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Bicycle-Metro Integration for The 'Last Mile' in Shanghai
Get PDFCycling is always considered to be one of the most popular daily traffic tools in cities due to its flexibility, convenience and low cost. Moreover, Bicycle-metro integration is theoretically considered to be an effective solution for improving public transportation efficiency of "last mile" between home and metro station in big cities. However, this proposition has not been fully proved in practice. In recent years, the emerging dockless bike-sharing system makes it possible to examine the spatial integration between flexible bicycle traffic and rail transit. Compared with traditional public bicycle systems with fixed docks, such as New York Citibike, this new bike-sharing system demonstrates the mobility and flexibility of cycling. We randomly sampled the GPS coordinates of 80,000 dockless bikes in Shanghai, which represent the origin and destination points of cycling. We mapped the bicycle traffic on an equal population cartogram of Shanghai to distinguish overall patterns within the center of Shanghai. Results show that most of the high-frequency cycling streets still centre around metro stations. The streets basically present a gradual decline from the metro stations to outlying areas in terms of cycling frequency, which indicates that bicycle-metro integration has already become the basic model for daily transport in Shanghai.publishedVersio
How well can privately owned public spaces (POPS) facilitate social interactions in Taipei City? A case study of the community residents’ daily life
Get PDFIn Taiwan, the high-density urban environment is the normal urban form as many highly populated counties. The concerns of possible impacts of vertical-developed cities have long discussed for several decades. Since the 1980s, in order to improve the urban environment and increase open spaces, the Taipei City Government granted additional floor area bonus as incentives in exchange of the private developers providing privately owned public space (POPS) for public use. Nevertheless many studies identify that the openness and the publicness of most POPSs are lower than expected. However, other concerns such as the possible external costs of the urban environment i.e. the decline of public service quality, more energy consumptions, increasing residential density, and skyline destruction derived from the additional floor area bonus as incentives for POPS are still to be studied. Early local research regarding the POPS usually focused on the usage of such space, and has given advices on design details. There is a lack of discussion about the impacts on the social behavior of residents by the POPS. Hence, this paper will discuss the possible impacts of the POPS on the social interactions（social relation. We will conduct questionnaire survey and field studies at the selected communities with more POPSs in Taipei. The research results will expect to gather some information about how can POPS benefit residents daily life at the community level and provide policy feedbacks on future POPS in Taipei.publishedVersio
Assessing the Transition From Traditional To Participatory Heritage Management In Turkey
Get PDFTurkey is in a unique geographical position with 18 nominated World Heritage Sites. Since 2005, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee requires a management system through participatory means to guarantee the protection of these sites. In this same year, Turkey enacted the associated legislation by proposing a new actor named site manager who has both local and professional knowledge with the main role of coordination of the site management system to ensure protection of the nominated property through participation. Public participation is therefore mandatory in the site management processes in Turkey. The aim of this research is to examine current site management practices in Turkey to understand how they address public participation inferring how the site manager scrutinises public participation during the development of the management plan. A combination of qualitative analyses is proposed to assess information contained in the documentation available for the development of management plans, including the management plans themselves. The focus is on understanding how knowledge from public participation is transferred, from focus group meetings to management plans, considering the actors, actions and outputs involved in the process. This case-based proof of concept provides a set of indicators to model public participation in site management processes to resolve the mistrust issues between authorities and communities and to gauge the level of knowledge transfer by the site manager
The mapping of historical streets on social media: a case study based on image recognition and semantic recognition
Get PDFIn the age of social media, the interaction of online and offline activities has produced a more diverse form of interaction between people and space. Weibo is the largest social media in China, where users share their insights by uploading photos and text. Historical streets carry important urban cultural imprint while its protection is facing the problem of enhancing attractiveness under the rapidly urban development. This study collected the Baidu Street View image and geo-tag Weibo photo of Hengfu historic conservation. Images were recognized through the machine learning algorithm, in order to realize the accurate measurement of the image elements. Building and greenery were the focus of attention of the crowd, and some streets have improved people's contact with greening through the design of vertical greening. Second, we combined the campaign of the hot events such as ' Leave fallen leaves' in social media, with the semantic recognition of the text of users ' Weibo. This paper analyze how the streets interacted with the online crowd with the help of social media, and analyze why some streets are more attractive while others lack attention and record, and put forward suggestions for urban design of historical street in future
Researching schools vs. researching with schools. An urban research laboratory experience in an Italian high school
Get PDFWe have tried to develop an innovative way to approach educational practice to promote synergies between school teaching, academic research and society. Through a transdisciplinary approach we have tried to prepare high school students to the challenges of researching, thinking and therefore planning about their own territory. This experience was conducted with a group 23 teenagers from a high school in the periphery of Rome, elaborating an original project of work-based learning inside the school. As tutors of their work, we tried to guide the students divided in five research groups, each one with a specific focus related to the territory where their school is located to the creation of a research project. Students were introduced to different tools with the aim of creating an interdisciplinary methodology, like interviews, focus groups, production of emic maps. Besides the nonetheless interesting results of all the research projects carried on by the five groups, what the participants learned has been a more complex way to reflect and argue upon urban territory, trying to manage change. In our view, this approach to deutero-learning can be seen as a way to give future citizens the tools to imagine and design the future of cities
