Salvador: The Struggle for Dialogue Within a Heritage City

Founded by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century as the colonial capital of Brazil, Salvador da Bahia on the northeast coast retains to this day a unique historical centre. Now a burgeoning metropolis, Salvador is also the country's third largest city with all the social, political and infrastructure problems and inequalities that accompany explosive urban growth. Sergio Ekerman , an architect and professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, describes how a lack of political will and consensus between private and public stakeholders is failing to produce the dialogue necessary for coherent urban development.     

社会基础设施概念下的城市景观设计教学策略与实践

社会可持续已成为全球城市化的重要议题,其中社会基础设施是实现这一可持续性的空间基础。风景园林本科设计课程教学有必要重新认知城市景观概念,从社会基础设施视角探索新策略。在哈尔滨工业大学风景园林专业的城市景观设计本科教学实践中,注重以社会可持续作为切入点,将城市景观视为重要的社会基础设施,引导学生研究场地中的行为与环境关系,探索新的概念与模式,用设计回应社会现实需求。     

Cultivating the Field in the Global Hinterland: Community Building for Mass Housing in the Amazon Region

The large-scale residential settlements that have sprung up over the last decade to house migrants flocking to join Brazil's burgeoning rural industries are in urgent need of retrofitting with infrastructure and community facilities if they are to become sustainable. To this end, international urban design practice the BAÚ Collaborative has initiated the ‘Eden’ project – a participatory design process that involves state authorities, local NGOs, residents and social workers. Rainer Hehl , a cofounder of BAÚ, outlines the problem, the project, and its test-site: the mining town of Parauapebas.     

Rethinking Minha Casa,Minha Vida: The Resurgence of Public Space

Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV – My House, My Life) is a federal programme started in 2009 that provides low-interest finance to construction companies in an attempt to plug the housing crisis and roll out millions of homes for low-income families across Brazil. Architect Nanda Eskes of Atelier 77 and photographer André Vieira look at the impact that this fast-track, hands-off approach has had on the overall quality of housing provision and the urban environment; they also highlight some innovative initiatives that have been conceived to ameliorate its impact.     

Bogotá and Medellín: Architecture and Politics

In the last 15 years, Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia's two largest cities, have undergone urban renaissances. These are a direct result of a political will to tackle the social, economic and physical segregation caused by the large-scale urban migrations of the 1970s and 1980s, which resulted in informal developments that were often isolated from central urban areas with no infrastructure. Lorenzo Castro and Alejandro Echeverri describe the shared experiences and distinct approaches of each city. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Everybody's Different’: Struggles to Find Community on the Suburban Frontier

The pace of suburban development on the growth frontiers of Australian cities raises urgent urban planning and resourcing issues regarding the physical and social infrastructure that are required to support this growth. These pressures are contributing to the popularity of capital-led master-planning approaches among governments and homebuyers because of its potential to deliver urban planning and infrastructure resources to new suburbs. Master-planning approaches have largely been used to create prestige estates attracting upper-middle-class residents; however, they are increasingly being adapted for wider markets. This paper explores how these contexts are important for understanding ongoing and emerging tensions among residents living in two socio-economically and culturally diverse suburbs on the peri-urban fringe of Melbourne, Australia. The findings question the potential of capital-led master-planning approaches to deliver sound urban and social planning outcomes for socially complex suburban settings.     

Social Disadvantage and Planning in the Sydney Context

The rubric of ‘new’ commons signals the re-assessment of old dilemmas about resource management and collaborative action in new social, spatial and technological settings. Urban commons feature in the expanding register of new commons, but there has been little analysis of the meaning and application of the concept. This article explores the urban commons in an Australian context, focusing on the provision of social infrastructure. While noting criticism of the concept's imprecision and ideological valency, the article argues that the urban commons offers new perspectives on public resources, urban governance and sustainability.

