The Victoria planning provisions: Is there space for place?

Drawing from Healey's notion of collaborative planning, it is postulated that under certain conditions there is a degree of freedom within the newly introduced Victoria Planning Provisions for place making at the local government level. Four case studies are described and discussed.     

Is There Something Beyond ‘Outside of the Box’?

Here, architectural and scientific researcher Rachel Armstrong questions whether the definition of ‘experimental’ green design presented here goes far enough. She urges architects to not dwell on evaluation processes, performance and ‘strategies’ and to seek a far more radical solution to sustainability, which abandons the current emphasis on industrial technologies and the existing educational and professional frameworks. In its place, she envisions employing biology as a driver for wholly new living materials and systems. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Particle distribution analysis along the collection electrode of a ‘wire-to-cylinder’ electrostatic precipitator

This study determined the value distribution of the ‘charge/mass’ ratio of the particles charged by corona along a ‘wire-cylinder’ electrostatic precipitator (ESP). These particles are absorbed by suction from the openings on the collection electrode. The results enabled the analysis of the particle movement in the ESP. For moderate voltage values (8–12 kV), the constant ratio along the ESP suggests that the product is uniformly collected when the particles acquire a sufficient electric charge during their progression. Conversely, for higher voltages (14–16 kV), massive deposition occurs at the inlet as soon as the particles are sufficiently charged.     

Temporary use and the onto-politics of ‘public’ space

This paper is situated amidst concerns that public spaces are diminishing in both quantity and quality (Low & Smith, 2006), with this trend exacerbated by the excising of state budgets for their provision, maintenance or development, their privatisation and/or devolution of their management to corporate interests. Here we interrogate what ‘public space’ is using the lens of temporary use projects undertaken on privately-owned land. As a distinct form of DIY urbanism, it could be argued that temporary use projects might be least likely to promote enduring change but, in this paper, we demonstrate that it is their very transience that enables the interstices between the actual and the possible to be exploited in innovative ways. We explore how a distinctive methodology associated with temporary use projects, and a reconceptualisation of what public space is, creates new opportunities to restore the emancipatory potential of (increasingly) emaciated public places.     

Is There Such a Thing as a Post-apartheid City?

In an introductory section, this paper considers briefly the achievements and problems of urban governance in post-apartheid South Africa through an assessment of three categories: administrative reform, developmental issues and conflicts over service delivery issues. It then goes on to assess continuity and change in South African cities. Continuity is the norm in understanding urban history with change understood as a series of accretions and as a layering of features, unless major economic shifts or revolutionary political shifts are in place. Using the example of Durban, a series of changes is highlighted, which fit into what the deracialized growth path allows and encourages. The paper argues that thus far, the ANC government has shown little capacity or desire to discipline capital along the lines suggested, for instance, by the Reconstruction and Development Programme’s section on public transport. Larger changes are thus limited by the predilections and established discourses of the business world and the absence of more dynamic and structured public intervention.     

Why Won’t Downtown Johannesburg ‘Regenerate’? Reassessing Hillbrow as a Case Example

This paper argues that neighbourhood change in Hillbrow is not concomitant with the linear processes of urban decline and economic resurgence. Instead, neighbourhood change is shaped by situated histories, politics and economics, in addition to the activities of diverse local actors. It also argues that despite severe physical decay, a history of being redlined and limited public sector support for the provision of public services, Hillbrow remains a resilient port-of-entry neighbourhood to Johannesburg for many residents who desire to engage in local and transnational economies. Current debates on urban land markets, therefore, necessitate an awareness of the roles that port-of-entry neighbourhoods facilitate in (mega)cities, and alternative urban planning responses to conventional regeneration strategies that are based on liberal market rationalities alone.     

The politics of ‘race’ and the transformation of the post-apartheid space economy

This paper provides an overview of the challenge of spatial reconfiguration facing South Africa. Set against a brief overview of the key aspects of the post apartheid urban policy milieu that, notwithstanding significant tensions within the ruling party, gave rise to a cabinet level policy commitment to a National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP). The paper reflects on three key themes. The first issue outlined in the paper is the massive demographic shift that is taking place that underpins the development challenge. In particular trends in the process of population growth, labour market change and urbanization are summarized. Second, given the dominance of Africans in urban spaces, the paper outlines how efforts to achieve racial integration have erroneously focused on rural over urban development. A distinction is drawn between traditionalist pro-African views that give preferences to rural spending and modernist views that articulate an overly non-racial discourse that embraces a shift to urban development. Finally we argue that the failure of spatial planning as proposed by the NSDP was not inevitable, despite real flaws in the policy and its execution. The dithering on spatial policy that surrounded the NSDP must be understood as the outcome of political contestation within the ruling party and a misplaced conflation of the categories of rural and African.     

Housing Market Renewal: Evidence of Revanchism or a Response to ‘Passive Revanchism’ Supporting ‘Citizenship of Place’?

