Arrival City — Application of the Game Theories in Renewal of Low-Density Urban Villages

Offering an alternative planning and design strategy of renewals of low-density urban villages, this research estimates potentials of increasing a city’s accommodation capacity of low-skilled labor force through economic approaches like the Game Theories. A design idea of creating an “arrival city” is proposed in the prototypical study on the renewal of the Ganjiazhai Community, a typical urban village in Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province. Developing spatial patterns through a series of evidence-based deductions and estimations, this research forms a node-axis framework of urban planning and design that allows for an adaptive combination of spatial modules and encourages spatial sharing, which might shine a reference for future planning and design of urban villages in Chinese cities.     

Fostering Urban Digital Integrated Systems: The Case of Carrè Laval,Canada

City governments are embracing digital technologies to improve hard and soft urban systems, so as to create and improve urban experiences, foster an entrepreneurial city, as well as devise novel services that can improve the livability of citizens and boost the local economy. Unlike traditional infrastructure and urban systems, which tend to be natural monopolies, data-driven digital platforms can engage multiple stakeholders simultaneously. This article, introducing the notion of hybrid urban digital integrated systems, proposes a methodology aims at the integration of digital and physical elements in urban environments. We based our discussion on the work developed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Senseable City Lab, which focused on the integration of the digital-technology-based solutions in Carré Laval of the city of Laval, Canada. As the result of the workshop, six projects have been developed by students, namely, “Activating Surface,” “Infinite memories,” “Fora,” “iTable,” “MinecARft,” and “Foodprint.”These designs aim at promoting civic engagement as intrinsic elements of the re-appropriation and redesign of this severely underutilized site. The human-centered designs rooted in specific context will help digital technologies embedded in the city and increase the attractiveness of the city to local and new stakeholders.     

HIGH-QUALITY URBAN ENVIRONMENT OUT OF SLOW DESIGN: REVIEW AND PROSPECT OF URBAN DESIGN PRACTICES IN CHINA

Driven by unprecedented urbanization and everchanging applied technologies, urban planners and designers are exploring how to create comfortable living experience in fast-paced cities, thus rises the concept of “slowing city.” By reviewing years of design practices of Sasaki Associates, this article is focused on the core idea of “slowing city,” i.e., “making good use of local resources,” and its application into a number of urban regeneration practice. Further, by taking “user demands” as a critical reference, the article discusses how to coordinate the interests of a wide range of user groups and then facilitate cooperation among the government, citizens, and designers to ensure the long-term benefits of construction projects. Finally, critical thoughts are given to how the emerging technologies could contribute to urban construction and life quality, and the new opportunity that they may bring to the planning and design industry.     

ON THE “TRIO” OF BEAUTIFUL CITIES

Urban quality improvement and the construction and management of high-quality beautiful cities have been considered a prioritized initiative across China. Beautiful cities are built on the harmony and symbiosis between human and the nature. This only route to sustainable development consists of three dimensions: 1) the deep structure of the beautiful city, i.e. a good site selection that realizes an interwoven pattern between urban matrix and natural ecological network, which could be reflected in spatial configurations of both “the city in nature” and “the nature in the city”; 2) the deep appearance and style of the beautiful city, deriving from the natural topography, process, and climatic conditions to guarantee the ecological adaptation to the nature; and 3) the green lifestyle of the beautiful city, which guides citizens to green living, green traveling, and green consumption so as to reserve sufficient development space for generations. This is the “trio” of beautiful cities. Drawing lessons from the conflicts with the nature in the past civilizations, the ecological civilization is the only way to achieve the human-nature harmony.     

城市滨水工业区的治理与重生:美国休斯敦港景观规划设计

With the increase of population in big cities, urban industrial districts are constantly seeking new development to realize the conversion from single-functional to multifunctional systems, to equip the city with diverse public spaces. The Port of Houston operates at the dynamic confluence of industry, transportation, and ecological systems, and has been a major driver of Houston’s economic growth over the last century. However, behind the prosperous economic growth, the port suffers from the isolation with the surrounding communities. Based on the “2045 Port Houston Master Plan,” the Landscape Planning and Design for the Port of Houston project focuses on urban space activation and ecological environment restoration through landscape planning and design methods, while facing the challenges of ecological environment, urban spatial pattern repositioning, and other urban issues. The project is expected to build an economically, socially, and ecologically healthy industrial waterfront zone. Port Houston, beyond its primary function as an economic driver, becomes a more visible and substantial force in urban governance of advancing the region’s activation and resilience.     

