Understanding Infill: Towards New Policy and Practice for Urban Regeneration in the Established Suburbs of Australia's Cities

A major challenge for urban Australia and its fast growing cities in particular is the provision of an adequate supply of appropriately located, affordable and sustainable housing across a range of dwelling types. A related challenge involves attempts by the metropolitan planning agencies in the capital cities to restrict residential sprawl and deliver more compact cities. Residential infill in the established suburbs has emerged as one of the principal urban planning policies designed to address this dual challenge. Infill targets, typically in the 50–70 per cent range, are now integral to all capital city planning strategies. This article examines the current pattern of infill housing development in Melbourne, Australia's second largest and fastest growing capital city. It highlights the existence of two infill segments—brownfields and greyfields—each with distinctive patterns of development that need to be better understood if urban regeneration is to figure significantly in delivering more liveable and sustainable cities. Current urban policies, programmes and practices are lacking an effective response to redevelopment of the greyfields.     

The flagship concept of the ‘4th urban environment’. Branding and visioning in Malmö, Sweden

In the process of turning the post-industrial city of Malmö, Sweden, into a knowledge-based, creative city, new urban planning strategies and visions are being developed. An important component of developing the “knowledge city” is the spatial conceptualization for renewal of urban life. One such concept introduced in Malmö is “the 4th urban environment” (det 4.e stadsrummet). In this article, based on critical urban studies, the development, branding, and practice of the 4th urban environment as a strategy to generate a creative economy and knowledge city is critically analyzed as part of a neoliberal planning discourse. The article raises the question, what kind of vision is “the 4th urban environment”? What is it an expression of; what does it mean for planning practice and to urban development? Contextualizing and investigating trends of neoliberal planning ideas are important to an understanding of the social and economic consequences of unequal power relations. The 4th urban environment and its application in Malmö is illustrative of existing neoliberal planning practices in a Nordic context, and in other similar economies with legacies of redistribution policies and long-standing leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This article focuses on what is articulated within discourses that re-present particular notions of space and place, to gain a better understanding of what neoliberal planning does to space.     

Delivering the Compact City in Australia: Current Trends and Future Implications

This article presents an overview of the characteristics of the market for higher density residential property (flats, units and town houses) in the three largest Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The article then discusses some of the implications of current planning proposals for further higher density housing in Australian cities under urban consolidation or compact city policies and reviews a range of issues that may well arise. In particular, issues concerning the role of the rental investment market and Strata Title framework in determining the outcomes of current metropolitan compact city policies and the implications of higher density housing for social stability are discussed.     

Delivering the Compact City in Australia: Current Trends and Future Implications

This article presents an overview of the characteristics of the market for higher density residential property (flats, units and town houses) in the three largest Australian cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The article then discusses some of the implications of current planning proposals for further higher density housing in Australian cities under urban consolidation or compact city policies and reviews a range of issues that may well arise. In particular, issues concerning the role of the rental investment market and Strata Title framework in determining the outcomes of current metropolitan compact city policies and the implications of higher density housing for social stability are discussed.     

经济转型和新型城市化背景下的城市规划应对

从城市规划的应对视角,首先分析了我国经济结构区域发展不平衡的现状,针对未来生产性服务业的高端化和基本服务的均等化提出了规划应对。其次从城乡统筹和规划协调视角指出城市群战略是新型城镇化的重点,最后从都市圈、城市群核心城市、城市群外围点状地区等不同尺度提出了区域差异化政策和规划策略。     

Measuring urban form at community scale: Case study of Dublin,Ireland

With a tradition of compact cities, generally strict planning controls, and variable growth rates, many cities in Europe have policies which aim to restrict low density growth patterns. However, there is clear evidence that low density growth is happening, and that it is essential to understand the nature, location, and extent of the urban forms emerging on the periphery of cities across Europe. In its extreme manifestation, such low density peripheral growth is labelled as sprawl and considered detrimental. Drawing on the extensive literature on defining and measuring urban form, we focus on the methodologies and measures applied in the European studies at the regional (metropolitan), city, and community level. Affirming that the assessment of urban form at the community level is undertaken only sporadically, we adapt the measures used by Knaap et al. (2007) in studying US urban form to explore their applicability and robustness in analysing the evolution of urban form in a European setting. We examine the change of urban form in the Dublin Region (Ireland) in terms of residential and commercial density, internal and external connectivity, and land use mix. We find that the measures used, when adjusted to meet availability and nature of local data, are strong in revealing the trends in urban development form. We conclude by discussing the significance of the trends revealed in the case of Dublin and point to the issues of data availability in terms of both spatial and temporal resolution. Finally, we speculate on how the measures at different scales are suited to inform different types of urban policies and planning approaches.     

Influencing Urban Planning Policy: An Exploration from the Perspective of Public Health

Human health requires the proper development and management of places through urban planning. This paper demonstrates how concerns for human health can become explicit matters for consideration in urban planning policy systems. Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to examine the policy development process, we combine a realist analysis, with a new institutional policy approach, to study a case of planning system review in Australia. These insights are useful for practitioners presented with similar opportunities for legislative influence. We also demonstrate the way this approach can be used in future research to develop rich insights into the forces at play in positioning health as explicitly related to urban governance.     

