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Densifying Johannesburg: resilient, sustainable, inclusive?
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 idea of compacting cities and limiting sprawl has become a predominant policy prescription among international agencies and in many countries and cities. Dense, compact cities are seen as more resilient, vibrant, diverse, inclusive, and sustainable. There has been intense debate over these claims (see UN-Habitat, 2009 for a summary), and several authors argue that dominant spatial trends are moving in opposite directions, undermining the plausibility of these policies. In particular, Angel (2010) shows that densities are declining in most cities studied internationally. Johannesburg in South Africa however is an exception, as it has densified since the 1980s, in part reflecting the collapse of controls associated with apartheid and modernist planning. In Johannesburg, densification is relatively moderate in most areas, and has also gone along with further expansion on the edges, albeit at higher densities than in the past. Patterns of densification however vary across the city, and there are even some areas that are dedensifying. Johannesburg is not unique amongst South African cities, although trends are more pronounced there, reflecting its position as the dominant economic centre in the country.publishedVersio
Disadvantaged women’s satisfaction with mass housing projects that are developed in the context of squatter housing regeneration: the case of Ankara, Turkey
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 southSince the endorsement of the “cities without slums” action plan at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, the pace of slum demolition increased starkly in many parts of the developing world. Ankara is one of these cities with a declining squatter housing population. Keles (1993) states that, in the year 1990, approximately 58% of the city’s population (1.74 of 3 million residents) was living in an informal or squatter housing, known as gecekondu (a Turkish expression for houses erected illegally in one night usually on public land). Although scholars like Karpat (1976: 24) describe gecekondus as “a source of poverty, rundown housing, crowded construction of lower-class people, high rate of crime and divorce, violence, (…), racial discrimination, (…), and later, urban guerrillas,” others like Duyar-Kienast (2005) discuss the positive attributes of these areas, including the strong sense of community, low-rise buildings with gardens, and the liveliness of public open spaces. According to a recent report published by the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Internal Affairs (2013), by the year 2013, the number of people living in such settlements in Ankara decreased to approximately 7%. The Mass Housing Development Administration of Turkey’s Prime Ministry (TOKI), which is tasked with the mission of alleviating the country’s housing shortage and transforming the informal housing areas, play a key role in this transformation.publishedVersio
Unlocking urban land values: comparing large-scale projects in Colombia and 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 southPlanning systems became instrumental to unlock land values and unleash the potentials for spatial fix. Indeed, there has been a great deal of attention to the impacts that state reform have been having on cities throughout the world. This paper exposes a crucial element of this process by exploring the contemporary experiences of land use planning in Colombia and Brazil. In specific, we compare the major instruments that promote great urban projects in the two countries and how they have been causing intense changes not only in urban space, but also in their planning institutional architecture. We argue that despite their different justifications and functioning, these new instruments end up producing similar results.
Great urban projects have become an important part of social and economic redevelopment of cities. They act upon a fragment of the urban territory, but that because of the conjunction of different strategies may have an impact in the city as a whole. This complexity means also the need for a specific management system that includes the diverse and diverging social actors that get the direct and indirect impacts of these projects. Finally, the importance of great urban projects derives from the context in which they were created, i.e. adapting cities to neoliberal globalization and more flexible instruments of planning in contrast to the previous modernist-keynesian framework. Hence, the urban transformations in Latin American cities required responding to the different yet intersecting challenges of democratization, decentralization, and globalization.publishedVersio
Participatory sustainable infrastructures: case studies in community-based environmental systems planning and implementation in Rio de Janeiro's favelas
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 southPatterns of increased global urbanization and a rise in precarious urban settlements have exacerbated trends towards substandard and unsustainable living conditions for billions around the Developing World. In Brazil, and specifically Rio de Janeiro, favelas have embodied this dual struggle to improve the livelihoods of citizens, while diminishing their negative impacts on the environment. Since the award of the 2016 Olympic Games, increased investment has led to numerous projects in these neglected communities. Urbanization programs such as Morar Carioca and Minha Casa Minha Vida have given residents glimpses of inclusive and sustainable development strategies, but ultimately failed to provide a continuous and stable vehicle for infrastructural improvement and related social, economic, and environmental benefits. As these communities have come under increasing international scrutiny, favelas have become a laboratory for scholars, planners, scientists, nonprofits and community organizers, leading to a variety of infrastructural projects that can provide an counterpoint to the abandoned top down approaches by local government programs. To overcome their principal infrastructural deficits, favela communities are creatively and directly collaborating with these outside parties to leverage their environmental and community assets and advance natural systems through participatory processes. This partnership between creative professionals, advocates, and local residents bridges knowledge gaps and broadens the scope of each approach, propagating more cohesive and holistic projects.publishedVersio
Geobia approach for urban land use mapping: random forests and spatial metrics relationship for Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico
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 southSince 2007 half of the world inhabitants have been living in urban areas; and by the year 2050 is projected that the urban population will surpass 60% of the total world population (United Nations, 2014; 2015). This expansion is most likely to happen in developing countries (Graizbord, 2007). Some of these countries do not count with the resources to cope with this growing social phenomenon, thus causing segregation, slums, deficiency of infrastructure, social inequality and uncontrollable sprawl. This has become one of the main challenges for those countries all over the world that have been working on solutions to provide acceptable conditions and quality of life for the growing population in urban areas. The demographic growth has indeed raised many concerns such as, environmental, economic, hydrological, heat fluxes, micro-climatic, violence, irregular settlements, visual, sound, air and water pollution, social and psychological issues.
