Public participation for infrastructure planning in the context of the German “Energiewende”

The German Energiewende (Energy Transition) poses major challenges to all parties involved. Public participation can contribute to the understanding of these challenges and their positive resolution. It is not suitable, however, to expect public acceptance for predetermined solutions. Participation presupposes openness about options. If this does not exist, one can resort to methods of communication that attempt to convince affected citizens of the necessity of adopting a planned measure. Yet if there is room for choosing among options, participation may create a foundation for broad acceptance of a jointly determined solution to pressing problems. Participative procedures that follow the model of analytic-deliberative discourse, by integrating scientific expertise with ethical and moral consideration, are particularly promising. A forward-looking model is drawn from the use of both online and traditional face-to-face methods of interaction, combining the advantages of both methods. An inclusive planning culture based on cooperation and integration is a promising way to achieve fair and effective implementation of the Energiewende.     

Policy and planning for the urbanized rural areas—The case of Sweden

The rural areas in Sweden are now facing an inevitable situation caused by forces which have become increasingly strong over time. National and international influences have become more dominant in economic, social as well as cultural respects. Rapid expansion of employment and new technology within the information sector are also significant inputs. The traditional role of rural areas as producers of raw materials will be retained, but production will be further automated and demand less employees. In several respects we can identify growing urban characteristics in rural areas, which to a large extent are the outcome of market‐based adjustment processes which have been supported by governmental policy and planning. We shall identify two different visions concerning the future of rural Sweden. Within the Parliamentary Delegation for Development of Sparsely Populated Areas (connected to the Ministry of Industry) a decentralisation strategy has been formulated aiming at consolidating the existing settlement pattern. We conclude, however, that in practice—considering the consequences of all governmental resource transfers—the government is promoting a strategy which focuses on the modernization of rural areas, so they will become increasingly integrated with other parts of the settlement system.     

The managerial turn and municipal land-use planning in Switzerland – evidence from practice

New Public Management (NPM) reforms are intended to increase efficiency and support a more managerial approach to public problems. This paper examines how NPM-type reforms have led to the growing influence of finance and real-estate departments in local level planning in Switzerland. Drawing on over 50 interviews, the paper maps the growing influence of flexible private-law or incentive-based instruments as complements to more binding instruments (typically zoning) in land-use planning practices. NPM reforms have prompted a renewed interest in public property, forcing municipalities to position themselves in relation to the necessity to sell or retain public land. The results show that NPM has affected practices of land-use planning in Switzerland, but the outcomes are more complex than a one-to-one takeover and there is variation across the country. The Swiss case study helps extend the wider international debate about NPM and planning. This paper highlights the complex impacts of managerialism on planning reform as well as ongoing tensions between increased efficiency in plan implementation and public scrutiny.     

Urban planning practices for bikeable cities – the case of Copenhagen

Cities are increasingly looking to cycling as a means to promote sustainability, liveability, and public health. Denmark is one of the European countries where cycling has remained significant – even in the motor age, and national strategies now aim to support and further increase cycling. The article presents the state of cycling in Denmark and Copenhagen – as well as the cycling promoting efforts of the city of Copenhagen which is one of the forerunners in the field.     

The birth of ‘land use planning’ in American urban planning

Although the concept of ‘land use planning’ is now firmly enmeshed in American urban planning, its meaning still remains vague. This paper aims to clarify the meaning by examining the historical development of land use planning in the USA. At the beginning of the twentieth century, city planners viewed a city as an organic unit of public facilities. While city planning thereafter provided potential elements of land use planning, such as zoning, zoning surveys and land use classification systems, the idea of land use planning itself was actually derived from rural county planning and was initially utilized in urban county planning as a guide for zoning in the 1930s. After bringing about a change in the way cities were viewed, that is, as a pattern of land use and population density, land use planning was further employed as a guide for urban redevelopment policies in the 1940s, and finally reaching full integration into city planning in the 1950s and 1960s.     