Amsterdam in the 21st century: Geography,housing, spatial development and politics

This city profile provides a multi-dimensional overview on the most recent social, economic, political and spatial changes in the city of Amsterdam. We map the social-geography of the city, discussing recent housing and spatial development policies as well as city-regional political dynamics. Today, the city of Amsterdam is more diverse than ever, both ethnically and socially. The social geography of Amsterdam shows a growing core–periphery divide that underlines important economic and cultural asymmetries. The tradition of public subsidies and regulated housing currently allows for state-led gentrification within inner city neighborhoods. Public support for homeownership is changing the balance between social, middle and high-end housing segments. Changes in the tradition of large-scale interventions and strong public planning are likewise occurring. In times of austerity, current projects focus on small-scale and piecemeal interventions particularly oriented to stimulate entrepreneurialism in selected urban areas and often relate to creative economies and sustainable development. Finally, underlying these trends is a new political landscape composed of upcoming liberal and progressive parties, which together challenge the political equilibriums in the city region     

新自由主义管治下的后奥运规划与开发：以悉尼奥林匹克公园为例

奥运会给主办城市留下的最大物质遗产是奥运基础设施和场馆。后奥运研究文献大多集中在设施和场馆的运营和管理上,而对以它们为基础的后奥运城市开发及其规划则重视不够。撰写此文的目的是为了增加有关后奥运规划和开发的研究成果。我们的方法是案例研究,以悉尼奥林匹克公园为例,分析2000年奥运会之后悉尼所在的新南威尔士州政府如何在新自由主义城市管治理念下继续规划和开发奥林匹克公园。我们的结论是：尽管政府投入巨资修建奥运设施有悖于纯粹新自由主义管治理念,可以看作是新自由主义面对全球化趋势的妥协,但是在后奥运规划和开发上,新自由主义管治所倡导的小政府、公私伙伴关系和政府从土地等资产盈利等却有利于使奥运设施遗产价值最大化。我们希望此文对中国主要城市的有关讨论作出贡献。     

建筑如何形塑城市——台北都市地景的演进个案

随着都市过程的推衍,台北市从旧市街往外扩展,不同时期的作用力透过街廓新的重划与建筑物的填充,将台北打造成一个"食衣住行"的紧凑城市。本文关注于响应都市生活的建筑机能,以及台北市的都市设计操作机制,探讨建筑如何形塑城市的课题。     

Metropolitan governance and strategic planning: a review of experience in Manchester,Melbourne and Toronto

This monograph examines the challenges facing major city regions in coping with dynamic processes of societal change. Particular attention is paid to the structure of metropolitan governance and the contribution of strategic spatial planning frameworks in managing urban development processes, focusing on recent experiences in Greater Manchester, Metropolitan Melbourne and the Greater Toronto Area. The study exemplifies the processes and inherent tensions involved, focusing on issues of economic competitiveness, social equity and cohesion, and the promotion of sustainably compact urban form. Institutional capacity-building measures are set firmly, however, within overarching neo-liberal perspectives, generating considerable tensions that clearly demonstrate the difficulties of translating metropolitan-wide visions into local implementation realities. The study concludes that the growing complexity of multi-nodal metropolitan structures and the increasing significance of interactional networks, linkages and flows within and beyond metropolitan boundaries, makes the task of metropolitan governance problematic.     

Implementing Metropolitan Strategies: Lessons from Melbourne

In 2002, the state government of Victoria, Australia, introduced a new 30-year metropolitan planning strategy for Melbourne. However, its implementation was problematic, at times ineffectual and at others the cause of community conflict. When a new government was elected in 2010 it announced the strategy's abandonment. This article evaluates the Melbourne strategy to examine its shortcomings. It concludes that it lacked the critical components of a clear purpose and vision, ownership, or at least acceptance, by all metropolitan stakeholders, including opposing politicians; and clear guidelines, actions (including expenditure) and regulation for implementation. These findings have relevance for metropolitan strategic planning in cities beyond Australia, as some of the underlying reasons, such as the neoliberal influence on policy, also exist in other city regions around the world.     

The "Creative Class" and the Gentrifying City

This study explores the recent spatial politics of John F. Kennedy Plaza, "Love Park"—a piece of Philadelphia's mid-1960s Penn Center redevelopments. By the turn of the century, Love Park had become a center of a growing international skateboard culture, appearing widely in magazines and videos and on ESPN. In 2002, the city redesigned the park in order to deter the skateboarders, to the vocal protests of a broad-based coalition that included Edmund Bacon and over half the city council members. Through a review of city planning documents, local newspaper reportage, and personal interviews, I argue that the Love Park debates illustrate the extent to which "bohemian" or "countercultural" lifestyles are becoming institutionalized as instruments of urban development.     

