Stages of a state: from São Paulo's Teatro São José to the Teatro Municipal, 1854–1911

This article uses the cases of the Teatro São José and the Teatro Municipal to explain how and why performance space in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, became an increasingly public issue between 1854 and 1911. Specifically, I analyse the ways in which the notion of the theatre as a public good evolved both in the discourse of paulistas and in the practice of legislation and contract negotiation. This article thus interprets planning history as a history of ideas and assumes cultural policy-making to encompass both government and non-government actors. To that end, utilizing legislation, government records, architectural plans, and the press as sources, I argue that theatres' ‘publicness’ in São Paulo was rationalized along three lines: their potential accessibility to a broad audience, their visibility, and their high cost. While public spending on the Teatro São José was justified on the grounds of economic development and moral and civic education, the Teatro Municipal garnered support as a project of Progressive Era urban reform that sought to affirm São Paulo's place in the civilized world.     

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.     

Re-imagining City Waterfronts: A Comparative Analysis of Governing Renewal in Adelaide,Darwin and Melbourne

Urban waterfront regeneration is one of the largest changes to the structure of Australian and many world cities over the last two decades. There is no comparative research which evaluates their governing with particular attention to the relationship and responsibility of quasi-public agencies and local government. This study advances the competitive-city paradigm from a focus on global cities to an examination of inter-city urban competition between differently located cities in the urban hierarchy by comparing waterfront renewal projects located in Adelaide, Darwin and Melbourne. Through interview, policy and document analysis, the article offers preliminary insights on current and emergent governance arrangements involved in urban waterfront renewal. In an era of increasing inter-urban competition, the study reveals hybrid forms of urban governance are driving the planning and delivery of these three waterfront renewal projects. Further, there exists a ‘knotty’ tension between these models of urban governance and the capacity for meaningful consultation and participation between governments.     

Importing planning ideas,mirroring progress: the hinterland and the metropolis in mid-twentieth-century Brazil

By 1950, the northern region of Paraná State was an affluent settlement zone, due to the prosperous coffee-growing industry and a recent systematic colonization scheme, with its deliberate process of urbanization, which had been responsible for a network of planned new towns. The region was economically and culturally tied to the dominant city of São Paulo, and the changing image of its main towns – Londrina and Maringá – was basically the result of the work of prestigious São-Paulo-based architects and town planners that had been hired by the local elite. Notably, modern architecture and urbanism were imported as a means of achieving modernity: a targeted instrument of civilization, even in a colonization zone where material conditions were relatively unfavourable. In fact, the acts of borrowing, rejection, imitation, adaptation, and transformation can be observed in the movement of ideas. Thus, this paper aims to analyse the two-way relationship established between the most influential Brazilian metropolis and the wealthy provincial hinterland longing to mirror modern features. More precisely, it aims to account for foreign influences and local initiatives as global mechanisms responsible not only for the diffusion of modern planning and architectural practices but also for the construction of a pioneering regional identity.     

Civic Building: Forte,Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz Arquitetos (FGMF), São Paulo

São Paulo-based practice Forte, Gimenes & Marcondes Ferraz (FGMF) places particular importance on developing relationships between architecture, its environment and the user. This is apparent in its two projects featured here: the FDE Public School at Várzea Paulista, for which the firm created concrete brise-soleils ; and the Edifício Projeto Viver, a community building at Morumbi, which it retained as a gateway for the favela it serves. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

全球化世界中的城市竞争与城市管治

在全球化的时代 ,资本和人才流动性很高 ,世界各地的竞争日益加剧。许多城市采用创业型的政策来加强城市竞争力。城市管治也从管理型向创业型转变 ,使城市管治问题变得更加复杂。探讨了城市管治与城市竞争力的互动关系 ,并用香港特区政府采用的增强城市竞争力的重大措施为例说明。     

Articulating the Broken City and Society

Jorge Mario Jáuregui of Metrópolis Projetos Urbanos (MPU) has been responsible for more than 20 projects for the Favela-Barrio (slum-to-neighbourhood) Programme implemented by the Rio de Janeiro city government, and two large-scale urban redevelopment projects for President Lula's PAC (Growth Acceleration Programme). Here Jáuregui describes the strategies behind his work and specifically the transformation of public space that was undertaken at the Complexo de Manguinhos in northern Rio as part of the PAC scheme. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Planning trajectories in post-socialist cities: patterns of divergence and change

