Urban_Planning

Compared with its eastern Mediterranean neighbors, the island of Cyprus is remarkable for the rapid and rather late appearance of urban centers during the Late Bronze Age. Using an approach that focuses on the role of built environments as contexts for social interaction, I argue instead that the first cities were the result of place-making by the various groups and individuals that made up an increasingly complex Late Bronze Age society. This took place at multiple spatial scales from the top-down planning of ruling elites that gave shape to the urban landscape, through the formation of neighborhoods, to the bottom-up actions of individual households and their members. As such, the new urban centers were both product and producers of social life and catalysts for the far-reaching social transformations that characterized the Late Bronze Age on Cyprus.

Il libro individua i progetti di territorio come l’elemento emergente all’incrocio tra azioni integrate di rigenerazione urbana e programmi di sviluppo locale.
La gestione del territorio è cambiata nello scorso decennio. Si sta delineando un quadro comune, uno schema innovativo che –a differenza della pianificazione tradizionale- interpreta il programma come un paniere di iniziative funzionalmente integrate, argomentate da un quadro di coerenze territoriali, sorrette da accordi flessibili ma vincolanti, con esiti non banali e -in linea di principio- valutabili e controllabili.
Non si tratta di requisiti facili. Tuttavia è possibile incontrare tracce di queste innovazioni nelle politiche territoriali e urbane in Italia, laddove si sente più viva l’influenza degli esempi europei.
I temi innovativi vengono esemplificati a partire dalle esperienze migliori ed evidenziano il necessario e non facile dosaggio tra aspettative generali -l’integrazione delle iniziative, la sostenibilità ambientale- e finalità pratiche -la partnership, il coinvolgimento delle forze locali, la capacità gestionale.
La rassegna comprende un campione molto esteso sia in Italia che all’estero. Sono considerate le più mature iniziative della Commissione Europea, Urban per la rigenerazione urbana e Leader per le aree agricole; i programmi di riqualificazione urbana e i Prusst; e in prospettiva i Programmi integrati territoriali che attuano il Quadro comunitario di sostegno alle zone ob. 1.
I numerosi elementi di interesse segnalati dai casi studio gettano luce su alcuni passaggi: l’elaborazione della proposta, il disegno della strategia, il montaggio delle iniziative, la gestione del programma.
Sono gli aspetti critici dell’innovazione in corso, sulla quale si spende facilmente retorica spicciola di scarsa utilità. Il volume indaga invece le soluzioni operative messe a punto dai programmi più avanzati, e illustra pratiche e teorie adeguate alle soluzione dei nuovi problemi.

The paper questions the urban narrative of the divided and underdeveloped city that is usually applied to Rome. Rome has always been considered a backward metropolis, a divided and dependent city, suspended between the modern and industrial North and the (comparatively) rural and traditional South. Since it became the capital of Italy in 1870, the small population that used to live around the Pope’s court has been replaced by those attending to the needs of the civil servants in government jobs, since Rome has in fact a comparatively weak industrial base. However, the administration pushed for the growth of the city, creating the need for a very large inflow of poor immigrants from the Southern countryside.
Besides being limited and empirically inadequate, this raises a crucial theoretical question: how can we describe and understand the change of cities in an age of global rescaling For instance, the two main narratives of globalization and competition, and the critique of the resulting social and spatial division, though opposed, share the same epistemological concern with generalization and explication. But the process of globalization confuses geographical scales, weaves together local and global dimensions, and erases physical and social boundaries.
At the turn of modernity, the city is as solid as ever, though neoliberal developments tend to jeopardize all certainties. The same cannot be said of its representations, that are increasingly less coherent and productive, though encroaching on the imagery of the city and of cities’ policies. Thus, walking on water is somehow required in order to match new social forms and their narratives.
Marc Augé calls ville-monde such new urban environments, as opposed to the global city,  based upon heterogeneity and juxtaposition. Urban space is socially fragmented, and a strict social zoning articulates society and opportunities. Cities change in diverging directions. This calls for a theoretical repositioning, and a paradigmatic turn in urban studies, as claimed recently by a number of scholars from the Global South. A turn that seems able to capture also some of the distinctive features of cities from a more local, European South.