Relationship between transit modal split and intra-city trip ratio by car for compact city planning of municipalities in the Seoul Metropolitan Area

Compact-city planning factors are commonly applicable even to metropolitan areas. In most cases, however, planning policies based on theses factors fail to consider that travel patterns are not uniform in each metropolitan area. Furthermore, the travel pattern of inter- and intra-municipality that results from spatial interaction between a central city and its various sub-centres and suburbs in a metropolitan area has not been fully explored. A consideration of the specific urban system could therefore provide an answer to the question of why certain factors have different effects on the transit modal split and car travel distance between municipalities of a metropolitan area. The aim of this study was therefore to find an effective way to establish compact-city planning policies in municipalities of the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA). An investigation of the changed travel pattern in each municipality based on the changed relationship between transit modal split (TMS) and intra-city trip ratio by car (ITR) between 2006 and 2010 found that the SMA became more car-dependent: TMS and ITR of the municipalities declined together, and ITR decreased much more in the outskirts. Based on the relationship between the two factors, the effects of changes in land use and transportation were estimated using a combination of cluster and regression analysis. This revealed that, in municipalities of Seoul and its adjacent sub-centres, there is a need to promote transit-oriented development (TOD) by creating high-density areas within close proximity to city railroad stations. In contrast, it is necessary, in municipalities on the outskirts of the SMA, to restrict large-scale developments, such as large retail centres, and instead promote a mixture of self-sufficient land uses. In the intermediate municipalities that lie between these two, TMS and ITR can be increased through TOD near railroad stations, or ITR alone can be increased through a greater mix of land use. These findings could assist in implementing effective compact-city planning policies in each municipality of the SMA, and could also be applied to the other metropolitan areas in Korea or elsewhere in the world.     

Urban planning in the most liveable city: Vienna

Vienna is a top-ranking city in living quality. To keep the standard despite the fact that it is one of the fastest growing cities within the European Union urban planning becomes a crucial focus Point. Still the city has no ghettos, segregated areas, gated communities and no-go districts and this has to be the same in the future. Vienna has to stay a compact city preventing urban sprawl. Density and quality is a goal and planning processes are focussing on that issue. Vienna's approach can be an answer how to deal with the challenges that many cities faces.     

两型社会视角下紧凑城市规划策略研究

透过建设“两型社会”的视角,分析了两型社会的目标和紧凑城市理念,研究了紧凑城市对于环境保护、资源节约、社会公正等方面的积极作用和其可持续性的特质,提出了紧凑城市规划的策略,以实现预期目标。     

城市规划中地域文化对公共设计的影响

城市规划中,公共建筑与公共文化结合形成独特的文化特色,已成为城市的价值所在,而城市的公共建筑则是城市文化特色的载体。本文通过描述城市规划的内涵以及如何提高城市设计的价值等几个方面进行论证。     

紧凑城市理论在我国城市群协调规划中的应用

城市群作为一种新的社会经济组织方式及文化、生态观的具体地域表现形态,在全球范围内不断涌现并迅速成长。如今,城市群已成为全新的国家参与全球竞争与国际分工的基本地域单元,它的发展深刻影响着国家的国际竞争力,对国家经济持续稳定发展具有重大意义。该文将通过分析城市群的空间组织模式及国内外城市群的发展现状,结合欧洲先进的紧凑城市理论,提出一些促进城市群空间组织优化的思考和建议。     

Meaning of Functionalism

Abstract

This study explores the recent spatial politics of John F. Kennedy Plaza, “Love Park”—a piece of Philadelphia's mid-1960s Penn Center redevelopments. By the turn of the century, Love Park had become a center of a growing international skateboard culture, appearing widely in magazines and videos and on ESPN. In 2002, the city redesigned the park in order to deter the skateboarders, to the vocal protests of a broad-based coalition that included Edmund Bacon and over half the city council members. Through a review of city planning documents, local newspaper reportage, and personal interviews, I argue that the Love Park debates illustrate the extent to which “bohemian” or “countercultural” lifestyles are becoming institutionalized as instruments of urban development.     

The uneven geography of housing affordability stress in Canadian metropolitan areas

Housing in‐affordability is a growing problem within Canadian urban areas. This research asks an as‐yet unanswered spatial question: where do those suffering high rates of housing affordability stress reside and what do the spatial patterns imply about policies intended to address this housing problem? This paper tabulates and maps the spatial distribution of households that pay excessive amounts of their income for rent in order to identify locations within metropolitan regions where housing affordability stress is greatest. It is found that significant unevenness characterises the spatial distribution of housing affordability problems in major Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs). Only a minority of places conform to the North American stereotype that concentrates this problem near the city centre. Where some CMAs have concentrations of the problem in the inner city or, alternatively inner suburb, other metropolitan areas exhibit a more diffuse pattern of housing in‐affordability. The locus of the problem is also variable depending on whether the household is of the family or non‐family type. The interpretation of the uneven patterns relates broadly to features of supply and demand that have been identified in previous research. From both a policy and theoretical perspective this work demonstrates that greater attention needs to be paid to the spatial aspects of housing affordability and to the related, economically‐induced risk of homelessness in Canadian metropolitan areas.