The Villages,Florida: Small-town Metropolitanism and the ‘Middle of Nowhere’

With over 110,000 inhabitants , The Villages is the world's largest retirement community. Its numerous distinct ‘villages’, surrounded by artificial landscaping and golf courses and served by three ‘downtowns’, cater to those who crave the idealised rural life of times gone by while also offering the convenience and stimulation of the modern metropolis. Deane Simpson , leader of the Master's programme in Urbanism and Societal Change at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, investigates.     

The ‘Silent’ Closure of Urban Public Space in Cape Town: 1975 to 2004

This study seeks to show that the closure of urban public space by residents in a South African context is not a recent phenomenon and that successful citizen-driven urban public space closures have been a feature of the urban landscape before the rise of gated communities and monitored urban public space. The primary objective of the study was to analyse and investigate spatio-temporal tendencies relating to the citizen-driven privatisation of urban public space in Cape Town. This objective would be driven by the creation of a comprehensive database of provincially gazetted urban land closures dating from 7 February 1975 to 17 December 2004 within one of the six municipal substructure regions of Cape Town. The secondary objective, but by no means less important, is an identification and analysis of the reasons forwarded, practices employed and techniques utilised by individual citizen-driven applications in two distinctly diverse residential suburbs within the study area.

The real estate ‘tsunami’ in Spain: the administration of urban growth in the case of Arroyo de la Encomienda and Valladolid,Spain

The ‘Bilbao effect’ was a key argument in the debate over Oslo's new opera house, set to open this spring. Geographer Marius Hofseth presents Norway's largest urban development project in light of political debates on the role of culture in urban development.     

The difference of ‘being diverse’: City branding and multiculturalism in the ‘Leicester Model’

This city profile on Leicester focuses on the representation of ethnical diversity in city branding. Through a historical approach, the paper discusses how the local authorities have taken advantage of the arrival of different migration flows into the city, in order to redefine its post-industrial identity in terms of multiculturalism, tolerance and inclusivity. In so doing, the paper emphasises the combination of deliberate marketing communicative activities, the provision of services for attracting and retaining foreign businesses and the creation of an open urban milieu where various ethnic groups are free to express and celebrate their own cultures through festivals and events. The paper identifies the alignment between place communication and place ‘offerings’ development as the crucial element underpinning Leicester's model for multicultural cooperation and critically assesses the recent challenges that are being posed to the sustainment of a multicultural city image.     

The post-modernist turn and spectres of criticality in post-socialist architecture: ‘one:table’ at the Venice Biennale 2012

This article examines the ‘one:table’ installation in the pavilion of Serbia at the 13^th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice (2012). The large empty table put on public view by its co-authorial team of ten architecture graduates is argued to be meaningful beyond its reasoning as an exhibit responding to the Biennale theme of ‘common ground’. The inquiry aims to demonstrate that this one simple object has an important critical effect in the architectural discourse of post-socialist Serbia. Its effect, it is argued, is complementary to designs for prominent buildings in Belgrade by the world-renowned architects Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Wolfgang Tschapeller and Sou Fujimoto. Conversely, its implicit criticality is compared to the method and media of an analogous case of post-modern critique in the installation ‘Table (of a Dancer, of a Marksman, of a Philosopher)’ (1982) by the architect Mustafa Musi?. The aim of the article is to compare the two exhibitions where the thematic of the table as architectural exhibit opens a discussion of criticality in post-modernist and post-socialist moments. The article discusses the two table installations in terms of Jacques Derrida's thesis of ‘hauntology’, which is itself derived from the analysis of another table, that is, a ‘simple wooden table’ used by Karl Marx in his seminal section on ‘the fetishism of the commodity and its secret’.     

The ‘distinctiveness of cities’ and distinctions in cities: boundaries of belonging in comparative perspective

It is in cities where people are most strongly confronted with diversity in an ‘age of migration’. However, comparisons of local integration contexts usually take ethnic boundaries as given or assume that they are constituted by the nation state. Our analysis of local discourses challenges this methodological nationalism. Departing from the ‘distinctiveness of cities’ approach, we scrutinise how Frankfurt, Dortmund, Birmingham and Glasgow differ in how diversity is discursively constructed. We maintain that the discourses not only reflect different frames in dealing with diversity but also serve as a proxy for debating the self-image of the city.     

