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.     

The local governance of culture-led regeneration projects: a comparison between Montreal and Toronto

This article analyses culture-led regeneration processes in the context of two case studies. We analyse the roles of urban stakeholders and the adaptation of regeneration strategies in two different local planning cultures: Toronto and Montreal. The two regeneration projects analysed are the redevelopment of the Toronto Entertainment District and a real-estate project proposal within the ‘Quartier des Spectacles’ in Montreal. The analysis highlights the specific planning culture embedded in local governance, aligned with two distinct applications of the creative city concept.     

New Socio-ecological Imperatives for Cities: Possibilities and Dilemmas for Australian Metropolitan Governance

This review examines two new socio-ecological imperatives that have the potential to reshape planning practice and policy: urban climate governance and governance for resilience. The roots of the new imperatives lie in international city collaborative networks funded by philanthropy organisations that operate at city scale. City networks operating at the metropolitan scale raise issues for Australian cities with distributed governance. This practice review considers the early manifestation of both imperatives in what might be termed ‘policy experiments’ in Australia’s two largest cities: the new climate governance framework emerging through the City of Sydney’s collaboration with the C40 network and the resilience regime being shaped by the City of Melbourne’s partnership with Rockefeller Foundation’s Resilient 100 program. Whilst our early analysis has accentuated the positive to some degree, pointing to different, if preliminary, forms of success in both Sydney and Melbourne, the limits and frustrations that present in both contexts cannot be discounted. Urban planners in many world cities and regions will need to consider and possibly absorb these new agendas of urban climate governance and governing for resilience driven by international city collaborative networks.     

The ‘desiccator difficulty’: surprise,indignation and the local politics of planning for sanitary technology in nineteenth century Melbourne

ABSTRACT

‘Desiccators’, large machines that used steam and beaters to reduce waste into powder that could be sold as fertilizer, were one solution put forward in response to late nineteenth century Melbourne’s sanitation problems. Despite some initial enthusiasm for them, challenges with finding locations for desiccators were soon dubbed the ‘Desiccator Difficulty’. The ‘Desiccator Difficulty’ is one, all but forgotten, story of the fragmented governance contributing to Melbourne’s delays in coordinating a metropolitan sewerage system. This paper examines desiccators as a story with parallels in and legacies for planning today. It focuses on the role of local property-based conflicts – arguing these constituted emergent forms of planning, underscoring an increasing urban separation and control later embodied in metropolitan planning and infrastructure. Fragmented standoffs and bylaws also rationalized spatial disparities – with suburban municipalities refusing to house desiccators, nightsoil was sent to outer shires for decades. The paper argues Melbourne’s socio-technical transition to metropolitan sewerage and governance occurred not because water-borne technology was necessarily superior, but because legal assumptions and property interests made alternatives difficult to maintain. Desiccators are examples of ‘muddling’ details that belie simple narratives of technological change, and which have implications for how wider urban environmental change occurs and is understood.     

创新街区的场所营造研究

“城兴人,人兴业”的城市发展新逻辑下,创新街区正成为城市新一轮发展的重要动力。在创新主导的创新街区建设中,“场所营造”成为街区吸引创新人才、促进知识产生、集聚创新活动的关键策略,是促进街区提高创新活力的重要路径。本文基于创新街区的实践和文献的综合分析,发现创新街区在场所的环境、结构、功能、氛围和意象等场所营造领域具有广泛的共同性,据此提出创新街区场所营造的“iFACE”概念化分析模型,并以全球典型创新街区案例为对象进行归纳,总结出创新街区提升吸引力和激发创新活力的场所营造举措,为“国家双创”和“城市修补”背景下我国城市的创新发展提供参考借鉴。     

New State Spaces and Contested Territories: A Critical Analysis of Joint Regional Planning Panels

This article critically analyses the Joint Regional Planning Panels (JRPPs), a series of planning panels in the New South Wales planning system predominantly made up of appointed planning experts to determine ‘regionally significant development’. The stated intent of the JRPPs is to improve objectivity and transparency in planning decision-making, however, this has come at the expense of the traditional role of local councils in determining planning applications. Key to this analysis are Brenner's concept of ‘new state spaces’ as evolutionary models of urban governance which act between conventional levels and hierarchies of political authority, and Allmendinger and Haughton's conceptualisation of new state spaces of planning operating in ‘soft spaces’ and ‘fuzzy boundaries’. This article explores the changing nature and function of the JRPPs since their establishment in 2009, and highlights that while opportunities exist for new state spaces to ‘harden’ as enduring tiers of urban governance, there is a pervasive need for connections between territory and politics to give popular legitimacy to permanent shifts of authority.     

