“Urban Farming Is Going High Tech”

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: How do traditional forms of urban agriculture and the newer digital urban agriculture converge and diverge from one another in terms of land use and gentrification? I interrogate the subject of digital urban agriculture with data from 82 semistructured interviews and notes taken during public forms and tours of facilities. Respondents were located in Denver (CO; n?=?30), New York (NY; n?=?26), and San Francisco (CA; n?=?26) and held positions ranging from community organizers, investors, local food powerbrokers, and planners to engineers involved in facilitating urban foodways based on vertical farming, automation, and related technologies. I find digital platforms—systems exhibiting characteristics including real-time surveillance, artificial intelligence, and automation—share similarities with traditional urban farming systems. Both platforms have the potential to disrupt dominant political economies and also have links to gentrification and other inequitable land use patterns. Potential divergences include differences in a) social, cultural, economic, human, and built capital barriers and outcomes; b) land use life course; and c) zoning.

Takeaway for practice: Digital urban farming systems inhabit a regulatory gray area; respondents encountered agricultural, industrial, or commercial zoning permits. The “digital” aspects of these systems contributed to this ambiguity and are used by powerbrokers to obtain further zoning permission than is possible with traditional urban agriculture. Compared with more traditional urban farming systems, digital urban agriculture taps into different forms of human capital. Finally, my findings are inconclusive on the issue of land use life course. Some data indicate digital farms will remain in urban cores, whereas other evidence points to the eventual migration of these platforms to the metropolitan periphery.     

The House of Commons: a precedent for post-occupancy evaluation

ABSTRACT

Building scientists have retraced the origins of modern post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) to the 1960s, but this paper shows that the use of POEs and their integration into the process of improving building performance has been a more longstanding practice. Focusing on the post-occupancy history of the House of Commons from 1854 until 1941 as a case study, this paper examines the nature and functions of these earlier precursors of modern POEs. A review of original archive material illuminates how POEs allowed Parliament as an organization to establish a large repository of knowledge on building performance, offering insights into technological, environmental and human factors. To understand the nature of these historic practices, however, it is critical to distinguish between POE functions that were embedded within the routine operational procedures, led by an in-house team of attendants, and those covered by several larger studies. The latter were more in-depth inquiries conducted by the Office of Works in collaboration with parliamentary committees, scientific researchers and in-house technical staff. These historic practices have also highlighted the role of institutional structures in enabling better collaboration between end users and facilities management in the process of operating, assessing and improving buildings in use.     

BIM adoption by public facility agencies: impacts on occupant value

ABSTRACT

Many governments have begun to demand that large public facility agencies adopt and implement building information modelling (BIM) in their business processes. Some have published BIM guides. Most of these are technical specifications that are useful at the project level, but they provide no support for the organization-level adoption effort. On the basis of a literature review, action research and case studies of five large UK government facility agencies, a BIM adoption impact map (BIM AIM) is proposed. It describes a set of possible relationships between the actions taken by public facility agencies, the intermediate outcomes of their actions and the eventual achievement of value for the occupants of the facilities they build. BIM AIM can be used by public facility agencies with a wide variety of construction project types to analyse and visualize the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in their BIM adoption efforts, potentially enabling them to focus on social impacts and outcomes rather than on the technological or management actions that intermediate stakeholders promote.     

《物权法》语境下的城市规划

2007年3月颁布的《中华人民共和国物权法》强化了对私有财产的保护，将“公共利益”作为政府行使征收权的前提条件。以体现“公共利益”和“政府干预”为特征的城市规划必将成为相关问题和矛盾争论的焦点。从西方近现代城市规划的实践来看，“公共利益”不但体现在政府对私有土地行使征收权方面．同时也体现在政府对私有土地利用自由的限制方面。本文试图通过对近现代城市规划出发点的回顾，以及中美对公共利益解读的对比，探索《物权法》的颁布对城市规划实践的影响，展望城市规划未来所必须应对的局面。     

A Review of “Children & Their Urban Environment: Changing Worlds”

Problem: Information is often suppressed when public infrastructure is planned by design-build-finance-operate (DFBO) public/private partnerships, an increasingly popular strategy for procuring transportation facilities, hospitals, and schools.

