Democratic design experiments in urban planning – navigational practices and compositionist design

In the field of urban planning, public participation and inclusion of citizens have been practised and researched for many years. However, a focus on co-creative urban planning practices seems to have gained more focus over the last decade and calls for new urban planning practices, which allow experimentation and imagination, and at the same time take its outset in the existing networks in the city (such as visions, strategies, regulations and practices) when planning for the future. In this article, we investigate how a compositionist design programme can be translated into the practices of urban planners. We find that the notion of ‘democratic design experiments’ in many ways meet the demands of the increasingly complex field of urban planning and set out to explore how such a design programme can be applied in practice. We suggest ‘navigational practice’ as a way of describing how urban planners deal with ‘drawing things together’ in urban space and introduce ‘sensitivity’, ‘staging’ and ‘mobilization’ as interconnected elements of this practice. We exemplify the significance of these navigational practices by analysing two democratic design experiments in the area of urban waste management in Copenhagen. The article concludes that compositionist design is a powerful contribution to the framing of urban planning projects and that navigational practice can be a productive way of operationalising democratic design experiments in the urban context.     

Retailers’ resilience strategies and their impacts on urban spaces in Turkey

Recent developments in the retail sector in Turkey have created a dynamic environment, with different resilience strategies of actors forming the sector providing a new context in which to discuss urban transformation. The developments have contributed to the public’s awareness regarding multifaceted problems in the retail sector, many of which have a negative impact on urban space. Retailers, citizens and governing bodies variously contribute to this issue with different perceptions of and strategies on how to adapt to the changes. How these dynamics work and influence urban space in the Turkish context is the main focus of this research. A field survey in Ankara revealed that the resilience strategies of traditional retailers are reactive rather than proactive. This situation provides them with the flexibility to adapt themselves more quickly to the changes in the sector. However, as there is no holistic retail policy in Turkey, reactive strategies also result in unplanned use of urban space.     

Urban policies,planning and retail resilience

Retail trade is a private-sector activity: its structure and location result mainly from the action of individuals and firms in a given time and space. However, planning and regulations, which translate the way collective interest relates to private interest, have a significant effect on the activity.When examining the relationship between retail and urban space in the last three decades, in what may be regarded as a process of general deregulation, it is possible to identify the continued relevance of public policies, plans and projects, although with differing intensity. This finding applies considering either those rules specifically designed for retail or those with a spatial focus on places where retail plays a significant role, as is the particular case of the “city centre”.Policy and planning are seen in this article in their relationship with retail and urban resilience, as the text deals with the way in which they influence the situation in the countries which were the object of study in the Replacis Euro-net research project: France, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey. The article intends to examine the role of the countries’ cultural framework in policy design and to demonstrate how regulations, planning systems and practices contribute significantly to understanding the differences in urban retail structure between these countries (and, in particular, in some of their cities).     

The shifting spaces of creativity in Hong Kong

This paper focuses on the development of Hong Kong's cultural economy and its translation into urban space. On the one hand it focuses on recent economic development and planning strategies to develop a post-colonial identity based on the international cachet of attracting creative industries. On the other hand, it considers the development of grassroots initiatives that herald the potential articulation of Hong Kong as a culturally dense global city. These grassroots initiatives are analyzed from the perspective of their problematic relationship with urban space, and how urban planning both supports and hinders cultural development. The paper argues that top-down planning is in large part catalytic, yet at the same time can run counter to the development of genuine artistic expression. It stresses the importance of ‘middleground’ actors in facilitating the development of spaces for artistic creation, particularly in their productive interlocking with different forms of artistic expression and public policy initiatives. The middleground can be conceived of as a relational space produced by various processes, actors and structures operating at different scales between institutional actors and the interests of ‘underground’ creativity. The article concludes by problematizing the role of middleground actors and underlines the value of ‘unpacking’ the middleground in order to account for the contested and negotiated processes it embodies. Renewed attention to these processes will contribute to enhancing the development of sites of artistic expression in Hong Kong and other emergent contemporary contexts.     

