might explain retail spatial distribution, and analysing its effects on a city, with Lisboa being used as a case study.Published versio
The airification of cities. Making sense of the impact of peer to peer short term letting on urban functions and economy
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The emerging sharing economy is an extremely interesting phenomenon in the context of major cities, impacting them on several dimensions, ranging from social to economic, from cultural to environmental. “The sharing economy is an emerging economic-technological phenomenon that is fueled by developments in information and communications technology (ICT), growing consumer awareness, proliferation of collaborative web communities as well as social commerce/sharing” (Botsman & Rogers, 2010), (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), (Wang & Zhang, 2012), (Hamari et al., 2015). The concept of sharing economy is very simple: it allows to rent out anything that is under-utilized or not used at all. The contact between supplier and customer is established through an online platform. Sharing economy platforms, in the last few years, have become very popular and changed our consumption patterns (Quattrone et al., 2016). On the one side, suppliers can short-term rent their goods (or services); on the other side, consumers can rent goods or services at a lower cost than a traditional provider (Zervas and Proserpio, 2014). Airbnb, a peer-to-peer accommodation website, is one of the most successful sharing economy platforms. Airbnb is a platform where people can offer for short term, discover and book houses all over the world, from a pc or smartphones and tablets. The company was founded in 2008 and by now (May 2017) it lists over 3 million properties in over 191 countries, over 65.000 cities, accommodating 150 millions of guests. Spaces rented on Airbnb vary from a couch in someone’s living room to an entire island (Wortham, 2011), but generally there are few typologies of accommodation: private or shared room and entire houses. The host may live in the property at the time of the rental or not. Airbnb claims that 57% of listings are entire apartments or homes, 41% are private rooms and 2% are shared rooms (Guttentag, 2015). Airbnb has been adopted on a massive scale worldwide and also in Italy: in 2015 the country had the third largest number of Airbnb listings in the world, with 83.000 hosts and 3.6 millions of visits per year, according to data published by Airbnb Italia. A press event in Rome (2016) saw the participation of the Italian minister of Culture who spoke with great enthusiasm of the affordances of the platform and the great benefits that it supposedly brings to urban economy. Nevertheless, in typical Italian fashion, there has been very little debate over the long term consequences of a relatively new phenomenon, especially one associated with novelty, enterpreneurialism and “new” technologies, and the only intervention that the government has deemed necessary has been that of imposing a tax on homes rented through the platform. However questions about the impact of an upsurge of short term rentals (‘STR’ onwards) over the delicate environment of Italian historical urban centres, as an example, have hardly been asked. Italians also seem to be ignoring the controversy that Airbnb’s fast rise has generated around the world, with accusations of driving up rents, depleting the residential housing market and, as is the case in Barcelona, turning entire neighbourhoods into 24h party zones, to the bewilderment of residents. Currently, in Florence and Venice just like in Barcelona, the risk to turn the historic centres into “cathedrals of consumption” where what had been grown naturally is replaced with a superficial and tourist-oriented veneer (Thani and Heenan, 2016) – is a very present one. The consequence of this process might be, at best, the loss of authenticity of such places (Zukin, 2009). In this context, the present contribution provides a more in-depth insight on the mechanics of Airbnb in Italy, focusing on two dimensions of the phenomenon, related to (1) the spatial distribution of STRs; (2) the economic impact of Airbnb on city centres and residential rents. After a brief recollection of the academic production on Airbnb (section 2), we describe our data and method of analysis (section 3); in Section 4 we present the spatial patterns of Airbnb supply and demand across 13 towns and cities in Italy, focusing on three archetypical patterns; we then hypothesize on the possible drivers of the Airbnb offer and suggest a possible way to assess whether Airbnb supply could be driven by an economic advantage of STR over long term letting (Section 5). In Section 6 we discuss the way the benefits of the sharing economy are… shared. Finally, we conclude by presenting a possible alternative way of regulating Airbnb.Published versio
Immigrants as agents of urban transformation: testing new typologies and new bridges between concepts and empiricism