Virtual enclosure,ecosystem services,landscape’s character and the ‘rewilding’ of the commons: the ‘Lake District’ case

Abstract

It is paradoxical that, while there is a generally increasing recognition of the scientific and cultural importance of conserving ‘semi-natural’ pastoral environments, and the negative effects of their widespread abandonment and overgrowth, British ‘rewilding’ activists and environmental managers are effectively advocating policies that will have a similar negative effect on the character of the semi-natural pastoral commons of places like England’s iconic Lake District. This situation, it will be argued, owes to the mindset of ‘virtual enclosure’ whereby the character of landscape is pre-defined by an assumed, behind-the-scenes, Euclidean/Ptolemaic spatial logic that leads to the comprehension of nature as a bounded scenic property; an (e)state of nature with its own economic system and services. This mindset is antithetical to both the practice of pastoral commoning and much contemporary natural science and conservation policy. It fits well, however, with older teleological ideas of nature, as well as modern ideas of privatisation, private property and management control.     

‘Observing cities’ social inequalities: a cartographic case study of Aveiro,Portugal

The aim of the study is to present a methodology and an instrument to study cities through a case study undertaken in the county of Aveiro, in Portugal. More specifically, it is to establish a typology of social areas, via the concerns that define quality of life. The data are from 1991 (the last published census), collected by INE (National Agency of Statistic), and desegregated for sub-sections (each subsection has about 300 inhabitants). Seven indicators were chosen, submitted to principal component analysis, and 4 factors were extracted: socio-professional status, ageing of population and buildings, accommodation capacity and precarious housing conditions. The cluster analysis permitted the identification, within each factor group, of sub-sections with different quality of life: high-medium, medium, low-medium and low.     

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.     

‘Activating Nature’: The Magic Realism of Contemporary Landscape Architecture in Europe

The redefinition of European cities has created new opportunities for the greening of public urban spaces. Lucy Bullivant describes how three young practices in particular – West 8, Gross.Max and Mosbach Paysagistes – are leading the way with their highly dynamic and inventive narrative approaches to history, culture and the emergent city. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A ‘stranger’ in the making of strategy: A process perspective of project portfolio management in a pharmaceutical firm

Scholars assume that the strategic direction of project portfolios is designed within organisations. Our study challenges this assumption. Taking a process perspective, we explored the long-term influence of an external partner, a university researcher, on the development of a project portfolio in a large pharmaceutical firm. By following five contracts that connected the researcher to the firm, we observed how the researcher initiated and managed projects in the portfolio, thereby keeping his influence and relevance alive. Yet, despite his long-term influence, the researcher was perceived as a ‘stranger’ with an ambiguous, and at times surprising, role. We advance our theoretical understanding of the link between portfolios and their contexts by extending the concept of project lineage to inter-organisational lineages and showing their nonlinear and social character. We also suggest related contracts, ‘contractual paths,’ as novel and useful for exploring the link between portfolios and their contexts.     

Contemporary tendencies in Colombian urban planning: the case of the ‘Planes Parciales’ in Medellín

After decades of internal conflict, Colombia is experiencing economic growth and urbanization. It remains, however, one of the most socially unequal countries in Latin America. Medellín, acclaimed the most innovative city, implemented large-scale transport infrastructures to link socially excluded areas to the city; new educational and cultural facilities; new public spaces and housing projects, rooted in the Barcelona model. This so-called ‘social urbanism’ has shifted local perceptions, though its socio-economic impact has been questioned. This paper focuses on the less analysed transformations in planning policy and management through two instruments: the Land Use Plan (Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial – POT) and the ‘Plan Parcial’. The research, based on a desktop review, interviews and site visits, examines the application of these instruments in Medellín, reflecting on how they contribute to achieving the aims of ‘social urbanism’. The paper explores the differences between ‘rhetoric’ and practice that are reflected in those between the city’s overarching plan (POT) and the implementation of ‘planes parciales’, focusing on redevelopment, urban renewal and urban expansion. Such differences mirror the deficiencies in the adaptation of the ‘urban project’ Barcelona model in Medellín, and provide the basis for a call to develop ‘social urbanism’ that is genuinely more socially, territorially comprehensive and inclusive.     

‘The spring of hope,the winter of despair’: an unfinished narrative of Mediterranean cities

Early in 2011, a powerful surge of protest calling for political and social change swept along the North African shoreline. Not for the first time, and almost certainly not for the last, the established rhythms of urban life in the region were to be severely disrupted. The patient work of well-laid plans counted for little as people took to the streets and military governments resisted; overnight, public squares became places of protest and even battlegrounds. Tunis, Tripoli and Alexandria – the three cities that feature in this paper – were by no means the only places to feel the strong winds of change. Moreover, all three of the case studies have long histories and, as with so many other cities around the Mediterranean, turbulence is nothing new. It is hard to think of other parts of the world where cities have so often experienced changing fortunes: at one moment in history nourishing the growth of civilization, at another trapped in a spiral of decline. Located between three continents, in a region of geological as well as geopolitical instability, Mediterranean cities are familiar with bad times as well as good. This paper explores the nature of this volatile process and its impact on urban life and form.     

