Housing need assessments in San Francisco,Vancouver, and Melbourne: normative science or neoliberal alchemy?

Abstract

Governments in much of the Global North have responded to dramatic increases in house prices and rents by setting supply-side targets for new housing in regional and local plans, based on calculations of need. We apply social constructionism to assess widely divergent needs assessments underlying housing strategies in San Francisco, US; Vancouver, Canada; and Melbourne, Australia. In San Francisco, authorities use an approach required by the state government that ignores overcrowding and other ‘invisible’ criteria. In Vancouver, authorities have taken an ambitious approach that goes beyond a minimum quantum of affordable housing to discuss limits to market production. In Melbourne, the state government has chosen to ignore its own commissioned needs assessment to de-prioritize concerns around affordable housing shortages. We conclude by recommending that planners apply greater rigor in housing needs assessments, that can inform public debates around more equitable housing policy.     

温哥华城市规划编制的模式、机制与启示

温哥华的城市规划管理系统被称为“自由裁量规划系统”。这城市规划管理系统融合了英国和美国两种不同的管理模式。英式城市规划管理注重自由裁量权在管理过程中的应用,而美式规划管理则依靠详细的法定分区图则,在决策过程中更偏重对清晰原则的依赖。而在温哥华,看似矛盾的两个系统共同存在,并实现了完美结合。在这一管理系统中,城市规划可分为政策研究、官方发展规划和分区图则3个层面。     

What the Neighbors Want: The Neighborhood Revitalization Program's First Decade

This article examines the first decade of Minneapolis' Neighborhood Revitalization Program. It seeks to frame the endogenously derived wishes of the city's residents within the power and resources given them by this unique citywide program. We review the completed neighborhood plans and funding allocations, revealing the patterns therein for insight about what is most important to current city residents. Some requests were reasonably predictable: improved housing, more policing, and improved commercial streets. Others were less expected: traffic calming, wetland promotion, and varied neighborhood identity efforts. In their great social and economic diversity, the 66 neighborhood plans hold great insight into the residents' ideas about contemporary city living. In addition, these plans, and residents' expectations, illuminate some contemporary tensions between what is wanted at the local level and what is needed at a larger city level.     

Biomedical image query in Gaussian-modelled feature space employing GeoSOM with enhanced inverted indexing

The paper investigates a novel visual concept-based biomedical image querying mechanism to manage with a wide range of medical images acquired under the similar class/modality. Initially, the approach converts RGB images to L*a*b* dimensions. L*a*b* triplets are then partitioned into sub-regions and subsequently modelled by an unskewed Gaussian function for image characterisation based on standardised moments, that represents visual features. The features are then blended to formulate visual concepts and later vector quantised by geodesic self-organising-map to build a codebook of concepts. A global relationship among the clustered concepts is further established through dual correlation matrices and used in a distance metric for matching the given query with target images. Additionally, an enhanced inverted indexing mechanism is introduced to reduce the search time of this query expansion framework. Systematic evaluation of retrieval results in a heterogeneous medical image collection of 30?000 images of different modalities, body parts and orientations, demonstrates 50% reduction in computation time and 20–30% increase in precision at each recall level in comparison with individual visual features. Further experimental analysis employing effectiveness, robustness and precision at 20 parameters validates the benefits of the proposed scheme.     

AIGC技术趋势下智能设计的现状与发展

目的 当前人工智能生成内容技术（AIGC）已步入全方位商业化阶段,AIGC正在成为智能设计的核心支持手段。为提高设计效率和设计质量,顺应人工智能时代不断变化的复杂设计需求,对AIGC支持下的智能设计方法进行综述。方法 通过文献研究,对AIGC技术的基本原理和主要特点进行深入分析,归纳出基于数据挖掘与分析、知识推理与学习、算法演化与模拟的智能设计方法,并得出数据预处理、语境感知调谐、跨模态交互设计、模型构建与评估、动态化学习与反馈优化等AIGC支持下智能设计的关键步骤。结果 AIGC在工业设计流程迭代、传媒创作人机深度融合和娱乐交互方式研发等领域对智能设计方法的变革具有重大意义。结论 对AIGC技术支持下的智能设计方法进行展望,得出虚实结合下的智能化数字孪生设计、全球协同下的智能设计社会变革、隐私安全需求下的交互反馈模式设计3个方面的趋势。     

Wave energy resources near Hot Springs Cove,Canada

Hot Springs Cove on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, Canada is an off-grid community of approximately 80 residents reliant on diesel fuelled electricity generation. Recent concerns with on site diesel based electricity generation have prompted interest in renewable alternatives, including wave energy. To help evaluate the feasibility of deploying ocean wave energy conversion technologies near Hot Springs Cove, a preliminary assessment of the area's near-shore wave energy resources was performed. A near-shore wave model, utilizing a transfer function approach, was used to estimate wave conditions from 2005 to 2013 at a 3 h time-step. Spectral wave data from NOAA's Wavewatch3 model were used as model input boundary conditions. The wave spectra resulting from the near-shore model were parameterized to indicate the magnitude and frequency-direction distribution of energy within each sea-state. Yearly mean values as well as monthly variation of each of the spectral parameters are plotted to indicate the spatial variation of the wave climate. A site in 50 m of water, appropriate for a 2-body point absorber, was selected based on a number of generic constraints and objectives. This site is used to illustrate the temporal variation of the spectral parameters within each month of the year. The average annual wave energy at the reference location is 31 kW/m, with a minimum (maximum) monthly average of 7.5 (60.5) kW/m. The magnitude of this resource is significantly greater than other high profile sites in Europe such as the WaveHub and EMEC, and indicates that the Hot Springs Cove region may be a good candidate for wave energy development.     