英国零售业规划政策评述

本文对英国零售业的规划政策进行了回顾与评述。在过去的20年间,英国零售业规划政策的一项核心内容是通过“城镇中心优先政策”来减少新型零售业态的扩张对城镇中心所带来的影响,从而保持与提高城镇中心的活力,并通过集约化使用土地达到可持续性发展。文章同时对规划政策制定过程中的五大矛盾进行了阐述。研究表明,“城镇中心优先政策“的执行受到近年来经济衰退和其他经济结构变化的影响和干扰。对很多人而言,城镇中心不再是他们日常生活的主要场所。在网购和手机购物直行的今天,现行的零售规划政策必须与时俱进,做出适当调整和改变。同时,许多经营大店的零售商正在反思和重估大店赖以生存的社会经济条件,并减少对大店的投资。     

形神兼备思路下的特色小镇规划研究--以滕州董村花汇小镇为例

针对当前特色小镇规划建设现实问题,在特色小镇传统规划方法中融入“形”“神”概念,阐释形神兼备规划思路基本内涵,提出形神兼备思路下的特色小镇规划设计方法:既要考虑规划方案的形态美,更应追求包括产业、人居、生态、文化等内涵的神态设计。最后结合董村花汇小镇规划,阐述了形神兼备规划设计方法在实践中的应用,以期为特色小镇的规划编制和培育建设提供一种新的视角和思路。     

From the Cold War to the warmed globe: planning,design-policy entrepreneurism,and the crises of nuclear weapons and climate change

Faced with two existential threats – nuclear war and climate change – planners have responded by proposing sweeping reforms for city-regions, often deploying the newfound rationales to re-package earlier ideas about ‘the good city’. This paper analyses how mid-twentieth-century planning discourses regarding Cold War urban dispersal in the USA might help us understand contemporary conversations about urban climate change adaptation. We apply Kingdon's Multiple Streams Analysis and his concept of policy entrepreneurs to show how planners frame problems and shape policy agendas. We propose a subtype of ‘design-policy entrepreneurs’ who use the spatial and visual tools of planning and design to advocate for preferred policies. By analysing the rhetoric and visual representations made by planners and designers from 1945 to 1965, we examine how they repurposed long-standing ideas about urban deconcentration into ‘dispersal for defence’ proposals. Such proposals for dispersing urban settlements into separated and ‘self-contained’ units received a dysfunctional partial acceptance: housing and transportation legislation embraced the dispersal part but resisted the complementary elements aimed at limiting damages from nuclear attack by concentrating development into distinct nodes. We conclude by asking how the perils of such partial policy-making success might play out on the terrain of climate change adaptation.     

Women and Transport

Abstract

Canberra is currently the focus of two interrelated urban policy issues. The long-delayed introduction of a form of self-government involves distinguishing domestic and ‘national capital’ responsibilities, particularly in the area of urban planning and development. On the other hand, the National Capital Development Commission's controversial commitment to a dispersed five-town ‘anti-city’ urban form has major economic, social and environmental implications for self-government.     

National high street retail and town centre policy at a cross roads in England and Wales

For eighty years, UK government policy related to urban sprawl, town centres and high streets in England and Wales has been dominated by planning/land-use control. In the post-war period, retail developments have often been discussed in the literature on planning for places – but the wide range of pressures for retail change is rarely brought together. This review of policy discusses many of these pressures: many of which fall beyond the urban planning remit. For example, although retail planning regulations have been influenced by Central Place Theory, this theoretical framework offers no insight on those private sector businesses that interface with urban planning. Worse, few (if any) professional town planners study retailing before formulating plans. Furthermore, the willingness of successive governments to exert meaningful influence through planning rules has ebbed and flowed, leaving town centres at a potential crossroads. This study addresses the vital missing link to business operations – and the rising pressures upon them – using Institutional Theory. Building on the findings of this analysis as well as earlier studies from other parts of the world, this article outlines implications for the management of town and city centres in England and Wales.     

‘The field of grain is gone; It's now a Tesco Superstore’: representations of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ within historical and contemporary discourses opposing urban expansion in England

Ideas about the difference between rural and urban areas are woven into the fabric of English society. This paper asks how two different campaigns against urban expansion and rural homebuilding in England – one interwar and one more contemporary (related to the production of the ‘National Planning Policy Framework’ document) – represent the difference between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ and how they use these representations to justify and naturalize their arguments. Utilizing interpretive textual analysis to compare the two periods, we show that, whilst planning has undergone significant paradigm shifts during the period between the two campaigns, in both archives a dominant ‘rural idyll’ is (re)produced and reinforced through the representational themes of beauty, nature, purity, an elite educated class, and a traditional social order. This is strongly contrasted to the representation of the ‘urban sphere’ as an unnatural, ugly, modern, and socially fragmented dystopia. ‘Urban’ areas are therefore constructed as the constitutive ‘Other’ to the rural idyll. In this way, the apparently natural urban characteristics associated with built-up areas are represented as ‘out of place’ within the rural sphere. These representations work to justify the argument that ‘development’ is a threat to the intrinsic characteristics of the countryside and should not be allowed to take place. This rural idyll/urban dystopia binary is argued to continue to have an important influence on shaping policy debate.     