This article explores the new planning regimes and planning processes in post-socialist countries and their ability to influence the spatial transformation of cities. It views planning institutions as culturally embedded in the overall process of economic, social, and political transition, while recognizing the power of specific local imperatives and market pressures to shape their response. The research draws on empirical evidence in four countries and their capital cities to highlight the links between the transition to democracy, markets, and decentralized governance on the spatial transformation in post-socialist cities. The main argument is that the new planning institutions have different ability to direct these processes of change, depending on the legal framework, the availability of plans, and the institutionalization of the plan-implementation process. Despite the diverse mosaic of urban experiences in Prague, Riga, Belgrade, and Tirana, planning institutions are viewed as path dependent, influenced by a common socialist legacy. Further, changes in the exogenous environment – economic, social, and institutional – are perceived to be important sources of convergence, but tend to shape different planning responses and policy choices. The research explores these differences as well as the new patterns of spatial transformation in three principal domains: (1) spaces of production/consumption reflecting the economic transition; (2) differentiation in residential spaces associated with the social transition; and (3) new approaches to planning and service delivery resulting from the transition in governance. Central to the arguments in the article is that transition of this magnitude has created a complex urban world in which the patterns of divergence are going to become more explicit in the future, producing spatial and temporal differentiation among post-socialist cities.     

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’.     

Cities and memory: a history of the role of memorials in urban design from the Renaissance to Canberra

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, there has been a significant revival of interest and growth in numbers of public memorials – sculptures and structures in public spaces that convey information and social attitudes about past persons, events and ideas. This renaissance has been most marked in national capital cities. To better understand this recent revival of interest in memorials, and their potential to reproduce or transform social and spatial relationships within cities, this paper examines the historical evolution of the role and form of memorials within the overall planning and development of Western capital cities, both existing and new, from their origins in Ancient Rome and through their later development from the Renaissance to the beginning of Modernism. It charts memorials’ ongoing contribution to the role of the capital city as a diagram that defines and communicates national history, identity and politics, contrasting this to ways that memorials have adapted to changing technological and political realities of land development and management.     

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.     

基于健康城市视角的城市管治路径选择

城市化的快速发展给城市带来了一系列的健康问题,这些问题已日益引起人们的关注。在此背景下,健康城市已成为世界城市的发展方向,采取合理的城市管治路径以提高城市的健康水平,促进健康城市建设,是各大城市所面临的共同挑战。本文首先对健康城市问题作了一些介绍,接着介绍城市管制的内涵,最后对我国健康城市建设指导下的城市管治路径选择进行了探讨。     

Growth of metro cities in India: trends,patterns and determinants

Using city-level census data this paper examines the trends, patterns and determinants of metro city growth in India and finds that the post-economic reforms period has heralded a rapid pace of metropolitan development, causing a dispersed pattern of metropolitan growth in the last two decades. The empirical results show that metro cities located along a riverbank and situated in the northern, eastern and southern regions of India; cities with better quality public services and those which are state capitals are revealed to grow faster than others. A proximity to a large city also spurs on nearby urban centres to become larger, highlighting agglomeration effects. In contrast, initial city size has a negative impact on metro growth, reflecting some conditional convergence in population growth across cities. It is also found that the older cities have not grown at a rapid pace, with many of them flagging remarkably low demographic growth, suggesting a process of population drift towards the periphery from the core city areas, thereby leading to an ‘agglomerated trend’ of metropolitan development in India. Finally, we argue that diverting investment and development projects towards regressive regions as well as to secondary cities for strengthening their infrastructure and economic bases may herald sustainable and balanced metropolitan development.     

Brasília: Life Beyond Utopia

Brasília is renowned the world over for its realisation of a visionary Modernist plan, designed by Brazilian architect and planner Lúcio Costa (1902–98). The reality of the city's design and its development, as explained by architect, author and academic researcher Thomas Deckker , is, however, much more complex. Contrary to public perception, Brasília falls a long way short of being ‘a unified city’, though it is one that has prospered with a growing population and stronger economy than other Brazilian cities.     

城市开发中的城市管治研究--以汕头市南区开发为例

我国20年来城市管治的政治经济背景的改变,导致许多城市的开发也随之发生了变化.本文首先回顾了国内外的相关研究,接着分析了汕头市的政治经济特征,然后以汕头市南区开发为例,阐述了当今城市管治对城市开发的影响,最后提出了汕头市今后城市管治改进和调整的建议.     

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.     

建筑物变形缝新构造设计和施工的应用

本文介绍一种新的建筑物变形缝构造设计,可以克服标准图集上变形缝墙体两边空鼓、渗漏及观感差的问题,变形缝此方法在多个获省、市优良样板工程中应用     

日本的城市环境问题及其改善过程——政策和规划视角研究

日本是亚洲最先城市化的国家,目前已有86%的人口生活在城市行政区范围内。在城市化的进程中,日本曾出现过各种各样的环境问题,经过半个多世纪的努力,现在的城市生活环境不仅得到根本改善,而且在资源循环利用和低碳社会建设等方面也做出引人注目的成绩。本文从日本城市规划制度和环境政策演变角度,分阶段介绍自1950年以来的城市环境问题、环境法律和有关城市规划建设的政策,逐步展开日本改善城市生活环境、保护地球自然环境的过程,尤其注重从生态城市到低碳社会转型发展的最近政策动向。