Space of Risk: The Contribution of Planning Policies to Conflicts in Cities,Lessons from Nazareth

This article defines a new concept, ‘Space of risk’, as a lived space that has low levels of trust among different urban groups; where people feel vulnerable and defenseless against terrorizing, urban clashes and riots. Based on a qualitative study, the article examines this concept in the city of Nazareth, which has been in turmoil since the introduction of a plan for a plaza. The article concludes that the reasons that may strongly contribute to the production of spaces of risk are: lack of the right to the city for urban inhabitants; the hegemony of the state over the city through ‘ethnocratic’ urban policies; the hegemony of global forces and neo-liberal agendas over the locale; deficient local politics; absence of communicative planning procedures; and contradictions between planners conception of the place and the way inhabitants conceive and experience it in their daily life practices. As planning has the power of creating and triggering risks in cities, the article suggests some practical ways for planners to avoid the production of spaces of risk through new techniques of collaborative planning.     

Speculation and Resistance: Constraints on Compact City Policy Implementation in Melbourne

Compact city policies such as Melbourne 2030 have been established in Australia for a range of reasons including climate change. It is now clear that the Melbourne 2030 policy has not been effective—with new development mostly on the urban fringe. This policy failure has often been sheeted home to resident and local government resistance to densification. This article suggests this narrative is insufficient to explain this failure at a metropolitan-wide scale and is clearly mistaken in one suburb, where aspects of the planning system appear to thwart the aims of strategic policy by encouraging speculation and producing vacant sites. Brunswick is an inner-city suburb with good opportunities for intensification adjacent to transit lines and on former industrial sites. In spite of resident resistance, 80 per cent of new dwellings proposed between 2002 and 2007 were approved for construction, and would have increased housing stock by 13 per cent. However, by 2009 just under half of all approved dwellings had been completed or commenced on site, while construction of the taller and higher density projects tended to stall, the sites having been on-sold and permits extended. We suggest developers anticipate that the planning system will ultimately approve significant increases in height and density, using Melbourne 2030 to over-ride local policy via appeals to the Planning Tribunal. Such permits produce significant capital gains that can be cashed without construction. We argue that elements of the Victorian planning system encourage ambit claims, contestation, cynicism and speculation, thwarting negotiations between residents, councils and developers towards a more compact city. The focus on the idea that resident resistance is the problem obscures the role the planning system itself plays in frustrating the goals of compact city policy.     

The ‘valley of ashes’ and the ‘fresh green breast’: metaphors from The Great Gatsby in planning New York

ABSTRACT

Visions in planning of what a city could or should be tend to be constructed around metaphors, rhetorical tropes that crystalize the image of a preferable future city. Such metaphorizations are never innocent: they draw on pre-existing cultural narratives and activate particular frames of expectation. This article examines two metaphors used in the planning of New York City, and its shores, in particular: the spectre of the ‘valley of ashes’ and the dream of the ‘fresh green breast’. These metaphors, taken from F. Scott Fizgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925), appear time and again in the planning and thinking of the New York shoreline, from Robert Moses’s plans for Flushing Meadow to Major Bloomberg’s waterfront development and Eric Sanderson’s vision of a 2406 New York in Mannahatta (2006). This article examines how the metaphors of the ‘valley of ashes’ and the ‘fresh green breast’ have been adapted throughout decades of planning New York City to accommodate changing relationships, conflicts and ideals, always infused by a pastoral undercurrent that is already questioned in Fitzgerald’s novel.     

Contemporary Production and Urban Change: The Case of Milan

ABSTRACT

How do new sites of production and workplaces relate to the making of urban change in Milan’s peripheral areas? The paper answers this question by looking at two different fields of investigation related to peripheral areas. On one hand, the paper examines the policies promoted by the public administration at the municipal level to enhance urban innovation through new workplaces within the smart city agenda. On the other hand, the urban innovation brought by the establishment of cultural and creative industries promoted by private actors will be examined, ranging from the new geography of creative places to the creation of temporary transformations. Starting from these two fields of analysis, the paper identifies areas of difference and potential combined effects between public action and private initiative. These are placed against the backdrop of a conception of contemporary production that has worked as a tool for social inclusion and place-making in peripheral contexts in Milan.     

Toronto: Paradigm Reexamined

There is currently a debate about the extent to which Toronto can serve as a model for transport and land-use planning policies in Australian cities. Proponents of the ‘Toronto model’ argue that the city has achieved high rates of public transport patronage through a combination of policies including the integration of transport and land-use planning. Much of the debate turns on definitional arguments about ways of measuring public transport patronage, population density and other relevant factors. This paper reviews the evidence, using consistent and rigorous definitions, and compares Toronto with Melbourne. It concludes that Toronto is indeed a model of successful public transport, with a relatively high trip-making rate that has been maintained over many decades. It also concludes, however, that this success relative to Melbourne is not explained by land-use patterns. The differences in population density and distribution between the two cities are smaller than previously thought, and the differences that do exist do not correlate with the differences in transport patterns.     