Alternative strategies for urban redevelopment: A case study in a squatter housing neighborhood of Ankara

Since the 1980s, the redevelopment of squatter housing settlements has been a primary policy focus of the local and central authorities in Turkey. Their strategies have adopted two different models: one approach was not effective at generating redevelopment activity and produced low quality living environments, and the other approach resulted in dislocation and gentrification. The literature stresses three issues. First, redevelopment sites are areas where market forces failed; thus, they are perceived as high risk, low-demand, and low-return investments with high transaction costs. Second, institutions that lower transaction costs boost market forces and increase economic performance in property development. Third, local authorities remain active in urban redevelopment; despite having no direct tools for local economic development, they do have tools for urban development. This study reformulates the basic transaction cost thesis and hypothesizes that local authorities can boost urban redevelopment by making changes to institutions or ‘the rules of the game’ by increasing information flow, positive externalities and perceived returns and by decreasing transaction costs, negative externalities and risks, all of which motivate land owners and house-builders. To test this hypothesis, I have conducted household surveys and semi-structured interviews with house-builders in a squatter housing neighborhood undergoing a gradual transformation. The goal of this study was to search for the impacts of the local authority’s strategies on homeowner inertia, private sector disinvestment and the implications of urban redevelopment. My findings revealed that the local authorities can produce desirable results for less attractive neighborhoods with the help of marketing, institutional strategies and effective land use planning without leading to dislocation and gentrification. Overall, this study suggests that ‘institutional’ strategies are crucial for urban policies and future urban redevelopment activities.     

Optimising spatial mergers: commercial and regulatory perspectives

This paper explores the potential application of spatial analysis and modelling techniques to the merger problem, and introduces a conceptual spatial modelling framework to improve retail merger and acquisition planning from both a commercial and regulatory perspective. Focusing on the UK retail sector, the paper demonstrates the importance of local scale market ‘dynamics’ in merger and acquisition (M&A) planning and evaluation; reviews the range of existing spatial modelling approaches to retail location problems, and illustrates how these models can be applied to M&A planning.     

Towards democratic planning? Negotiating change in St Kilda,Melbourne

Are planners ‘dealmakers’ caught up in selling urban areas to the highest bidder, or are they negotiators concerned to maintain democratic planning and social diversity in areas that are subject to gentrification? This paper explores this question through the example of two sites in St Kilda, Melbourne. The sites highlight planning strategies used at the local government level by planners who are attempting to negotiate change and to maintain the social and cultural diversity of the area. The first example illustrates the processes of ‘democratic planning’ where planners question what is ‘legitimate’ and draw on discourses of local need. The second example illustrates the problems of co‐opting local culture within a process of democratic planning that is based on community consultation. Together, the examples illustrate the need for tighter local government policies, including stricter policies about the use of developer contributions, and a closer and more critical focus on the term ‘community consultation’, if democratic planning is to be achieved.     

城市规划专业基础教学中的公共政策素质培养

立足于当前我国城市规划学科属性由技术性向公共政策性转变的大背景,以西安建筑科技大学建筑学院城市规划专业基础教学改革实践为案例,探讨城市规划专业基础教育中,如何结合低年级学生特点,在专业基础课的不同教学环节中,科学、巧妙地引入城市规划公共政策属性的初步内容,培养学生的公共政策素质,增强学生对城市规划学科认识的全面性,使专业人才的培养向城市规划的本质回归。     

Taking the high ground: construction of the regional spatial order of Chang’an Area in Tang Dynasty

ABSTRACT

Ancient Chinese cities were closely connected to extramural areas. Therefore, research on the construction of urban space in ancient China should not be restricted to the area within the city wall; rather it should extend to the surrounding areas. There has been plenty of research on the urban planning and design of Chang’an in Tang Dynasty (618–907), which is the capital of the most prosperous dynasty of ancient China. However, little research has paid attention to its spatial order at the regional scale. This article aims to solve this problem using the ‘triple-evidence’ method, i.e. based on the evidences from archaeology, literature and field survey. More specifically, it explores the main problems involved in regional spatial construction, reveals the general strategies for construction of the regional spatial order, and further analyses the planning and design approaches for different spatial scales. This paper reveals that ‘Taking the High Ground’ is the main method used in the construction of regional spatial order of Chang’an Area in Tang Dynasty, which reflects the dialectical whole of ‘configurational force’ and ‘form’ in the planning and design theories of ancient China.     