Development trend of urban design in “digital age”: Pan-dimensionality and individual-ubiquity

The wave of “digital age” featuring digital information is coming. Digital technology is profoundly changing the societal development direction and evolution paths. It also has significant bearing on production modes, social interactions and lifestyles. With regard to urban design, a system of knowledge about the creation and adaptation of material space forms that integrate humanities, art, technology and materials, digital technology has provided it with a brand-new and revolutionary scientific impetus for its evolution. The result of this evolution is “digital urban design paradigm based on human-computer interaction”, i.e., the urban development is moving toward “pan-dimensionality” and “individual ubiquity”. The future of urban design will construct a new approach to urban research and engineering, which is more complex, capable of accommodating and compatible with multiple goals of “instrumental rationality” and “value rationality”. Such a new approach shall be led by the probabilistic theory of “gray scale thinking”, reflecting quaternary synergetic view of “scientific rationality, ecological rationality, cultural rationality and technical rationality” to realize the cognitive progress of “engineering for the benefit of mankind”.     

RESILIENT URBAN DESIGN METHODS AND PRINCIPLES BASED ON THE COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM THEORY

Uncertainty exists in the current urban development of contemporary cities and is getting diversified and complicated. Identifying and adapting to such uncertainty is partly defining the future development of urban planning and design. The concept of “resilient city” is developed from the current scientific demands in urban planning and design. This article suggests that Complex Adaptive System as a new system theory would help resilient city planning and construction. According to the Complex Adaptive System theory, a resilient city should possess the adaptability of its components, diversity, autonomy, appropriate redundancy, slow-variable management, and identification, in order to improve the ecological, social, and economic resilience and vitality of the city.     

疗愈性街景元素识别与评价研究

The street is a type of important urban public space with multiple social values, one of which is the restorative potential. Based on the “beingaway,” “extent,” “fascination,” and “compatibility” constructs of restorative environments proposed by the Attention Recovery Theory, this study elaborated the significance of restorativeness provided by street environments to people living in high-density cities. It used the traditional restorativeness scale with mobile eye trackers to explore the restorative experience provided by an urban street, and identified the specific streetscape elements related to restorativeness and the degree of their influences. The results show that “greenery,” “people,” and “cars” perform significant influences, and different streetscape elements have different degrees of influences on the 4 constructs of the restorative environment. For example, for the“being-away,” “extent,” and “fascination” constructs, the influence of “greenery” is the most important, while “people” plays the core role in “compatibility.” The findings can help professionals develop targeted design strategies to improve diverse street environments for a better restorativeness.     

Morphology of quarters in traditional Arab Islamic city: A case of the traditional city of Damascus

Studies on the quarters of traditional Arab Islamic cities have stressed the idea of an urban structure that corresponds to social groupings and to a collection of local regions or even of “inchoate” neighborhood units. This spatial model has often provided the rationale for the intervention in these cities and in the design of new housing layouts. This study aims to examine this issue through syntactic measures and observations to describe and analyze the structure and morphology of quarters through connectivity and visibility analysis of pedestrian movement through space syntax. Whether the structure of these cities presents a global whole in contrast to the assumptions of physical subareas of social groupings is discussed. The city of Damascus is used as a model of analysis in which the urban morphology of quarters is described and characterized. This study reports several findings that are potentially relevant to the understanding of traditional laws that relate the physical layout of quarters to the social structure and their local subareas to the global whole that dominate and unify the parts. On this basis, the design approach in these cities may be better understood.     

Metropolitan spatial structure analysis based on the identification of commuting zones with Nanjing City as an example

Commuting zone research is critical to the understanding of the operational rules of the metropolitan spatial structure and improving spatial performance. This study aims to identify the main commuting centers and zones by using cellular data with Nanjing City as the example. This study analyzes the operational features of the internal spatial structures of the city from two dimensions by merging multi-source data, namely, commuting centers and zones, thus achieving an understanding of the existing problems with the urban spatial structures and their internal causes. Results showed that the commuting zones of Nanjing are distributed in a pattern of “multiple commuting centers”, with Xinjiekou–Hunan Road and Hongwu Road–Chaotiangong–Shuangtang as the core, Mochou Lake as the main commuting area, and Dongshan and Jiangpu as the secondary commuting zones. Significant differences and similarities are discovered in our comparisons along the two dimensions of commuting zones and centers in terms of spatial structural factors, such as land use, transportation, and commuting in the city. The similarity is shown as a common declining trend in the values of all our indicators with the increase in the distance of commuting zones from the city center. However, the differences are significant in terms of the clustering features of the various parameters concerning commuting centers and zones. Specifically, four clustering patterns are discovered, namely, “monocentric clustering”, “circular monocentric clustering”, “polycentric clustering”, and “sparsely dotted distribution”. This study sheds light on the existing problems with the city’s spatial structure and proposes some overall suggestions toward urban spatial structure improvement on the basis of these findings.     

