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When traditional and creative industries blend: a case-based discussion of the implications for urban design
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017As economic interests in an urban society develop, functionally determined zones of production become zones of transition and pose challenges to urban design as an instrument for organizing competing or contradictive spatial interests. This contribution centres on such a zone of transition, an industrial site in the Belgian city of Hasselt which is progressively enveloped by urban development. Interestingly, this area is part of a larger industrial area along the quays of the Albert Canal. This canal was developed in the 1930s to connect the Campine coal basins, the maritime port of Antwerp and the steel basin in Liège to one another (Van Acker, 2014). The Hasselt Canal Zone thus exists on the interstice between two very distinct systems: the radial-concentric pattern of the (medieval) city, characterized by two concentric ring roads; and the linear development of the Albert Canal, a national backbone for industrial and commercial development. Due to their subsequent development and saturation, these distinct systems increasingly influence each other here. Hence, the Hasselt Canal Zone demonstrates a gradual transition which includes the introduction of new programmes, creating a public and urban élan on the south bank of the Canal. This process has started in 1997, when the Muziekodroom, a local non-profit organization for musical education, band practice and concerts, settled in a partly abandoned slaughterhouse. In the ensuing 20 years, other new users have followed by appropriating obsoleted industrial infrastructure: two shared office buildings, a college of advanced education in pop and rock music, a dance club, a repair service for electronics, and catering businesses. In branding the core zone of transition with the name Quartier Canal, this new generation of occupants manifestly propagate a cooperative and synergetic agenda. New occupants also coexist with traditional Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), mainly light industries, building merchants and traders, which have not left the site, some still depending on the Albert Canal for transportation of building materials and petroleum products. Their interests are advocated by several public entities involved in maintenance and exploitation of the Flemish waterways, and entrepreneurship along its shores. As a consequence, very diverse spatial claims and expectations come together.Published versio
Toward territorial cohesion with the national spatial plan for Albania 2030
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017In late 2013 the National Territorial Planning Agency (NTPA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Urban Development (MUD) of Albania took the initiative of drafting the First National Spatial Plan for Albania 2030(NSPA). The strong need of the country to jump to a new way of sustainable development was backed up by the political will and a new legal planning reform, paving the ground for new integrated planning instruments. Although this is not the first time plans are drafted in Albania this is the first national spatial plan for the country. The methodology for drafting the NSPA was based on three complementary steps: At first the metabolic analysis of the territory was performed for five main systems of the territory: water, food, infrastructure, urban and natural system. Secondly, the Declaration of Vision was drafted through a wide participatory process from different stakeholder form the government administration but also independent experts and academia. Third, the strategic proposals through flexible tools that allow for further exploration for best collaboration between national developing sectors and local governance. The plan followed an open and democratic approach reflected not only in the participatory drafting process but also on the strategic proposals that were offered. It was not the aim of the working group to have a restrictive plan with rigid land use maps but to provide a tool for the national and local administration and also private sector that would guide and advise on the best possible uses of the territory. The plan gives alternatives and describes possibilities for best cross-sector and inter-regional cooperation and proposes strategic projects of national importance for the sustainable development of the territory in the next 15 years. Major public hearing were held across the country, so people could have the chance to express ideas, to be informed but above all to be part of a national plan that would guide the territorial development for the next 15 years. The participation process resulted to a new increased level of awareness of the importance of territorial planning as a cohesive process to different governance sector of the administration. Strengthen institutional capacity for cross-cutting issues of territorial planning resulted essential to achieve a plan that aimed spatial balance, sustainable development, and socio-economic wellbeing. Even though the NSPA is approved at the highest instances foreseen by the law, for the actual administration it is an ongoing process and its success depends on a large scale on continuous research of contextual planning issues and for every stage of its implementation or upgrade to assure an open transparent inclusive process with democratic participation.Published versio