The book for the fine art of construction

The fully revised 1999 edition of the Steel Construction Manual is a comprehensive work for architects and engineers covering planning and construction using steel. A variety of warehouse, multi-storey and special buildings have been selected to illuminate interesting structural designs in detail.     

The Practice of the Comprehensive Traffic Planning for the City of Chongqing

This article discribes the comprehensive traffic planning of Cho-ngqing, an extra-large industrial city in the southwest of China,which has a geographical importance and hilly terrain. The plan-ning stresses the needs to meet the city's future socio-economic de-velopment strategy, the guarantee for the realization of urban devel-opment strategy and the solutions to the conspicuous traffic prob-lems.     

Postsecular planning? The idea of municipal spirituality

In the contemporary political context, religion is rarely out of the news, usually postulated as a regressive force, battling against modern liberal Western values. However, in everyday life, and specifically with regard to place value, the situation is more complex. This paper addresses the challenge this context and the attendant notion of postsecularism bring to planning practice. It argues that religious and spiritual values can be rearticulated as concepts which add a substantive positive dimension to planning and its conceptualisation and constructions of place. This is done by developing the notion of municipal spirituality, which draws on the theological conceptions of transcendence and the common good to redefine the value of places whose worth cannot easily be made in instrumental terms. In so doing, it challenges the current antagonistic opposition of religious and liberal democratic values, repositioning religious and spiritual concepts in an inclusive way. The idea of municipal spirituality illustrates how planning could have a role in defending and promoting such places. Further, it demonstrates the importance of engaging in agonistic rather than antagonistic debate, rearticulating the criteria on which places can be valued by planning practice.     

XXI. Century’s challenges for the regeneration of port cities – and for the regeneration of the Havana Bay and waterfront

Based on presentations and discussions during a one-week workshop at Havana, Cuba, in June 2017, the article gives an overview of conditions and options for the regeneration of the Havana Bay and the City of Havana. Although the City of Havana seems to be an excellent location for all kinds of international businesses and tourism because of its favourable geographic and climate conditions as well as its outstanding cultural heritage, many big problems must be solved in an ambitious regeneration process. In order to significantly enhance economic growth and development, it is required to remove some political and legal barriers, but even more it is needed to restore environmental and living conditions around the Havana Bay.     

Land use,planning, and the “difficult character of property”

Contemporary land use planning has an ambivalent relationship with private property. While inextricably entangled with private property, planning frequently presents itself as at a remove, such that planning does not appear to regulate property, but rather acts upon “land use.” It is tempting to see land use, therefore, as a means by which planning can institutionally distance itself from its necessary relationship to private property. An original genealogy of land use planning within Canada, however, reveals its entanglement with debates concerning the governance of land, and the imperative for the state assessment of the productive or wasteful uses to which it is put. Private property thus emerges as a central concern to planning, given its importance to landholding, the fear being that unregulated private property leads to unproductive and wasteful forms of land use. Viewed thus, land use should be treated not as the negation of property, but rather as a particular and constrained framing of the planning/property relationship. Put simply, land use asks certain questions of property, while eliding others. It becomes important, therefore, to open the “black box” of land use, in order to understand the important way in which planning practice engages private property.     

The Study of Mechanism for the Development of the Large Cities in China

In studying the development of largecities in China,one has to examine both itspattern,a repeated phenomenon which isuniversal in the development of large cities,and its mechanism, which exists in the tradi-tional culture as well as in the political andeconomic structures of the society.     