Evolution of the “Golden Royal City”: Analytical study on urban forms of ancient capital cities in Myanmar

The historical cities in Southeast Asia with distinct characteristics are an important part of Asia's cultural heritage system and the ancient capitals of Myanmar are as an example of these civilizational achievements. Their urban forms through history are essential spatial carriers reflecting the traditional local planning thinking. However, the overall understanding has yet to form due to a lack of systematic research. This study aims to complement it by studying the urban forms of almost all Myanmar's ancient capitals based on verifiable spatial elements, works of literature, archaeology documents and field survey. The location, boundary and layout elements are analyzed to classify and characterize these urban forms, and their evolution rules are then summarized. Furthermore, the urban planning characteristics are discussed, indicating that the regulated structure and distinctive image gradually formed, accompanied by increasingly mature planning thinking and methods. The study reveals that the urban form and the planning thinking of Myanmar's ancient capital cities had undergone an evolution with its own characteristics and that the “Golden Royal City” is of unique value in the genealogy of Asian capitals. The findings will contribute to the mutual learning between civilizations and provide a scientific foundation for the heritage conservation.     

Quality of public space and sustainable development goals: analysis of nine urban projects in Spanish cities

The starting point of this research is the urban model promoted by the United Nations through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The importance of public spaces is especially highlighted in Goal 11.7: “provide universal access to safe, inclusive, and accessible, green, and public spaces.” The quality of public spaces can be properly assessed by reconsidering the quality indicators and investigating their development potential, which is the main focus of our research. This study is based on a theoretical and methodological reflection on the quality of public space, considering the contributions of some contemporary urban traditions and a few recent experiences. From this perspective, a variety of public space projects developed in the European sphere have been selected and analyzed. The quality parameters identified in this initial analysis were then applied to the analysis of nine representative case studies in three Spanish cities (Madrid, Barcelona, and Zaragoza). The main goal is to propose a methodology that helps to evaluate the quality of those public spaces and determine its relationship with the safety, accessibility, and inclusiveness conditions they offer.     

互联网时代下城市空间品质提升与特色保护

In this interview, three scholars discussed the problems in China’s urban renewal practice in the Internet Era and the context of inventory development. They first reviewed the factors that impact the characteristics and identity of urban space, and pointed out that urban renewals should not neglect the social, cultural, artistic, historical, and ecological qualities of space. They then underscored the aesthetic education will be future research and practice interest in the field of urban renewal. They noted that, under the impact of “attention economy” and ”online influence,” urban spatial construction across Chinese cities would be homogenized, compromising the diversity of spatial characteristics. Nonetheless, urban planners and designers can leverage the online platforms as communication channels and resources for the protection of spatial characteristics and identities, and to foster new urban development paradigms. In addition, the scholars believed that the public should have a greater discourse power in urban renewals, which requires the the promotion of Community Co-building Initiative, and designers’ efforts in promoting related research and education programs. In the end, they discussed the challenges faced by the protection of historical sites, including the outdated urban governance methods, flawed urban development institution, and the lack of funds due to the slowdown of economic growth. They also encouraged designers to respond to these challenges with long-term, proactive, and innovative perspectives, truly meeting citizens’ daily needs, improving urban governance methods, optimizing urban renewal mechanisms, and impelling the growth of local economy.     

近现代东北城市规划理念及现实启示

近现代时期对于东北地区城市的兴起和发展起着十分重要的作用。文章在分析近现代东北城市建设相关历史背景的基础上,进一步研究近现代城市规划与建设的不同理念以及由此衍生的不同城市空间形态和特色,进一步以此为借鉴,探索对当代城市规划理念的现实启示。     

Working With Wilderness: A Promising Direction for Urban Green Spaces

Wilderness is a cultural construct that is deeply rooted in many societies. For landscape architects and their predecessors, wilderness has long been important as a contrast to artificial garden elements, as an inspiration for naturalistic plant designs, or today as a timely contribution to reconciling cities and their inhabitants with the natural world. Since cities and wilderness have traditionally been seen as opposites, new approaches are necessary to better address the opportunities and challenges associated with wilderness in urban regions. From an ecological perspective, urban wilderness can be defined as an area characterized by a high degree of self-regulation in ecosystem processes where direct human impact is negligible. This allows two main types of wilderness to be distinguished: “ancient wilderness” represented by natural remnants in many cities, and “novel wilderness,” which arises in artificial urban-industrial sites. The two types require different approaches in designing and managing green spaces. Ancient wilderness is a traditional object of conservation and restoration, and offers inspiration for naturalistic plantings. In contrast, the emergence of novel wilderness has long been associated with neglect and socio-economic decline. Since the 1980s, however, early pioneer projects in Germany have started to integrate novel urban wilderness into the green infrastructure. The results are unprecedented green spaces that combine novel wilderness with design interventions. These places are attractive to visitors, contribute to biodiversity conservation, and support many ecosystem services. This article aims to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of integrating wilderness components and processes into the urban green infrastructure—a timely way to reconnect cities with nature.     