基于农民视角的城乡统筹规划——从藁城农民意愿调查看农民城镇化诉求

当前城乡统筹规划编制多从城市角度研究问题,缺乏对农村地区发展的关注,缺乏对农民意愿、需求的尊重和体现。本文以藁城市城乡统筹规划为例,尝试从农民的视角来统筹城乡发展。在对农民意愿调查与分析的基础上,提出了"尊重城乡差异,尊重农民意愿,实现规划方案向规划政策的转变"的规划思路,并在聚落体系、设施配套、产业发展、村庄重组以及政策设计方面提出了一系列体现农民意愿、维护农民利益的规划对策。     

‘Resistance was futile!’ Cycling’s discourses of resistance to UK automobile modernism 1950–1970

This paper investigates the place of utility cycling (cycling as a means of transport rather than as a sport or leisure activity) under urban modernism in the UK. In many western contexts the dominant feature of urban modernism was its emphasis on accommodating private vehicles to the neglect of other forms of mobility. The result was the production of a ‘car-system’ with significant change to urban and rural environments. This paper assesses resistance to what we term ‘automobile modernism’ during the high watermark of its planning and implementation (1950–1970), using the UK Cyclists’ Touring Club (now known as Cycling UK) archive. We make three contributions. First, and primarily, we highlight how cycling advocacy contested automobile modernism’s claim that cycling was ‘outmoded’. In so doing we note significant continuity in policy debates and political advocacy regarding cycling’s place in the road environment around issues such as segregation from motor vehicles. Contemporary attempts to promote cycling, as well as a wider urban sustainability agenda, are heavily influenced by this history. Second, we highlight a commonality between cycling and other resistance to automobile modernism in terms of rural and urban landscape impacts. Third, we highlight how the CTC ‘professionalized’ its advocacy to resist automobile modernism.     

Local food production: some implications for planning

Following a catalogue of problems in British farming, attempts are being made to re-localize agriculture for reasons of rural regeneration and sustainable development. It is a move that is both consumer driven and encouraged by government policies and grant schemes. This article examines what the implications for the land use planning system might be from this small revolution in farming and retailing. Research in Somerset using planning history records reveals that in some cases planning permission has proved an obstacle to the establishment and expansion of local food businesses. This is especially so for applications for farm shops and agricultural workers' dwellings. Survey data shows that a significant proportion of local food producers selling through box schemes, farmers' markets and farm gate sales are new entrants to farming. New entrants present particular difficulties for planners and planning committees, because they challenge the conventional conception of what farmers and farm businesses are like, and invoke concerns about abuse of the agricultural dwelling concessions provided by the system. A tension is identified between the interpretation of ‘sustainable development’ in planning circles and among local food proponents. The neglect of ‘food miles’ as a consideration in retail planning policy is highlighted as an example of this clash of perspectives.     

市场经济体制下城市商业网点规划研究

城市商业网点规划是近年来我国新兴的一种规划类型。本文首先对法英等西方发达国家的商业规划进行了简要介绍,然后指出了市场经济体制下我国城市商业网点发展的特点、城市商业网点规划兴起的原因和规划编制中需注意的一些问题。     

Local Innovation And Global Change: ‘Remaking The Welfare State’ In Sweden1

Swedish urban planning and housing policies have been seen as exemplars by many Australian policy makers. The mixture of state activism, strong local government, broad concepts of welfare policy and social housing, coupled with wide community acceptance of these ideals, has enabled major innovations in housing policy. This article describes the historical background and recent changes to these policies within Sweden's changing political framework. It also shows that global fiscal changes, coupled with Sweden's entry into the ‘federalising’ European Union, have changed the context of these policies. Swedish housing and urban policy is changing; Swedish local government has a strong role in the development and implementation of these changing policies. There are many interesting lessons for Australian urban policy in these changes.