In England, housing market renewal (HMR) proved an urban policy cause célèbre held to be representative of state-sponsored gentrification. This paper considers some critiques and explores the relocation experience of a group of residents in South Yorkshire, England during the implementation of HMR policies during 2005–2007. This paper argues that: (i) from the mid-1970s, ‘place-based citizenship’ and participation standards had been eroded and the introduction of HMR was an antidote to state neglect; (ii) state failure in addressing ‘slow-burn’ shocks such as deindustrialisation and housing market restructuring can be viewed as a form of ‘passive revanchism’ and (iii) HMR can be viewed as a means of addressing deficits in participation standards that arise from differential experiences of place: the term ‘citizenship of place’ is therefore used to signal the call for a more nuanced account of policy interventions such as HMR in order to assess how complex processes of restructuring affect citizens across spatial and temporal scales.     

What do we mean by ‘flexibility’ and ‘variability’ of systems?

International usage highlights interesting differences in interpreting the terminology commonly associated with building systems, says the author, who here suggests a more unified interpretation.     

Case study analysis of risk from using excavators as ‘cranes’

Excavators are frequently used as ‘cranes’ for object handling on construction sites, but this situation brings with it significant health and safety hazards that often, are not fully appreciated by stakeholders. These hazards are identified; their risks explained and studied; and appropriate advice for stakeholders explicated. A developmental approach is employed that embraces accrual of evidence; case studies; theoretical examination; and derivation of guidance. It is found that excavators are often used as cranes employing both ‘formal’ or less satisfactory ‘informal’ methods of load connection. Hazards from using excavators as cranes (found principally among load connection points and associated lifting accessories), are often ‘hidden’ and can lead to catastrophic failure during lifting operations. Stakeholders need to be aware of the hazards and implement suggested risk controls to remove or mitigate them.     

Is there a relationship between TELs and default? Evidence from US municipalities

The economic effects of tax and expenditure limits (TELs) have been often studied in the literature. However, little research has addressed how TELs might influence the propensity for a jurisdiction to default on its obligations. This study specifically fills that void. Overall, the results indicate that while the likelihood of default increases as TELs become more restrictive, the magnitude is not particularly large. Once decomposed, it would appear that property tax limits increase the likelihood, while expenditure limits have the opposite effect, though the latter result is insignificant. The findings are robust to a number of specifications and provide potential policy implications.     

Sustainability as a motive for leisure-time gardening: a view from the ‘veggie patch’

There are many definitions of ‘sustainability’, but the term exists within social, economic and environmental contexts, the ‘three pillars’ of sustainability. Although governments, businesses and communities have embraced the concept, there appears to be limited understanding of it at the individual level. This paper reports a desktop survey to investigate the drivers of sustainability that motivate leisure-time gardening in private (backyard) and public (community) gardens. There was little mention of the ‘three pillars’ and they were seldom interlinked. A key element of ensuring sustainable futures is to engage individuals in behavioural change. It is necessary to raise awareness of sustainability in an individual’s everyday leisure activities. Leisure-time gardening is one way forward.     

‘A University is a society’: an environmental history of the METU ‘campus’

The formation of a ‘society’ was the major goal of the founders of the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Turkey, which was established in 1956 and became a significant source of intellectual, ideological and architectural capital for its region. The university was designed as a total entity, a three-dimensional modern grid spread over the barren Anatolian prairie, and, in half a century, succeeded in transforming its immediate environment into an ‘ideal landscape’. There has been no publication to date documenting the formation processes of the institution, nor its impact as an environmental revolution. In opposition to the consensus that the development of this university was rooted in the United Nation's programmes for higher education in the developing world and the United States' post-war policy in the region, this paper suggests that the METU Project was rather indicative of the Turkish Republic's desire for modernisation in all of its social and ideological programmes. This paper examines the METU Project in a bid to understand how the Anatolian prairie was transformed into an urban environment, and the unique ways it is perceived in the surrounding political contexts of institutional and everyday life. By compiling an environmental historiography, the intention is to find answers to the questions of how, and to what extent, the ideal landscape was influential, and how it was presented with architecture through social and political practices.     

How do open space characteristics influence open space use? A study of Melbourne’s Southbank Promenade

ABSTRACT

With the importance of open spaces to urban quality of life being increasingly recognized, knowledge about which spatial characteristics influence open space use, how, and why is of growing interest to open space researchers, designers and managers. Through an observational survey of Southbank Promenade in Melbourne, Australia, the research examines how various specific design characteristics of open spaces correspond to their actual uses. The findings show that different levels and kinds of uses are associated with the different space features of three distinct sections of Southbank Promenade, under varying time and weather conditions.     

‘The Common Camp’: temporary settlements as a spatio-political instrument in Israel-Palestine

From their emergence in the 19th century to their current global proliferation, camps have been created extensively by and for different populations under the modern state order. Whether employed by national and colonial powers as instruments of control, or constructed ad hoc by displaced populations as makeshift spaces of refuge, camps are used as a versatile instrument for the rearrangement of people in space. In Israel-Palestine, camps are part of the significant geopolitical changes related to the state-building project and to the mass displacement it caused, providing a core example of similar enterprises of territorial alternation and social engineering. While the Palestinian refugee camps are well recognised and studied, many other types of camps which have appeared in the region over the last century together form a distinctive spatial paradigm. Through its particular manifestations in Israel-Palestine, this article examines the camp as a central instrument by which modern societies and territories are administered, negotiated and reorganised. The identification, understanding and re-definition of the camp’s multifaceted spatial vocabulary allows to better understand this encompassing phenomenon which becomes increasingly relevant and urgent in today’s migration age.