The Changing Italian Cities:
Emerging Imbalances and Conflicts
GSSI Urban Studies - Working Papers 6 | 2014
edited by
Antonio G. Calafati

Le pratiche di ricerca adottate da pianificatori, urbanisti e progettisti sono esplose in corrispondenza all’affermazione delle critiche postmoderne. C’è da chiedersi, trent’anni dopo, quanto si siano giovate delle opportunità offerte e quanto abbiano superato le sfide incontrate. Programmi di ricerca diversi si sono sommati senza entrare in competizione (Allmendiger 2002). Una pluralizzazione così estrema da non costituire vincolo. Ma la libertà metodologica concessa dai nuovi riferimenti è stata assunta in modo a volte confuso, senza dichiarare premesse e oneri teorici; ed è progredita in un evidente vuoto di dibattito, quando non in un patente disinteresse ai problemi della ricerca e valutazione. Una pratica opaca, probabilmente maggioritaria, manifesta una prudenza fin esagerata rispetto alle critiche avanzate in questo periodo; mentre frange più avventurose ma disperse sono a rischio di derive iconoclaste, romantiche e antimoderne forse ormai inattuali. L’antinomia tra modernismo e relativismo può apparire in effetti troppo rigida, mentre si possono mantenere posizioni intermedie di un certo interesse (Beauregard 1991). In questa divaricazione la ricerca urbana italiana si è smarrita, ha perso il contatto con i fenomeni e la capacità di dare spessore alle interpretazioni. Una riflessione matura su questi ultimi tre decenni potrebbe consentire invece qualche positiva scossa

Since the fifties, the designer of the metropolitan cities has become the new officially licensed master participant in the field of architecture. Today, in Egyptian communities, the conditions of the built environment need to reflect a deeper understanding of the principles of Urban Design—the art of the city. Urban design is tangent to the new global movements toward quality of life and the significant visual qualities.
This paper offers an elaborated introduction to the research justification; visual chaos. It focuses on the trend of urban visualization appropriateness toward a good city form in the urban sprawl in Cairo, Egypt. It concentrates on the interactions between visual perception and Everyday Urbanism as a new approach in developing countries. It emphasizes the interactions between geometry and meaning in the art of the city as tool to analysis visual context in Cairo.

Utopian visions and diagrams have engaged in a multitude of relationships. For example, a utopian narrative can be conceived as a diagram, or with the aid of diagrams, and understood through diagrammatic (re) annotation. This notion is explored through an interpretation of Thomas More’s Utopia and Andrea Branzi’s Agronica. Both schemes address various structural conditions through diagrammatic operations. In More’s scheme the channel that separates Utopia from the mainland, dug by its putative founder King Abraxas, inscribes a circular boundary, reiterated in the city walls and moat; it is resonant with contemporaneous rota and volvelle schemata. Conversely, Andrea Branzi’s “mirror simulator” multiplies Agronica’s centrifugal grid to infinity, negating the “outside,” and is evocative of pervasive virtual networks.