The main objective of this paper is to apply a novel method to extract the urban land use from remotely sensed images. This is due to the fact that there is a need to improve methodologies that can update and identify the constant complex changing patterns and spatial development of urban areas.publishedVersio
Insurgencies in the city: protest, urban planning and dreams for the city
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 southUrbanization has progressively constituted a primary site of endless capital accumulation, resulting in many forms of barbarism and violence on whole populations in the name of profit. In other words, the creative destruction has taken not only a physical toll but destroyed social solidarities, swept aside any pretenses of democratic urban governance, exaggerated social inequalities and has increasingly terror as its primary mode of social regulation.
Our proposition is based on the understanding that this urban crisis is the common ground of the everyday urban conflicts in which our cities speak, such as the protests that occurred in the United States, Egypt, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Israel, and Greece. Planning theory and research have since long recognized the importance of the conflict. Contention and conflict around urban development policies and plans are recurrent features of urban life, and cycles of social mobilization and contention are important factors in shaping urban societies. In addition, research on urban conflicts has played a key role in urban policy studies.
By contentious politics we mean episodic, public, collective interaction among makers of claims and their objects when at least one government is a claimant, an object of claim, or a party to the claim; and the claims would, if realized, affect the interests of at least one of the claimants.publishedVersio
Mega sports events and insurgent citizenship in Rio de Janeiro
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 southModern mega sports events represent new global coalitions of international organizations and multinational corporations. These events juxtapose the competition between large cities to attract international investors to promote post-fordist and service-sector based growth. After nearly two decades of failed attemps, from a strategic plan inspired by Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro was successful in hosting the two largest contemporary mega sports events, the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. The last decades, Brazil has made significant progress towards enabling greater citizen participation through a myriad of participatory processes consolidated on a federal, state, and municipal level. At the same time, the urban governance in Rio has taken a neoliberal turn, using global mega sports events as a strategy to enhance private economic development in the city. The prospect of the benefits of the mega events have opened up for overstepping the existing institutional and constitutional/legal framework, with consequences for the urban poor and their access to decision making.publishedVersio
From the “City of Walls” to the “Pilotis Brasilienses”: challenges on the road from spatial disconnection towards social connection 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 southDistinct planning theories have addressed the importance of promoting social connection in the built environment. When Susan Fainstein developed the concept of “Just City” (2010) she used social connection as a fundamental aspect towards the just city defined by diversity, equity and democracy. Fincher and Iveson (2008), additionally, explore social connection as a tool to “plan with diversity” as one of the “three social logics of urban planning”, i.e., redistribution, encounter and recognition. There is no doubt that social connection is a powerful tool and that it can tackle complex issues like urban diversity and spatial justice. However, the Brazilian context shows that there are still many uncertainties about how spatial connection can be used to promote social connection.
Several authors have shown that social connections became more complex and ephemeral in modern society, such as Castells, with the concept of “network society” (2010), or Bauman, with the concept of “liquid modernity” (2000). Although the virtual world plans an important role in the creation of social connection in the present context of the ‘Post-Industrial Society’ (Bell, 1973), physical space still has a part in the creation of social connections. A banker living in a gated community in the suburban area of São Paulo has more social contacts with a banker in London than with a construction worker living in poor housing at the other side of the street. Thus, urban intervention aiming to promote social contact can be extremely challenging, especially in such complex and uneven urban contexts.publishedVersio
The role of integrated multi-sectoral programmes in the process of urbanization of slums in Brazil: evaluation of results
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 article aims to discuss the changes in the programmatic content of the slum upgrading processes, with consequences in shaping the programs, their (re) arrangement and prospects for multisectoral action, with explicit reflection on the overall performance of the urbanization process. To this end, the essay is descriptive and will address the Integrated Multi-Sector Project (PMI), a financing line from the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) which sought to shape an alternative model for addressing the social and economic problems, trying to cover articulated solutions for the various territorial needs, articulating, at the municipal level, investments in various urban infrastructure sectors such as sanitation, slum upgrading, transport, public and social facilities. This line had its first operation in 1997, from then until 2010 were approved another 37 loans made by municipalities in all regions of the country totaling R $ 1,563.4 million. Despite the significant value, the trajectory of PMI, its results and performance have not been adequately evaluated, as there is no systematic evaluation of similar projects carried out by the Federal Savings Bank, operator of the proceeds from the Worker's Guarantee Fund for Time of Service (FGTS) and the Federal Budget (OGU) for slum upgrading.publishedVersio
Chinese planning history methodology under interdisciplinary background
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 study on Chinese planning history is on the rise. In 2011 urban and rural planning was established as an independent first-level discipline in China. Accordingly, its secondary discipline - planning history – gained independence from architectural history and urban history. In November 2012, the Academic Committee of Urban Planning History and Theory was formally founded under the Committee of Urban Planning Society of China, bringing together scholars from various research fields focusing on studies of planning history and theory. With a growing diversity of the academic background of these scholars in recent years, the interdisciplinary feature of planning history increases. The participation of scholars in the field of history, law, sociology, geography and so on brings new research topics like “history of planning academics” and “legal history of planning”, greatly enriching the research contents and methods of planning history in China. The establishment and improvement of disciplines rely on the establishment of methodologies. Only subjects that have appropriate historical research methods guided by specific methodologies can be called history disciplines. Planning history study is no exception. However, against the backdrop of massive construction in China, Chinese planning study is more oriented to direct application values of planning practices rather than planning history research and its associated methodology. Additionally, Chinese historian FU Sinian’s view point – history is the historical materials and data - has exerted great influence on history and planning history study in China.publishedVersio