World exhibition as a tool for the promotion of healthy and liveable cities: case study Milan, Italy
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Mega-events, such as world and international exhibitions, the Olympic Games, other sports and cultural events, are intrinsically complex processes. Their planning, organisation and realisation require the engagement of a large number of people and financial resources for the successful realisation of the event. In addition, the success of the event depends on numerous social, economic, political, spatial and other factors that are often unpredictable and can significantly increase effects of the event that can be recognised in long-term on the local, regional and national level. While hosting mega-events, the attention of a large number of people from all over the world is focused on this specific event that has its own specific roles in the realisation of that event. According to Maurice Roch (2000) mega events involve combinations of political and economic elites, together with cultural elites and professionals that are operating within and between urban, national and international levels, and working together to produce the event and to manage their effects. They can be conceived as temporary “cultural and physical bridges” between elites and the people. In mega-events people are active members of international cultural movement and they are involved in international communication that is taking place. Compared with other mega-events, world and international exhibitions last the longest and attract the greatest number of visitors. For the purpose of the exhibition, the most suitable site to meet all set-up parameters and for which it is desirable to conceive the long-term use is chosen. For every exhibition, the specific topic is set to which all participants correspond with the conception of their pavilion and presentation. The exhibition topic is always in line with global trends and promotes the technology, science and progress towards the concepts of sustainable development.Published versio
Making the most of the European capital of culture. Cultural events and spatial strategies in European port cities
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Since the experience of Glasgow, European City of Culture in 1990, and Barcelona, which hosted the Olympic Games in 1992, European port cities have displayed a growing interest in hosting cultural megaevents – i.e. “large scale cultural (including commercial and sporting) events which have a dramatic character, mass popular appeal and international significance” (Roche, 2000, p. 1) – as a strategy to trigger or boost urban regeneration and local development (Qu and Spaans, 2009). Mega-events have increasingly been interpreted as chances to accelerate existing urban projects, to encourage discussions about future development scenarios and strategies, to improve local institutional capacities and to raise local communities’ ambition. In other words, cultural mega-events are understood as potential drivers of urban development and as unique occasions for producing positive intangible legacies in the long term. In this context, the European City/Capital of Culture (ECoC) programme has played a crucial role in the last decades. Major European port cities such as Rotterdam and Genoa attempted to capitalise their year as ECoC in order to deliver a renewed image and reposition themselves within global urban networks. Aarhus in Denmark and Paphos in Cyprus are the ECoC 2017, while Valletta and Rijeka have been awarded the title respectively for 2018 and 2020. Liverpool, ECoC in 2008, inspired the UK City of Culture initiative with the aim of extending the positive benefits of event-led and culture-led regeneration to other British cities (DCMS, 2009; ICC, 2012): so far, two port cities have been designated as UK City of Culture, namely Derry-Londonderry in 2013 and Hull in 2017. This interest appears to some extent fostered by a recognition of the potential contribution of cultural mega-events – such as the ECoC – to urban regeneration and development in port cities. In this context, legacy has become a key concept in the rhetoric of the ECoC, while the embeddedness of cultural strategies into long-term planning agenda is increasingly considered a precondition for achieving a positive legacy from the event (Smith, 2012), as well as for cultural mega-events more generally (Bramwell, 1997).Published versio
Car sharing and socio-spatial injustice
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Car sharing is nowadays commonly acknowledged as an innovative approach to the transportation problems of urban areas (Firnkorn and Müller, 2015). Scientific literature regularly discusses car sharing related to the context of sustainable mobility and environmental benefits, or in relation to consumer behaviours in the sharing economy rhetoric. The former approach is common in transport studies and concerns strategies to face mobility-related problems in urban context and potential solutions for the environmental impacts of car traffic due to CO2 emissions (Martin and Shaheen, 2011), number of vehicles per household (Martin et al., 2010) and vehicle-kilometres travelled (Firnkorn, 2012). On the other side, social studies are more interested in the changes of consumer behaviour and their implications on society and economy. These publications are mostly based on the shift from ownership to service use lifestyles (Kuhnimhof et al., 2011; Prettenthaler and Steininger, 1999; Schaefers, 2013): the concept of ownership is changing fast and determining lots of consequences on consumers’ practices and business strategies (as, for example, the interest of auto companies in short-term rental like a way to balance the loss of purchases; Schwanen, 2016a).Published versio