This report aims at analyzing the state of today’s knowledge and tools that is relevant for moving European cities towards climate neutrality. The report has been created using both literature sources as well as analyses of case studies from European cites. The main issues dealt with are how the concept of climate neutrality applies to cities, what experiences cities have in planning carbon neutral urban districts and the tools that could be used such as indicators, scenarios and benchmarking.
As the world’s population increases along with higher living standards more greenhouse gases (GHG) are emitted. The migration of the majority of the population into cities creates a possible opportunity to fight these pressures in a more efficient way. This is because cities are large and concentrated emitters of GHG and therefore also a good platform to cut emission. They are also expanding which means that new and modern technology can be introduced in new built districts. Moreover, cities are generally nodes for societal systems, facilitating the production and implementation of innovations.
The concept of climate neutral urban districts is a way to approach the issue of carbon emissions in a smaller more controlled way, creating test beds where new ideas and technologies can be introduced. Climate neutrality aims at developing strategies and actions that avoid global climate change by elimination of carbon emissions arising from anthropogenic activities. However caution should be taken as the concept is not fully developed. Climate neutrality can be seen in many ways and a unified definition cannot be presented yet. However several projects can be identified that experimented with sustainable neighbourhood developments. These projects were amongst the first to directly apply the vision of sustainable development emerging from the UNCED Rio Summit in 1992 and the consequent Agenda 21 action plan. The knowledge and experience gained from these early projects is considerable, and their influence can be seen in a number of CLUEs.
The CLUE case studies show that cities are increasingly moving towards the integration of renewable energy sources and a closed loop metabolism with instruments of planning, design and construction. At present, it can be said that the CLUE project cases show a range of initiatives currently applied in cities across Europe but, for the most part, do not show the application of holistic long term climate change mitigation strategies. Three main issues are considered in this report: frameworks for determining urban GHG emissions, scenario planning for stakeholder participation, and benchmarking the results that are achieved.
In chapter 3 an overview of frameworks is sketched to calculate urban district GHG emissions. One of the main issues is the lack of clarity on what should be accounted for on an urban scale: the imported goods and services as well? The issue about setting the system boundary in a way that the results get trustworthy and transparent is challenging and is still internationally debated.
In chapter 4, the necessity of stakeholder participation is sketched, and what could be achieved by it. In chapter 5, scenario methods are reviewed. It is argued that it is important to distinguish external scenarios (sketching the uncertainties emerging from the outside world) from internal scenarios that are aiming at evaluating longer term impacts of courses of action. It is argued that scenarios are a good tool for providing stakeholders with expertise that is required for participation.
Chapter 6 considers evaluation and benchmarking of CLUEs. Evaluation is valuable and necessary both to secure goal fulfilment and/or to define targets for further progress. The theoretical work within the area of evaluating GHG reduction measures is comprehensive both within general theory of evaluation guidelines but also for environmental and sustainability follow-up. The main function of indicators is the representation of information regarding the complex issues they address. They decrease the number of parameters that are usually necessary to present the situation and simplify the communication of results to the users. New sets of urban indicators are developed for benchmarking best practice in the search for climate neutrality, which are specified in terms of the fabric that serves the city-districts, neighbourhoods and blocks. Based on this approach, new mathematical formulas are used to generate urban sustainability indicators. The pros and cons of this approach are discussed. Using this approach it is possible to compare the performance of city-districts in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emission. This in turn allows each of their respective performances to be benchmarked against one another in terms of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the outcomes of this study, and the challenges for further research and development. It develops 7 characteristics that are of key importance for a successful approach in planning, decision making and operation of a CLUE:
1. A long term future orientation
2. Participation of stakeholders
3. Measuring progress
4. Benchmarking
5. Be sensitive non-climate related impacts of urban planning
6. Being equity sensitive
7. Creating a stepping stone to a Climate Neutral City/society

Urban environment, particularly of dynamic megalopolis cities, is constantly changing in physical and metaphysical forms. Urban fragments are cleared for new construction, redesigned and built up. Buildings or urban designs, implanted in particular context, start interact in active or passive form, causing mutation and transformation of the urban fabric.
On the one hand, Manifest Architecture embodies a certain autonomy, on the other – it is aimed to disturb the tranquility. ‘Kubuswoning’ by Piet Blom, much talked-of Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, The Sydney Opera House provoked, irritated and harbored the ethics, but ethics of nihilism.
Each iconic building as less well known has a bright visual shell and receives instant fame (Jencks, 2005). They are not silent. They scream. However, what is the result? Do the authors achieve the task? Perhaps the autonomy of object should be considered as a temporary phenomenon. In this regard, code of ethics of iconic architecture changes as changes the attitude to its aesthetic content.
Counter-architecture can be counter-only in a specific context, which becomes spatial background. Postmodern assemblage is autonomous visually, but socially, economically and philosophically the object is an active communicator. Urban context is an open system, constantly exchanging information. The city is in a state of disequilibrium, as there is the mobility of environment, the fundamental instability and innovative nature (Prigogine & Stengers 1984). Environmental events (iconic architecture) are changing urban fragment; they are "order parameters", the control parameters (Haken 2006). But environment in turn, defines the appearance and behavior of these events, then there is a " circular causality" (Haken 2006). Urban context and architectural object influence and define each other. According to fact of matter, energy and information exchange between environment and architectural object, it is a natural conclusion that the quality of the building will be reflected in the context and will entail physical (visual) changes in the place design: the number and quality of buildings, social activity; context acquire other aesthetic values. Biography of iconic, alien architectural object and the environment, which it has changed, is the history of aesthetic and ethical mutual influence.
Iconic architecture is precisely a sign, because initially been programmed for a specific effect. Image and the impact of the museum in Bilbao and subsequent objects of this trend had powerful political and economic support as elements of general mechanism for updating the environment. Could we talk in this case about the autonomy?
Is it right that interaction between architecture, which has contrasting characteristics to the context, and the recipient-context carries a maximum possibilities to the urban development? Maybe, It will result the exchange of various information between these two elements (contrast object and context). Typical building projects, mass architecture are the main city background, context. Avant-garde, iconic, architecture, which embodies the author's manifesto and a natural reflection of its time, is regarded as unique in the urban fabric. Charged of creativity potential buildings carry a destructive and creative infection of transformation.