Is there a housing shortage? A post-Keynesian economics approach to the financialisation of housing in England
Get PDFThe overwhelming dominance of neoliberal economics has come under question following its failure to understand, let alone predict, the barrage of global financial crises that began in 2007/8. Heterodox economic theories, Post-Keynesian school of thought in particular, have since assumed much greater significance during the last decade as much broader and more encompassing theoretical conceptualisation of economic behaviour is established. Land and property development stands at the centre of these debates due to the fundamental importance of property in providing collateral to the private banking system when money is created. Furthermore, the neoliberal exclusion of the role of debt and financialisation in determining the growth of the global economy has encouraged a fundamental misallocation of resources. The significance of excluding debt has permitted a deepseated narrative to evolve amongst policy makers, in which the high price of land and homes in most developed countries is indicative of a shortage of supply, whereas it is likely that the role of debt driven demand is a more plausible culprit. This paper explores the role of financialisation and money creation in the UK to better understand the impact of debt upon the presumed shortage of housing supply in England. The unswerving belief of a housing shortage in the UK is beginning to be questioned. Between 2016 and 2018 the UK government substantially reduced its 25-year projections of increased household requirements by some 1.1 million units, reducing annual needs by more than 25% to 159,000 units. The implication of such a substantial and sudden shift in projections will inevitably have a broad impact on urban planning requirements and highlights the usefulness of heterodox economic thought in untangling the complicated transition of urban planning to meet future needs.publishedVersio
Creating shared consciousness through collaborative education: the case of municipal amalgamation in Ukraine
Get PDFSince the launch of decentralization reform in Ukraine in 2014, the country has become an arena for a large-scale transformation of territorial governance and planning systems. Currently, 899 amalgamated municipalities have emerged through the voluntary merger procedure, with an overall population of 9.5 mln and total area equivalent to 38.9% of that of Ukraine. Being far more just an enlargement of territorial units, amalgamation is envisioned as a major tool for fiscal decentralization, community empowerment and re-defining the scale of social infrastructure provision. Currently, the planning process in newly created municipalities is constrained by the lack of appropriate legislation and planning tools, a severe shortage of planning professionals and low self-consciousness of municipal management in regards to objectives and potential of spatial planning. This paper discusses experimental pedagogic approaches implemented for enhancing spatial planning capacities of staff of newly formed amalgamated municipalities in the settings of post-socialist Ukrainian countryside and in the context of the ongoing decentralization reform, advocating the relevance of the blended learning formats that produce knowledge along with transformative change
Invisible projects: imagined nearness as a tool to explore long-term transitions of landscape/heritage. The case of the river Tiber in Rome
Get PDFHow to deal with landscapes (and heritage) whose transformation has only been imagined by built environment disciplines for more than a century? How can long-term transitions of landscapes/heritage be explored to better understand a territory? This paper focuses on invisible projects: imagined transformations that have been developed for the Tiber riverbanks, in the historic centre of the city of Rome. The “massive change” determined by the construction of the riverbanks, at the end of the Nineteenth century, is here taken as a starting point for a process of long-term transition for the landscape/heritage of the Tiber, in its relationship with Rome historic centre. Such a change has physically modified the perception of the river in the city, with the construction of two embankment walls along the river. Because of this change, planners and designers have had difficulties in rethinking a role for the Tiber riverbanks. This can be linked to a lack of effective analytical tools to address the (sometimes invisible) existing dynamics that occur in and towards the area. The concept of nearness will be introduced to investigate a number of narratives, representations and collective memories partaking on the construction of positions/points of view of who practices a place
Nature-based solutions: new challenges for urban planning
Get PDFNature-based solutions (NBS) are broadly defined as the use of solutions based on nature and ecological functions to address societal challenges, such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, population health, food security, and natural disasters, through the delivery of multiple ecosystem services (ES). This paper aims to outline some of the main challenges associated to the development and mainstreaming of NBS in urban planning, providing valuable insights for the integration of NBS in urban planning processes and instruments. To this aim, five challenges are proposed and discussed in this paper, namely: to provide decision-makers with tools and methods for mapping and assessing ES that substantiate evidence of NBS effectiveness in providing multiple benefits; to use more flexible and qualitative planning approaches that can foster the implementation of NBS such as performance-based planning; to develop indicators that can be used to evaluate and compare possible NBS during strategic environmental assessment of urban plans; to include the assessment of ecosystem disservices that may emerge when considering and comparing NBS interventions; to develop adequate measures of progress for the monitoring of NBS effects over time to strengthen the evidence base for their benefits and co-benefits.publishedVersio
Territory as media and social media as territory
Get PDFHow can planners find within social media new spontaneous ways through which people imagine, represent and socially produce a territory? This is what I have investigated in a peripheric neighborhood of Rome, trying to highlight how, through the acknowledgement of digital habitat embedded in a territory, it is possible to understand citizens' narration and hopes for their territory, as well as to find new ways to enhance participatory processes. I investigate how the habitat developed through a daily and routine use of mobile technologies of communication could make emerge new action spaces. I have identified insurgent democratic practices and new ways of citizens' engagement with their own city political issues, given a recurring distrust regarding official and established politics. Hence, since physical territory is a media of a diverse range of social relationships, also social media have become a portion of that territory where people can develop debates and conflicts regarding "major" themes and the image they would like to build for their territory. If researchers and planner accept that these contradictory and emotional digital places are in fact new portions of territory, alternative imaginations of space can be identified, generating new forms of collective appropriation of urban space