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Study on living space and community attachment of the three gorges migrants - a comparison between migrants resettled nearby and relocated outside
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017China has a large number of migrations organized by the government, mainly for engineering, ecology and poverty alleviation. The project of resettlement has great significance in politics, economy, society and other aspects. Previous research on migration is mostly based on the survey of economic income and social adaptability, instead of living space and community attachment. These fields have a bearing on the vital interests of migrants, and play definitive roles in the living quality and dignity after relocation. The migrants of the Three Gorges are chosen as the object of study, because of their symbolic significance and the large number of migration samples. The migration is divided into two modes: 79% are resettled nearby, and 21% are relocated outside (Shanghai, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Hunan and so on), then four groups of sites are selected as the research destinations. The study records the forms of living space of the migrants’ present and original residences, (the submerged areas are consulted according to the surrounding villages.) and induces residential features, street forms, housing forms, social and economic characteristics. Furthermore, communications with migrants show their living conditions and community attachment, and the evaluation of living space before and after the migration. The investigation of the two modes of migration reflects the great influence of the living space and community attachment on the stability of migrants. The living space of migrants resettled nearby changes to a lesser extent, thus leads to faster life adaptation, but there are still problems of integration into city life; migrants relocated outside face obvious differences in living space, difficult community culture, hence the lifestyle changes significantly. The humanistic construction method of the immigrant community, as well as the adjustment of the social psychology, determines the success or failure of the migration project, and the maximization of the dignity of the migrants, in order to properly arrange this special group.Published versio
From knowledge of the territory to the spatial planning culture
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Consolidating the paradigm of territorial governance (with civil society increasingly and more activelyparticipating in spatial planning) with the assumptions of sustainable governance comes up against the lack ofrobust knowledge of the territory and a civic spatial planning culture, both from civil society as well aspolitical and technical decision-makers. In this context, it is proposed as a starting question how it is possible to develop a greater awareness on theterritory and a robust civic spatial planning culture for both in these new “actors” and the political and technical decision-makersso they see it as a common good and a scarce resource, ensuring its sustainable development.Underlying this question is another of no less importance: what is the role of school education, morespecifically the Geography discipline of secondary school, in the processes of collective learning about the territory and spatialplanning culture? After the theoretical study of the concept of territory, spatial planning and territorial planning culture,these are confronted with a representative sample of civil society through questionnaires applied to:- Secondary school students (who have not yet intervened in the reconfiguration of the territory),with or without frequency in the Geography discipline (in order to verify to what extent the geography, ofthis level of education, provides a better knowledge of the aforementioned concepts);- Parents guadians, representative of the adult population, who have already intervened, consciouslyor unconsciously, in territorial reconfiguration, but who do not have direct responsibilities in spatial planning.Published versio
Supporting innovation in rehabilitation initiatives for deprived neighbourhoods: a multi-level perspective
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The rehabilitation of deprived urban neighbourhoods through area-based and integrated approach has assumed importance on the European and many national agendas for over thirty years (Berg et al., 1998; Couch et al., 2011). Such approach, rather than focusing on improving the social, economic, housing and urban condition of individuals or households with low incomes and specific needs with no regard where they live, pursues the same objectives by concentrating on specific (deprived) geographic areas. In some countries the experience of area-based initiatives has been long and weighty in terms of resources allocated, and has anticipated European initiatives, namely the URBAN Community Initiative. In other member states, including Italy, vice versa, when introduced by the European Union's initiatives in a limited number of target cities and towns, this approach was considered an absolute novelty (Parkinson, 1998; Carpenter, 2006; Dühr et al., 2010; Seixas and Albet, 2012). Area-based and integrated approach to urban rehabilitation assumes wide and variable meaning in different contexts according to different European, national and regional policies. Also the terms used change in relation to the specific problems to be emphasized but also to the political rhetoric aiming at stressing the novelty of urban policy undertaken. Regeneration, for example, is a term used recently at the EU (and Italian) level to indicate urban policies aiming at improving the “quality of life”, in the broadest sense, in deprived areas (EU, 2015). But this term implies different approaches: while some consider local communities or neighbourhoods as the very object of regeneration, others use various policy instruments to improve the urban economy to the benefit of the inhabitants’ economic well being (Cochrane, 2007). Some approaches are physical, property-led or business driven, some others focus on the urban form and design, on cultural industry or health and well-being, some others emphasize community-based, social economy (Colantonio and Dixon, 2010). In addition, the term urban regeneration in continental Europe appears to be rather indeterminate in its outcomes compared with the Anglo-American context in which this and related terms were originally coined (Rossi and Vanolo, 2013).Published versio
Technology use and its influence in travel behaviour and urban form
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017It is likely that the current generation that is growing up immersed in a technology filled world can perceive space and distances from a different perspective than those that come before. The speed by which technology is evolving increases day by day and, moreover, people and companies are discovering and consolidating different ways to take advantage of the current available possibilities that the devices with internet connection can offer.Published versio
The economic crisis modelling the territorial cohesion : The French case
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The economic and financial crisis since 2007 was a brake on economic growth, accompanied by a reduction in public and private investment. In addition, the European Union lost weight in a globalized economy. The development and application of the principle of competitiveness seeks to counteract the negative effects of the crisis. To this end, it moves not only to the economic and business sphere, but also to the territorial context. Competitive and synergistic territories are now the focus of numerous development and investment policies. However, other territories with characteristics that do not favour investment run the risk of falling behind in a process marked, above all, by innovation. The Eighth Progress Report on economic, social, and territorial cohesion. The regional and urban dimension of the crisis was published in 2013, although it offers information only up to 2011. Its analysis covers aspects such as poverty, social exclusion, the labour market, migration, and regional convergence. From the main conclusions drawn from the study, we will highlight the following. First, the increase in regional divergence after a long period of convergence. They re-emphasize the central pentagon in front of the peripheries, and the urban versus the rural areas. Secondly, the cities present heterogeneous situations, better resisting the large capital cities, even though poverty and social exclusion rates increase within them. About EU Member States, between 2007 and 2011 the countries most affected by the crisis in terms of GDP and the labour market were Latvia, Greece, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Spain. Portugal, Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and Slovenia also suffered a high impact of the crisis.Published versio
Tourism identity in social media: the case of a Chinese historic city, Suzhou
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The city’s tourism identity has been emphasized in a contemporary tourism planning practice. Many studies on tourism planning and promotion have addressed that the investigation on local identities and tourism potentials in the development of the city’s tourism strategy must go beyond the aspects of geographical space. With emerging social media communication and increasing crowd-sourced data, there is a great potential for engaging social media studies with tourism planning practice in order to reflect visitor’s perceptions and subjective views onto the city’s tourism strategies. This research seeks for a new approach of relating sense of ‘spatial’ place with ‘digitally-presented’ sense of place.Published versio
City versus suburb: the effects of neighbourhood location on place attachment and residential satisfaction
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017Emotional connections of people with their environment have been investigated in various disciplines and certain crucial constructs have come out such as place attachment and place satisfaction obtaining attention in environmental psychology. Place attachment was defined as an essential element of personal identity and it was associated with certain constructs which can be analysed in both personal and community context (Anton & Lawrence, 2014; Brown & Raymond, 2007; Jorgersen & Stedman, 2001; Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983). Place satisfaction was defined as “multidimensional summary judgement of the perceived quality of a setting” which means it is a concept generated by assessing physical and social attributes of an environment in terms of fulfilling a person’s needs(Stedman, 2002, p. 564). There have been multiple attempts to define place (Altman & Low, 1992; Easthope, 2004; Soja, 1998; Tuan, 1979). Place embraces the physical space through experiences and perspectives of the people (Relph, 1976; Sack, 1997; Stedman, 2003; Tuan, 1977). Spaces transform into places by use of meanings which are given to a setting (Tuan, 1977). Furthermore, Altman and Low (1992) define place as “the environmental setting to which people are emotionally and culturally attached” (p. 5). The construct of place indicates a space which is given meaning by way of individual, group or cultural approaches (Altman & Low, 1992). Moreover, Jorgersen & Stedman (2001) also proposed a framework of sense of place containing three constructs which are place attachment, place dependence and place identity.Published versio
Planning, pluralism and religious diversity: the spatial regulation of mosques in Italy
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017In recent times, regulations governing religious practices in European cities have generated widespread debate in many countries. In fact, the growing religious diversity in many cities has significant consequences on the urban environment, and primarily the new spaces that it entails (e.g. places of worship and burial grounds) and new forms of expression in public (e.g. types of dress connoting a particular religious conviction, such as the Islamic veil or the Sikh turban). These spaces and forms of public expression engender complex problems of regulation, including specific questions related to urban planning. In these circumstances, the otherwise abstract issues of cultural pluralism and religious freedoms suddenly become concrete and urgent within specific urban contexts (Moroni and Weberman, 2016). Consider, for instance, when a religious minority applies to the local council for planning permission to build a place of worship: in many cases, in several European countries, such applications run the risk of encountering forms of resistance – for instance, by local authorities, politicians or grassroots movements – in which the objection to the proposed scheme is framed in terms of planning issues (for some examples in different countries, see for instance: Dunn, 2001; Gale, 2005; Gale & Naylor, 2002; Germain & Gagnon, 2003; Isin & Siemiatycki, 2002; Jonker, 2005; Kuppinger 2011, 2014a, 2014b; Landman & Wessels, 2005; Qadeer and Chaudhry, 2000; Saint-Blancat & Schmidt di Friedberg, 2005; Torrekens, 2013; Vahed and Vahed, 2014; Villaroman, 2012). Many planning theorists have attempted to untangle the complex web of issues surrounding urban pluralism and diversity in Western cities, sometimes doing so with specific reference to religious diversity (Burayidi, 2000a and 2015; Binnie et al., 2006; Dwyer, 2015; Dwyer et al., 2016; Eade, 2011; McClymont, 2015; Murtagh and Ellis, 2010; Qadeer, 1997 and 2016). The main aim of this paper is to contribute