     

城市基础设施项目社会评价研究

以社会学为基础 ,提出了城市基础设施项目社会评价的概念 ,探讨了城市基础设施项目社会评价的基本问题 ,详细论述了项目周期不同阶段社会评价的主要内容     

Citadels of Freedom: Lina Bo Bardi's SESC Pompéia Factory Leisure Centre and Teatro Oficina,São Paulo

Transgression is by implication transdisciplinary, slipping beyond accepted boundaries. Rachel Sara describes how Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi designed her buildings in a state of ‘incompleteness’, so as to be ready for a collaborative occupancy in ‘recognition that the users' experiences construct the architecture as much as the architect herself’.     

Towards Sustainable Neighborhoods:The Role of Social Planning in China-A Case Study of Ningbo,Zhejiang Province

This paper argues for a strengthened form of neighborhood planning designed not only to improve the quality of life but also to promote the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups and a more ecologically sustainable development.Empirical focus is the municipality of Ningbo from 1990 onwards,and the most dynamic dimension of this demographic is the net in-flow of rural migrants from across China,and its implications for social policy are traced.The new infrastructure of local governance affords a unique opportunity for a new approach to solving the critical urban problems of ecological sustainability,social inclusion,and quality of life at the neighborhood level.After showing how neighborhood planners might contribute to local initiatives for neighborhood improvement,the paper concludes with some comments on the implications of this approach for planning education.     

Reinforcing relationships for resilience – by embedding end-user ‘people’ in public–private partnerships

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) target overall benefits from mobilising private resources in delivering public infrastructure. Their longer time spans generate higher risks, hence the greater need for resilience in PPPs, compared to traditional procurement. PPP infrastructure outcomes should include both sustainable and resilient built infrastructure, as well as reliable and resilient service delivery. The public–private cross-sectoral relationships can be significant contributors to resilience. Previous research findings show that public–private relationships are still predominantly formal in PPPs. However, appropriate informal relationships can foster mutual trust and better teamworking that trigger self-adjustment mechanisms to overcome adversities and enhance resilience. Integrating relevant ‘people’ into PPPs to establish a public–private–people partnership (4P) is proposed to reinforce formal–informal relationships, while enhancing relevant ‘social infrastructure’, which could then lead to more resilient and better ‘value for money’ built infrastructure. Findings from another recent study demonstrate the value of 4P in pre-disaster planning. 4P also helps to develop resilient ‘social infrastructure’ for post-disaster reconstruction of sustainable built infrastructure. Conceptual diagrams are developed to summarise how the 4th P could reinforce public–private relationships and inject resilience into a potentially unstable PPP system.     

Infrastructure as Practice

Abstract

To design infrastructure is to design a built form that can be generative and directive: it has the potential to create place and suggest future growth. Yet transportation infrastructure in North America is routinely designed as isolated, mono-functioning works of engineering. In urban areas, this singular approach often leaves areas of adjacent land as vacant and unviable public space discouraging to other patterns and modes of movement. Conversely, new infrastructure in dense urban areas could be developed that promotes public space and includes cultural and social agendas as primary generators of built urban form. This new approach would weave novel, responsive elements into an existing fabric, generating a multiplicity of connections, program, and places.     

What’s Critical about Critical Infrastructure?

Abstract

Critical infrastructure (CI) has received much attention in research, policy and political discussions in recent years, following concern over exposure of infrastructure to terrorist attack, disruption through disasters, rising awareness of the interdependent nature of infrastructure in modern urban systems, and changes in the ownership of and responsibility for infrastructure assets. In this paper, we explore the implications of different framings of both “critical” and “infrastructure”, through two questions: critical how and for whom; critical when and at what scale? Framings of CI, and their increasingly important manifestations in policy and law, have deep but too-often unexposed implications: the lines drawn between what is defined as critical and that which is not concerns not only the physical or informational assets, but the inclusion/exclusion of communities and their places and values as important aspects of modern urban governance. We argue that a better understanding of what is critical about urban infrastructure is not just recognition of their vulnerability and interconnectedness, but also of the key linkages between critical infrastructure and human and environmental system integrity and equity within the context of capitalist urbanisation.     