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The paper reflects on migrations and discusses how the role of immigrants in cities can be assessed. In a complex context of migrations and urban transformations I explore the relationship between these two components. Is the role of immigrants in urban spaces analysed by policy makers? Is the diversity of migrants and foreigners considered on urban planning and housing policies? What categories of immigrants do government agencies and supranational institutions contemplate? Do the variables considered when categorizing immigrants express the complex reality of migration? These are some of the questions that guided the reflections presented here. Being an exploratory work I will not seek to answer these questions but rather to critically discuss their pertinence. In the Portuguese context this discussion is relevant due to territorial imbalances and inconsistencies, affordable housing shortages and enhancing discourses on the value of the contribution immigrants make. When studying immigrants and foreigners who enter and remain in Portugal, it is clear, that the new and overlapping situations do not fit the traditional categories of immigration and tourism. Thus I propose a set of categories more adjusted to these circumstances considering immigrants and foreigners in the cities, their housing needs and specificities. Methodologically, the research consisted of a literature review and was carried out employing analysis of several laws and documents focusing conditions for entry and to stay on Portugal and the right to housing. The paper is divided into four sections. Section one gives a brief overview of the migrations complexities and some problems and challenges arising from this situation. Particular attention is paid to the migration studies and to the impacts of migration flows in cities. Throughout the section two I discuss the concept of immigrant and the way this one is operationalized in legal and administrative categories. This analysis confirms that traditional categories of migrants weren’t broadened by the inclusion of the effects of migrations in the urban spaces. Recognizing this gap, in section three I propose a new approach who consider the impacts of immigrants and foreigners in the city, especially in its housing component. For the drawing of this exploratory typology I considered the situation in the Portugal, namely in the city of Lisbon. Conclusions are outlined in the last section.Published versio
City unsilenced: public space and urban democracy on trial Sabine Knierbein
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Around the world, the shrinking capacity of (formal) democratic process has left protesters and ordinary citizens with no other resort than to take to the streets, the emblematic space of the publics, for reinstating democracy. Shrinking democracy, coupled with economic restructuring, constitutes an underlying challenge facing cities and communities around the world. Public space, as a building block and medium of political engagement and social interactions, may represent an alternative space and a vehicle of resistance against systems of shrinking democracy. In its capacity as a vehicle for active democracy, public space in contemporary society deserves greater care, attention, and critical reflection. As movements evolve to confront new challenges, explore new opportunities, negotiate with new actors and circumstances, and utilizing new technologies and platforms, our understanding of the role and agency of public space as lived and political space must also advance. This is precisely the objective of exploring the linkages between urban resistance and public space in the age of shrinking democracy. With this work and others to follow, we continue to explore public space as sites of renewed hope and possibilities in the quest for a more just, enduring, and democratic urban(ized) society.Published versio
Metropolitan planning and urban minorities “on the move”. A transnational perspective on integration patterns
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Planning traditions in European countries have generally either ignored settlement patterns of underprivileged migrating populations or tried to control them through imposed settlement actions or population redistribution (Desage et al., 2014). Urban integration of immigrants or of poor nationals in a migration situation (such as rural population attracted by employment opportunities in the city or returning expatriates from former colonies, etc.) has been generally addressed by providing specific or standard public housing or by implementing social mix policies. In this paper we address integration patterns by focusing on the characteristics of a “welcoming” territory or its “hospitality”, i.e. a territory that offers opportunities for integration and that showcases its social diversity. We further question the importance of morphologic configurations of metropolization and of governance arrangements characteristic of metropolitan planning for successful incorporation. New comers to the city claim space and make place. In regard to these processes, we ask several questions: what settlement and place-making patterns of migrants, chosen or imposed, are associated with metropolization in different world contexts? Can suburbanization be considered an advantage for integrating a new population, and under what conditions? How do city and suburban administrations, be they fragmented or federated in metropolitan governance institutions, respond to these processes of settlement? In order to address these questions and see how metropolitan urban areas can use take advantage of their suburban morphology and of immigration we have studied U.S. examples of successful “gateway” metropolises of the 21st century. The choice of the North American example was based on the fact that morphological characteristics of metropolization have their origins in the U.S. and that we find in the American scientific literature successful stories of immigrants’ incorporation that contribute to economic and territorial development. In addition to the US theoretical model we have studied two contrasting European cases of metropolitan pilot projects concerning immigrant and minority integration: that of Grenoble, in France, and of Cluj, in Romania. These