The “penalty factors” method for the prediction of TBM performances in changing grounds

Tunnel construction by TBMs through hard rock is significantly affected by the geological and geotechnical conditions at tunnel level. Ground parameters such as uniaxial compressive strength, fracturing degree and abrasiveness, and factors such as water inflows and stress level may deeply affect the way a TBM will perform. In addition, different types of TBMs will behave differently in a given condition.This paper presents a method for TBM performance prediction in changing grounds, which has been developed in the framework of the European project “New Technologies for Tunnelling and Underground Works” (NeTTUN). The model starts from an optimum TBM performance in best conditions, i.e. when all ground parameters are in their “best state”. A stepwise reduction of the optimum advance rate is then performed, according to “reduction factors” that quantify the effect of degrading ground conditions on the TBM advance rate. By doing so, the “penalty factors” model is able to take into account a very wide range of ground conditions, from very good to very poor. Two types of TBMs commonly employed in rock tunnelling have been considered, i.e. Gripper and Shielded machines, each of them characterized by its own set of reduction factors.In order to consolidate the factor values and to validate the model, a TBM performance database, also developed in the framework of the project NeTTUN, has been used. The database includes a large number of tunnels excavated in different ground conditions with all standard TBM types. The comparison between the values given by the “penalty factors” model and the actual TBM performances observed during construction shows that the developed tool may provide a reliable estimation of the TBM performance based on simple ground parameters.The “penalty factors” model has also been interfaced with the DAT (“Decision Aids for Tunnelling”). The DAT software, co-developed by MIT and LMR-EPFL, is able to compute the probabilistic distributions of the tunnel construction time and – cost in function of the geology – and construction related uncertainties.The model is conceived to be used in its present form. However, the methodology can be easily adapted to match the expertize of the user, who is free to update the optimal performances, the ground parameters and/or the values of the reduction factors according to his/her own experience. The model can also be extended to other TBM types and to conventional excavation methods.     

New life for American Downtowns? The 1958 international seminar on urban renewal and the travel of planning ideas in the North Atlantic World

This article scrutinizes the travel of planning ideas between Western Europe and America in the post-war decades by employing the 1958 International Seminar on Urban Renewal as a case study. As a joint venture between the International Federation for Housing and Planning and James M. Miller, a planning professor from Columbia University, this meeting was the first transatlantic conference after 1945 principally intended to (re-)introduce American planners to European reconstruction efforts. Therefore, the seminar testifies to an emerging interest of the wider US professional public in West European planning during the 1950s. When American planners struggled with deteriorating downtowns and suburbanization, they turned to Europe, where cities experimented with pedestrianization, mixed-use zoning and comprehensive planning in order to build their razed city centres anew. Although Americans were relatively unsuccessful in implementing these ideas in their cities, the events surrounding the 1958 seminar show that, even during a period of US hegemony, transatlantic connections were more than a mere ‘Americanization’ of European practice. Thus, this article argues for viewing transnational connections in the post-war North Atlantic World as a circular flow of ideas, in which Europeans and Americans alternately acted as borrowers and lenders, according to their variable perceptions of each other.     

The Forecast of the Targets for the Urban Housing for a Relatively Comfortable Standard of Living in China

To attain a relatively comfortable standard of living by year 200O is the strategic target ofChina＇s economic development.We should first make it clear what is the pattern and standard forhousing for a relatively comfortable. Through our study in the present housing conditions andthe life pattern in 2000.analysis of lowest area limit for one housing unit and macro-analysis ofhousing economy.and study on the inevitability of multiple and multi-level targets for housing ofrelatively comfortable standard of livng,as well as using the analysis of indexes for judging hous-ing conditions in other countries as reference.we set multiple and Mlti-level Targets for Housingfor a Relatively Comfortable Life and Use Them as Reference and Basis for Drafting the GeneralSystem of Housing for a Relatively Comfortable Life and for the Development of HousingProducts.     

Learning in iterated consultation procedures – The example of the German electricity grid demand planning

Public participation has become a conditio sine qua non when planning infrastructure projects. However, current research is concerned with one-time experiments and can not elucidate long-term effects of iterated consultations. Our argument is that consultations have learning effects over time. We test our argument using the German procedure for electricity grid demand planning as a case. Using dictionary coding and a quantitative analysis, supplemented by a qualitative text analysis, we show that participants get better in framing their contributions by using the “right” keywords. Hence, consultations evolve over time and improve in terms of the output legitimacy they generate.     

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.