大温哥华区战略规划的实施与监督

基于对大温哥华区及其战略规划的介绍,本文总结规划实施与监督机制,并对实施监督的具体检测指标进行详细说明。     

Experiential Planning: A Practitioner's Account of Vancouver's Success

Shutdown at Youngstown: Public Policy for Mass Unemployment Terry F. Buss and F. Stevens Redburn. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1983. 219 pp. $10.95.

Shutdown: A Guide for Communities Facing Plant Closings Jacqueline Mazza et al. Northeast-Midwest Institute, Washington, 1982. 65 pp. $8.00.

The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison. Basic Books, New York, 1982. 323 pp. $19.95.

Urban Decline and the Future of American Cities Katharine L. Bradbury, Anthony Downs, and Kenneth A. Small. The Brookings Institution, Washington, 1982. 309 pp. $10.95.

Shutdown: Economic Dislocation and Equal Opportunity Illinois Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Chicago, 1981. 108 pp. No charge.

The Next American Frontier Robert B. Reich. New York Times Books, New York, 1983. 320 pp. $16.60 (cloth).

Megatrends John Naisbitt. Warner Books, New York, 1982. 290 pp. $15.50 (cloth).

Report of the Mayor's Task Force on High Technology Development City of Chicago, Illinois, 1982. 67 pp. n.p.

San Antonio's Place in the Technology Economic: A Review of Opportunities and a Blueprint for Action Mayor Henry G. Cisneros. City of San Antonio, Texas, 1982. 242 pp. n.p.

Winning Technologies: A New Industrial Strategy for California and the Nation: Executive Summary California Commission on Industrial Innovation. Office of the Governor, Sacramento, California, 1982. 55 pp. n.p.

The Scientific Basis of Health and Safety Regulation Robert W. Crandall and Lester B. Lave, editors. Studies in the Regulation of Economic Activity, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1981. 309 pp. $10.95.

Risk in the Technological Society Christoph Hohenemser and Jeanne X. Kasperson, editors. AAAS Selected Symposium (65). Westview Press, Inc., Boulder, Colorado, 1982. 339 pp. $27.50.

Urban Policy Analysis: Directions for Future Research (Urban Annual Reviews Vol. 21) Terry N. Clark, editor, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, California, 1981. 400 pp. $20.00 (cloth), $9.95 (paperback).

Analyzing Urban Service Distributions Richard C. Rich, editor. D. C. Heath, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1982. 265 pp. $27.95.

The Politics of Urban Public Services Richard C. Rich, editor. D. C. Heath, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1982. 250 pp. $25.95.

Privatizing the Public Sector E. S. Savas. Chatham House Publishers, Chatham, New Jersey, 1982. 164 pp. $15.00.

The Visual and Spatial Structure of Landscapes Tadahiko Higuchi. Translated by Charles S. Terry. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983. 218 pp. $22.50.     

温哥华公园公众参与机制的借鉴

加拿大温哥华的公园建设和管理在全球取得了令人瞩目的成果,这得益于温哥华公园管理局独特的体制与管理理念。温哥华公园管理局以其独特的公众参与机制,为推动和实现"绿色,和谐"的城市环境起到了重要的作用。通过介绍温哥华公园管理局在社区文化共建、项目建设、政策制定3种典型的公众参与模式,说明在"服务城市的所有人、社区和环境"目标指导下的管理机制的特点与方法,为中国公园实现"以人为本,共享发展"的目标提供借鉴。     

Impacts of large-scale wave integration into a transmission-constrained grid

This paper presents a study of large-scale wave energy integration in which transmission constraints are considered. The Vancouver Island electrical grid is considered and is modelled using PLEXOS^® Integrated Energy Model software. The model incorporates the current transmission grid, the existing fleet of main generation stations and ten potential wave farm sites with a total generation capacity of 500 MW. The objectives are to investigate: 1) the potential contribution of wave power toward energy self-sufficiency, 2) the effects of transmission constraints on the viability of alternative wave farm sites, 3) the impacts of wave integration on the load profile. Findings suggest that wave energy integration can significantly reduce the energy dependency on neighbouring jurisdictions but the current grid infrastructure is not adequate to fully support 500 MW of wave power. In this regard, it is shown that potential wave power integration can significantly benefit from transmission expansion for particular pathways. Further, results show that wave integration leads to reductions in the share of energy supplied from other sources and that this reduction follows an annual pattern. This periodic trend is particularly important for a hydro-dominated (energy-limited) grid where water level in reservoirs is managed on monthly and yearly bases.