The article examines the role of housing cooperatives for social cohesion in the city by introducing linking social capital which grasps the vertical dimension of social capital. Housing cooperatives represent a crucial intermediate level between residents and urban housing policy, thus, providing opportunity structures for bottom-linked citizen participation. Drawing on the case of Vienna, a large-scale household survey and interviews with key informants provide empirical evidence on the importance of a form of social capital which links actors on different levels in the spatial hierarchy: residents, housing managers and political decision makers. The findings add to our understanding of the opportunities and problems with resident participation in a policy field structured by multi-level governance. Our two-level analysis shows that the dominant model of governance, top-down as well as neoliberal, has structurally limited the room for participatory practices in cooperative housing. Nevertheless, we argue that professional housing cooperatives have a potential to give residents a voice beyond the neighbourhood. Their strong linkages with public decision makers on different scales can help leverage ideas and resources of residents.

(article in press)
Urban self-organisation (USO) undoubtedly is a innovative and edge cutting concept in contemporary urban research and practice.  In this paper we pay tribute on the role of USO in participatory perspective by focusing on the socio-psychological underpinnings of the concept rather then accepting it as an axiomatic truth. The acknowledgment of the socio-psyhological underpinnings of USO in this research embodies the role of proximity, community mobilization and most intriguingly, collective intentionality. In the search of answers, we examine these three aspects of USO with the help of three self-organised community incentives in the Netherlands. The outcome of this research suggests that USO, seen as a socio-psychological phenomenon, has promising role in setting the future agenda of participative planning theory and practice.

This thesis is majorly focuses on the situation of the urban villages of Delhi. Urban villages have evolved and transformed over the period of time and still has intact culture and tradition of villages but developing themselves in the race of urbanization. The housing market in these urban villages of Delhi is attracting majority classes of people to find an accommodation in the city. They are hubs for students, newly migrated, single working males and females and labor class.
Urban villages plays very important role in the functioning of the city by providing the accommodation to the people of Delhi as well as migrating people. The density of urban villages is much higher than other colonies and gradually increasing. Urban villages covered the 38.3% land of the Delhi city but provide the accommodation to more than 60% of people.

Purpose:

Zone 6 of Tehran, with a populations of 220000 people (3.6% of city population) and 20 square kilometers area (3% of city area), is one of the main municipal zones of Tehran (Iran center of statistics, 2006). Major land-uses, like ministries, embassies, universities, general hospitals and medical centers, big financial firms and so on, manifest the high importance of this region on local and national scale. Thus, it is necessary to pay close attention to issues concerning crisis management in this area.

Design/methodology/approach:

In this paper, by employing indexes such as access to medical centers, street inclusion, building and population density, land-use, PGA and building quality, vulnerability degree of street networks in zone 6 against the earthquake is calculated through overlaying maps and data in combination with IHWP method and GIS.

Findings:

This article concludes that buildings alongside the streets with high population and building density, low building quality, far to rescue centers and high level of inclusion represent high rate of vulnerability, compared with other buildings. Also, by moving on from north to south of the zone, the vulnerability increases. Likewise, highways and streets with substantial width and low building and population density hold little values of vulnerability. Thus, streets with high level of inclusion, building and population density present further vulnerability.

Originality/value:

It is expected that the results of this paper be used by the urban decision makers. Due to high vulnerability of most parts of the urban textures of Tehran, similar researches will have importance for preparation for the future possible earthquakes.

What may a major global financial crisis actually look like? How may it feel, what kind of form and shape may it take in the mundane and in the common, in the spaces of our everyday coexistence?

These questions had been tormenting the crisis-scape project from the outset, questions that we in turn posed to our guests at our concluding conference that took place in Athens in May this year. Rather than trying to reflect upon the conference as a whole (which would have been a nearimpossible task, with its twenty-two contributions in total), this Special Feature has chosen to focus on highlighting a relationship between it and the previous outcome of the crisis-scape.net team: the documentary Future Suspended. An experimental play, in a sense, between the main structure that we ourselves had set for our documentary—and by extension, the structure of our research project as a whole—and the contributions presented in Athens during those early May days. The conversation is intriguing, even if not entirely pre-planned; could it be so for that exact reason?