The impact of biophilic design in Maggie’s Centres: A meta-synthesis analysis

This paper presents a meta-synthesis conducted to identify, compare and synthesize published qualitative data related to the Maggie's Centres, as a paradigmatic architectural example in the provision of non-institutional cancer support. These centres are internationally renowned for their unique architecture, where the careful design of indoors and outdoors spaces plays a critical role in their agenda for supporting care. Previous research has thoroughly analysed this approach to therapeutic environments, not only confirming the importance of designed space as originally conceived in Maggie's philosophy but also identifying precise supporting effects associated with specific elements within their design. This paper aims to provide a new reading of Maggie's contribution to cancer support by offering an examination of all these data through the lens of biophilia, which clarifies the impact of design decisions connected to nature on cancer patients' lives. The analytic process included a systematic search strategy, extraction and classification of salient concepts using an open-coding approach, and lastly an interpretive evaluation. The systematically selected data helped to identify and rank the biophilic design parameters that appear the most critical for promoting and supporting human health and wellbeing in non-clinical therapeutic environments, from the user's perspective. It also provided a compilation of distinctive design interventions related to biophilic parameters, which provides benchmark information for future research and design guidance in these environments.     

Bugs,Bats and Animal Estates: The Architectural Territories of ‘Wild Beasts’

For architecture, animals and insects have conventionally represented the threat of infestation - a parasitic and insanitary uninvited presence. Could the animal world, however, offer previously untapped opportunities for design innovation? At a time when the relationship between architecture and nature is coming under question, Ben Campkin takes the opportunity to bring attention to the wider social and geographical processes lying beneath the occupation of the man-made environment by insect and animal life. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘The party’s over’: critical junctures,crises and the politics of housing policy

The key argument set out in this article is that historical and comparative forms of investigation are necessary if we are to better understand the ambitions and scope of contemporary housing interventions. To demonstrate the veracity of our claim, we have set out an analysis of the UK housing polices enacted in the mid-1970s as a basis for comparison with those pursued 40 years later. The article begins with a critical summary of some of the methodological approaches adopted by researchers used to interpret housing policy. In the main section, we present our critical analysis of housing policy reforms (implemented by the Labour government between 1974 and 1979) noting both their achievements and limitations. In the concluding section, we use our interpretation of this period as a basis to judge contemporary housing policy and reflect on the methodological issues that arise from our analysis.     

‘Houston,we've got a problem’: The Political Construction of a Housing Affordability Metric in New Zealand

Since the global financial crisis, housing affordability has assumed increased policy significance in a number of countries around the world. At a national level, housing policy formation is subject to certain path dependency processes and embedded institutional structures. In this paper, I argue that housing policy formation in New Zealand is increasingly subject to global flows of policy ideas and that the development of new housing affordability policies draws upon networks of global policy agents, housing experts and private consultants. In particular, this research examines the manner in which a US-based private consultant's metric of housing affordability, and analysis of the causes of housing unaffordability, has been incorporated into policy-making and new legislation in New Zealand.     

Beyond Design and Participation: The ‘Thought for Food’ Project in Flanders,Belgium

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the development of methods of social innovation in participatory urban design. Based on the ‘Synoikos scenario Workshop’, an adapted methodology was applied to and evaluated within the (participatory action) research context of the European ‘Thought for Food’ (T4F) landscape enhancement project concerning the agro-industrial area surrounding Roeselare in West-Flanders, Belgium. Within this complex spatial and social context, design-based scenarios served as a tool for stimulating participants to discuss their discordant views and to understand the consequences of their activities for others.     

Opportunities and Constraints in State Housing Policy: The Example of Tasmania's ‘Affordable Housing Strategy’

The lack of Commonwealth government funds for public housing has encouraged state governments across Australia to develop ‘Affordable Housing Strategies’ to address the problems that result from the shortage of housing available for low-income households. However, to date there has been limited discussion of the implications of these affordable housing strategies and their significance as a form of policy intervention. This article highlights the Tasmanian Government's ‘Affordable Housing Strategy’ as a case study to illustrate the obstacles that confront state housing policy makers. These include difficulties in securing partnerships with the private sector, an inability to influence macro-economic policy settings, fluctuations in the property market cycle and a reliance on small and uncertain budgetary allocations. However, there is limited scope to address some of the problems that have undermined previous state and Territory housing policy initiatives by reaching agreements with local government to ease planning controls for social housing, boosting the capacity of the community housing sector and using additional budgets judiciously.