Purpose: I aim to identify strategies to increase transparency and accountability in large infrastructure projects delivered through public/private partnerships.

Methods: I studied the case of an award winning public/private partnership to plan a rapid rail line in Vancouver by comparing confidential documents released after project approval to the information available while planning was underway.

Results and conclusions: I find that although this project followed many best practices for achieving accountable and transparent public/private partnerships, in some instances it kept unfavorable study results from public view, limiting the potential for meaningful public involvement in the planning process. Takeaway for practice: I identify the following strategies to increase transparency and accountability in large infrastructure projects, including those delivered through private-public partnerships: (1) using a clear and narrow standard for what information should be kept confidential; (2) ensuring that public officials with responsibility for project decisions and their staffs have full access to all project information, including that not made public; (3) appointing a watchdog to see that these standards are upheld; and (4) implementing a decision process that allows public input and places the burden for proving that information should remain confidential on the entity making the request.     

亚单元3，科英布拉，葡萄牙

亚单元3教学楼是科英布拉大学医学学院为辩论教学而设计的。设计任务书包括了一系列的空间和功能, 分散于或多或少地向公共开放的多个组成部分中。大空间包含了更多公共功能的空间,比如图书馆、礼堂以及餐厅;还有公共性稍弱的空间,比如,用于实践课的大型实验室或教室;更为私密的空间则比如教授职员办公室。这些空间的尺度及开放程度形成了一条螺旋上升的     

An integrated approach to public’s perception of urban water use and ownership of water companies during a period of economic crisis. Case study in Athens,Greece

ABSTRACT

This study applies an integrated approach to investigate public perception of residential water issues during a period of economic crisis. The study investigates the perceptions and practices of Athenians in water conservation, their satisfaction with the supplied water, their opinion on the privatization of Water Company and their willingness for additional payment for the improvement of water services. A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. Results indicate that the respondents have adopted water conservation practices, but there is still room for further saving. Most of the respondents declared to be satisfied with the supplied water and do not agree to the privatization of water companies. Women, older participants and those having lower income are less willing for additional payment. Research findings are useful tool for policymakers to design policies and make decisions regarding water management, ownership of water companies and changes in behavior of water use.     

Bachelor Culture in the Work of Adolf Loos

Abstract

The issue of gender in the architecture and writing of Adolf Loos arose from an ongoing debate over gender identification and roles in Viennese culture of the fin-de-siècle. Loos's critique challenged what he saw as the degradation of contemporary culture through its feminization. His masculinized alternative reclaimed the public realm for the rational and the pragmatic. Through this crucial maneuver, Loos tied modernity back to its class base, to an ideology of production and progress, and brought nineteenth-century positivism forward into the twentieth century, jumping over the “effeminate” interlude of art nouveau.     

北川快速重建背景下的公共服务设施体系构建

快速重建是灾后重建工作的基本特征,公共服务设施是城市重建的重要内容。本文根据城市灾后快速重建的特点,结合北川新县城规划建设的实际经验,从公共服务设施用地分类、布局、配置要求三个方面展开讨论,力图总结出快速重建背景下公共服务设施建设的特殊性与规律性,为灾后重建工作提供参考。     

全民阅读

<正>Chi Li,a famous woman writer in China,rarely visits bookshops anymore.Instead,she buys books online.She believes it is difficult to find what she calls"real"books on shop shelves now."Most of the books in shops are tool books to help people to pass a test or earn more money.In my eyes,they are not real books,"said Chi Li.     