留白: 将城市虚空转变为公共空间

Cities are spatial aggregations of capital and culture that host and serve a vast array of different and often contradictory publics. For this reason, cities need spaces that accept and encourage multiple types of representations and forms of expression: planned and spontaneous, regulated and unregulated, permanent and temporary. This essay argues that emptiness is a spatial quality that can satisfy these needs and that urban voids are a paradigmatic example of empty spaces. The term “void” implies that these spaces are emptied of the value typically associated with cities as places of capital accumulation. But this emptiness (of capital, real estate value, efficacy, or production) is what enables other sensibilities and opportunities to emerge. In other words, a lack of value is what makes these vacant spaces appear as marginal, and this marginality is precisely what gives the urban voids the possibilities for publicness that other urban spaces do not have. Despite the social opportunities offered by urban voids, the evanescence of emptiness ultimately exposes the limits of urban voids.     

Reactivate Sarajevo Now— The Regeneration Design for the Historical Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina

In times of radical change, we need to look into cities as laboratories. A sheer unlikely candidate for such an urban laboratory is the city of Sarajevo. Yet, the city’s turbulent past of alternating periods of construction and destruction and the variety of social, cultural, and political layers in its built environment reveal challenges and potentials relevant to the state of many contemporary cities around the globe. Sarajevo’s discontinuous political, social, and historical development has created a bricolage city. By highlighting the existing local socio-cultural and ecological systems, the Urban-Think Tank’s “Reactivate Sarajevo” project aims not only to contribute to a post-war revitalization of the Bosnian capital but also to produce, from the experience of this extraordinary city, lessons of wider, possibly global significance.     

Eight Reflections on Quantitative Studies of Urban Green Space: A Mapping-Monitoring-Modeling-Management (4M) Perspective

Green space is an important component in urban environment, providing considerable ecosystem services to our socio-economic-cultural activities. Metrics designed to capture green space provision, supply and demand, measuring availability, accessibility, and visibility have been widely adopted to gauge progress toward achieving sustainable development goals from local to regional scales. In this article, we offer eight reflections on quantitative studies of urban green space for mapping, monitoring, modeling, and management (4M) practices in landscape design and planning. The article’s objective is to stimulate fresh and innovative thinking in the conversion of data to interventions. Eight points are made: 1) Green space mapping should be characterized in a multi-attribute conceptual model, including quantity, quality, type, and structure; 2) green space mapping sources, methods, and uses vary by definitions, approaches, and scales; 3) phenology modifies seasonal quality and quantity of urban green space; 4) spatial and temporal green space data cubes will help realize the goal of near real-time monitoring of urban green space change; 5) green space coverage reveals green space supply, but green space exposure can capture effective demand via modeling the supply–demand relationships of human–green space; 6) green space exposure measures should account for spatial, temporal, and social differences; 7) greening optimization by landscape architects and planners should consider both biophysical, biodiversity, and health benefits; and 8) urban green space management should be strategized with a long-term view. Finally, we advocate data–science–decision support systems that can help guide and promote 4M practices of urban green space. These points of reflection have broad implications for research, practice, and theory of urban green landscape design, planning, and management, and altogether constitute a set of principles that can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward strategizing optimal 4M of urban green space.     

Calling Time: Managing Activities in Space and Time in the Evening/Night-time Economy

Recent years have seen the emergence of two policy objectives and associated development trends in UK city centres relating to urban vitality and to the urban renaissance policy agenda. These involve a shift towards more city centre residential development and, associated with the 24-Hour City agenda, a shift towards the development of evening/night-time economies (ENTEs). Mixed land uses are seen as an essential component of this vitality. But conflicts often arise from different land uses in close proximity, which, in turn, suggests a need for the sensitive management of urban areas in general and the ENTE in particular. Focusing on the management of activities in space and time in the ENTE of UK cities, this article explores how planning and liquor licensing controls, the two main sets of contextual controls for the ENTE, provide both the context for more active forms of management and policing and frame an opportunity space for behaviour and conduct. The article's overarching argument is that the management of the ETNE should be considered in terms of a fine-grained understanding of space and time.     

德国城市空间秩序的理性主义之变

本文以德国城市空间秩序的演变为研究对象,分析了其从"自发的城市"到"设计的城市"、从拥挤的工业城市到"反城市"的田园城市、再从传统德国城市秩序到现代主义城市新秩序的城市实践历程,并指出德国城市空间秩序的转变伴随着对理性主义的不断追求和建设、反思与回归的交相更替,对这一段历史的研究将有助于我们更加深刻地理解今天的中国城市。