Changing neighbourhood character in Melbourne: point Cook a case study

In the past two decades, Melbourne has been subjected to diverse pressures due to its changing scale and function within the global system of cities. Among many other features of the new phase in Melbourne’s urban transformation are its new suburbs which have proliferated in large numbers at the city’s urban fringe. Characteristic of these suburbs is a new urban character which has evolved as a by-product of a pre-defined and controlled mechanism in planning, design and implementation of housing developments. The objective of this paper is to investigate the process that determines the evolution of this new character; examining the role of local planning authorities and developers in shaping the built environment. Firstly, the paper discusses the definition of neighbourhood character and its interpretation among academics, policy makers, planners, urban designers, developers and real estate agents. Then in a three-step process the nature, quality and style of neighbourhood character in Point Cook are investigated through analysis of Council policies and through review of developer statements on character building and place-making. Lastly to understand how the idea of character is constructed and enacted by local residents of Point Cook, a survey was administered for the residents.     

Whose City is it? On Urban Planning and Local Knowledge in Globalizing Tel Aviv-Jaffa

This article focuses on the variety of images, perceptions and social constructions about a city articulated by the different ‘actors’ which use and shape globalizing urban settings. The actors in focus are mainly the planners (representing the authoritative aspects of planning and city management) and the residents of the city (those who enjoy or are adversely affected by different planning visions and projects). Planners mainly use their professional knowledge, which they obtained from formal education. Residents built up their perceptions and images of the city in a more intuitive way, from their daily routine practices in the city. Following this, the article explores the intricate and sometimes complicated relations between the various types of knowledge involved in the planning process with the aim to find out whose perceptions of the city are incorporated in the planning processes. Focusing on knowledge as a base for formulating cityscapes stems from a personal position and experience as planners, as members of a planning team, nominated by the Tel Aviv Municipality to devise a ‘new strategic plan’ for the Central Bus Station (CBS) area in the city. The article begins with a short introductory background, describing the social and economic situation of Jewish residences and non-Jewish labour migrants of the CBS area in Tel Aviv. It then outlines some theoretical frameworks regarding the different perceptions of this area by the different ‘actors’ involved in its production. The article concludes with some insights regarding the ways that globalizing cities are planned and managed.     

The concept of polycentricity in European spatial planning: reflections on its interpretation and application in the practice of spatial planning

The concept of polycentric development has emerged as one of the hallmarks of the emerging field of European spatial planning. It was one of the key principles in the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), it has been frequently debated by academics, and it has been invoked by those engaged in spatial development policy making across the scales of multi-level governance in Europe. The concept is subject to multiple interpretations. This article argues that as well as being differentiated by spatial scale (vertical differentiation), the concept can also be differentiated horizontally by context. It is currently being interpreted and employed in at least three domains of meaning: in the emerging field of transnational spatial planning for Europe; in the practice of spatial development policy making at the various levels of multi-level territorial governance within Europe where planning occurs; and in an emerging academic discourse relating to European spatial planning. The article then focuses on the second domain where polycentricity is employed and has meaning ascribed to it, through a consideration of how the concept has been interpreted and applied in recent spatial planning initiatives in England. The article concludes that further ‘bottom-up’ comparative research and analysis is key to future research into the concept of polycentricity in European spatial planning.     

Urban regeneration through cultural creativity and social inclusion: Rethinking creative city theory through a Japanese case study

This paper aims to rethink creative city theory by analyzing urban regeneration processes in Japan through cultural creativity and social inclusion. The impact of Florida’s theory has led to the common misperception that cities prosper as people of the creative class, such as artists and gays, gather. However, attracting people of the creative class does not automatically make a creative city. Empirical analyses of Kanazawa City, clarify that the creative city needs a ‘culture-based production system’, a well-balanced system of cultural production and cultural consumption that takes advantage of accumulated cultural capital. This paper also examines Osaka City, where creative city policies failed to produce adequate results because they did not take root as a comprehensive urban strategy. However, in spite of these failures, a lively and inclusive grassroots movement has emerged around the creative city. This movement brings Osaka towards being a socially-inclusive creative city.     

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.     

Ciudad Jardín Lomas del Palomar: deriving ecocity design lessons from a garden city

Ciudad Jardín Lomas del Palomar is a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, designed by the German immigrant Dr Erich Zeyen in 1944. Zeyen based Ciudad Jardín on Ebenezer Howard's garden city ideals and designs, which had gained a strong influence in Germany at that time in architecture and urban planning. Like garden city communities elsewhere, Ciudad Jardín was intended to create an urban environment suffused in ample public and private green spaces. This little-known South American garden city-inspired neighbourhood offers a unique learning opportunity about the role of social and political forces in historic preservation and planning, and about the value of urban planning based on green infrastructure as revealed by a society with comparatively little environmental awareness or historic preservation values. The article is based on original research carried out by the author in Argentina.     

海绵城市建设融入国土空间规划体系的路径与方法研究

海绵城市是城市开发建设的新模式,是未来城市转型发展的新趋势,将海绵城市建设融入国土空间规划体系,是优化自然资源资产配置、提高城市发展质量的迫切需求。文章首先对海绵城市和国土空间规划体系的概念进行了界定;其次根据一定的选择原则,形成了总体规划和详细规划落实海绵城市建设的内容体系;最后对每项海绵城市建设的规划内容给出了在具体项目中可实际操作的方法和技术要点。     

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.