Where to for Brazil's Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik , a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil's urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid-20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country's cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.     

Infrastructure Planning: in a State of Panic?

Abstract

Infrastructure is routinely framed in contemporary urban policy as a vehicle to grow the economy through the creation of jobs. In periods of economic downturn and when ongoing fiscal uncertainty ensues, governments may look to the construction and maintenance of social and public infrastructure such as social housing and public transport. Cities and communities that have endured infrastructure deficits in the past may become the beneficiaries of adjusted national and state-level policy to support economic prosperity through expedient infrastructure implementation programs. Yet in the post-GFC policy environment urban infrastructure has recentred the role of infrastructure in driving urban economic recovery in terms of economic prosperity. Drawing from the state of exception literature, I call on the notion of urgency to explore infrastructure planning as it manifests at the juncture between strategic planning and implementation. This paper will contribute to the critical urban planning literature by examining how infrastructure prioritisation and implementation is shaped through a characterisation of urgency which subverts the relationship between urban infrastructure planning, implementation and planning process.     

Curitiba Revisited: Five Decades of Transformation

Heralded worldwide as an exemplar of sustainable development, Curitiba now has a history of over half a century of enlightened urban planning. Curitiba born Maria do Rocio Rosário , who is the Head of the São Paulo-based Urban Development Strategies (UDS), reflects on whether Curitiba has actually delivered on its ambitious ideals and where the future challenges might lie for metropolitan integration.     

我国城市基础设施建设投融资模式现状及创新研究

城市化进程加快了城市基础设施建设的步伐,但城市基础设施的融资功能衰退、融资渠道狭窄、融资效率低下,投融资已成为制约城市基础设施建设的瓶颈,而这些问题无一不是源于现有的政府与市场角色界定不清以及市场化程度低下的城市基础设施投融资体制。文章首先利用统计数据分析了我国城市基础设施建设投融资存在的问题,然后针对有关问题提出了城市基础设施建设投融资模式创新的几种形式,最后给出了建立投融资模式创新保障机制的建议。     

Planning,Funding and Delivering Social Infrastructure in Australia’s Outer Suburban Growth Areas

The long-term success of Australia’s rapidly growing outer-suburban communities depends to a large extent on the presence of social infrastructure such as schools, libraries, sporting facilities and community centres. This paper briefly surveys and analyses the current frameworks and practices that support the planning, funding and delivery of social infrastructure in three of Australia’s fastest growing regions: Melbourne; Perth; and South Eastern Queensland. It finds that Australian governments have become adept at planning new suburbs, but still face significant challenges securing adequate funding for infrastructure and managing the complexity of infrastructure delivery.     

Urban studies in Australia: A road map and ways ahead

Charting the dominant approaches in Australian urban studies over the past 30 years by way of a narrative history of research practice and publication, the paper emphasises the significance of environmentalism, feminism and postmodernism for urban research since the 1980s. Current preoccupations include globalisation and social polarisation, expressions of social difference in cities, and the effects of privatisation and new information technologies on urban infrastructure and planning.     

There’s always the river: social and environmental equity in rapidly urbanising landscapes in India

In the pursuit of sustainable and liveable cities, Indian built environment practitioners and policy-makers are understandably focused on aspects of infrastructure, sanitation and health, given the significant urban problems of pollution and environmental degradation. However, there is limited empirical examination of Indian towns and cities as changing urban landscapes. To explore this, the paper examines the rivers in two rapidly urbanising Indian cities. It calls on interviews with practitioners, residents and users in Madurai and Ahmedabad, focusing on access and use of the river to explore social and environmental equity. The findings suggest that free, public and safe access to the rivers have reduced over time in both cities, for different reasons. Perceived environmental quality of both rivers has also worsened and the associated cultural meanings, held by riparian users, have changed. We suggest that urban river infrastructure should be reconceptualised to explore the feasibility and acceptability of a more holistic approach to understanding Indian riparian urban landscapes.