two very different contexts in Western and Eastern Europe are put together here in regard to integration patterns of a similar population, impoverished Romanian in majority of Roma ethnicity. Highly excluded from the labor market and from formal housing, suffering discrimination and marginalization in Romania (Vincze, 2015), they are low-skilled and very poor immigrants in search of a better life. In France they often live, at least for a period of time, in very harsh living conditions in improvised and informal settlements such as slums and squats, from which they are often evicted. In regard to this population, we give here the term “minority” a wide meaning that reflects not only a quantitative difference from the “majority” based on objective and/or subjective criteria, but especially a dominated position due to social and economic exclusion, and to forms of marginality (such as informal or illegal occupations and housing). We focus on the movement of these populations, chosen – such as their economic migration to western Europe – or imposed – such as resettlement after forced evictions – that makes them “new comers” with low resources in a territory where they aim to settle and make a living. In the American literature on migrations and cities, different types of immigrants (high and low skilled, with high and low human and social capital, etc.) are considered together as complementary in their settling and integration patterns. However, the different examples show that generally highly skilled workers have always been more easily integrated, whereas “poorer and less-skilled immigrants – who are often the backbone of the service economy – have met more resistance” (Singer et. al., 2008: 155).Published versio
The (in)consistent community boundaries : temporality in multiple social-spatial interactions
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Boundaries are temporal. The perception of a boundary is an interactive process in relation to specific social contexts. This article investigates the temporality of community boundaries, focusing on their social-spatial interactions through performatives, which contribute to both the inconsistency and consistency of the perceived boundaries, and analyzes the dynamic community boundaries in time with empirical evidences from two typical Beijing neighborhoods. Building on an analogy with theater performances, the article brings forward a conceptual framework for the understanding and analysis of community boundaries in urban space, with a focus on the stimulators of spatial-temporal transformations. The temporality of boundaries can be understood in two perspectives, situational and representational. While the former promotes inconsistency of boundaries with ruptures and shifts, the latter brings consistency to boundaries through bring diachronic, repeating perceptions to the contemporary spaces. The temporality of community boundaries implies a connection of the neighborhood and surrounding urban areas. The more a community is integrated, the more changes and shifts take place to the boundaries, which hence become flexible, tolerant, and porous with publicness.Published versio
Challenging community diversity through diverse neighborhood design principle: a case study of wat-ket, Chiang Mai, Thailand
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The borders of the world seem to diminish, as we are moving into the era of diversity or one would consider it to be an era of super-diversity. Against the backdrop of immigrant issues, various countries have to rely on the movement of people for the decades to come. The members of South East Asian are among those countries. In the year 2015, in the aim for stronger economic development in the whole region, they initiated the ASEAN Economic Community to encourage the flow of skilled migrants in the territory. Several national and regional policies were nominated for smoother integration. Thailand who is ranked among the top 15 countries of migrant destination in the world will remain as the major destination in AEC. Unfortunately, the local neighbourhoods that are the area where the host and the newcomer interact were overlooked. They are the places, which have to cope with the impact of immigrant first-hand including more housing and services demands, social tension, diversified needs, etc. To make it worse, immigration studies in Thailand have only been focusing on the issue of illegal immigrant, labour regulation and immigrant health problem related to HIV and infectious diseases. However, few scholars have touched the aspects of socioeconomic development and urban development context as Haguet and Chamratrithirong (2012) stated that “Analyses of the effects of migration on the Thai economy have for the most part narrowly focused on the wages earned by migrant workers and have only recently begun to consider migration’s impact on the broader structure of the economy.”. Researchers in the field of immigrant integration have been proposing that the diversity in the local community should be adopted as the main solution for immigrant integration. (Bosswick et al., 2007; Dixon et al., 2011; MPI, 2014; Kesten et al., 2015) It is the realm that promote “commonplace diversity” (Wessendorf, 2011). Various studies support that the good-quality physical environments are significant stimulators for diversity, including space for interaction, cultural spaces, public infrastructure. (Jacobs, 1961; Penninx, 2009; Legeby, 2010; Lelévrier et al., 2015) We anticipate that with the proper neighbourhood environment, there will be numerous types of positive interaction that eventually result in better integration.Published versio