Hazardous Waste Facility Siting A Role for Planners

Hazardous wastes present a critical environmental challenge for the United States in the 1980s. Part of the challenge involves cleaning up or containing abandoned and uncontrolled waste disposal sites. The larger part of the challenge is to properly manage the hazardous wastes that are keyed to the productivity of the national economy. This article briefly overviews what the wastes are and how much exists; what their potential is for adverse human health effects and environmental degradation; federal legislation designed to regulate hazardous wastes; and the nature of public opposition toward siting new facilities. This summary precedes a more in-depth discussion of research designed to assess land use suitability for siting new hazardous waste facilities based on water supply, and other physical and cultural siting criteria. Results indicate that initially suitable sites do exist for siting new facilities. Planners can play an important role by identifying suitable sites through their knowledge of land use, environment regulation, and with the aid of the screening process reported here.     

State and Municipal Climate Change Plans: The First Generation

Problem: Global warming has emerged as one of the new century's top planning challenges. But it is far from clear how state and local governments in the United States can best address climate change through planning.

Purpose: As of 2008, 29 states had prepared some sort of climate change plan, and more than 170 local governments had joined the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign that requires that a plan be developed. This article analyzes this first generation of climate change plans and seeks to assess the goals being set, the measures included or left out, issues surrounding implementation, and the basic strengths and weaknesses of state and local climate change planning to date.

Methods: I conducted this research by analyzing planning documents as well as interviewing state and local officials by telephone. I analyzed the plans of three types of governments: all states with planning documents on climate change; cities with populations of over 500,000 that are members of the CCP campaign; and selected smaller cities that are CCP members.

Results and conclusions: Most plans set emissions-reduction goals, establish emission inventories, green public sector operations, and recommend a range of other measures. Many recent plans have been developed through extensive stakeholder processes and present very detailed lists of recommendations with quantified emissions benefits. But emissions-reduction goals vary widely, many proposed actions are voluntary, few resources have been allocated, and implementation of most measures has not yet taken place. Most plans do not address adaptation to a changing climate. Officials see rapidly growing public awareness of the issue and general support for climate change planning, but reluctance to change personal behavior.

Takeaway for practice: Future climate change planning should (a) set goals that can adequately address the problem; (b) establish long-term planning frameworks in which progress toward these goals can be monitored on a regular basis and actions revised as needed; (c) include the full range of measures needed to reduce and adapt to climate change; (d) ensure implementation of recommended actions through commitment of resources, revised regulation, incentives for reducing emissions, and other means; and (e) develop strategies to deepen public awareness of the need for fundamental changes in behavior, for example regarding motor vehicle use.

Research support: This research was supported by the University of California, Davis Department of Environmental Design.     

Hotel attributes and hedonic prices: an analysis of internet-based transactions in Singapore’s market for hotel rooms

A number of valued attributes determine the room rates that hotels charge. These attributes include not only room quality characteristics, but also access to various shared hotel facilities, service quality, and access to amenities beyond the hotel itself. Using a hedonic price function approach, this paper reports estimated implicit prices for hotel room attributes in Singapore. Real transaction prices are regressed against objective attributes and consumer perceptions, as reported by an on-line travel agency. Most objective characteristics are significant in all functional specifications, and consumer perceptions explains much of the variability within a given star-rating (3, 4 or 5) of the hotel.     

When Do Plans Matter?

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Plans often sit on the shelf and fail to promote action. This raises the question of how and when plans matter. This is especially important in sustainability planning where local governments are more likely to take actions with short-term benefits that are easy to adopt. How can planners promote more sustainability actions, especially those with longer term benefits? In this study we examine factors influencing local sustainability actions by tracking 651?U.S. local governments’ adoption of 34 sustainability actions from 2010 to 2015. We differentiate places that recently adopted a sustainability plan from those that have had a plan for a longer period and those that have never adopted a sustainability plan. We use difference-in-difference (DID) modeling to assess what effect plans have on the level of sustainability actions. We find a plan may have its greatest effect in motivating actions when it is newly created. Places that adopted a plan between 2010 and 2015 exhibited a significant increase in sustainability actions during those same years. By contrast, places that already had a plan in 2010 showed higher initial levels of sustainability actions but did not show a higher level of growth in the number of actions adopted compared with places without plans. In general, we find local governments with higher levels of sustainability actions articulate social equity goals, devote staff and budget resources to the effort, engage the public, and promote interdepartmental coordination. Local governments under Republican control enact fewer sustainability actions.

