Urban Residential Satisfaction and the Planning Implications in a Developing World Context: The Example of Benin City,Nigeria

As urban expansion continues into the 21st century, one of the daunting challenges facing many developing countries is the planning and the management of cities in such a way as to meet a planning reformist role of promoting equitable, efficient and sustainable urban settlements. In the face of mounting criticisms of technocratic top-down approaches to housing and infrastructure development, there is a need for studies on the interface of satisfaction assessments and planning on the one hand and the social and cultural implications for urban management on the other. This is particularly so in the context of developing cities that are often characterized by dwindling public finances, urban poverty, spatial variations in housing and services, and poor socioeconomic conditions, as well as top-down approaches to urban management. A systematic spatial assessment of urban satisfaction is presented using Benin, a traditional West African city, as a case study. The significance of the satisfaction approach for planning, social and equity concerns is identified, and it is argued that we should look beyond it and incorporate community participatory approaches in the urban development process.     

Memory,narrative and display – city museums in recent initiatives and debates

Currently, the study and the exhibition of the history and artistic traces of city development are gaining new interest. Several Italian and European cities are proposing, or have just established, organisations or museums intended to ‘display’ their past. Recently a research group has been constitued at the University IUAV of Venice based on the premiss that a contemporary City Museum has to be a conduit for knowledge to a large and varied public including, on equal terms: citizens, immigrants, tourists and people with cultural and professional interests in the urban environment. In this sense Venice seems to be a very good clase‐study. While an important initiative, such as the constitution of a new Museum of the twentieth century in Mestre (the mainland of Venice) is going on, the research group thinks that this kind of institution, within the framework of a very complex and rich system of museums, such as the Venetian one, could have a wide remit. In fact, one of the special key issues for Venice in the twentieth century has been opening up its cultural and productive activities to the external world. Foreigner visitors, as well as many citizens have always had the vision of Venice as a medieval and renaissance city with a very old historical centre. Yet in the course of the twentieth century, the urban settlement had greatly changed in a very interesting and innovative way. This has to be explained and shown to both tourists and the Venetians.     

提升住宅的声环境品质

优化居住质量将作为今后住宅建设的政策来实施，这一观点已逐渐被人们所接受。因此，提升居住环境的声品质亦已提到议事日程。本文首先就这方面所面临的形势，以及目前在围护结构中对空气声和撞击声的隔绝方面所存在问题作一阐述。同时还对若干热点的技术问题进行探讨。文中还提供了国外在住宅建设中控制声品质的最新经验，以资借鉴。     

城市居住综合体及其对城市空间结构的调整作用

在世纪转折的今天 ,城市居住综合体作为城市住宅的一种 ,在改变着城市面貌的同时 ,也在改变着城市的空间结构。文章首先介绍了城市居住综合体这一特殊的居住建筑模式 ,进而对城市居住综合体与城市空间结构的关系进行了研究。通过对城市空间结构认识的回顾与展望 ,指出城市需要更加开放、复杂、连续的空间结构。文章还对我国城市空间结构的发展现状 ,特别是住宅建设对其的影响作了分析 ,认为城市居住综合体在调整城市空间结构方面大有可为 ,而这也正是城市居住综合体作为一种特殊形式存在的合理性之一。     

Perceptions and Acceptability of Multihabitation as an Urban Low Income Housing Strategy in Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana

Urban low income households have often used multihabitation as a housing strategy to find affordable accommodation in the urban centres. Several factors have contributed to the gradual shift from multihabited compound houses to single family dwellings. These concerns have influenced the level of satisfaction of multihabitation and deterred real estate developers from engaging in such housing markets. Moreover, the changing socioeconomic conditions in urban centres resulting in the individualisation of family systems in the twenty-first century have undermined the benefit of multihabitation in urban low income housing provision. It is on this basis that a study is conducted to examine the perceptions and acceptability of multihabitation in the twenty-first-century urban low income housing provision in Ghana. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection, primary data on households’ perceptions and acceptability of multihabitation in the twenty-first century urban low income housing provision was collected from households in five low income communities in Greater Accra Metropolitan Area. From the study, it emerged that although there were challenges associated with multihabitation living arrangement, residents perceived that there were still social and financial capital advantages as well as psychosocial benefits such as security and stability that emerged from the close relationships fostered under multihabitation. Hence, it is suggested that governments should adopt multihabitation in urban low income housing provision in the twenty-first century but with design modifications.     

Displacements in the name of (re)development: the contested rise and contested demise of colonial ‘African’ housing estates in Kampala and Jinja

This paper examines historical and contemporary processes of urban (re-)development and displacement in Uganda. Particular focus concerns the often conflicting strategies employed by urban managers and residents to plan, govern and live in both the late-colonial and early twenty-first century city. Both eras can be considered significant, even momentous, for the prominence of strategic projects of socio-spatial urban reconfiguration that incorporate(d) powerful discourses fusing land and housing development with societal progress and national development. The former project putatively centred on orchestrating African development and welfare, the latter on the more ambiguous project of re-development. The ‘Good City’ and the ‘Good Citizen’ are used as heuristic devices to examine the planning ideals and rationalities that inform(ed) these projects and the conflict of rationalities they provoke(d), particularly in terms of competing visions of the good city and good citizen. The paper emphasizes that current projects of redevelopmentalism do not take place in politically inert or historically benign space. Rather, it is shown how historical and place-based specificities articulate with and mediate the process of redevelopmentalism in Kampala and Jinja.     