The collective spaces system in coastal areas planning – the importance of building a theoretical framework of evaluation of the approach of different tools
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The specialised literature links the collective spaces system (SEC, in its Portuguese abbreviation) to: the foundation that structures the urbanized areas; the network that coordinates the different aspects of urbanisation, relating them to each other; the set of spaces the individual travels and from which he interprets and understands the city; the grid which organizes the building and which endures beyond it; an urban value, able to trigger, on its own, other economic or cultural processes, leading to investment and local initiatives; a driving force of local experiences; and the pillar of a Corbusian balance. Thus, inter alia, – for reasons relating to: the need of structuring the urbanized areas; the urgency of coordinating and relating the constituent aspects of urbanisation; the importance of providing interpretation to the city; the significance of organising the building; the promotion of local initiatives and local experiences; and the urban improvement itself – the role of the SEC in planning should be, nowadays, a central issue of debate. In coastal areas, where – due to agricultural productivity, fishery or energy production, or even for reasons relating to infrastructure concentration, cultural heritage and these spaces potential for touristic and leisure activities – the concentration of population is 3 ultimately significant, this debate becomes all the more important. However, despite the fact that coastal areas planning tools have been directing a multitude of operations for the improvement of collective use spaces in these areas, these measures' contribution regarding the planning of the above areas is still unknown. Furthermore, upon consideration of thirty nine coastal areas planning tools, evidences that the improvement of collective use spaces has been promoted with environmental protection goals were, predominantly, found. If these evidences are verified, then limitations might arise with respect to the contribution of these tools for the coastal areas planning. This article aims to highlight the need of building a theoretical framework which, when applied to different cases and contexts, allows us to undertake this evaluation.Published versio
Spaces for local welfare : How planners can contribute to make social services more inclusive
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The combined effect of economic reorganization processes, the increasing precariousness in the job market and the shrinking of the national welfare systems, have progressively eroded traditional social protection measures and exacerbated the traits of social fragility in many European cities. The long phase of economic recession is linked both to the general worsening of the economic conditions of large parts of the population, and to the austerity policies and the drastic reduction of public expenditure on welfare. Devolution processes have played a significant role in reshaping the European welfare systems, underlining the relevance of the local dimension in the welfare policies and in the structure of social inequalities. The consequences are even more evident at the local scale, where local governments are facing the need of more adequate and effective welfare measures and policies with scarcer resources1. Moreover, the ageing of the population, increasing migrations flows, the more frequent mobility of the individuals and the impoverishment of many families have generated new heterogeneous needs, mining the traditional welfare systems and the administrative treatment of the needs. Meanwhile, the number of actors involved in the governance of social policies has increased, highlighting at the same time the potential of innovation and the limits in responding to these new challenges (Bricocoli, Sabatinelli, 2016). This new panorama seems to orient the social policies towards three interrelated criteria: integration, activation, localization. These aspects, variously articulated, are addressing the social policies toward the interactions of different sectors (public, private, third sector) and subjects (social housing, new fee-paying or shared services, light forms of assistance and care, private company welfare services, etc.), promoting the autonomy of the recipients and the resources that can be activated at the local level (Kazepov, 2010). In addition, a renovated attention to the spatial dimension of social services and its generative power (Bifulco, Vitale 2003; de Leonardis, 2003), mainly referred to the territorial contexts in their material and tangible sense, often inspires and orientates ideas and resources for innovative projects (Bricocoli, Sabatinelli, 2016).Published versio
Study on the renewal of traditional communities in the Urban-Rural Concurrent Business Behavior - A Case of Guoyang Community, Baise