to this debate on planning and (religious) diversity in the field of planning theory. In particular, it stresses the importance of focusing theoretically not only on positive action, but also on the role of planning and building rules, which is sometimes neglected in the discussion of many planning theorists on questions of pluralism. The starting point of our discussion is the case of a new planning law governing the construction and location of places of worship in the Lombardy region, Italy1. Although the issue concerns various religious minorities, this article will focus on Islam and hence on the construction of mosques, which in Italy (as elsewhere) is a frequent target of local government opposition. What concerns us here is not so much the current legislation of the Lombard authorities per se as the example that these regional regulations furnish for a critical rethinking of some fundamental issues currently affecting several Western countries and cities. In fact, the planning restrictions introduced by the Lombardy region are similar to restrictions in force in other Western countries (see for instance Gale, 2005, on the UK, Kuppinger, 2014, on Germany, Torrekens, 2013, on Belgium, and Villaroman, 2012, on Australia). This article is divided into four sections. The first briefly describes the characteristics of religious diversity in Italy and its spatial repercussions. The second focuses on the case of the regulations governing the construction of places of worship in Lombardy, Italy. The third section contributes to the field of planning theory, with reference to ways and means of guaranteeing pluralism in cities through the tool of planning rules, suggesting some theoretical guidelines for reforming the planning system in order to promote and protect (religious) diversity. The last section draws conclusions.Published versio
Overcoming resource scarcity by implementing strategic regional plans through urban-regional development projects: a European perspective
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The objective of this paper is to highlight some preliminary findings of an ongoing research project (2016-2020) entitled “From Plans to Land Change: How Strategic Spatial Planning Contributes to the Development of Urban Regions” (CONCUR) in which the author, as a postdoc researcher, and the coauthor, as the project coordinator, are involved. The project is financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and is based at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL in Switzerland. A team of circa 7 researchers investigates different aspects concerning how strategic planning contributes to the development of urban regions. In this paper, we argue that urban regions in Europe and beyond are currently encountering a range of challenges, such as providing a varied and efficient transportation network, affordable housing, green infrastructure, public spaces, and attractive investment conditions (Albrechts et al., 2017). In addition, a number of urban regions have been experiencing dynamic changes in the scale and scope of metropolitan governance (Zimmermann and Getimis, 2017), and new forms of flexible territorial governance arrangements have emerged (Oliveira, 2017). These economic, social and governance driven challenges unfold in a context of limited financial, human, infrastructural, land and ecological resources. The hypothesis of departure postulated in this paper is that urban regions, in a scenario of limited resources, have been implementing strategic spatial plans through area-specific and functionally-oriented urban-regional development projects (URDP). Examples of such projects include the repurposing of outdated harbour, industrial or railway facilities, the reconfiguration of green infrastructures, the reinforcement of the public transportation network and the development of new residential areas. This is a claim in line with that of Tiwari and Winters (2016), who argue that “strategic planning today is used to determine where a project will be in the future” (p. 2). These authors also argue that one of the reasons that public administrations adopt a more intensively project-based approach to spatial planning is that governments are cash-strapped and must therefore prioritize capital-intensive actions in a market-sensitive environment (Tiwari and Winters, 2016). Carmona et al. (2009) underline that strategic planning is seen as the best means for an urban region to take advantage of the opportunities of globalization; and urban projects are the chief mechanism for implementing a futuristic vision of a global-oriented strategy. Urban development projects exist in urban regions with very different histories and development levels (Cohen, 1966), from Europe (Meijsmans, 2007) to elsewhere in the world (Carmona et al. 2009). Fast-track plan implementation through projects has been criticized, however, because these projects are often linked to neo-liberal aspirations of the entrepreneurial city (Moulaert et al., 2001). Other scholars decry the poor integration of urban projects in wider spatial planning processes (Swyngedouw et al., 2002).Published versio
The challenges of planning in the unequal cities. Urban poverty workshop for innovating urban planners education path
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017The recent shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals scored a point of no return in the international debate on development, stating that the separation between the rich part and the poor part of the population is no longer with the North and the South of the world, but between nearby areas in always more highly polarized contexts. In this framework, a deeper knowledge of the spatial dimension of poverty and of its spatial implications is required; especially in the Italian Faculty of Architecture where urban design and plan-making are frequently still considered "the real core" of the discipline with the general under-evaluation of the wicked problems. On the contrary, in the United States, thanks to the passionate work of Ananya Roy, this knowledge found its place, first in the university program at the Institute of Urban and Regional Development of UC Berkeley, and then in Los Angeles, being highly appreciated both by students, scholars and NGOs. According to this awareness, the first workshop "Urban Poverty. The praxis of planning in unequal cities" organized in September 2016 at the Sapienza’s Faculty of Architecture in Rome, gave the opportunity for discussing and testing theory and practices of urban research and city planning with issues of poverty, in particular regards of western cities and the city of Rome. This first experiment offered the opportunity to think about the interdisciplinary and/or international teaching aimed at preparing students for today’s and tomorrow’s planning challenges in the unequal cities.Published versio