探讨凹空间的都市住宅

近30年来，都市的规模及人口密度增长得非常迅速，为此，如何设计好都市住宅成为建筑师面临的课题。本文主要通过个别具有影响的集合式住宅实例，探讨凹空间的都市住宅（围合型的庭院住宅），指出凹空间的都市住宅将成为都市住宅设计发展的新焦点。     

Tyranny of inappropriate policies: Sharing as housing strategy among middle/low income households in Abuja, Nigeria

The housing strategies adopted by urban households in a situation of housing shortage in a particular city will often reflect the peculiar circumstances of that city. This paper investigates one strategy – sharing of dwelling units – adopted by some middle/low income households in Abuja, Nigeria's new capital, in a situation of rapidly increasing population, high cost of living and inadequate housing provision. It is found that a combination of factors – the inability of most Abuja residents to secure residential accommodation from the dominant but limited public sector supply, cultural factors, the housing allowance policy of government and the fact that many relocatees to Abuja do not bring their families – have made a good number of households favourably disposed towards sharing, an option which keeps the amount spent on housing low but which, in most cases, completely excludes personal comfort. It is recommended that, since standard estimates of affordability often provide little guidance to policy makers, the appropriate strategy in search of sustainable solutions would be to make available a range of housing packages from which households in Abuja will choose, and to make adjustments to regulatory regimes so as not to constrain the production of housing.     

国际化的办公建筑设计

办公建筑是二十世纪最重要的标志之一,在各大城市是办公楼的顶部勾画出了城市的天际线。作为经济繁荣、科学进步、技术最常见的标志,办公建筑越来越成为这个世纪世界经济状态的象征”,这样的说法完全正确,因为办公建筑最能够反映过去一百年来在各个不同国家地区的变化,以及就业方式已经发生的深刻变化。     

从滨江城市到沿海城市——南宁城市建设简史

南宁历代古城沿邕江而建,得水利,受水患。古城在选址、建造和扩展等方面都有值得今天的城市建设加以借鉴之处。未来南宁城市发展将在方向上发生根本变化,从滨江城市转变成沿海城市,但在城市交通和水系保护方面还应当注意避免以往的失误。     

Reinventing Planning: Critical Reflections

There is a growing acceptance in international development circles of the contribution a revitalised planning can make to addressing key urban challenges. Current expectations that planning can play roles in managing the growth of cities in ways that promote their sustainability, inclusiveness and liveability, contrasts with past perceptions of planning as an irrelevant discipline obsessed with spatial ordering and control. This paper considers whether the new forms of planning can address the challenges facing cities, with particular reference to the South African context. It does so through providing an overview of the shift in thinking about planning, and reflecting on the new agendas for planning as well as on some of their silences. It argues that the new approaches need to be understood in terms of contemporary urban and planning theories which are rethinking the nature of planning and its relationship to power and institutions, and which view cities as complex, dynamic places, embodying multiple interests and spatialities. These perspectives can help to enrich our understanding of the new approaches to planning, and to avoid ineffectiveness or a return to the negative elements of modernist planning of the past. The paper demonstrates the argument through focusing on some of the recent themes that have received attention in the contemporary international agendas for planning: the cross-cutting themes of sustainability and gender; the infrastructural turn in planning; and the ambiguities of the compact city. While these are quite particular concerns, they highlight the complexities of institutionalising the new approaches to planning, and ways of thinking about spatial planning.     

新加坡组屋规划设计演变及启示

居住是城市的基本职能,住宅建设水平直接体现着城市社会、经济、文化发展水平。新加坡组屋以居者有其屋著称,50年来,已从单纯解决房荒问题演变为提高住宅品质问题,并提升为国家精神内涵的载体。通过解析组屋规划、设计、建设的发展过程,针对我国城市住宅的发展现状和居民需求的发展趋势,从社会人文、城市规划、建筑设计等方面探讨住宅小区规划设计的有益启示,以期为我国城市住房,尤其是保障性住房的新一轮发展提供参考依据。     

The Role of Design

The experience of design in the American city is reviewed as a way of finding the focal role for urban design during the next 50 years. The past centuries have been characterized by a disregard for landscape and cityscape—not intentional desecration, but modification of environment by the unattended consequences of social and technologic change. Efforts at design that have been partially effective have usually been misplaced or palliative. In view of these circumstances, the achievement of an environment desirable to people depends upon awakening the public consciousness to the need for deliberate concern. This concern must be used to give designed image to the different parts of the city, to improve the form of residential areas, and to design urban movement to mesh with city form and provide a contemporary lattice from which to view it.     