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017With the new type urbanization, the Chinese urbanization rapidly develops under the industrialization accelerating development. In 2011, the Chinese urban population exceeded the agricultural population at first time in thousands of years, and it marked a new development stage that China had began to enter the period of urban social orientation. This also means that the characteristic of rural society which sustains thousands of years has changed. People's mode of production, occupation structure, consumer behavior, life style, concept of value has changed greatly. The life and production mode transform from agricultural production to urban-rural concurrent business behavior. These essential changes greatly broke the original stability of rural communities, and workers of rural migrants and those who go backwards and forwards between rural and urban areas exerts a great influence on the style structure of traditional communities. The traditional community can not rely on their own strength to deal with the challenge, and can not complete the system structure transform of their own. Under our country polarization development of urban and rural areas for a long time, the revival of the traditional community is ignored, therefor the traditional village style no longer exists, and what is showed in front of people is the scene that is lack of the design and planning, additionally, there is no way that residents have nostalgia. I have a deep feeling after interviewing main streets of Guoyang Community. We should calm down to trace the root of ancient village of traditional architectural culture and reflect advantages and disadvantages of the current rural construction pattern to find a way for the protection and the renewal of traditional architecture.Published versio
Renewed neighbourhoods: requalified and dignified neighbourhoods? Examples of districts in region Auvergne Rhône Alpes (France)
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017In France, for 40 years, a public policy called policy “of the City” has been implemented to act globally on the social and urban exclusion. Since 2003, this policy has knew an important change and tries through actions of urban renewal to transform profoundly the neighbourhoods of social housing. By improving social housing, public places, facilities, by demolishing and building housing and by attracting private investments to diversify housing and population and by diversifying the functions of these neighbourhoods, it is a question of making of these stigmatized districts, "banal" districts. After more than ten years of urban renewal, we can wonder about the effects of this policy on these areas in terms of requalification and dignity. Are these neighbourhoods less stigmatized, really requalified? Did they acquire a better image? Are they dignified to be inhabited for the inhabitants of these neighbourhoods and for the inhabitants or the citizens generally? If the first evaluations of the policy of urban renewal show that the living environment was improved, that the inhabitants feel better, and that they consider these neighbourhoods as "banal" neighbourhoods, dignified to living there, they also suggest, with regard to the difficulties met in certain neighbourhoods to attract private investments and actors, and new inhabitants, that these neighbourhoods are still far from being requalified in the public opinion. After having presented the policy of urban renewal, its emergence and its objectives, we shall return on the results of evaluations of the urban transformations led on all the concerned neighbourhoods, and we shall show, by analyses led in renewed neighbourhoods of the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, that it is advisable to be very careful as for the requalification of these neighbourhoods.Published versio
Green infrastructure in liminal streetside spaces : cases from European city cores
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Human interactions ranging from everyday socialization to celebratory gathering and insurgency are all more or less accommodated along the streets of contemporary Western cities. In the denser quarters of European cities, in particular, the street is the setting along which much of the civic life of urban dwellers is played out. As the pedestrian moves laterally from the roadway curb outwards, a narrow ribbon of quasipublic/private space that emerges from adjacent buildings is usually encountered. In the city core and inner ring suburbs, this transition zone harbours stoops, landings, areaways, pavement gaps at foundation walls, facades, sills and lintels, handrails, stairwells, and other niches that present urban dwellers with tight-but sufficient opportunity for streetside horticulture and related accoutrements. It is this underappreciated transition zone, and the recreational and expressive activities associated with growing plants in it, that is addressed below. I use the term convivial green street to convey an assemblage of features and patterns in a supportive context (street, built form). This setting is enacted by gardeners (residents, merchants, employees) who cultivate plants to a degree sufficient to elicit some sensory appreciation on the part of passers-by and, now and then, to prompt social engagement between cultivators, neighbours, and passers-by who share the street’s frontage.Published versio