Takeaway for practice: Sustainability plans are most effective in spurring local sustainability actions when they are newly created. However, this initiation impact in motivating actions wanes over time. Promoting continued adoption of sustainability actions requires a comprehensive approach with attention to political support, public participation, social equity, interdepartmental coordination, and local capacity.     

传统精义与现代气象交融——香格里拉闪片藏居改造更新导则探析

以香格里拉闪片藏居改造更新导则的制定为出发点,通过对传统＂闪片房＂的特征提取,结合实际调研论述传统民居的变化,找出适合以及不适合的变化细节应用于导则中对其实际操作进行控制引导。对导则进行细分,将传统民居的改造以及更新分别对待,从＂传统＂到＂现代＂,从＂过去＂到＂现在＂,归纳适用于＂现代＂气象的＂传统＂精义,结合当地环境文化等因素,找出契合的方式运用于民居改造更新中,由此总结民居改造更新导则的导则之＂导＂。     

New service functions may help preserve village shops

Experiments in four shops in Denmark create the basis for a distribution of service functions to village shops all over the country. Establishing some more or less untradi‐tional service facilities in a village shop improves the possibilities of survival for the shop. This is the conclusion of a controlled experiment performed by The Institute for Centre‐Planning, Copenhagen, in four village shops over a period of 18 months. The five most important and best‐paying service facilities were sub‐post office, dispensing of medicine, public library service, receipt of pools coupons and certain bank services. Furthermore the experiment comprised municipal consultation (area office), public telephone, and receiving of items for dry cleaning. The effect of establishing the supplementary service functions in the village shops was measured partly through information on the turn‐over in the four shops and the six shops selected as control shops partly through the use which the inhabitants made of the service offers. The degree of satisfaction of the inhabitants faced with the possibilities of having available the various forms of facilities was also measured prior to the experiment and after the experiment by means of personal interviews among the households in the test areas as well as in the control areas.     

Scenario Planning for Urban Planners: Toward a Practitioner's Guide

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Scenario planning has promise as a planning tool when compared with more common approaches, yet planners have had limited success with scenario planning in part because of the complexities of the scenario-planning process itself. We address these issues by constructing the key building blocks of a scenario process for public sector planners. We review and synthesize 63 articles and 25 projects from 2004 to 2014 to construct a planning typology with nine components that capture the important variations in scenario projects, such as the project scope, desired outcomes, and the types of scenario construction and evaluation tools used by planners. Although the typology is based only on a select set of projects from the industrialized world in English, we nevertheless further use our review and synthesis to characterize the key subcomponents or possibilities within each component and discuss the overlaps and connections among them. We then use the typology to code a subset of the reviewed projects to identify the associations among the subcomponents of different components and to explore whether planners should promote or avoid these associations. Finally, we offer some instructions on how planners may use the typology to create a better scenario–planning process.

Takeaway for practice: Our typology illustrates the combination of variables that comprise a scenario-planning process and the tradeoffs planners make when choosing one set of factors over another. Planners can use our typology to construct a variety of scenario processes that are participatory, transparent, and future oriented and are an improvement over traditional planning approaches.     

Administration,Landscape and Authorized Heritage Discourse – Contextualising the Nationally Valuable Landscape Areas of Finland

Abstract

In 2010, the Finnish Ministry of the Environment launched a re-evaluation and revision of the 1993 inventory of Nationally Valuable Landscape Areas (NVLAs). While the inventory works for implementation of the National Land Use Guidelines, it also showcases the use of landscapes in Finnish national heritage policy. Based on critical readings of three influential Finnish administrative landscape policy reports, I claim that NVLAs, as tools of heritage policy, are based on the approaches and methodologies that have supported Finland’s development into a modern nation state by providing tools for intellectual governance of the national past and territory. Rather than meeting the diversity of landscape conceptions, as defined in the European Landscape Convention, the NVLAs run a risk of being in conflict with citizens and actors that do not share the administrative assumption of landscapes as public containers of national heritage.