效率导向中的基本判断：提高容积率的解读

住房保障已经成为建设和谐社会必须实现的目标之一.在城市土地资源日益紧缺和人口规模日益膨胀的趋势下,是否应通过整体提高居住用地容积率来保障住房供给成为讨论的焦点.在当前形势下,城市发展向存量土地要效率是必由之路,但是风险会伴随在唯效率导向的开发过程之中.整体提高居住用地容积率这一选择涉及城市发展的系统建设,必须先行对城市人口分布战略、住房供给及公共利益等方面进行基本判断或选择,具备足够的应对策略,才能为城市提供一条真正和谐的道路.     

Housing in Chinese Urban Villages: The Dwellers,Conditions and Tenancy Informality

While it is widely acknowledged that Chinese urban villages provide an important source of rental housing for low-income populations, the composition of their dwellers, housing conditions and rental contracts has not been adequately studied. Drawing from surveys of sixty urban villages in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, this study finds that housing in urban villages is more family oriented; that over half of dwellers work in the tertiary sector; and that although they have relatively stable jobs, few have job security with contracts. In predominantly rental housing, the housing unit is small. Tight control by the city government over housing development has led to quite expensive rentals measured by unit space as well as poorer housing conditions. Tenancy informality in terms of the absence of formal contracts is widespread and most severe in Shanghai. The lack of formal contracts is largely independent of the status of dwellers or their job status but is rather dependent upon the rent value.     

Toward a Theory of Gentrification A Back to the City Movement by Capital,not People

Consumer sovereignty hypotheses dominate explanations of gentrification but data on the number of suburbanites returning to the city casts doubt on this hypothesis. In fact, gentrification is an expected product of the relatively unhampered operation of the land and housing markets. The economic depreciation of capital invested in nineteenth century inner-city neighborhoods and the simultaneous rise in potential ground rent levels produces the possibility of profitable redevelopment. Although the very apparent social characteristics of deteriorated neighborhoods would discourage redevelopment, the hidden economic characteristics may well be favorable. Whether gentrification is a fundamental restructuring of urban space depends not on where new inhabitants come from but on how much productive capital returns to the area from the suburbs.     

城市公园有机更新的方法研究——以福安富春公园更新为例

近几年来,随着城市建设进程的加快,一大批始建于20世纪的城市公园面临着改造更新。这些公园虽然大多衰老破败,已无法满足人们日常使用,但是这些公园又多处于旧城的核心区域,交通便捷,游憩设施和植物景观仍然有一定的使用价值,如何改造这些老旧的城市公园,使其焕发出新的生命力,是当前城市公园建设中的迫切问题。该文以福安富春城市公园更新为例,针对城市公园更新的特点,引入有机更新理论,指出城市公园更新必须遵循的整体性、阶段性、延续性、适宜性原则,同时应建立新建、改造、保护于一体的整体更新措施体系。     

探索景观化城市的设计途径

面对当代城市发展所带来的挑战,景观都市主义的学术思潮应运而生.该理论体系刚刚起步,尚不完善,设计师们须在吸纳景观都市主义相关理论的同时,通过大量的设计实践,探索适合中国国情的景观化城市设计思路.通过尝试将景观都市主义理论和城市设计实践相结合,并对典型的城市设计案例进行分析概括,从而探讨与总结出基于景观都市主义的城市设计方法和策略.     

中国城市邻里效应研究框架初探

邻里作为居住的基本空间单元,对居民施加着潜移默化的影响.近20年来,“邻里效应”(neighborhood effects)作为一项实证研究在欧美学界兴起,而在中国尚处于起步阶段.随着中国城市收入分化加剧,各个社会经济阶层的邻里不断涌现.如果能明确不同邻里对居民的作用结果和作用机制,就能通过规划手段对邻里的某些特征进行干预,从而在整体上提升居民的社会、经济和健康水平.基于此,对西方邻里效应研究进展进行了回顾,提出面向中国城市的邻里效应研究框架,并就指标内容、作用路径、数据采集和分析方法、如果避免选择偏差等内容进行重点讨论,以期为相关的公共住房计划、混合社区策略、社区规划等提供定量研究支撑.     

Models of Urban Transformation: Informal Housing in Ankara

Squatter housing (called gecekondu in Turkish) has been the central element of urban discussions in Turkey since the beginning of the 1950s. However, the solutions to this problem have changed over time. Until the mid-1960s, governments had a negative attitude to squatter housing areas and their populations, seeing them as the sources of social ills in the urban system. Thus, renewal was defined as clearance and redevelopment. However, this situation changed in the 1970s, preparing the necessary ground for rehabilitation and upgrading. In contrast, in the 1980s renewal was evaluated in a global context and equaled regeneration. So, following the 1980s, squatter housing areas have again been considered as problem areas which have to be transformed for the capitalization of global interests, in the name of urban rent. These areas could have been transformed into prestige areas to increase the physical and visual wealth of the city. Thus, first with the improvement plans and later with the urban transformation projects, squatter housing areas have been subject to urban renewal for the betterment of urban space. This study aims to compare these two different squatter housing transformation approaches from the point of view of their impact on the physical and social topography of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey.