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Wellbeing and urban planning
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southIn the globalized world neo-liberal urbanisation is widely implored and cities are exploring harmonizing ways to enhance the wellbeing of their citizens. Various think tanks and civil societies have been long advocating for a shift in the economic framework from growth to wellbeing (Donella H Meadows, 1973). In the view of economic crisis, the shift to wellbeing from growth looks very likely (Padoan, 2013).Health and Wellbeing is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals declared by the UN. With this perspective, this paper aims at understanding what does wellbeing mean in the context of urban planning, historically and in the 21st century.
John Snow’s mapping of London in 1854 is one the landmark moments of modern urban planning which was followed by the works of Patrick Geddes (Schwab, 1992) (Hall, 2014). Both these works focused on improving the overall quality of life in human settlements. This momentum was later changed into the modernist planning of Le Corbusier (and others) that drove the urbanization around the western world for much of the first half of 20th Century (Harvey, 1990). The classic ideological tug of war surrounding the urban planning of New York between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses marks the landmark moment of the arrival of postmodernist planning, which was further advanced by David Harvey (Harvey, 1990).publishedVersio
Cultural development in the Mediterranean basin as perceived by the shaping of built form
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southThe Mediterranean basin, as a geographical, political and economic entity, has been the cradle for the development of the most infamous civilizations of mankind. It thus provided the ground for formal and informal networks to develop and become concretized in built form. Throughout the ages, people have been moving in and around the basin; shrines, castles and even entire cities have been founded, have flourished and at times have been left to deteriorate as migration of people and ideas have been pasting the Mediterranean, as indeed any other geographical entity, with consecutive layers of space and meaning. The paper attempts to provide a quick overview of some important yet not easily perceived aspects of the basin’s cultural development and especially the manner in which they are reflected on built form over the centuries. The aim of the approach is to deepen and improve the understanding of the man-environment relationship in a manner directly relevant to the intricacies of the Mediterranean basin.
From the very beginning it has been clear that although the sea may often be conceived as a barrier leading to isolation, many places along a coast may have been be more easily accessible by boat rather than by road. History has shown that maritime transport has proved to be at least equally if not more preferable for moving both people and goods. As early as before the 1st millennium BC, the Phoenicians followed by the Greeks, in search of new productive or simply commercial horizons, have been attracted by distant Mediterranean locations and have been interested in expanding their influence either by conquering existing settlements or by establishing new ones.publishedVersio
How do creative sectors relate to the historical city center: the case of Grand Bazaar in Istanbul
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southAt the end of the 20th century, the manufacturing sector was removed from the cities, and instead the services sector that produces intangible assets such as information technology and knowledge was recommended for development. In addition, these new development policies defined culture as an economic variable, as well. Information, culture and creativity became key words for economic policies. The attempt to define culture and creativity as economically important factors has led to economic studies of creativity. UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) asserts that creative economy is important for economic development, not only in developed countries but also in developing countries. UNCTAD also publishes Creative Economy Report to help countries plot their own road maps by emphasizing their unique strengths.
Creative sectors are defined differently by different social scientists, but the importance of city life appears to be the common denominator for all of them. The city exhibits not only a physical infrastructure, but also an intellectual infrastructure, in the form of cultural diversity, research resources, meeting places, and tolerance to alternative life styles. Cultural accumulation from the past, traditions and different lifestyles of the city offer an appropriate milieu for creativity. Landry (2000), a pioneer scientist in creative studies, argues that cities that have an ancient history and are able to transfer this history to current generations, have a great advantage in being creative.publishedVersio
Cultural references as a basis for spatial planning and environmental justice - Environmental Licensing and the preservation of cultural heritage in Brazil
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southThis paper aims at discussing the preservation of cultural heritage as an important aspect for both spatial planning and environmental justice. It proposes understanding heritage from an environmental point of view. Such approach derives from the perspectives set forth by legal and socio-environmental debates on environment, which is understood as a broad category that includes both natural and cultural aspects (MARÉS, 2006; RODRIGUES e MIRANDA, 2012; SANTILLI, 2005), as well as the relations between man and natural resources, or, in other words, between culture, nature and space. It also proposes discussing heritage given the present heritage policies, which are based on affirming cultural rights, empowering identities, respecting cultural diversity and promoting social economic development (BRASIL, 1988; IPHAN, 2012).
This work proposes to study preservation initiatives and the role of the Brazilian Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage – IPHAN in the context of environmental licensing. Our analyses understands such context as an important arena for conflicts related to environmental justice, cultural, memory and land rights, as well as spatial planning, particularly when faced with development policies and the construction of major infrastructure projects, as proposed by Brazil’s Growth Acceleration Program - PAC (LEAL e SILVA, 2015; OLIVEIRA, 2015).publishedVersio
Towards critical studies of climate adaptation planning: uncovering the equity impacts of urban land use planning
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southMunicipal jurisdiction over land use planning and development is an opportunity for implementing climate adaptation actions at the local level. Cities in the global North and South deploy diverse strategies to integrate climate considerations into land use plans, sectoral infrastructure and water strategies with clear land use implications, and different land development and management tools. To boost political salience and feasibility, these efforts often emphasize co-benefits with other developmental objectives. However, the emphasis on “win-win” adaptation solutions may obscure the uneven costs and benefits borne by different groups, provoking the question of: adaptation for whom, by whom, and how? While momentum and funding grows for cities to adapt, researchers need to investigate whether some adaptation efforts are effectively prioritizing the needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations or whether they merely re-package business-as-usual land use planning approaches that have so often left such groups behind. Efforts to reduce climate vulnerability through land use planning tools are indeed embedded in the very institutions and development processes that are currently reproducing uneven risk exposure and socio-economic vulnerability.publishedVersio
City marketing in Medellin - Colombia: awards and good urban practices as a global reference
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south“Cities can´t be totally global”. It is the statement of Doreen Massey, (1993 cited in Fortune and Silva, 2002, p. 443), who examines that before the social and cultural conditions that make up the city, a globalization of a few projects in the others localization. By this way, globalization generates its own opposition, allowing actions, groups or movements to break what otherwise would be an universal continuity of logic global institutional messages (Fortuna; Silva, 2002, p. 451).
In Colombia, globalization and international policies has also affected the development of cities. In line with Peck and Theodore (2010, p. 171) "there is a pre-made market for Barcelona or Vancouver classes, in locations that are in line with current policies and ready to insert the cities in a global market to ensure possibility of making the local an overall practice". That is how the city of Medellin established in the global planning debates as a successful example and as a good practice, which has allowed to host some of the most important international events in the country, like a headquarter of the seventh World Urban Forum organized by UN-HABITAT in march 2014.
But such recognition has been the result of several political processes where city marketing is the key element for the dissemination of urban practices and as advertising platform abroad. For Boneti (2007) “agents that define urban policies are not just national, and the programs and projects are not unique or different, as they are according to the global economy”.publishedVersio
Energy transitions towards a low-carbon society. Highlighting the role of the human factor
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southTwo major challenges are impending upon the world’s energy future: the achievement of a secure energy supply, and a move from dependency on non-renewable to a dependency on renewable energy sources. Both of them have become policy priorities for the European Union (EU) due to growing concerns about environmental challenges and the fact that the EU imports about half of its energy needs. In particular, the EU is dealing with climate policy and energy security jointly: both the Climate and Energy Package and the Energy Roadmap 2050 endorse the goals of reducing greenhouse gases emissions while at the same time ensuring security of energy supply. However, low-carbon transition and energy security are not always faces of the same coin. As a matter of fact, successful policies aiming at the former may undermine the conditions at the basis of the latter, and vice versa.
As a matter of fact, to pursue both challenges at the same time requires a fundamental shift of the present paradigms, often referred at as ‘energy transitions’: revisions that concern entire energy systems, not just some of their parts. These changes are structural, as they modify the way energy provision is organized at the level of society. They are radical, since they may demand abandoning existing technologies even if they still work, and even if the changes occur slowly and seemingly incrementally. And the changes are fundamental, because they require that we start thinking in novel ways about energy, its provision, and how a good and just society is organized around energy.publishedVersio
Challenges to spatial justice: How to achieve planning targets while respecting constitutional rights; the new Viennese law on planning
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southThe capital of Austria, Vienna, is a growing city in the heart of Europe. By 2014 about 1,8 million people had their permanent place of residence in the city, by 2029 the 2 million limit will be exceeded.1 With a distribution of 35% building land, 45% green area, 14% traffic areas and 5% water, Vienna meets the demands of many and has again ranked first in the Mercer international quality of living survey, covering 230 cities worldwide.2
Vienna’s administration now has to ensure, that the city maintains this high standard of living, providing not only for good infrastructure, but also maintaining Vienna as a socially just city.
One of the aspects that need to be considered in this task is the issue of land classified as building land, but not being used as such. In effect, about 25% of Austria’s designated construction land has no building or structure on it, but is neither offered for sale.3 Especially for Vienna with its vast recreational areas it is of utmost importance that estates suitable for construction and thus qualified by spatial plans as building land are in fact used for building houses and not left vacant, to provide its population with sufficient housing and protect green zones from being build up. To meet this target of reducing Vienna’s surplus of vacant building land, the city’s government enacted new provisions4 providing for the possibility of zoning building land for a limited time only to put pressure on land owners to make use of their estates’ status and actually develop their plots.publishedVersio
Extension of urban rail transit network and residential property values: a difference-in-differences approach
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southUrban rail transit has been widely considered an efficient and environmentally friendly mode of transport to address urban transport challenges. In the past decades, there is growing investment in urban rail transit systems in cities worldwide to meet the increasing demand for travel. According to urban economics theory, households make trade-offs between commuting cost and housing consumptions in selecting their residential locations, hence the accessibility benefit brought by urban rail transit could be capitalized into residential property values. On the empirical side, although a large body of studies have investigated the impact of transit station proximity on residential property values, most research rely on classical hedonic price analysis with cross-sectional data, thus unable to discern the causal effect of urban rail transit investment on residential property values.
In this study, we revisit the relationship between urban rail transit and residential property values using the extension of Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) network in Singapore as an empirical setting. MRT is a heavy rail transit system, which forms the backbone of the public transport system in Singapore. To meet the increasing travel demand resulting from the steady economic growth and population growth, the Singapore Government has been continuously extending its MRT network in the past decades. Most notably, the Northeast Line (NEL) and the first two phases of the Circle Line (CCL) were opened in June 2003 and April 2010, respectively.publishedVersio
Study on methods to solve population loss in rural areas of China - From the perspective of urban and rural development
No full textProceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the southUntil the end of 2014, the rate of urbanization in China has exceeded to 54.77%, which means more than half of China's population has come into the city. The following urban problems are serious, since most of the cities are overloaded. Particularly in metropolis and megacities, environment and resources are under great pressure. Meanwhile, the population density of rural areas is decreasing to a extremely low level.
The gap of development level between rural area and the city has already been great. A lack of developing motivation, lagging in agricultural science and technology, makes it difficult for rural areas to face the serious problems. Furthermore, losing population causes things to turn even worse. Therefore, in order to ensure the harmonious development of both urban and rural areas, promoting rural development has become the core issue of urban and rural development research. However, the key point of the promotion is how to guide squires or Innovators back to their hometown and train more capable people.publishedVersio